“Violet’s the warden whose watch you took, the one who was late,” I said. I sat down on the floor, my back to the painted baseboard, and started to eat. “She’s full-time. We’ve got five full-timers. Violet and me and Renfrew — you haven’t met him yet, he was asleep. He’s had rather a bad time. Can’t sleep in the day — and Morris and Twickenham. And then there’s Petersby. He’s part-time like you.”

He didn’t turn around while I was talking or say anything, only continued looking out the window. A scattering of flares drifted down, lighting the room.

“They’re a nice lot,” I said, cutting a bite of cake with my fork. In the odd light from the flares the jam filling looked black. “Swales can be rather a nuisance with his teasing sometimes, and Twickenham will ask you all sorts of questions, but they’re good men on an incident.”

He turned around. “Questions?”

“For the post newspaper. Notice sheet, really, information on new sorts of bombs, ARP regulations, that sort of thing. All Twickenham’s supposed to do is type it and send it round to the other posts, but I think he’s always fancied himself an author, and now he’s got his chance. He’s named the notice sheet Twickenham’s Twitterings, and he adds all sorts of things—drawings, news, gossip, interviews.”

While I had been talking, the drone of engines overhead had been growing steadily louder. It passed, there was a sighing whoosh and then a whistle that turned into a whine.

“Stairs,” I said, dropping my plate. I grabbed his arm, and yanked him into the shelter of the landing. We crouched against the blast, my hands over my head, but nothing happened. The whine became a scream and then sounded suddenly further off. I peeked round the reinforcing beam at the open window. Light flashed and then the crump came, at least three sectors away. “Lees,” I said, going over to the window to see if I could tell exactly where it was. “High explosive bomb.” Jack focused the binoculars where I was pointing.