I swore I’d never forget how to pack a parachute. I was hoping to be able to begin today by writing down the numbered list of steps I used to know by heart. But to my horror—is this what happens when you’re middle aged?—I can only remember the essence of the task. Which is, in brief, to reduce thirty feet of white silk tendril-trailing jellyfish to a parcel the size of a cushion. It was my first job in the WAAF and my trainer was a girl from a city in England I understood to be called New Kassel. On my first day she abused me for arriving at work with my hair tied in a black muslin wrap.

“But I’ve put a treatment on,” I protested. I thought the muslin would be hidden by my WAAF cap. “The desert air is so harsh on the hair, no?”

“It’s not regulation, pet,” she said, softening, since I was clearly another of those local recruits who didn’t have a clue.

To pack a parachute is to become a master in the arts of folding and tucking. In the corralling of cords. My teacher—Pam—was dogged. Under her somber eye I tussled and yanked and perspired. I dreamed of my ’chutes snagging, bundling in the air, spinning the cords into a rope on the end of which a writhing airman plummeted to earth. But Pam would never have permitted that. I packed with her breath on my neck—hot, slightly onion-smelling at all times. Again, dear. Again. And once more, pet. I don’t know how many times I packed the same parachute. After three weeks I was beginning to comprehend the true meaning of patience and precision. It was a belief, parachute packing. A one true way. And there is something miraculous about a ’chute blooming in the sky, every cord flitting out of its binding without a hitch, the canopy plumping open into a perfect dome. Almost, I would say, holy.

After five weeks, I learned that James had been shot down and reported missing.

—

It was Peter who told me. He tried to protect me by saying, “Everyone’s being picked up by the New Zealanders, Yvette. I bet you he’ll be back with his squadron in a couple of days . . .” But by this time I was sobbing and snarling in Célia’s arms.

I was taken off my lovely parachutes. The precious procedures had been driven quite out of my head. Pam told me to go home. I was just about to when some visitors arrived from Heliopolis, a couple of genial top brass. While they inspected us, their driver, an army girl, fainted. Before I knew it, my hand was in the air. “I can drive you to Heliopolis.”