Nobody wanted to walk to the pub through the mud and slush and falling sleet after a day like that, and I couldn’t use the Tilly to drive them time and again.

Next day it was blowing a gale, though the sleet eased. Old Flash rang to say I wasn’t needed at the aerodrome. I could have kissed him. At half past eleven on the button, Jamie’s lot came singing past the limekilns.

“Jane, Jane, go upstairs,” Louisa urged.

“Won’t you play the piano for them again?”

“I will, but let’s go upstairs on our own just now,” Louisa said. She started from her chair beside the fire and snatched up Jane’s sticks. “For a bit of quiet before the party starts.”

The old woman caught on. For the first time since B-Flight’s last mission, we four would be under the same roof. Jane took the sticks and hobbled out of the bar.

“What is it your old auntie drinks, Mrs. C.?” Jamie asked, pulling his tanner from the black oak beam. “Whisky and a drop of water? I’ll treat.”

“Not for sixpence,” Nancy said firmly. “Not even for you. That’ll be two and six.”

“Highway robbery,” he complained. “How does she afford it?”

“She doesn’t. She had two the day she arrived, and that’s that. Take her a pot of tea if you want to be nice.”

“Feels a bit mean, Nancy.”

“Oh!” I said, getting a dig in. “Wasn’t there something about ten bob you owed someone, Flight Lieutenant Beaufort-Stuart?”

He shrugged. “I’ve not got it on me now.”

Nancy was not to be moved. So it was tea.

“Very proper, too,” Jamie said solemnly.

“Come on, Jamie Stuart, I’ll help you through the doors with the tea tray,” I offered.

“I shouldn’t allow Scotty around that fine woman without a chaperone,” Silver agreed.

Jamie gave him a halfhearted clout. “Jealous.”

“Just wondering what you’re up to!”

“I’ll tell you when I find out,” Jamie said.

At last. Four days gone, and I hadn’t once caught Jamie or Louisa alone without Phyllis or Silver tagging along. I held the hall door for Jamie, and led him upstairs and down the passage to Room Number Five.

Louisa let us in. Jane sat by the unlit fire wrapped in a woolly blanket—of course, it wasn’t three o’clock yet. Some jazz singer was warbling on the wireless, sat like a queen on a doily taking up most of the dresser. Jamie perched the tea tray on a shaky table covered with another doily, and for a wee while we all looked at one another without saying anything.

Then Mrs. Warner said, “Show them, Louisa.”