In the Tilly on my own, I unfolded the banknote—very generous if he meant me to keep it. Just like a Beaufort-Stuart, throwing money about, even when they didn’t have any. A pilot’s salary is a deal higher than a driver’s, but it was likely his only income.

Hidden inside the ten shillings was a sheet of notepaper from Jamie’s wireless operator. It was covered with blether in Chip’s sprawling American print. Rows and rows of five letters apiece, none of it anything like words.

Pass it along, Jamie had said.

I thought I might send the ten bob to my dad as he’d bid me. But I knew who the pencil scrawl was meant for, and it wasn’t old Alan McEwen.

I had a guess what Jamie was up to. And I thought this would help him, and I wanted to help him. So I did.

It should not have been the carry-on it was to get Louisa and Jane alone with me and Jamie for five minutes.

For several days of dreich misery, sleet whipped at RAF Windyedge, and you’d be surprised how busy our Jamie was kept when he wasn’t in the air. I was kept busy too. Phyllis could write her reports sitting in Nan Campbell’s office or in the bar at the Limehouse, but I had to be at the aerodrome to do my work. Each day I’d bicycle over (to save the Tilly’s petrol), in a great big mackintosh through the wet, up the long lane to the airfield. Then I had to drive Wing Commander Cromwell over to Deeside to meet with 648 Squadron’s A-Flight, or take a mechanic to Stonehaven to collect aeroplane parts from the rail station, or give Jamie and Adam Stedman a lift around the airfield to do inspections.

There wasn’t room in the hangar for all B-Flight’s aircraft, and icy spitters drove at the wings of the sad planes left outside. The sleet came down so hard that Adam and Jamie crawled up through the escape panels in the floor of each plane instead of opening the overhead hatches, while I sat in the Tilly, blowing on my fingers and watching through the streaming windows. One of the shot-up planes sat for nearly forty-eight hours before Jamie spied that water was seeping through the bullet holes. When he put his head up into the cabin he ducked back out sharpish. I could see him gagging.

“What is it?” I called, cranking the window down about an inch.

“The cabin’s all full of mildew. Reeking with it! That’s just happened in two days. Ugh. I’d better taxi her into the hangar or she’ll be unflyable. Get someone out here with a starter for me, will you?”

And I left him and Adam peering up into the plane and holding their noses while I sped off on that errand.