‘All right, then. Sixpence each way.’

She was digging into her pocket for a coin when there was a knock at the door. A soldier was standing outside, pack on back, his head in beaky profile as he scanned the ruined terrace to the east of the square; he was very young and deeply tanned, the colour ending abruptly halfway up his forehead.

‘I’m looking for the Shaws,’ he said, his voice hoarse. ‘Eileen and Horace Shaw. And the kids.’

‘Sidney! It is Sidney, isn’t it?’

He turned to face her. ‘I know you,’ he said. ‘You was warden here before I left.’

He’d shot up, and broadened, in the years since she’d last seen him; all the Shaw boys were built like tanks, but beneath the sunburn, he looked exhausted.

‘Where are they?’ he said. ‘I went to the house and no one answered and there’s no bloody windows in the place – where have they gone? I bin travelling three weeks to get here and they’re not bloody here.’ He was close to tears, she realized.

‘They didn’t leave us an address,’ said Winnie. ‘I’m ever so sorry. There was a rocket bomb in Falcon Road a fortnight ago and it took the roofs off that side of the square. They’ve patched it up, but most people have left.’

‘I bin in Egypt,’ he said. ‘I won a leave lottery, and now they’re not even here and I’ve only got a week.’

‘Can I get you a cup of tea?’

‘No, I got no time.’ He turned and walked back up the path, and she ran to catch him up.

‘The Town Hall might have a record, but Mrs Aitcheson’s still at number 19. Let’s go and ask her,’ she said. ‘There’s not much she doesn’t know. Do you remember what the kids always called her?’

‘Mrs Jungle Drums.’

‘She hasn’t changed.’

He nodded, too tired even to smile, and Winnie led the way.

Even before the war, the square had been shabby – a mere mile from Bloomsbury, but lacking both poets and stucco, with absentee landlords dragging their feet over repairs, and broken downpipes flaring green slime across the brickwork. It had always been full of people, though, three or four families sharing each front door; now it was three-quarters empty, boards across half the windows, and tarpaulins stretched over the exposed rafters.

Mrs Aitcheson had refused to move. She had been born in the square, married round the corner and widowed in the Great War, and was now living in her basement kitchen, her bed covered with a sheet of plywood during the day, her ear still glued to the ground.

‘They’ve all gone to your mum’s brother-in-law in Watford,’ she said, instantly, to Sidney. ‘The one who’s a council officer with a motor-car. But have a bite before you go. Give us the news. How long since they’ve seen you?’

Sidney eased his pack to the floor, but didn’t sit. ‘Two and a half years,’ he said, accepting a slice of bread-and-marge. ‘But Victor’s not been back in three.’