“I can manage being on my feet in this room by myself perfectly well, as you know.”

“All the same!”

I made her sit. I darted down the passage, stepped into the bathroom, and switched on the light.

The whole world seemed to explode.

It was a roar louder than being inside a Blenheim in the air, louder than standing next to a Messerschmitt 109 starting its engines. It was an explosion of thunder so suffocating I couldn’t hear my own shriek. The light overhead flickered out. The house shook. The floor beneath my feet shook. All I could think was that it was an earthquake, as once happened when Mummy and I were hanging out washing in our Kingston garden and we were both knocked off our feet—nothing else I ever felt could make a house tremble. I pressed my back against the bathroom wall, waiting for the earth to stop moving.

When the world set itself aright, I tore back to Room Five, where I’d left Jane sitting in her nightgown listening to Music While You Work on the wireless.

The radio was dead and she was lying on the floor.

She had jumped up when the thundering started. The shaking hadn’t knocked her over—it just startled her so much she lost her balance.

She was doubled over between the armchair and the bed, whimpering. She had taken all her weight on her right hand as she threw it out ahead of her to break her fall.

It was as if she’d stepped into a time machine and come out twenty years older.

She cried and sobbed. She didn’t cooperate when I tried to help her sit up. I coaxed and pleaded and finally scolded. That made her whimper in a new and different way, whiny and sniveling, which shocked me. Finally I managed to make her roll onto her side—and gaped in horror when I saw that the last three fingers of her right hand were bent sideways.

But it was her wrist, not her fingers, that she grabbed at with her other hand. She cradled the hurt hand against her chest, moaning. I thought she’d broken her arm.

I was either going to have to leave her to get help, or yell my lungs out to make someone hear me.

“Help! Help! Ellen! Phyllis! Nan!”

I’d left our door open, and Elisabeth Lind came flying into the dusty sunlight of our room wearing nothing but a fancy French silk bra and knickers, and one very ordinary darned wool stocking that was part of her WAAF uniform. She’d been getting dressed. She was not the least bit embarrassed. She knew what to do.

“Stop moving her about,” she told me sharply. “Mrs. Warner, can you hear me? Did you hit your head? No? Ah, thank goodness—”

“My wrist—mein Ärm ist gebrochen—ah—”

“Shh—no German.”