When Alice arrived in the boardroom, she smiled briefly at Theo before taking a seat next to Ursula. The women glanced at each other, Alice clearly as anxious as a cat in an air raid with her desire to know about the fate of her book project, but George unhurriedly took a piece of paper from his pocket and cleared his throat.

“I’ve had a letter from Rupert.”

“What does he say?” Tommy asked.

“How is he, George?” Emily interrupted.

“As you know we haven’t heard from him in quite some time—” George broke off, his voice hoarse.

“Can you tell how he’s coping?” Emily said insistently.

George unfolded the thin sheet of paper and pushed his spectacles up the bridge of his nose as he looked down.

“He’s all right as far as I can tell. He asks after all of you,” he said, looking around the table, gaze lingering for a fraction on Alice. “And he says he’s looking forward to reading our new titles when he comes back. He mentions the possibility of some leave in coming months—”

There was a murmur of excitement and George’s broad smile was replicated around the table, except for Alice, who listened benignly as George recounted the remaining contents of the brief letter.

“So there you have it. And with Mussolini’s weakening position, and the Allies’ advance into Tunisia, let’s hope that the tide is turning and that he will soon be home.”

George turned to Theo and caught him off guard since Theo shared the widely held belief that anticipated the war continuing, and a 1944 campaign.

“Yes, George. Let’s hope so,” he said, hesitating. “In which case, hadn’t we better get on with publishing some of those books for him to read?”

It had the desired effect, and George laughed.

“Then we’re all agreed; time spent waiting on a rooftop or in a shelter, or an aircraft hangar, could be better spent with a book,” George said cheerfully. “The question is, which one?” He looked at Theo.

“We’ll get to that in a moment,” Theo said, avoiding Alice’s stare, “but first of all, Tommy has an update for us.”

The production controller nodded. “Our biggest worry has been about the board and paper, but with the success of salvage and pulping this has temporarily abated. However”—Tommy paused to look around—“the type metal for printers is growing ever more scarce—even the standard type usually kept for reprints is being taken down and melted. We’ve had to do this ourselves on a few of our titles.”

“How scarce?” Ursula asked.

“Like the dodo—zinc, copper, brass, all the materials used for block-making and cover-stamping are virtually extinct.”

“What does that mean?” Alice asked worriedly.