Still, she liked going to the Partisan, even if she was a bit in awe of everyone. There was always something happening, the New Left Club and the Direct Action Committee, music, talks, films, theatre. You name it. It was – she reached for the word – affirming. No, exciting. Banning the bomb wasn’t just about being against things. It was for things, for life, for living, for fun and gaiety, health and happiness. Being young and active, having a cause. It was a new kind of politics, of being together. It was exhilarating. Joyous. Life sparkled. It was for the day, for light, for the sun. It smothered the nightmares that plagued her, the firestorms, the peeling skin, the charred flesh. Berlin. Dresden. Hiroshima.

She used to wonder if John ever went there, and if she met him, what she’d do. She thought of him night and day, crowding into her dreaming time at night, her thinking time on the Tube, the slack moments at work. But she was bone-tired and her breasts were tender. She wanted to cry all the time. And always the swirling hurricane of a question. Why? What had she done wrong? She thought there’d been such good omens at first with the way they met, and what they had in common. She’d let herself go into free-fall, her mind in chaos, her body tender at the thought of him. And then, rupture, as if she had been flayed alive, skin on that side, flesh on the other. Raw and bloody, like those poor souls in Hiroshima. She put a brave face on it at work, and at home, playing with the boys, reading them stories, helping with the washing-up since her cooking wasn’t up to it, as Dee had said. She’d never paid attention in Domestic Science.

§

She sidled through the door and into the meeting, where a young man was holding up the model of the homeosaurus, exposing its underbelly.

‘Each scale,’ he was saying, ‘points in the wrong direction, but if you look here’ – he unhinged a section, pointed to a yoke made from matchsticks – ‘there’s a wooden yoke that fits over each person’s shoulders.’ He hooked it back together. ‘Altogether it will be about thirty feet long. I reckon the body will need about twenty grown-ups to carry it, and then the children can carry the tail.’

‘Children?’ Betty said.

‘In ever diminishing sizes. Why not? They’d love it, and we could really get the message across. Take it everywhere. Schools. Parks.’

‘What’s it made of?’ Betty asked, thinking of Graham and Martin.

‘Well, the head will be of papier mâché. The frame, balsa. And the scales tarpaulin. Painted. Varnished. It goes stiff then, so won’t flap. And we’ll strap it taut, anyway.’ He smiled at her. ‘It won’t be heavy, if that’s what you’re thinking. A woman could lift it.’