‘Evie, we’re closing the school today,’ Mary Helston said. ‘Don’t send Jasmine in.’

‘What’s happening, Mary? What were the sirens for?’

‘I don’t know. I can’t talk now. I have to call all the other parents. I’ll come over as soon as I’ve finished.’ Her voice was strained, anxious.

Little more than an hour later, Mary was at the door. The two women embraced.

‘God, Evie, I’m worried sick. They’ve attacked the airfield at Butterworth as well as Bayan Lepas. It took an absolute pummelling. I could see fires burning across the Strait as I drove over here. Frank…’

Evie held her friend tightly. ‘Frank’s there, not in Singapore?’

‘He’s in Butterworth. He got back from training in Singapore two days ago.’ Mary began to cry. Silent tears that ran down her cheeks. She didn’t attempt to brush them away. ‘He told me they’d be sitting ducks if the Japanese were to attack. Those Buffalo things they fly are out of the ark. They have no chance against the Japanese Mitsubishis.’ She gave a strangled sob and Evie led her to a seat and sat down beside her, putting an arm around her friend.

Mary was shaking. ‘The Japanese planes smashed the American fleet to bits, so what chance do Frank and the other chaps have in their bloody useless, clapped-out excuses for planes?’

‘Do you really think they’ve attacked the airfield?’

‘I know they have. Apart from my seeing the fires, Dad is plugged into all the latest information. He says even though they attacked the airport here on the island, most of their efforts were directed at Butterworth. Giving it a pounding. There were only about half a dozen of our boys there to mount a defence. One of them is Frank.’ She gave a wracking sob. ‘Evie, I agreed to marry him. When he got back from Singapore we had dinner at the E&O… I …’ She held her hand out and Evie saw she was wearing an engagement ring.

‘Oh, Mary,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what to say.’

Later that day the bad news was confirmed. The air attack on the aerodrome at Butterworth was intense with the entire RAF and Australian airforce presence wiped out. The enemy had been careful to use only anti-personnel bombs on the runways, presumably to preserve them for their own eventual use.

Mary told Evie she didn’t know whether Frank Hyde-Underwood had been one of the few airmen who had managed to scramble but had been shot down by the superior Japanese aircraft, or whether he had been one of the victims of the annihilation on the Allied presence on the ground at RAF Butterworth. Either way, he had almost certainly lost his life and with it, Mary Helston had lost her second chance of happiness.

Over the following days, as well as bombing the two airfields, the Japanese attack included a less successful attempt to sink all the ships in the port at George Town. The city was completely unprepared. Within three days of the Pearl Harbour attack, the Japanese had total supremacy of the skies above Penang and soon after that, the last of the Brewster Buffalos, sent up from Singapore after the first attack as reinforcements, limped away from Butterworth.