‘You have my hands,’ said Ida. ‘I noticed straight away.’

He looked at his right hand and then held it up, palm towards her, and she fitted her left against it. ‘See?’ she said. ‘Broad palms. Long fingers. Do you play the piano?’

‘Not very well. I’m exceptionally fast at peeling carrots, however. What shall I call you? I don’t think I could ever …’

‘No,’ she said. ‘Don’t. Just call me Ida. Miss Ida Pearse, 42 Lynch Lane, Gibraltar, just in case you ever felt like writing.’

‘Pretty lady!’ They turned to see two American sailors approaching along a brambled path. ‘We’re lost, pretty lady, can you help us?’

‘Where do you want to get to?’ asked Ida, with the composure of someone who spent most of her professional life sticking needles into servicemen.

‘Have you heard of Parliament Hill?’

‘I have. Carry on along this path, turn right through the patch of woodland and then bear left up the hill.’

‘See, we only know port and starboard. Can you escort us there? Kid, can we escort your sister?’

Noel opened his mouth and then closed it again. ‘Sure thing,’ he said.

They could hear the noise before they saw its source: a chaotic murmur, cut through with odd whoops, a harmonica razzing above it, a doodling version of ‘The Marseillaise’ played on a trumpet. The crowd had extended along the whole, broad brow of the hill. Some people were sitting on the grass, some looking at the view, some flirting, some kissing, some dandling babies. Nothing was actually happening; no one was waiting for anything; no one was issuing orders. The sailors spotted a friend and wandered off, and Noel and Ida stood side by side and looked out across the city, and Noel felt as if the laws of gravity had been loosened for the day, and that he might, at any minute, lift just above the grass and swoop like a swallow over London.

Acknowledgements

Two compelling non-fiction books written by air-raid wardens, and actually published during the war, inspired me to tell Winnie’s story in V for Victory: Raiders Overhead by Barbara Nixon, and Post D by John Strachey. The North London Press – Jepson’s paper – was a real weekly newspaper and I spent many hours in the British Library finding inspiration in its 1944 and 1945 editions. Finally, the wartime diaries of Gwladys Cox, a West Hampstead resident, immersed me in the frustrations and terrors of that last, seemingly endless year of conflict. Their volumes are kept at the Imperial War Museum.

Don’t forget to read Evans’ hilarious novel

OLD BAGGAGE

Old Baggage is a funny and bittersweet portrait of a woman who has never, never given up the fight.

It is 1928. Matilda Simpkin, rooting through a cupboard, comes across a small wooden club – an old possession of hers, unseen for more than a decade.

Mattie is a woman with a thrilling past and a chafingly uneventful present. During the Women’s Suffrage Campaign she was a militant. Jailed five times, she marched, sang, gave speeches, smashed windows and heckled Winston Churchill, and nothing – nothing – since then has had the same depth, the same excitement.