At the bus stop there was a long queue. An 88 had just drawn up, the platform already crammed, the conductress standing with one foot dangling over the edge and an arm curled round the pole. ‘Room upstairs!’ she shouted as people burrowed past her.

The line swayed forward. ‘I can’t get on there,’ said an old chap with a stick, just in front of Vee. ‘Want to go ahead of me?’

‘No, I’ll wait.’

The bus moved off again, edging into a stream of taxis.

‘Be quicker to walk home,’ said the old gent. ‘If it wasn’t for my leg, that’s what I’d do.’

‘War injury, is it?’ asked Vee, scenting a talker, and wondering whether she was about to spend half an hour wincing at the news from Spion Kop.

‘Turned me ankle dancing at the Palais.’

‘Oh.’ She gave him a bit of a smile. A car swerved and hooted as a green army lorry started to nose out of a side road opposite.

‘You ever go dancing?’ he asked, leaning against the lamp-post and straightening his injured leg. He had pink cheeks and thick white hair, cut very short, so that his head looked like a thistle.

‘Me?’ said Vee. ‘No.’

‘Why ever not? Youngster like you – we all need a bit of fun, don’t we? Especially now.’

Vee shrugged awkwardly. A whole lifetime was wedged between the last time she’d danced and the present, though she could remember it clearly enough: she’d worn a tartan frock with a matching bow in her hair, and had accidentally kicked the girl next to her while attempting the Charleston.

‘I met my wife dancing,’ said the man. He tapped his red knitted scarf, like someone touching wood. ‘She had the neatest pair of pins in Kentish Town. Still has.’

‘That’s nice,’ said Vee. ‘Nice thing to say.’

‘She was dancing with another fellow and I went up to her and I said—’ Brakes squealed and someone shouted. Vee turned her head and saw that the army lorry had pulled right out into the traffic and was swinging at speed into the wrong lane. She could see the white star on the door, she could see the driver, his face all mouth and eyes as he realized he was about to crash head-on into a taxi, and then the lorry jerked and seemed to glide sideways so that it was no longer heading for the taxi but directly towards herself. She had time to take a single step to the side. The lorry brushed gently past her coat and struck the bus stop with a muffled thud; muffled, because there was something soft between the front bumper and the pole. The soft thing folded over the bonnet, red scarf trailing.

Vee didn’t faint, but the pavement bucked under her, and she had to rest a hand on the warm metal of the bonnet. Her mouth was full of saliva. She couldn’t see the old man’s face, just the back of his head, but the fingers of his right hand were splayed near hers – they were square-tipped, a little dirt under the nails; a gardener’s hand. The thumb was trembling very slightly. She heard the steady hiss of an exhalation and the man’s torso seemed to widen and flatten like dough spreading across a board. The thumb stopped twitching and someone behind her said, ‘Oh God, oh God,’ and Vee turned away and put a hand over her mouth. Sour liquid ran down her palm and on to the pavement.