Automatically, he reached into his pocket and took out half a crown. ‘What happened to you, old friend?’

The man was plainly drunk and his speech slurred, but Vic understood him well enough. ‘Family gone, no home, no job. Thanks for the money, mate.’

‘Is there anything else I can do to help?’

‘Lost me blanket,’ the man muttered.

It was such a simple item, but where could Vic get such a thing at this time of day? On an impulse, he took off his overcoat. It was a fine navy wool and cashmere his father had bought for him at Joshua Taylor’s when he first went up to Cambridge. ‘You’ll want something to wrap up in on these blasted fens,’ he’d said. It was old now, but still perfectly serviceable.

‘Here you go,’ Vic said. ‘This’ll keep you warm.’

The beggar fingered the fabric approvingly before pulling on the coat in a hurry, as though fearful that Vic might change his mind. Then he resumed his position on a pad of flattened cardboard, reached into a canvas bag and pulled out a bottle.

‘Care to join me?’

‘Keep it for yourself, my friend.’

‘You’re a true gent, sir,’ the man said. ‘Merry Christmas.’

By the time he got back to his father’s house Vic was soaking wet and shivering with the cold, yet somehow happier. The following day he felt worse, but Diane had been slaving away in the kitchen since early in the morning, so he felt duty bound to appear for Christmas dinner.

When he explained that he didn’t eat meat, she muttered about ‘strange habits’ and how his father could at least have warned her, adding that she wouldn’t have spent all that money on a chicken if she’d known. The only moment of relief from her constant chatter was when his father turned on his radiogram – one item that had not been banished – for the royal Christmas message.

The King seemed to be grasping at straws:

Never did heroism shine more brightly than it does now, nor fortitude, nor sacrifice, nor sympathy, nor neighbourly kindness, and with them – brightest of all stars – is our faith in God. These stars will we follow with His help until the light shall shine and the darkness shall collapse.

Ha ha, Johnnie whispered. Leaving it all up to God now, are we? Run out of options? But who is God going to choose, when our little pal Hitler also believes that he’s on their side?

Vic escaped on the first Boxing Day train, claiming that he was expected back at work. This was a lie; he’d been given a full week’s leave, but he couldn’t bear to stay a moment longer in Tunbridge Wells. Although it had never really felt like home, at least he’d once felt as though it was a place of shared memories – but now even that had changed. To make things worse, there were no seats on his train. As he stood in the corridor some Tommies pushed roughly past him, muttering about ‘bloody foreigners’.