‘What the HELL!’ It was Mario’s voice, roaring across the crowd. ‘Did you just hit that lady?’

The answer was strangulated.

‘Did you just HIT her?’

‘No, he didn’t, I tripped, I’m all right!’ shouted Vee, from below, her voice lost among the damp overcoats. She’d landed on one knee, her shoe half off, and she was still crouched, struggling to replace it when the fight started, all pushes and grunts and lurches, the odd smack of flesh on flesh. It was a station porter who pulled her out of the crowd, and she straightened to see a heaving knot of men, khaki serge, grey flannel, red faces, a split shoulder-seam showing a crescent of pale blue shirt, Mario’s head pushed back at an angle by someone’s hand under his chin, and then a whistle blew and two coppers elbowed past, followed by a third. The knot unravelled, an airman dodged towards the exit, his nose streaming blood, and then the struggle was over and Mario and Hat Man and an indignant-looking American sailor were being arrested, and everyone was talking at once, even Vee, though the phrase ‘It’s all been a mistake, Officer’ felt chillingly familiar in her mouth, and God knows it had never done her an ounce of good in the past. In any case, she thought, if anyone could talk his way out of custody, it would be Mario, who, by the time they had reached the police station two hundred yards away, had already recounted the story of a friend of his who had stumbled during a St Patrick’s Day Parade and accidentally punched a police horse. He looked round for Vee as they filed up the steps and under the blue lamp. ‘You gonna wait? You don’t have to.’

‘Of course I’ll wait,’ she said. No one in her life before had ever swung a fist on her behalf. Besides, she had no idea how to get home on her own.

Noel stayed up until midnight. After finishing an essay entitled ‘The Structure and Properties of the Metallic Elements’ for Dr Parry-Jones, he laid the table for breakfast and then took The Complete Saki up to bed with him. The house was quiet, except for the usual creaks and ticks, and the cycle of Mr Reddish’s snore in the next room, starting each time with a gentle snuffle and building gradually to something that sounded like a death-clash between rival wild boars, before subsiding, for a golden minute or two, into silence. ‘I expect there’s been a problem with the trains,’ Mr Jepson had said, when Vee hadn’t returned by supper time. Mr Reddish had suggested the same thing, while Miss Appleby, arriving home late herself, had exclaimed, ‘Ooh, isn’t she back yet? The naughty girl!’, which hadn’t been helpful.