Suddenly there was a loud crack and as Giles looked to the side, he was appalled to see his navigator lying back in his seat with blood pouring from a gaping wound in his chest. The wind was whistling through the broken window, which made it almost impossible to keep the plane on course and then he noticed his left-side wing smoking before bursting into flames.

This is it, Giles thought as he pressed the eject button and offered up a prayer, and then he was hurtling towards the ground, and strangely, the last face he thought of before he crashed into a field, and darkness claimed him, was Livvy’s.

Chapter Forty-Four

‘Why don’t you go and get some rest?’ the radio officer told Livvy in the early hours of the next morning, but she shook her head. She had stayed on long after her shift had finished to see the planes return and now most of them were back. There were only four missing and the pilots who had already landed had told them that at least three had taken a hit. That meant there was still a possibility of one coming back, but would it be Giles’s plane? She had lost radio contact with him and some of the other planes when they were somewhere over Berlin early that evening and now she couldn’t rest until she knew he was safe.

Suddenly there was a low droning noise over the tower and the last Lancaster dropped into view before bumping along the runway to eventually come to a shuddering halt. Without thinking, Livvy flung the headphones aside and was out of her seat and racing out of the door and across the runway, only to come to an abrupt stop when a weary pilot, closely followed by his crew, climbed down from the cockpit.

It was Giles’s good friend, Will, and at the sight of her he hung his head.

‘Giles?’

He looked at her and shook his head at the question in her eyes. ‘Sorry, Livvy. He was flying right next to me when his plane took a hit.’

‘But didn’t he try to get out?’ There was panic in her voice now.

He nodded wearily. ‘Oh, he ejected all right, but I couldn’t see if his parachute opened or not. It was too foggy. I’m so sorry. He was a good chap was Giles.’

‘Yes … yes, he was,’ she said brokenly as she turned and blindly made her way back to her hut. ‘He was a very, very good bloke.’ She only wished now that she had taken the time to tell him so.

Cissie was cleaning the hall windows when something on the drive caught her eye and glancing up her heart sank as she saw the telegram boy furiously cycling towards her, his legs going like pistons.