Nancy slid a pint glass beneath a tap and began to fill it with ale that foamed like liquid carnelian.

“See, we can cooperate when there’s a good reason for it,” Silver whispered, and I laughed.

“Who’s first, lads?” Mrs. Campbell called out.

I looked up at the black oak beam above the Limehouse bar. Gleaming silver, exactly where I left it, was the tanner I’d put there for luck six weeks ago. I swear, Nancy polished those coins while we were away. I reached up and twisted my shining sixpence out of the wood and slapped it down on the brass counter with a tinny clink.

“Make that one Silver’s,” I said. “I’m paying. Best observer in the RAF, he can see in the dark. Pull me a pint, too, while you’re at it, Mrs. C. I’m parched.”

“Right you are, Flight Lieutenant Beaufort-Stuart.”

She beamed at us over the taps, looking for faces she recognized. “How about you, Sergeant Wingate?”

“Sure thing, Nancy,” said Chip, and pulled his own sixpence from the beam.

When he turned around, Bill Yorke and the young Aussies were watching with interest. The wishing coins were new to them.

“You put a tanner or a bob up there before an op,” explained Derfel. “Then when you’re safe home, you take it out and buy yourself a drink.”

Along with me and Silver, Chip, and Derfel, Ignacy was the only one of us who had left a coin there. The rest were new to Windyedge, and had to dig into their pockets. Nancy began to hand round pints as fast as she could pull them.

Dougie started to take a sip.

“Not yet,” Ignacy warned. The Australians all looked at me, confused.

I shook my head. “Wait for everybody.”

No one drank. Silver was right; they could cooperate.

When everyone held a brimming glass, I raised my own toward the untouched coins still shining in the ceiling. “Absent friends.”

The murmur went around the room. Absent friends. The girls raised their teacups.

“Sergeant Colin Oldham,” Silver said quietly, holding up his pint to me.

“Cheers.”

We tapped each other’s glasses, remembering. Only two weeks ago.

“Och, you’ll soon learn our ways,” Nan told the new lads, her eyes wet and glinting. Then she went back to work, as she’d been doing for twenty-five years.

Everybody quieted down a bit now that there was something to drink. Nancy doled out tinned beef sandwiches. Bill Yorke pushed a chair across to sit next to the girls, and got out his cigarette papers. The first two he pulled out were torn, or wrinkled, or something, and instead of flattening them, he crumpled them up and dropped them in the ashtray. He rolled a cigarette for himself before offering them round.