When he discovered that the German agent who’d be looking after him when he landed would be a woman, he’d hoped she’d be the kind who’d fall for his charms, but the moment he saw her that plan went out of the window. Now he was just delaying the journey to London while he thought of something. He was even beginning to wonder what the consequences would be if something happened to the woman: would anyone miss her?

By Tuesday, Lillian Abbott couldn’t ignore an unmistakable menace about the German. Despite his frequent smiles and apparently relaxed manner, she felt thoroughly intimidated. Even aside from harbouring a German spy, there was also the fact of having a stranger in her house. Apart from his bath on the first morning, he never seemed to wash, so had a foul odour, and he was eating so much she was buying more than was wise on the black market. She was concerned she could be drawing attention to herself, even in an area where people apparently didn’t indulge in gossip.

As she was about to leave on Tuesday morning, he announced that he’d need another day at least before he could consider moving on, and as she cycled to work, the realisation that he might have no intention of ever going to London began to dawn on her.

That afternoon, on the way back, she stopped at Peascombe cricket club. It was situated between the two villages, and when she’d moved to the area, she’d attended their matches, partly because it seemed to be the right thing to do and also because she enjoyed cricket, certainly more than attending church. Now the ground was abandoned. The low metal railings that had skirted the boundary had been uprooted and sent to aid the war effort, probably now being turned into tanks. The outfield was also serving the war effort, having become a series of vegetable patches, though inevitably there’d been bitter disputes between the two villages as to who was responsible for maintaining them, and as a result most had gone to seed. The clubhouse was boarded up and the large roller, which required two men to pull it, lay rusting on what had been the batting strip.