‘I suppose you’re aware that it’s only in the past couple of weeks that WAAFs have been brought back since we were evacuated at the start of hostilities?’

‘Indeed, ma’am. I am delighted to be back here again.’

‘When were you here before, Motts?’

‘I was an assistant cook here, before the war, ma’am. I was brought up in Felixstowe and my parents still live there.’

‘Excellent. Then you’ll know your way around already.’

‘I’m afraid we never strayed far from the kitchens.’

‘Mess facilities in the Manor are only for officers these days, I’m afraid. You’ll be eating in the cookhouse across the way, in the old stable block. It’s plain fare, but there’s plenty of it. I suggest you find your room, make yourself comfortable and then head over for lunch, twelve-thirty. Afternoon briefing is in the hall here, two p.m. sharp. Then you’ll get your detail, and you won’t have a moment to think. It’s all go out there.’

Kath wandered through several corridors, up and down short flights of stairs, encountering a couple of dead ends and having to retrace her steps several times before finding number fifty-four.

For some reason she’d imagined that all the rooms in the Manor would be of baronial proportions, and was sorely disappointed to discover that she was in what must have been part of the servants’ quarters: a whitewashed cell with high, narrow windows like arrow slits into which five double bunk beds, five cheap plywood chests of drawers and a single wardrobe had been awkwardly squeezed, given the cramped dimensions of the room. Only one of the beds, a lower bunk closest to the door, remained unmade. Standing on tiptoe to peer through the window, she could see the courtyard below. Now she understood. The room was in one of the towers, which accounted for its odd hexagonal shape.

At least it’s not a corrugated iron hut, she thought to herself; and the bathroom was just along the corridor, not across a damp field. She made up the bed, covering the thin, hard mattress with one of the blankets under the bottom sheet – a trick she’d learned from the early days of her induction. She unpacked her kit into the only drawer that remained empty, took off her jacket, kicked off her shoes and lay down, trying to calm her nerves.

The weeks at Stanmore had been an eye-opener, bringing home even more forcefully the critical importance of accuracy in reading and reporting what hundreds of WAAFs around the country were trying to interpret on their fuzzy screens and sometimes temperamental equipment. The success of Allied raids and the lives of hundreds of flyers were entirely dependent on it.

Would she come up to the mark under pressure? Would she manage to keep calm, to analyse carefully, to stand her ground, to trust her instincts? Apart from a short experience in Devon and the mock scenarios in examinations, she had never been properly tested. She might have been, as the officer at Stanmore said, one of the best at the theory tests, but now she would have to prove she could do it in practice.