“When’s your birthday?” I persisted. “You’ll have to get an adult National Registration card when you turn sixteen. Sergeant Lind here fibbed about her age when she took her driving test, and if you need anybody to pull strings for you at the recruitment office, I’d say she owes you a big favor anyway.”

I couldn’t understand why Louisa looked so angry.

And then I realized she thought I’d pushed her into a corner. She wasn’t “of pure European descent.” She thought the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force would turn her away, the way the navy turned away her father.

“The air force lifted the color bar in 1939,” I said. “I guess it wasn’t done with a big welcome or a lot of fanfare, but there are a few West Indians in the RAF. I met one myself last autumn, George Archer, gunner in a Wellington bomber. Family man, lovely chap. I think the WAAF would take you.”

As I watched the familiar excitement creep back into her heart-shaped face, I secretly thought that giving Louisa the tip-off that would get her into the services was perhaps my finest hour: the best thing I’d done for Britain since the war started. A bomber pilot sent night after night on missions of destruction doesn’t get much opportunity to be creative.

Buckets of blood—what was I going to do next?

Weren’t there a couple of one-armed ferry pilots in the Air Transport Auxiliary? I knew my wee sister had a friend who flew for them. Maybe she could introduce me.

It would be a while yet before the damaged bits of me healed, but the war wasn’t over.

Ellen:

Louisa as a WAAF! I tried to imagine her in air-force blue and a peaked cap. I wanted to see it. I wanted to see her as an officer, bossing folk about.

I needed to shift gears, too. Under Nan Campbell’s roof for fifty times as long as any other? Shaness—much too long.

I thought I’d apply for a bit of training. Gunnery—or those teams that raised the barrage balloons, protecting cities from enemy aircraft. Maybe even become an officer myself. I’d learned a lot watching Jamie.

The next few months wouldn’t be easy, living with the Torries in Windyedge and waiting for a transfer.

But Louisa and I would have each other while we waited.

Louisa:

I remembered what Jane Warner had said about a razor and ink being all it took to fix her passport.

Rules are made to be broken, Lula.

When my sixteenth birthday comes around in the spring, I thought, and I get my new National Registration card, I have only to get rid of one stroke off the 6 and add another loop to make it an 8.

You, Jane said to me, with warmth in her wonderful rich voice, you might be able to change things.