Inside it, wrapped in silk underwear like a pass-the-parcel, were five cheeses and six blocks of butter. Jane had smuggled dairy products off the Isle of Man in her knickers! I definitely did not see her packing them.

“There wasn’t any rationing in That Place, darling, and I know you struggle because of the blockades, so I brought some contraband.”

Mrs. Campbell let out another burst of dry laughter. “My word. All that butter! You haven’t changed a bit, Aunt Jane.”

She hadn’t exactly said thank you.

“Nor have you, Nancy,” said Jane gently, as if it couldn’t be helped.

Room Number Five was at the end of the upstairs passage. Mrs. Campbell called it the “second-best double room.”

“I’ve put my own wireless radio in there,” she told us again grudgingly, “but you’ll both have to share the bathroom with the lasses. There’s only Volunteer Ellen McEwen just now, the driver for RAF Windyedge. When there’s a squadron based at the aerodrome there are sometimes others. You’ll have to take a torch or a candle when you use the stairs at night, as it’s impossible to fix blackout over that tall window in the hall. I’ve taken out the bulbs from the electric fittings to stop anyone switching on the lights by accident.”

It was all cold. The stair was covered with faded coconut matting. This brown dull stuff underfoot had been green and alive once, palm trees blowing in a tropical sky. Far from home like me. Except that nobody stared at coconut matting. It was ordinary.

But Room Number Five was all right. It had three of the deep-set windows, one small one like an arrow slit facing northeast toward the airfield, and two facing southeast. With great relief I set down the case of Jane’s that I was carrying. I didn’t think it would be too bad being here, even if it was cold and dark, because I liked Jane despite her being German, and there was a piano downstairs, and the gramophone. I leaned across one of the bigger windowsills in the room, and I could see the North Sea like a strip of Christmas tinsel on the horizon. Far off in the distance, somewhere on the way to Norway, the sun was shining.

If the aerodrome gets busy, I thought, perhaps there will be other young people about.

There was already Ellen McEwen. She couldn’t be much older than me. But she seemed it, in her crisp khaki uniform and tie, driving the Royal Air Force van so casually. It made me quite envious, remembering. Also, she was a tall and rather striking beauty, with shining coppery hair coiled beneath her uniform cap. She could have been on a recruitment poster. She’d made me feel mousy and shy, which wasn’t helped by her being a bit stiff.