Again my heart turned over. Perhaps Felix Baer was bringing us a new set of code charts. I leaned on the dashboard, trying to see what was going on.

“How do I know?” said Ellen, staring at the sky through the glasses. “Och, they’re coming round again.”

She slid back abruptly into the driver’s seat, shoved the Tilly into gear, and started it up.

She drove too quickly. A freezing wind howled through her open window, and I braced myself against the dashboard. Jane, beside me, clung to the window crank and the door handle. We rounded the bend in the lane, and instead of carrying on ahead into the village to drop off Jane and me at the Limehouse, Ellen swerved into the drive of RAF Windyedge.

I held my breath. Ellen screeched to a stop in front of the barrier at the guards’ hut and waved.

One of the soldiers began to lift the barrier. The other came over to the van and glanced at the pass that Ellen held out. Then he stooped to peer in at her passengers—Jane and me.

“You have got to be joking,” he said.

“Oh, you know Louisa, Nobby,” Ellen exclaimed in irritation. “And this is Mrs. Campbell’s old auntie, haven’t you met her yet? She’s been living at the Limehouse since November!”

Jane gazed out the window at the planes, which had finished a single loop out to sea and were now heading back to the airfield.

“I haven’t the time now to drop these ladies off!” Ellen exclaimed. “ID, Louisa?”

I dug in my schoolbag. Jane beat me to it, and did the magic trick with her dead husband’s passport.

“Highly irregular,” grumbled Nobby. “You know that—”

But the other guard had already raised the gate. Ellen cut off Nobby’s protest by rolling up her window. The Tilly sailed past the barrier, spraying through icy puddles.

Ahead of us, the planes were roaring in for another go. One of the Blenheims had flown ahead of the Ju-88 to lead it. Another came behind the Luftwaffe plane, escorting it, and the Spitfires stayed above the others, guarding the Blenheims. Ellen guided the Tilly off the driveway and over the longer grass to the mowed runway’s edge, where she threw open her door and leaped out to watch. I leaned out the open door behind her; Jane leaned over my shoulder.

The leading aircraft touched the ground and taxied out of the way.

“That’s Ignacy,” Ellen said. “It’s Pimms Section in the air—most of ’em. Jamie must have been the first to land.…”

The Luftwaffe bomber was coming in now, its wings rocking, its nose rising and dipping. It looked very unstable. Harry Morrow in the Blenheim behind it came down as calm and steady as anything. Something was wrong with the German plane, or with its pilot.