‘Oh, well.’ Dee flicked the ash onto the earth floor. ‘He says it’s not the way to settle a quarrel.’

‘How else do you settle one?’

‘You talk.’ Dee shrugged. ‘Or there’s international policemen. Law. I don’t know.’

‘Like the United Nations?’

Dee shook her shoulders with an irritable flair. ‘Who cares?’

‘I’m just interested,’ Betty said. ‘I don’t want another war. Especially with the bombs they dropped on Japan.’

‘Well, you should talk to my dad sometime then,’ Dee said.

Betty pulled out her cushion and leaned it up against the wall behind her, looking at her friend. ‘Is that why they don’t talk to you in school?’

Dee looked down at her school tunic, folded and unfolded the pleats. She straightened her legs, crossed them at the ankles. She didn’t need to answer.

‘That’s awful,’ Betty said.

‘You can see their point,’ Dee said, stubbing out her cigarette on the earth floor, throwing the stub in the corner. ‘Their fathers risked their lives. Maggie Ascombe’s father actually died in the war. And what did mine do? Gardening.’

And what did mine do? Betty thought. He was happy to carry out the Führer’s will. Had he ever stopped to question it?

‘What about now?’ Betty said.

‘He works for the council,’ Dee said.

‘No, I mean, about war? About stopping war?’

‘I don’t think he does anything except shout at the wireless,’ Dee said. She looked up then, and smiled. ‘He’s the loveliest man, Betty. He just doesn’t believe that violence is the way out of a crisis. Though he did say once that perhaps it had been necessary to get rid of Hitler. I don’t know.’ She pulled out the cigarettes again, offered one to Betty, who took it, holding back her hair as she leaned forward to light it. ‘This can be our little house,’ Dee said. ‘Our secret place. Shall we go out this weekend? A cycle ride?’

‘That’d be nice,’ Betty said. ‘We can pack some sandwiches.’

Dee stood up, brushed the skirt of her tunic, and pulled out a small lipstick which she dabbed on, smacking her lips. ‘Does your father let you wear this?’

‘No.’ He’d taken his thumb and pressed it hard against her lips, wiping it off.

Dee was modern, the best friend anyone could have.

§

Mrs H told her father and he summoned Betty into the shelter. He made her sweep up the cigarette butts and burn the cushions and tarpaulin.

‘I sent you to the convent so you would become a lady.’ His eyes grey like her own, icy as a glacier. ‘Not to mix with the Irish.’

He didn’t say it, but Betty heard. Untermenschen.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

London: November 1958