Someone was outside – she could hear their heavy breathing. Then she gasped as whoever it was tried the door handle. They rattled it – that was what she had heard before. They were trying to get into the house. For a moment she wondered if it could be one of her neighbours, but knew that wasn’t likely. Sarah or Rita would go round to the back door as often as not, and any of them wanting to come in at this time of night would have knocked and called her name.

There was very little light in the hall, but she could make out the shadows around the doorway. She had sewn a makeshift curtain out of an old chenille tablecloth to hang across the inside of the door, fastened to a rod at the top so that it would swing with the door as it opened or closed. That kept the worst of the draughts out. Now whoever it was must be poking their hand through the letterbox, as the curtain moved and jerked. Kitty could hear her heart hammering in her ears. All the same, she reasoned that she had locked up earlier in the evening and it was a good, stout lock – again thanks to Danny’s forethought. Perhaps the person thought they’d find a key dangling on a string inside. Time was they might have left one there, accessible through the letterbox, or have left the door completely unlocked, but with the war making everything so uncertain, they didn’t take risks like that any more.

After what seemed like hours but couldn’t have been more than a few minutes, the person gave up trying to get in through the door. Then came several footsteps as the person moved away. Kitty held her breath. What if they tried to break the parlour window? She calmed herself by thinking they probably wouldn’t; the noise would wake too many people. Did they know the way in around the back? She breathed out slowly. She knew she had locked and bolted that door too. Had Tommy left his bike in the yard – maybe this person knew about it and wanted to steal it? No, he’d propped it in the hallway, even though she’d repeatedly asked him to wheel it around the back into the yard to get it out of the way. Now she was glad he’d ignored her.

Cautiously she opened the parlour door and crept closer to the window. The curtain was closed but she could hear someone was there. There was a very slight scrabbling, then silence, which seemed to go on for ever.