Despite Avril’s comment, there were no Americans among the diners. At the next table two Senior Ministry types, grey complected, with receding hairlines and tortoiseshell glasses, were discussing the Appian Way and eating devilled kidneys; both looked like Avril’s husband, Clive – as did most of the men in the room, though none of them actually were, since Clive was currently abroad, doing something for the Foreign Office. He was a very nice man, diffident and slightly bewildered, like a staid dog who’d been taken for an unexpectedly vigorous and sustained walk. The couple had met in the basement air-raid shelter of the Ministry of Information, where Avril was employed in the publications department. ‘I fell for his intellect,’ she always said, not mentioning the houses in Belgravia, Norfolk and the Loire. There was no need to ask what Clive had fallen for; heads snapped round whenever Avril stalked past. They did so again now, as she tip-tapped down the stairs ahead of the waiter.

‘Darling Winnie!’ she called, from across the room, and the other diners simply stopped with forks halfway to their mouths. She was striking rather than beautiful – seemingly drawn with a stronger pen than everyone else. She had also, since the last time Winnie had seen her, dyed her hair red.

‘What do you think?’ she said, sitting down. ‘Clive came back from his last trip with a packet of henna rolled in his underpants. Obviously, we mustn’t speculate about where he went, but I do hope they hold another conference in North Africa.’

One of the diners on the next table was trying to fish his spoon out of his soup.

‘Hello, Avril,’ said Winnie, used to this ruthless annexing of attention. ‘I don’t really like it, to be honest. It makes you look very pale.’

‘Renaissance, Clive said. Titian’s La Bella.’ She took a compact out of her bag and inspected herself for a moment or two. ‘I think I should be wearing a darker shade of lipstick, though – more the colour of yours, perhaps.’

‘I’m not wearing lipstick, Avril.’

‘Really?’

‘They’re just chapped. And don’t say, “It suits you.”’

Avril leaned across the table and patted her hand.

‘Dear old Twinnie, cross as ever. You’re looking a little bit tired, if you don’t mind my saying.’

‘That’s because I was on shift last night.’ She had slept on a camp bed at the Post, and been woken at half three by an explosion so loud that she’d assumed a bomb had landed in the next street. Scrambling outside, she’d found that all was quiet, a full moon prinking the frost so that the ruined houses looked like cliffs of quartz, and then, as she’d stood listening, her breath fogging the view, there’d been another blast, this one preceded by a noise like a rifle crack, and followed by a flood of orange light above the rooftops to the east. She’d set out in that direction, and had met Doreen Hurst from Post 8 coming towards her, a torch in each hand and a hat with ear-flaps under her helmet.