‘It was classified,’ he said, not showing any sign of surprise. ‘Nobody was supposed to know at first, but I guess they decided to leak some information to the public. Let them know we’re ahead of the Soviets.’

‘You make it sound like a game.’

‘Pretty high stakes game,’ he said, lighting up a Camel.

‘It says it was the 1st of November. That’s over a month ago, but there’s been nothing in the British papers.’

Jack shrugged and took a slug of coffee.

Arthur’s voice was in her head: his warnings about them sleepwalking into apocalypse. She only dimly remembered Hiroshima and the relief most people felt that the war in the East would end too. But a couple of years ago she’d seen newsreel of the city. The pictures of the children parading in their shorts and black bobbed hair made it seem as if all was well now, but at the end there was a scene of the people of Hiroshima’s ‘new city’ bowing their heads in remembrance. It seemed to Verity as if no one else was remembering. Everyone was desperate to protect themselves from the devastation inflicted on Japan but how could they do that if these bombs were so prevalent, so common that they were sitting up the road in Holkham, waiting to be dropped over Siberia?

‘Is this something to do with what you’re up to at the base?’ She held up the newspaper.

‘That’s classified too,’ he said again, then laughed. ‘Don’t look so serious! Of course it’s got nothing to do with it. This place is thousands of miles away in the Pacific. I’m here. But I guess it’s all connected.’ He paused. ‘Look – what I do is preparation. Information. I can’t say any more, you know that.’ He put his hands up in helpless supplication.

‘You could,’ she said.

‘But I’d have to kill you.’ He had an irritating smirk on his face. It felt like he was playing a part. The American Rogue.

‘Don’t treat me like an idiot, Jack.’

‘Vee, I’d tell you if I could but, really, it ain’t so very exciting. I’m just doing what I’m good at. It’s just a job, and a pretty boring one at that, stuck in a plane for ten hours at a time.’

‘You’re being disingenuous,’ she said.

He sighed. ‘It’s hard to describe it, Vee.’

‘You’re not from Arizona, are you? All that chatter about horses, it’s not true. I can tell you don’t know anything about horses.’