The warden said: ‘Now I’ve got no driver, and I can’t leave the scene.’ He looked up and down the street. There were little knots of people standing outside some of the houses, but most were probably in shelters.

Daisy said: ‘I’ll drive it. Where should I go?’

‘Can you drive?’

Most British women could not drive: it was still a man’s job here. ‘Don’t ask stupid questions,’ Daisy said. ‘Where am I taking the ambulance?’

‘St Bart’s. Do you know where it is?’

‘Of course.’ St Bartholomew’s was one of the biggest hospitals in London, and Daisy had been living here for four years. ‘West Smithfield,’ she added, to make sure he believed her.

‘Emergency ward is around the back.’

‘I’ll find it.’ She jumped in. The engine was still running.

The warden shouted: ‘What’s your name?’

‘Daisy Fitzherbert. What’s yours?’

‘Nobby Clarke. Take care of my ambulance.’

The car had a standard gearshift with a clutch. Daisy put it into first and drove off.

The planes continued to roar overhead, and the bombs fell relentlessly. Daisy was desperate to get the injured people to hospital, and St Bart’s was not much more than a mile away, but the journey was maddeningly difficult. She drove along Leadenhall Street, Poultry, and Cheapside, but several times she found the road blocked, and had to reverse away and find another route. There seemed to be at least one destroyed house in every street. Everywhere was smoke and rubble, people bleeding and crying.

With huge relief she reached the hospital and followed another ambulance to the emergency entrance. The place was frantically busy, with a dozen vehicles discharging maimed and burned patients into the care of hurrying porters with bloodstained aprons. Perhaps I’ve saved the mother of these children, Daisy thought. I’m not completely worthless, even if my husband doesn’t want me.

The girl with no hair was still carrying her baby sister. Daisy helped them both out of the back of her ambulance.

A nurse helped Daisy lift the unconscious mother and carry her in.

But Daisy could see that the woman had stopped breathing.

She said to the nurse: ‘These two are her children!’ She heard the edge of hysteria in her own voice. ‘What will happen now?’

‘I’ll deal with it,’ the nurse said briskly. ‘You have to go back.’

‘Must I?’ said Daisy.

‘Pull yourself together,’ said the nurse. ‘There will be a lot more dead and injured before this night is over.’

‘All right,’ said Daisy; and she got back behind the wheel and drove off.

(iv)

On a warm Mediterranean afternoon in October, Lloyd Williams arrived in the sunlit French town of Perpignan, only twenty miles from the border with Spain.

He had spent the month of September in the Bordeaux area, picking grapes for the wine harvest, just as he had in the terrible year of 1937. Now he had money in his pockets for buses and trams, and could eat in cheap restaurants instead of living on unripe vegetables he dug up in people’s gardens or raw eggs stolen from hen-coops. He was going back along the route he had taken when he left Spain three years ago. He had come south from Bordeaux through Toulouse and Béziers, occasionally riding freight trains, mostly begging lifts from truck drivers.