Ma seemed to be studying her knitting with particular care.

‘We’ll miss you, sweetheart,’ Pa said, filling the silence. ‘But we’re very proud of you; aren’t we, Mags?’

Ma came over to Kath’s chair, putting her arms around her and kissing the top of her head. ‘Just so long as you’re safe, my darling,’ she said, quietly.

Three months later, after a thoroughly embarrassing medical examination declared her to be A-1, Kath’s call-up papers arrived. She was to report to an RAF base north of London, and a rail warrant was included, along with a precise timetable. Waiting for the connection at King’s Cross she met another recruit, smartly dressed and well made up, her auburn hair resting in perfect curls onto her shoulders.

‘Marcia Bonham; pleased to meet you.’ The handshake was firm and confident, her vowels posh, so it was quite a surprise when she told Kath that she’d been working in a factory, ‘making bits for bombs’.

Kath struggled to imagine this educated, fashionable woman wearing factory overalls. ‘Why did you give it up?’

Marcia smiled. ‘Not sure, really. Suppose I just wanted to be more in the thick of it.’

If only I had an ounce of her confidence, Kath thought. ‘I hope you get what you want. I’m told it’s the luck of the draw.’

‘If I learned nothing else in the factory, it is that you have to be bold or you’ll never get anywhere. Men are successful because they decide what they want and go all out to get it. Women have been taught to hold back and think they’re not good enough, so we’re always lagging behind. We need to think and act more like men.’

Kath laughed. ‘I hadn’t really thought of it that way.’

‘And if all else fails, we still have our special persuasive powers.’ Marcia cocked her head, gave a false smile and fluttered her eyelashes. ‘Works every time.’

Kath’s first few days in the WAAF were a series of horrible shocks. Each time, she felt it could not get any worse.

She’d been warned that they’d have to bunk up, but hadn’t expected to find nearly fifty others sharing a flimsy corrugated iron hut set in a field. The iron bedsteads were equipped with three two-foot squares of hard wadding (known to all as ‘biscuits’) that you had to jam together to make a mattress, a pillow stuffed with prickly straw and a single woollen blanket so heavy it felt like sleeping under lead weights. Everything was damp, the rain battered on the roof like gunfire and she barely slept a wink.

On their first morning they were set an initial intelligence test. She found it nerve-racking, not knowing what importance they would place on the results when deciding your fate. At first the questions were easy, lulling her into a sense of false security, till she came across this one: Mary, who is sixteen years old, is four times as old as her brother. How old will Mary be when she is twice as old as her brother?