She lost a moment or two, and then she was sitting on the kerb and a policeman was taking her name and address. ‘Margery Overs,’ she heard herself say (thank Heavens). ‘And did you see how the accident occurred?’ he asked, and if she’d been thinking straight, if she hadn’t been feeling such a rag, she’d have said, ‘No, I didn’t, I’d turned away, I was looking in my handbag, I just heard a crash,’ because that’s what you did with the police, you kept your mouth shut, you never told them anything you didn’t have to, but instead she nodded; instead, she said, ‘I saw it all.’

‘You’ll have to go to the Wallace Street Station tomorrow and make a statement,’ he said. ‘Ask for Sergeant Bayliss.’ After that, a lady from one of the shops, with a diamanté bow at her neck and purple lipstick, brought her a glass of water and offered to find a taxi, and handed over three shillings to the driver, so that Vee was borne in splendour back to the Vale of Health, which was just as well, because when she tried to get out of the cab, her legs were like rubber bands. The cabbie knocked on the door for her, and Mr Jepson came out and helped her along the path, as if she were a ninety-year-old.

‘Do you have any brandy?’ he asked, when she was sitting in the kitchen. ‘Stupid question, I suppose.’

‘I’d rather have tea.’

She watched him make it, not even protesting when he threw away the old tea-leaves and put three spoonfuls in the pot.

‘Cigarette? Anything to eat?’ he asked, as if he were an usherette with a trayful of ices. She shook her head. ‘Where’s Noel?’

‘In with Dr Parry-Jones. I think they’re studying the circulatory system – I caught the word “aorta” as I passed the door. Do you want me to fetch him?’

‘No, he’ll only worry. I’ll be all right in a minute.’

Mr Jepson gave his moustache a stroke. ‘Where did it happen?’ he asked.

‘Near Bond Street. I’d come out of Dickins and – oh dammit, damn it all.’ She stood, abruptly, knocking her chair back, and looking wildly around the kitchen, just in case the string bag that she had absolutely and certainly left in Oxford Street had somehow miraculously flown back home. And then she sat down again and burst into tears, something she hadn’t done in a long while, and certainly never in front of a lodger.

Mr Jepson reached into a pocket and gave her a folded handkerchief, and then he poured the tea as she wiped her eyes.

‘Sorry,’ she said, taking a gloriously strong mouthful. ‘All these bombs we’ve had and I’ve never seen a dead person before. Except in a coffin.’ She thought of her father’s oddly healthy appearance as he lay in his box in the front parlour; she thought of her husband, looking as if he’d never been alive. ‘And the poor old chap was talking about his wife to me, before it happened. He was saying lovely things about her, how he first met her at a dance in Kentish Town, and now she’ll just be finding out, I suppose …’ Her lips trembled and she pressed her fingers to them. ‘Could I have that cigarette after all?’