‘Cheese? Where?’ asked Smiler. ‘Which lucky bleeder’s got some cheese?’

McLennan packed up his camera and hurried off into the gloaming, followed at a more leisurely pace by Smiler and the others – ‘We might nip into the Fox and Grapes, and then again, we might not’ – leaving only Winnie manning the Post.

‘What, all on your own?’ asked Avril.

‘Basset’s back at six. Besides, I’m used to my own company.’ The casual phrase came out sounding like an elegy, and Avril pulled a sympathetic face. ‘You do know, darling, that Clive’s keeping his ears pricked for even the tiniest bit of news. He’ll tell you the very second he hears anything.’ And instantly, all the worry that Winnie had been keeping firmly pegged was up again and waving, flapping round her like hung sheets in a gale. ‘Oh, please, let’s talk about something else,’ she said, dragging the desk back to its normal position, and handing the copy of Tin Helmet to her sister. ‘Are you going to write another book?’

‘Oh, I have to, I don’t have any choice; my publisher’s an absolute martinet and he says it’s essential I build on my success. I’m thinking about short stories this time. The Home Front from different angles: the country housewife, the Ministry Man …’

The woman whose husband’s in a POW camp, thought Winnie, with absolute certainty.

‘I’ve already thought of a—’

The air in the room folded into Winnie’s face like a concertina, and then retreated, pulling out of her lungs with a tidal suck and opening the door as it left, revealing the empty cement path up to the square, footprints visible in the sludge.

The door slammed shut again, with such force that a cobweb was shaken loose from the frame and moved not down, but sideways, parallel with the ceiling, as if borne on an invisible tray, and Avril’s book, which had been on the desk, was on the rug, which itself was pleated against the far wall, exposing the concrete floor of the hut. A chair had swivelled on the spot. The map had been torn from the wall. Avril’s face was taut, her eyes enormous.

‘Rocket,’ said Winnie, her mouth moving, but no sound emerging, not enough breath left inside her to make a noise. She hit herself on the chest and tried again, a mousy squeak. ‘Rocket overhead, right overhead. Stay here. Here.’

She grabbed her oilskin from the hook, and then her helmet, and opened the door into a cloud of stinging hail, minute chips of razor ice that weren’t ice at all, she realized, pulling on her coat and running up the path: the air was full of tiny fragments of glass.

On the south side of Deddington Square, the roofs and all remaining windows were gone. Mr Iles from the ground floor of number 12 had come outside and was standing with his hands on his hips, looking up at the empty sky, as if admiring a cloud formation, and Winnie ran past him and along Fig Passage into another street of roofless houses, the road paved with slates, someone already sweeping the glass from their front path, and ahead of her was Longford Row, more rafters like toast-racks, someone shouting, and now there was smoke in the air; Archer Street, the houses shorter with every few yards, no roofs, no upper floors, no fanlights over the front doors, and then there was her colleague Polesworth, covered in dust, leaning against a gatepost, the bare outline of the Fox and Grapes behind him, more air than brick.