“I’m really becoming worried about her,” Mrs Lucy said. One of the ack-ack guns started up, and there was the dull crump of bombs far away, and we all stopped to listen.

“ME 109s,” Morris said. “They’re coming in from the south again.”

“I do hope she has the sense to get to a shelter.” Mrs Lucy said, and Vi burst in the door.

“Sorry I’m late,” she said, setting a box tied with string on the table next to Twickenham’s typewriter. She was out of breath and her face was suffused with blood. “I know I’m supposed to be on watch, but Harry took me out to see his plane this afternoon, and I had a horrid time getting back.” She heaved herself out of her coat and hung it over the back of Jack’s chair. “You’ll never believe what he’s named it! The Sweet Violet!” She untied the string on the box. “We were so late we hadn’t time for tea, and he said, ‘You take this to your post and have a good tea, and I’ll keep the jerries busy till you’ve finished.’ ” She reached in the box and lifted out a torte with sugar icing. “He’s painted the name on the nose and put little violets in purple all round it,” she said, setting it on the table. “One for every jerry he’s shot down.”

We stared at the cake. Eggs and sugar had been rationed since the beginning of the year and they’d been in short supply even before that. I hadn’t seen a fancy torte like this in over a year.

“It’s raspberry filling,” she said, slicing through the cake with a knife. “They hadn’t any chocolate.” She held the knife up, dripping jam. “Now, who wants some then?”

“I do,” I said. I had been hungry since the beginning of the war and ravenous since I’d joined the ARP, especially for sweets, and I had my piece eaten before she’d finished setting slices on Mrs Lucy’s Wedgwood plates and passing them round.

There was still a quarter left. “Who’s upstairs taking my watch?” she said, sucking a bit of raspberry jam off her finger.