‘You’re pulling my leg.’

‘Dzien dobry. Mam na imiȩ Noel Bostock.’

She actually laughed this time. ‘You’re a tonic,’ she said. She checked her watch again. ‘Come and see something. It’s quite educational.’

There was a cardboard sign reading ‘DO NOT ENTER – DANGER!’ strung across the door of the church, but she opened it anyway. Light spilled into a broad porch; there were hymn-books stacked on a bench and a print of a girlish-looking St Francis feeding doves. ‘I think this part’s Victorian,’ said the warden, ‘but the vicar says the main structure’s far older. This was in the ceiling wreckage.’ She pulled away a fold of canvas from something lying on the floor. ‘It’s called a roof boss,’ she said. ‘We think it’s not seen daylight for centuries.’ Noel crouched down. A wooden face the size of his own looked back at him, green vines pouring out of each side of the open mouth and encircling the head. He leaned back so that his shadow no longer fell across the carving, and the colours leaped out: the eyes pure white, a blue dot at the centre of each, the flared nostrils lined with red. It was as brilliant as if the brush had just been laid down – brighter, newer, than anything he’d seen for years, in this tired city where everything looked in need of a scrub or a lick of paint, or a wrecking-ball.

‘What’s going to happen to it?’

‘Someone’s coming from the University to take a look,’ said the warden. ‘There might be more in the rubble, the vicar thinks.’

‘Will it go to a museum?’

‘I suppose it might.’

‘Which one? The V&A? I go there quite often.’

‘Tell you what,’ said the warden, taking a small notebook and a stub of pencil from her pocket and handing it to Noel, ‘scribble your name and address down here and I’ll drop you a card if I find out. Whatever happens, I hope they take it soon or it’ll end up getting swiped – people will loot anything, you’d be amazed.’ She pulled the canvas back across and Noel furtively patted his pocket to make sure he still had the glass.

Outside, the sky had darkened.

‘Oh,’ said Noel, tilting his head.

‘What’s the matter?’ The warden turned from the door, and then heard it herself.

‘Doodlebug.’

The faint clatter, like a stick dragged along an iron fence, was coming from the south-east.

‘I thought we’d finished with those buggers,’ she said. ‘Pardon my Polish. Come along – there’s a shelter on Cheshunt Road.’

Noel followed her, craning upwards as he walked. The ugly rattle grew louder and the V-1 came into view, far overhead, its silhouette as prosaic as a piece of drainpipe.

‘It’s going over,’ said the warden, slowing her steps. ‘Heading towards Finchley, I’d say, or Hampstead.’

A cold hand seemed to grip the back of Noel’s neck. ‘Hampstead’s where I live.’

She gave him a quick, appraising glance. ‘It’ll probably go even further,’ she said. ‘It might end up missing London altogether.’