‘So what have they left?’ she asked, unwilling to muddy her shoes.

‘Unlabelled crates – we won’t know till we get them back. I’ll have to fetch the wheelbarrow.’

It took forty minutes to transport all the boxes, Noel pushing, Vee steadying, and there was something about the task so reminiscent of their past adventures – the suppressed excitement, the makeshift, furtive speed of the transfer, the unsanctioned nature of the goods – that when Noel saw Lady Gillett peering down at the devastated lawn through an upstairs window, he hissed, ‘Peelers!’ and Vee jumped about a foot before feinting a smack at his head.

‘Anyhow, she should be Digging for Victory on that lawn,’ she said, censoriously, as Noel guided the final barrow-load between the gate-posts of Green Shutters and round towards the back garden.

‘Or planting rice, given its current state,’ he said, and she laughed. He went to fetch the toolbox and, nail by screeching nail, removed the first lid.

‘Oh my Lord!’ said Vee.

They ate frankfurter sandwiches for lunch, followed by cling-peaches and chopped pineapple, and then opened a can of peanut butter to see what all the fuss was about.

‘It’s the look of it,’ said Vee, declining a taste. ‘It reminds me of when we had a cat.’

They’d quickly run out of shelves in the larder and had transferred the bulk of the tins to the lumber room, stacking the Spam, chicken roll, ham-and-eggs, frankfurters and beef stew in a revolving bookcase and the canned fruit and vegetables in the stained-oak linen press. Unclassifiable items (‘Cheese? In a tin?’) were on the windowsill behind a drawn curtain.

Noel ate a second spoonful of peanut butter and washed it down with Florida orange juice. ‘Why were you so worried about the letter?’ he asked. ‘What did you think it was?’

‘Oh, I …’ There was a pause, while she tried to think of a plausible answer.

‘The rates,’ she said.

‘You paid them in December, and they always make you angry, not frightened.’ He was looking straight across the table at her, gaze on the level, as tall as she was; grown up, nearly.

‘I’m being blackmailed,’ she said. ‘I got a letter last week from someone who knew I wasn’t really your aunt, I don’t know how they found out. I should have told you, it’s your business as much as mine – it’s just that you’ve been … a bit offish. But I should have told you.’

The room seemed to heave under Noel’s feet, like the queasy shrug of an earthquake.

‘So you met him,’ he said.

‘Who? The blackmailer? No, I was supposed to, but he never turned up – I thought the letter would be him, writing again.’

‘It’s my fault,’ said Noel.

‘What?’

‘It’s my fault.’

‘How’s it your fault?’

He looked away, his features bunched with guilt. In the silence, Vee heard the soft squabble of chickens.

‘Tell me,’ she said.

He shook his head. ‘You’ll hate me.’