“Louisa!” The voice was high-pitched and urgent and definitely didn’t belong to the German pilot. “Louisa, wake up!”

I crawled out of bed and clunked around in the dark, feeling my way. Jane and I had locked ourselves in; I’d shoved a chair under the door handle to brace it. It took me a moment to undo all this extra security.

“Louisa!”

“I’m coming!”

I got the door open. Ellen McEwen stood in the shadowy passage in her ATS uniform, less crisp than it was the day before, holding an electric torch.

“I have to take the pilot back to RAF Windyedge,” she said. “His contact isn’t here, but he wants to go. You can tell he’s a mess of nerves. Will you come with me? Please come with me.”

“Oh—” I protested. “But I’m supposed to help Jane—it’s her first day here!”

“I asked Mrs. Campbell, and she’ll take over till you’re back. Please, please, Louisa.”

Didn’t I want to do something to win the war? To be in the sky? To fly into combat against German pilots?

Well, here was a German pilot.

It wasn’t flying into combat, but it mattered. I could go with Ellen, and do a little thing for our side.

And I wanted to see him again.

“Yes, all right.” It came out like the croak of a tree frog. I cleared my throat and tried again. “Let me get dressed.”

“Thank you, thank you. He’s downstairs having coffee. We can have some too.”

Mrs. Campbell had also made a great pot of porridge. We all stood at the bar strengthening ourselves, Ellen and I at one end and Felix Baer at the other. The “coffee” was made from chicory syrup, and it was terrible. I decided I would not drink coffee again until rationing ended or I went back to Jamaica, whichever came first. But that pilot-pianist drank it greedily.

When he’d finished he looked up at the sixpences and shillings left behind by 648 Squadron, gleaming silver in the yellow light of the lamp Mrs. Campbell had switched on behind the bar.

He reached into a pocket and pulled out something that shone like a silver sixpence. I couldn’t tell what kind of coin it was between his thumb and forefinger. It wouldn’t have fit in the gas meter, but he reached up and pressed it firmly into a crack in the black oak beam over our heads.

“You see, Louisa?”

I jumped. I didn’t expect him to call me by name.

“How you say—?” He faltered. “For luck.”

“Aye, right,” said Mrs. Campbell darkly. “Good luck, then.”

He pushed away his coffee cup and went through to the hall. His boots clattered as he took the stairs two at a time. I worried he’d break his neck in the unfamiliar dark. A minute later we heard him come back down.