‘WVS canteen has just arrived,’ said Avril, breathlessly. ‘They want to know where to park.’

‘Here, if they can,’ said Winnie, jerking a thumb towards the pavement opposite the Incident Post. ‘It needs to be visible. It’s going to be a long night.’

She kept catching glimpses of the digging team through the perforated walls of the Fox and Grapes, the small, patient movements which always seemed so slow, and yet were the only way to burrow through the compacted mass of masonry, its surface already slimy with damp. Most of the Heavy Rescue boys were from the building trade – you’d see them tapping the rubble, hearing its hollows and struts, gauging its instability, choosing their careful route into the interior.

Two survivors had already been found in Ashington Gardens, a mother and child furred with plaster dust and blank with shock, saved by their kitchen table, but there were at least fourteen others missing on the east side of the Gardens, and more in Archer Street. Twenty-eight casualties had been treated on the spot and thirteen taken to hospital. Eight deaths had been confirmed. Winnie was using the top of a garden wall as a makeshift table, the searchlight as her desk-lamp, as she checked rapidly through the census cards, thankful that she had always insisted that they be updated weekly, her wardens noting which families had left London, or had returned, or left again, or if a resident was in hospital, or whether previously abandoned flats were housing temporary workers, or which soldiers were home on leave, so that now the rescue workers were not just digging blindly, or speculatively.

The Boy Scouts were back, spring-heeled, tireless. ‘Gas board want a word with you, Warden,’ said Terry. ‘They think you should evacuate Wixell Row. They’re outside number 17.’

‘Right-oh.’ She tucked the cards into her jacket pocket.

‘Anything you want us to do?’

‘Yes. Polesworth’s inside – ask him to phone Control and check that casualties should still be sent to St Mary’s, only we’re hearing from the ambulance drivers that it’s getting full.’ She was walking away as she spoke, skirting the WVS van that was slowly crunching over a surface of shattered roof-slates. ‘And get yourselves something from the canteen truck.’

‘What about you, Warden?’

‘Tea and a slice, please,’ she said, breaking into a jog.

‘… so they hired a car,’ said Jepson, ‘quite a swish one, and called at various shops, and explained, using official language, that they were Board of Trade inspectors and that there were counterfeit coupons circulating in the district. So the shopkeepers would get out the coupons, and the thieves would examine them very carefully – they even had a magnifying glass and what they claimed was a special rubber that only worked on genuine ink – and they’d declare that at least half the coupons were probably forged, and would have to be checked by an expert at the office, and then they’d issue a receipt, and promise to return.’