“Grace.” Mrs. Weatherford said her name with an insistence that broke through the haze of her fear. “Go fill the tub and sinks with water. Viv, open all the windows. I’ll fetch our masks and supplies while Colin turns off the gas at the mains.”

“B-but the bombs,” Viv stuttered, looking more terrified than Grace had ever seen her.

“They’ve only just seen the plane.” Mrs. Weatherford pushed to her feet and snapped off the wireless. “We have at least five minutes to get to the Andy if not more.”

There was a calm authority to her tone as she spoke, and it pulled each one of them to the task she’d assigned. Though Grace didn’t know why she had been told to fill the tub and sinks, she did as asked, letting the gush of water accompany the siren’s wail.

Never had the taps run more slowly.

By the time the last sink filled, she ran to the Andy on legs that threatened to give out. There was little to the shelter, merely a curve of metal buried beneath a bit of dirt to form a submerged upside down U. How such a contraption could possibly keep them protected from a bombing was beyond her, a consideration that hadn’t crossed her mind until that moment.

She stepped down through the small entrance, squeezing her way into the shelter. It smelled of dirt and damp metal, and blotted out the sun overhead, leaving the interior dim. Viv was already there, sitting in the near darkness on one of the small benches Colin had set on either side of the narrow space. Her arms were hugged around her middle and she looked up sharply, her long-lashed brown eyes wide with worry.

The siren cut off. An ominous silence replaced the warbling cry.

Grace sat beside Viv and took her friend’s hand in hers. But she could offer no words of comfort. Not when every muscle in her own body was tensed for an explosion.

This was it. Like Poland. They would be bombed as surely as had Warsaw.

She didn’t know what a bomb might sound like, or even what to expect. Let alone what to do if they were struck in their tin of a shelter.

Colin joined them in the Andy and folded his large frame on the bench opposite them. His head bowed forward somewhat to accommodate the low arching ceiling. Mrs. Weatherford entered the shelter last with four gas masks dangling from one shoulder and a large box clasped in her hands. The clatter of her movements echoed against the steel frame and reverberated in their ears.

Colin immediately reached up to take the box from his mother. She smiled her gratitude and handed everyone their respective mask.

Grace accepted hers with hands that wouldn’t stop shaking. “Should we put it on?”