Thomas swallowed as he looked up and down at the passing traffic. Suddenly he had taken charge for a change. ‘Look for a policeman,’ he instructed her as, keeping close to the wall, they moved on. Suddenly the all-too-familiar sound of an air raid siren pierced the air and Daisy froze, her eyes stretched wide with fear. Suddenly people were running past them, as if they were invisible. They flattened themselves against a wall.

‘What shall we do now?’ Daisy asked fearfully as she clung to Thomas’s hand like a limpet. At that moment a middle-aged lady wielding a large wicker shopping basket stopped abruptly right in front of them

‘My dears, whatever are you doing out here all alone?’ Her voice was kindly, and Daisy started to cry as she and Thomas stared numbly up at her.

‘Look, come with me, we need to get you into a shelter.’ She ushered them in front of her and at the end of a street she shooed them into an open doorway and down some steps. They found themselves in a large cellar that had clearly been adapted into a shelter and she told them reassuringly, ‘You’ll be safe here now until the raid is over and then you must go home.’

Daisy and Thomas slid onto a long bench that was fast filling with people and soon after there was a loud droning overhead and the sound of the ack-ack guns began to sound.

Shortly after they heard loud whistling noises followed by earth-shaking explosions as yet more bombs were dropped on the already dreadfully damaged city and the children could only sit there and pray that it would be over soon. As the day wore on there seemed to be no let-up and eventually someone lit some oil lamps, casting ghostly shadows over the faces of those that were sheltering there. A baby was crying, and small children were becoming fractious as their mothers tried to entertain them but at last the all-clear sounded and slowly the people rose and began to leave, afraid of what they would find above ground. Taking his sister’s hand Thomas encouraged, ‘Come on, we can’t stay here on us own.’

It was then that the kindly lady who had taken them there stopped in front of them again to ask, ‘Will you be all right getting home by yourselves? Have you far to go?’

For a while, the children stared numbly up at her and then starting to cry again, Daisy blurted out, ‘We don’t know our way home. It’s a long way away. Ben took us away from our mummy.’

Bending to her level, the lady took a large white handkerchief from her pocket and mopped at Daisy’s tear-stained face before saying, ‘Right, I think we need to find someone to help you. Just stay there for a while, I’ll be back very soon, I promise.’