I put down the hairbrush and wound my shawl tight about my shoulders. Queenie, that canny, bonny lass, my old friend, was putting on her nightdress in the next room, and I had to pretend I didn’t know who she was! It was hard.

But Louisa needed to know.

“She’s our Jamie’s sister,” I whispered over the rushing water. “You can trust her because she’s Jamie’s sister.”

“Oh!”

Louisa laughed wildly.

“Of course she is!”

She leaned over the basin with her toothbrush, which had not come near her teeth for at least five minutes.

“Whisht. Don’t tell,” I hurried to add. “She wants the Germans to think she’s Swiss.”

“Jamie’s sister! Their eyes are exactly the same! No wonder she hides behind those stick-on lashes! But,” Louisa asked breathlessly, “won’t she tell Cromwell? Isn’t she supposed to?”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “I don’t think he’s meant to know a thing about it. She might report it to her own commanding officer. But she’d have a long jaw with Jamie before she did that. If she ever catches him alone.”

“How am I going to catch her alone?” Louisa wailed.

That was the hard part. Sharing a room with Phyllis. Always carrying some gadgy in the van. Cromwell breathing down your neck. Worrying Nan would hear you.

“Do you talk in your sleep?” Louisa asked suddenly, reading my mind. “What if Phyllis heard? Do you think Jamie talks in his sleep?”

“Silver will shut him up if he does,” I said, hoping so, as I turned off the taps.

Jamie:

I tossed and turned in my bunk again, but tonight everyone was restless.

Derfel was singing under his breath in Welsh. The Australians chattered quietly. “Tomorrow at Mrs. C.’s?” I heard one of them say. I didn’t know any of them well enough to tell apart their accented voices in the dark.

“Too right,” another answered. “My turn to dance with Sergeant Lind.”

“She’s talking to the Jerries in the afternoon and we’re flying tomorrow night. We won’t even see her.”

“I can dream, can’t I?”

“Go ahead and dream,” said the first—probably Harry. “Flight Officer Pennyworth is mine.”

Meanwhile, Chip and Yorkie argued softly on the other side of the room. I couldn’t hear most of it, but it was about the German prisoners. If Cromwell was getting information out of them, he wasn’t sharing it. Our ground crew had gone over every inch of the captured German bomber and we’d all had a nosy inside the cockpit, but no one found any hidden secret messages or classified Luftwaffe radar gear. Or fresh code settings for a German cipher machine.