‘Heavens, is that why we see so many low-flying aircraft on our screens? I never saw any down in the West Country. Have you ever had to use it?’

‘Not yet, thank the lucky stars. But it’s very reassuring to know it’s there, I can tell you, and that your lot are onto us, too. Who knows how many lives you’ve saved, between you all.’

‘I’m so glad you told me.’

A chill wind had got up, stroking the fluffy reed-heads into waves. ‘C’mon,’ Kath said. ‘Ma will be waiting for us to get back for tea and cake.’

He checked his watch. ‘Crikey, yes. Mustn’t miss the five o’clock bus, either. I’ve got to get to the base for a seven p.m. briefing.’

‘Briefing on what?’

‘Big mission on Tuesday,’ he said. ‘You’ll probably see us on your screens.’

‘Stay safe, Mark, won’t you?’

‘I’ll do my best, sis. I’ve got a new friend, by the way. Someone to live for.’

She knew at once what he meant, and was glad for him.

26

Vic buried himself in work. There was certainly plenty of it, and dealing with the Americans required great patience and diplomacy. Accustomed to operating in small teams on tight budgets but with relatively high levels of freedom and flexibility, he simply could not get used to what he saw as the profligate ways of his US counterparts.

‘If there’s a problem, throw money at it,’ seemed to be the usual response. ‘Or bring in more people. Just make it happen.’

Working in larger teams meant it took much longer to reach decisions, and American systems were so bureaucratic that it took forever to extract the permissions they needed to move forward. It was endlessly frustrating. The timetable Vic had planned for what they’d now been told would be just four weeks at Martlesham soon went out of the window. By the end of the first fortnight they had barely started.

Through working all hours and putting himself to sleep at night with a few tots of the sweet American whisky he’d acquired from the mess for an absurdly cheap sum, he successfully managed to banish all thoughts of Kath for several days in a row. It was only when he lowered his guard – if he found himself alone in the barracks, or if the whisky failed for some reason to work its usual magic – that he found himself yearning for her.

That halo of red curls glinting in the sunshine, the sweet gap-toothed smile, those pale cheeks that coloured at the slightest hint of pleasure, excitement or confusion, the freckles he’d once playfully tried to rub off her nose. The moments they’d shared on the Cliff Walk, watching the North Sea in all its moods and weathers. The ease of their conversation, walking through the grounds at Bawdsey, imagining the gardens in their heyday and laughing about the White Lady said to haunt the Italian Garden at night. The way Kath seemed oblivious to his difference, the way she stood up to the bullies. That terrible day of the crash, when she had sought him out and comforted him. Their kiss in the bus station at Lincoln.