‘Where’s he?’ asked Winnie.

‘Ceylon, last we heard.’

‘And the others?’

‘Walter’s in Greece, maybe. Frank’s in Burma, they’ve not heard from him in a while.’ He sunk a mug of tea in one long draught. ‘I’m going. Thanks, Mrs Aitcheson.’ He clumped away up the area steps, still eating his bread-and-marge. His father had cut a map of the world out of the Daily Sketch and kept it folded in his wallet, in case anyone asked about his boys.

‘It’s freezing in here, Mrs A,’ said Winnie.

‘I never feel it, dear. I wear my Arthur’s great-coat and I’m cosy as a kitten. Born hot-blooded, he always said.’ She gave a chirrup of laughter. ‘Mind you, Sidney’s going to get a shock when he sees his sister. Eight months gone, no wedding ring, and I hear that the father’s as black as the sole of your boot. Got tired of waiting for her fiancé to get back from his ship, I expect. How long since you’ve seen your hubby, dear?’

‘Four years, ten months,’ said Winnie.

‘But you’re a good girl – you’re the faithful type, I can tell.’

Was that a compliment? It made Winnie feel like the baggier sort of fireside hound, resting its chin on the owner’s leg. Glamorous, svelte women – women like her twin, Avril – were never labelled ‘the faithful type’.

‘Can I get you anything, Mrs Aitcheson?’ she asked. ‘Do you want me to put up the blackouts?’

‘I heard we don’t have to do that any more.’

‘You heard right – just ordinary curtains. But I thought, maybe, for warmth.’

‘Go on, then, dear. Did you hear about the barman at the Star and Garter? The one with the missing fingers?’

‘Gibson? What about him?’

‘He’s been summonsed. They found a big pile of brand-new gentlemen’s coats in the tap room that he said he was just minding for someone.’

‘Well, maybe he was.’ Winnie liked Gibson. He was a part-time fireman, and had the sort of cheerful face that it was good to see above a pile of smoking rubble; he’d lost the fingers to an incendiary in ’41, and still turned out for the AFS, and, frankly, it would take more than a few swiped coats to lower her opinion of him. She let Mrs Aitcheson rattle poisonously on while she finished the blackouts.

Outside, twilight was dropping like a shutter and you could almost hear the crackle of the frost forming. She checked on the surface shelter in Bedale Road, and helped the steward to carry out the chemical toilet and tip the contents into a nearby crater, and then she returned to the Post, and briefed Smiler on the minimal events of the last twenty-four hours.

‘Off you hop then, Shorty,’ he said, lighting fags for them both. ‘See you tomorrow evening, if we’re not both dead.’

Her flat was half a mile away, past what remained of Falcon Road. Winnie flashed her torch across the ruins and a pair of cats stared back at her, their eyes like a switchboard signal, four green lights in a row. It still felt odd to be able to use an unshuttered bulb, or to see the glimmer of half-lit streetlamps. The night the rocket had landed, an American truck carrying a searchlight had arrived and bathed the whole area in brilliant white light, and an old man pulled from the wreckage had thought he’d reached heaven, and had asked for his long-dead wife. ‘Typical of the Yanks,’ Smiler had said, afterwards. ‘They all think they’re God.’