The small child in the living room of Flat 3, Easton House, had gradually manoeuvred her way around the cluttered space until she had a clear view of Jepson’s missing ear. He was busy taking down her father’s story in shorthand, but he could almost feel the intensity of her gaze.

‘After that I just walked,’ said Private Birrell. ‘Bumped into an American unit – well, they looked like Americans, but they talked funny and I thought for a moment they were Germans in disguise, but it turned out they were all from Wisconsin. Sort of up-and-down accent, like Norwegians. They gave me a lift to … where was it? Ancona? Feels like half a year ago, and it was only last week. Ancona, I think, and then – I can see you, little Shirley Birrell, come out of there.’ He held out his arms to his daughter, but she stayed behind the drying rack, bending her knees so that she was concealed behind a hanging night-dress.

‘She doesn’t know me yet,’ he said. ‘She couldn’t even walk when I last saw her. And of course, I’ve never seen him at all.’ He nodded towards the high-chair where his wife was feeding the boy mashed carrots. ‘I only came home on a forty-eight-hour pass, didn’t I, Lena? That was just before we were sent to Tunis. The next letter I got from her was months later, when I was in the camp – You’ll never guess what’s happened, Tom …’ He winked at his wife.

‘Now stop it,’ she said, flustered, trying not to laugh. ‘And I hope Mr Jepson won’t print that bit in his paper. Come on, Shirley, let’s get your hair brushed.’ She hitched the baby on to her hip, and led the child out of the room. The door shut, but the walls were like cardboard, Shirley’s voice as clear as a choirboy’s.

‘That man’s got no ear.’

‘Shhh, don’t be rude.’

Birrell looked embarrassed. ‘Sorry. You got kids?’

‘No.’

‘Hark at me, voice of experience, I’ve only had ’em myself for about ten minutes, all told. I got called up in 1940, twenty years old, fancy free, met Lena first home leave, blinked twice and I’ve got a family. I don’t regret it, I’m not saying I regret it, but look at this place.’ He glanced around the room – the muddle of cheap furniture, a pile of ironing on the table, a makeshift play-pen for the baby in one corner, one wall missing half its plaster.

‘Oil bomb in the next street,’ said Birrell, nodding at the wall. ‘Still waiting for the landlord to do something. No hot water. This isn’t a place to bring up kids, but half the borough’s smashed up now, so where are we going to live? They’ll have to build, won’t they? Someone was saying they’ll need a million new houses, and they’ll have to do them properly – inside lavs, and modern heating and somewhere outside for the kids to play. We haven’t spent half a decade being shot at just to come back and roll over and put up with the same old bollocks.’ He grinned, tiredly. ‘Maybe you shouldn’t print that either. But there’ll need to be a big shake-up when this is all over, won’t there?’