“The RAF’s,” Morris said, and we all fell silent, thinking of Vi and her bewildering popularity with the RAF pilots in and around London. She had pale eyelashes and colourless brown hair she put up in flat little pincurls while she was on duty, which was against regulations, though Mrs Lucy didn’t say anything to her about them. Vi was dumpy and rather stupid, and yet she was out constantly with one pilot after another, going to dances and parties.

“I still say she makes it all up,” Swales said. “She buys all those things she says they give her herself, all those oranges and chocolate. She buys them on the black market.”

“On a full-time’s salary?” I said. We only made two pounds a week, and the things she brought home to the post—sweets and sherry and cigarettes — couldn’t be bought on that. Vi shared them round freely, though liquor and cigarettes were against regulations as well. Mrs Lucy didn’t say anything about them either.

She never reprimanded her wardens about anything, except being malicious about Vi, and we never gossiped in her presence. I wondered where she was. I hadn’t seen her since I came in.

“Where’s Mrs Lucy?” I asked. “She’s not late as well, is she?”

Morris nodded towards the pantry door. “She’s in her office. Olmwood’s replacement is here. She’s filling him in.”

Olmwood had been our best part-timer, a huge out-of-work collier who could lift a house beam by himself, which was why Nelson, using his authority as district warden, had had him transferred to his own post.

“I hope the new man’s not any good,” Swales said. “Or Nelson will steal him.”

“I saw Olmwood yesterday,” Morris said. “He looked like Renfrew, only worse. He told me Nelson keeps them out the whole night patrolling and looking for incendiaries.”

There was no point in that. You couldn’t see where the incendiaries were falling from the street, and if there was an incident, nobody was anywhere to be found. Mrs Lucy had assigned patrols at the beginning of the Blitz, but within a week she’d stopped them at midnight so we could get some sleep. Mrs Lucy said she saw no point in our getting killed when everyone was already in bed anyway.