‘Last chance for a vacation,’ he’d said, his voice on the telephone interrupted by the usual clicks and buzzes and sudden gaps.

‘What do you mean, “last chance”?’

‘They’re sending us to France. Or maybe not France, maybe Belgium or Holland or some place with flat roads, you know. We’re due to leave next week.’

‘Oh.’

‘They’ve taken the trucks in for service. Can you meet at the train station Thursday? Early?’

A month ago she’d have refused, she was too busy, Thursday was the day she changed all the beds and shopped for fish – but after four weeks of odd surprises and switchback decisions and unexpected calls, she felt lighter, springier, like a flattened feather cushion after a good shaking, and all she could think of was one of Mario’s favourite phrases: ‘Ah, what the hell!’ After all, would Mr Reddish actually die if he had shepherd’s pie on Friday instead of something unsuccessfully masquerading as cod? And in any case, if Mario were going to Belgium or wherever, then this might be the last time that she ever saw him, and though she’d known that this interlude was bound to be short (she wasn’t a fool) it was still painful to contemplate that when he’d gone it would be straight back to the usual: Miss Appleby mooning over her forthcoming nuptials (should the bouquet be artificial or could she get away with snowdrops and ivy?), Mr Reddish reciting ‘The Flowers of the Forest’ whenever they had Scotch eggs, and Vee sitting in the middle of it all, knowing that the chances were that nothing unpredictable would ever happen to her again, at least not in a pleasant sense.

A thaw had set in overnight, and at Victoria Station, water was spattering from a gap in the blacked-out roof into a cluster of buckets. The floor was patterned with filthy footprints, the air wringing with damp, and every single person in the booking-hall seemed to be coughing. Vee, looking round for Mario and spotting him almost immediately – that great head above the crowd – felt as if she could have swatted the germs like flies.

She was disappointed, though not in the least surprised, to find that he had brought half a carriage-load with him: six other GIs, a Tommy and two girls, neither of whom looked quite awake. He always seemed to accumulate an audience, so that even when an evening had begun with a quiet drink, within an hour or two there were half a dozen simultaneous conversations, and tricks with coins and beer-mats, and great gusts of laughter. ‘Grew up in a big family,’ he said. ‘Can’t stand it when it’s quiet.’

‘This is Margery – Mrs Margery Overs,’ announced Mario, as they headed towards the platform. ‘You want to know anything about Sardines, you just ask this lady. We played it at the camp last week, thirty-five people in the john, two of them standing on the sink. Came right off the wall, looked like Niagara.’