I kissed Jane’s silver-white hair again. She was recovered enough to be herself—I could tell. Fighting. Thinking.

But my job had just become a hundred times more difficult.

Ellen:

I was downstairs in uniform and eating porridge when the bomb hit. The glasses rattled. My bowl slid and smashed on the flagstones. Nancy gave a wail and disappeared for a moment below the counter on the other side of the bar.

By the time the roaring stopped and I’d dived behind the bar to haul Nan to her feet and try to shut her skriking, Nobby Fergusson was pounding on the door—he’d seen the bomb fall and thought it hit the Limehouse. I left him with Nan and ran upstairs to Jane and Louisa.

There stood Sergeant Lind in her naughty French underthings and one stocking. I let out a howl of laughter and choked on it one second later when I spied Louisa on the floor with Jane.

“That was a Luftwaffe Junkers 88 with a fighter escort of Me-110s,” I told them, passing on what Nobby told me. “They came straight here and scarpered off again, whilst our lot are stuck on the ground clearing snow, and one of our lads, not saying who, never made it out of bed yesterday. And Deeside is snowed in too. Not a single RAF plane in the sky to chase off the Jerries, and they still missed the airfield!”

“They might be aiming for something else,” Louisa said quietly.

“Mrs. Warner needs a bandage,” Sergeant Lind said. “She’s twisted her wrist and dislocated her fingers.”

“I’ll fetch Nan’s first-aid kit. Are you hurt, Louisa?”

Louisa shook her head.

“They got the hill above the limekilns,” I went on. “If they’d waited a tenth of a second longer it would have hit this house.”

Elisabeth Lind went to get dressed, but Louisa didn’t want to leave Jane. We bound up the old woman’s wrist and fingers, and pulled her off the floor and pushed her into the big stuffed armchair. But we couldn’t put clothes on her and there was no way to get her downstairs unless someone carried her.

The bomb that missed the Limehouse did not fall harmlessly. You could tell that by leaning from Louisa’s window. There were sirens and shouts, and a scraping and pounding noise of men using spades and pickaxes against rock. The trees on the hill were aflame, and there came a delicious smell of burning pine, even through the window glass.

“Louisa, you must go find out what’s happening!” Jane told her.

“But you can’t get up! Supposing the house is on fire!”

Jane snapped at her, “Goodness, girl, you’d better find out if it is, hadn’t you!”

Louisa and I both jumped. We’d neither one of us ever heard her speak so sharply.