“Wait, Lucy!” I lurch toward her. “Let me help.” Clinging on to my arm, she leaps gamely onto the running board of the lorry.

“Get me up on the back, Mr. Acton, and I’ll hand the sandbags down to you.”

I make a stirrup of my hands. Lucy is light and strong. In an instant she’s up on the bed of the lorry and the first sandbag is on its way. It’s surprisingly heavy for its size. I carry it to the other side of the alley and surrender it to Ellen. I’m about to say, Careful, it’s heavy, but with a bright glance—did she know what I was going to say?—she takes hold of the sandbag as if it weighs no more than a large loaf of bread and sets it down in the most endangered doorway. I start to shuttle back and forth between the two women, and soon Ellen has created three tight rows of sandbags across the first door. We fall into a rhythm, working our way back up Church Walk from one front step to the next, pausing only to reverse the vehicles at intervals. Old men and women appear at the windows as Matilda Rail did, wraithlike in the shadows of their rooms, tapping on the glass and mouthing their thanks.

“They’ll be awfully cold with no power,” Ellen says, taking one of the last sandbags from me. I remember this voice from before. Lively, very clear. The sort of voice that if she called you across, say, a couple of acres of pastureland, would carry without being strained or shouting.

“I have gas stoves.”

I’m slightly out of breath.

Finally we’re done. I glance at the empty lorry. “Let’s hope that’s as high as the water will go.”

She shakes her head. “We can’t be sure. There might be another bulge coming down the river.”

I collect myself at last and put out my hand. “I’m sorry, we haven’t met properly. My name is James Acton.”

“Ellen Parr.”

Her fingers are cold but she seems unaware of this.

“Of course,” I say, as casually as I can. “Althea Brock has mentioned you. She told me you were a miller’s wife. You would know about rivers.”

She breaks into a delicious grin. “My late husband was always careful to say that I was a miller.”

“I stand corrected.”

I ought to bow my head. But her smile is causing such disarming delight to spread over me that I can’t take my eyes off her. She doesn’t seem to mind in the least.

“Where did you get the sandbags, Mr. Acton?” she asks as we move toward her Land Rover. “I thought they were like gold dust.”

“Requisitioned from the soldiers. The camp up on the hill. I’ve got contacts,” I add, thinking of poor Matthew Dodds.

“That’s good of them.”