I’d never seen proper snow. In London we got sleet or sometimes sooty slush. The high moors around Windyedge had been white all winter, but this was the first picture-postcard snow I’d ever seen up close. I threw the window open and leaned into the sill over the books.

“It smells different!”

I scooped snow off the sill and licked it. A flurry of wet flakes gusted into my face and the Scotch pines sighed.

“It sounds different!”

Jane laughed at me. “Shut the window,” she said. “The fire is on.”

“Can the Blenheims fly in snow?” I exclaimed.

“I shouldn’t think so,” said Jane.

“I told Miss Lind about the Enigma machine,” I confessed.

Elisabeth Lind came in for five minutes, carefully avoiding Nancy Campbell. She was so excited it made her weep. She gave a little sob as she opened the shining wooden lid of the cipher machine, and another as she pressed a key and a lamp came on.

“I’ve never touched one,” she whispered. “Show me how the code works.” I opened my exercise book to the first message I’d decoded, and showed her.

“It’s so beautiful,” she said. “Don’t call it contaminated just because they want to trick you. It’s the purest piece of machinery I’ve ever seen. It has to do what it’s told.”

I know it sounds mad, but I knew what she meant.

“When the snow is gone I shall have to send it away,” she said wistfully. “I’m a bit envious of you getting to really use it.”

The 648 Squadron airmen spent the day digging out Blenheims and clearing the runway, and the ground crew paraded up the lane to clear it as far as the main road. Ellen was busy hauling spades and soldiers; the Tilly rattled on tires wound up in chains. I kept running to the window to try to see what was going on, and just before it got dark Jane insisted I run outside. She sat in the bar where Mrs. Campbell could keep an eye on her, while I borrowed Mrs. Campbell’s boots again and went down to the harbor to look at the snow falling on the cliffs and in the sea. My feet seemed back to normal, thank goodness.

Low gold winter sunlight streamed through the southeast windows when I woke up the next morning, lighting corners of the room and casting shadows behind the furniture. The radio played while Jane poked about in the top dresser drawers, hunting for something. I jumped up to help.

“Oh, just a clean handkerchief!” she told me. “I can’t find a single one.”

“I washed them all yesterday. They’re on the drying rack by the bathtub. I’ll fetch one—but it won’t be ironed yet, you know! Do sit down—I don’t like to leave you on your feet.”