There was a pause.

‘… All right,’ supplied Winnie.

‘Yes.’

Their eyes met for a fraction of a second and Elsie made a spluttering noise that was close to a sob, and then recovered herself. ‘And I thought, I don’t want to go backwards. And I know it’s going to be horrible, telling him, but I know this is right, I know it, I know it. And I’m going to stay in the Wrens – that was the other bit of the “flash-bang”. They’re already talking about transferring girls to the Fleet Air Arm after the war, and they always need telegraphists and I could end up just about anywhere. Australia. Damascus.’

‘Zanzibar!’

The whistle on the kettle began its rising shriek, and Winnie turned off the gas and refilled her hot-water bottle, wedging it between her belt and her jumper. She’d have to get ready for Avril’s party soon; her pale-blue crêpe dress and a new pair of stockings were hanging over a chair.

‘You could say something like: “We’ve been apart too long, Gordon. We’ve both changed.”’

‘But he hasn’t changed.’

‘“We’ve been apart too long, Gordon, and I’ve changed.”’

‘All right, I can try that.’ Elsie transcribed the words. ‘Do you think I have, though?’

‘No,’ said Winnie. ‘Not a bit. You’ve always been dynamite.’

Elsie reached out and gave one of Winnie’s hands a squeeze. ‘You’re a pal,’ she said.

They had nearly reached the Tube station, picking their way across the filthy sandwich of ice and mud that covered the pavements, when Winnie spotted the van, its back door half open, the pale smear of a streetlight picking out the gilded words ‘BREAD AND CAKES’ on the side. She crossed the road and peered in; the interior was empty.

‘What’s the matter?’ called Elsie.

‘I’m not sure.’ The row of terraced houses beside it was derelict, the roofs missing, rafters crossed like bean-sticks, but in one of the windowless front rooms she could see a torch dipping and probing, and the silhouette of a policeman’s helmet.

‘Wait here a mo,’ she said to Elsie.

‘Why?’

‘That’s the mortuary van.’

‘It can’t be.’

‘The official one got buzz-bombed. I just want to check what’s going on.’

She knocked at the open front door.

‘Who’s there?’

‘Is that Constable Orr?’ she called. ‘It’s Warden Crowther. From Post 9. I was just passing.’

She edged from the narrow hall into what had been the front parlour. The room stank of woodsmoke and it was crowded, striped with shadows from the constable’s torch. An empty stretcher was propped upright against a wall, two Light Rescue men standing beside it with arms folded while Dr Skipton crouched next to something on the damp floor.

‘What’s happened?’ she asked. The torch swung round towards her.

‘Win? You look smart. Didn’t know you had legs.’

‘Back here, please,’ said the doctor.

Winnie took out her own torch and edged the beam towards what lay on the ground, mentally bracing herself. If you had to look at a corpse, then an official relationship made all the difference – squeamishness took second place if you had a job to do, even if that job was simply to find a blanket or to note down a name or date. Here she was only a spectator. Her torch-beam slid across trousered legs and a bucket from which a set of old fire irons protruded.