‘After the war?’

‘Yup.’

Winnie shook her head. ‘I’ve no idea.’ Her own job was utterly finite; the armistice would come, and then no one would need air-raid wardens any more. The whole intricate jigsaw of Civil Defence – the ARP, the Heavy and Light Rescue, the Fire Service, the WVS tea-vans that turned up at incidents as if conjured like Cinderella’s coach – all these pieces would be shaken apart, and she herself, after five years of steadily increasing responsibility – a woman in charge of men – would suddenly be in charge of nothing at all. It was like being in rep: a role learned, played and discarded.

‘The thing is,’ she’d written to Emlyn recently, ‘I’m now so used to putting on a boilersuit that I can’t imagine having to wear a skirt to work, and where, in any case, will I find an employer who lists “ability to run across uneven ground while carrying two full buckets” under “qualifications needed”?’

He hadn’t yet answered – in fact, it was almost a fortnight since she’d received his last letter, which had consisted of a full-page rumination on the subject of orchards – should they grow damsons or plums on their hypothetical half-acre? Perhaps they should stick to apples, in which case would she prefer Worcester Pearmain or Blenheim Orange, though he’d heard the latter only flourished in sandy soil? He’d ended with a sketch of a fretwork planter he’d once seen at Kew, and the usual ‘all my love, Emlyn’. The letter had gone under the bed with all the others.

‘Right,’ she said, finishing her cocoa. ‘I need to get over to Myddleton Square and see if anyone’s turned up to repair the shelter roof yet. If I’m not back by lunch-time, have a merry Christmas, won’t you, Basset? And best wishes to Min.’

‘Thanks, Chief. Where are you spending yours?’

‘With my parents. I’m getting the train tonight.’ And returning on Boxing Day, if she could possibly manage it, with the excuse that her friend Elsie would be turning up on leave from Portsmouth at some point. And then there was Avril’s party on New Year’s Eve; the invitation had arrived, with ‘Please come, dearest Winnie. It won’t be a proper celebration without you’ handwritten on the back, while the front bore a rather clever line-drawing of her sister’s striking profile above the typed words ‘This slender volume will shock many; it will, however, impress a great many more – New Statesman.’ Winnie had inked a moustache on the picture, before propping it on the shelf above her gas fire.

On the way to Myddleton Square, she called again at the basement flat on Falcon Road, and again there was no answer. The cat, though, was still waiting outside.

Noel’s most vivid memory of past Christmases was of a moment simultaneously marvellous and catastrophic.

‘Now be rather careful while opening this,’ his godmother had said. He’d been six or seven years old, seated on the wicker armchair with the brown velvet cushions, and Mattie had placed something very heavy and smooth and round on his lap, the whole wrapped in white tissue paper and tied with a green ribbon. He had pulled on one end of the ribbon, and the paper had whispered away to reveal a glass sphere, enclosing a tiny pine wood, and at its centre a cottage with a puff of smoke emerging from the chimney. Standing in the doorway, carrying a basket and about to step on to the path that wound through the trees, was a small girl in a red cloak. And in the leafy shadows hid a wolf.