The ice slowly melted between them and eventually Pauline surprised Peggy by actually apologising for her outburst the other day. As the chatter once more rose in volume, Harvey patiently sat begging at each of them in turn for more food, and Daisy fell asleep in her pushchair, Peggy knew that harmony was restored and everything would be all right.

She lay back on the blanket, shielded her eyes against the sun and gazed up at the clear blue sky thinking how wonderful it was that in this moment it didn’t feel as if they were at war. It was like the old days, although the picnic would have been on the beach back then, and music would have been coming from the bandstand as they ate ice cream and hot chips smothered in salt and vinegar.

She let her eyelids droop, drowsy from gin and the sun and good rich food, delighting in the song of the skylarks and only vaguely aware of the buzz of a distant engine that must be a plane flying very high, and therefore not from Cliffe.

‘Strewth!’ shouted Peter, leaping to his feet. ‘Everybody take cover. Now!’

Startled out of their stupor, they all looked at him in confusion. ‘It’s just a plane,’ said Rita.

‘That’s no flaming plane,’ Peter shouted. ‘It’s a V-1. And it’s heading this way.’ He hauled Rita to her feet, grabbed Daisy’s pushchair and shoved it under the trees, startling the toddler awake and making her cry.

The other men were galvanised into action. Cordelia and the two pregnant girls were unceremoniously plucked from their chairs and carried into the bushes under the trees, where they ended up knee-deep in a weed-choked, hidden ditch.

Peggy snatched Daisy out of the pushchair and joined them, while Sarah and Ivy raced to help the mothers of the small children playing nearby get them out of the open.

They all huddled there, eyes turned skyward as children cried and Harvey whined in confusion. They could hear the buzzing of the engine more clearly now, and see the large, pilotless plane coming nearer and nearer – untouched by the barrage of gunfire that was coming from the top of the cliffs and the nearby hill at the end of Havelock Road.

‘It’ll be all right as long as that engine keeps going,’ said Peter, one arm around Rita, the other round Cordelia. ‘It’s when it stops we could be in trouble.’

Peggy watched, her heart beating so painfully she could scarcely breathe as she held Daisy and prayed for this awful thing to fly over them and land somewhere it would do no harm.

And then the engine cut out.

Frozen in fear, they watched the thing tip towards the earth, gaining speed as it silently dropped like a stone behind the trees in Havelock Gardens.

‘Down! Get down,’ shouted Ron, grabbing Harvey to his chest and throwing them both to the ground.