– Why is he allowed to have that much power? He is just one person! Is it because they agree with him? No Jews! Whites only! An Aryan race? Are you kidding me? We got through one World War already for this? The world better not let anything like this ever happen again, Ivy. I can’t take it. Please don’t leave me and go away. I don’t think I can take that either. Why can’t you just stay here? Why do you have to go and help a friend in London of all places? Do you know how many bombs have been dropped down there?

I kiss her on the lips.

– Have you written back to Levi?

– Aye.

– Is he okay?

– He’s good, or he says he is anyway. I can’t believe you are both going to be gone now!

– Don’t worry, you’ll be okay. And I killed the mouse.

– You did?

– Yes.

– It wasn’t a bad mouse.

– You can’t know that, you never met any of his friends. That mouse might have been a total psychopath and not in a good way, I suppose there isn’t any good way to be a psychopath…

I glance at her.

– But it was so small.

– Small mice can be psychopaths too, Morag, and it was riddled with disease and it was sitting on the back of the sofa last night when you were sleeping on it, it stuck its finger up at me!

– Mice don’t have fingers.

– Aye, they do.

– How did you kill it?

– I put a glass bowl on top of it, but then it tried to shoot its skinny arm out with that little pink paw thing and I slammed my hand down on the bowl because I thought it was going to get out and it broke its arm, snapped it, clean in half. It was bleeding on the floor.

– Gross.

– So I lifted up the bowl and I took the broom and used that to stand on the mouse. It crunched a lot for such a tiny thing.

– You can be so cold, Ivy Proudfoot.

I smile with a fleeting touch of pride despite myself.

She has no idea.

I don’t tell her I watched it die.

It lay on its side and its heart was beating so fast the whole ribcage was just a huge indent of oxygen going in and out and in and out. She wasn’t asleep either. She was in the bath. I was as quiet as I could be so she wouldn’t hear anything. At least I know that I can kill something now. Everyone has to start somewhere, a little thing and then a bigger thing.

– What we need is music and dancing, have you got your ID cards, Morag?