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Egypt, cancelling out all the gains we’d made against the Italians. These were Mussolini’s mobsters, the men who’d gassed whole Ethiopian villages. Weren’t they? At least, that’s what we’d been taught.
    But though Greece and Crete had fallen, Tobruk still held out and Rommel hadn’t got around to reserving his room at Shepheard’s – not yet, anyway.
    Sometimes I’d glance up from my squiggles and find I was looking at a man dumb with misery. A few were still cocky, quite a few more obviously relieved at being out of the war, but most were stunned by what had happened and was happening to them. Seeing your enemy when he’s trying to hold up his trousers makes hating him very difficult.
    I tried very hard not to stare. I didn’t want to be forced to see them as real people. I didn’t have the courage. I was there to take notes. That was what I was good at and that was what I’d do. What made it harder was that I wasn’t supposed to talk about my work, even to the rest of the girls back in the hut. They knew I was a shorthand writer and that was all. They didn’t even envy me my clean hands. Vee thought it was frightfully dull compared with being a driver.
    ‘At least we get to see the world. All you see is a stuffy office with bars on the window, poor old girl.’
    But it was the girls of the Mechanized Transport Corps (MTC) – pistol-packing Mary Newall’s private army, débutantes to a woman in Savile Row tailored uniforms – who got all the plum driving jobs, according to Grace.
    ‘It’s those rather natty blue chiffon scarves they wear round their necks,’ she complained. ‘Frightfully flattering compared to a khaki collar and tie. And silk stockings – why can’t we wear silk stockings? So they get the ambulances and the staff cars. We get the ration trucks!’
    ‘Important things, rations,’ said Pansy, solemnly. ‘More important than generals in staff cars. An army marches on its stomach.’
    ‘Who said that?’ teased Vee. ‘Your dad again? He’s a card, your dad!’
    *   *   *
    Pansy came in, took off her shoes, fell backwards on her bed, still in her cook’s whites, and groaned, ‘What a so-and-so of a day!’ (the worst language she ever allowed herself).
    ‘What’s up, love?’ Vee asked, looking up from polishing her buttons. She slotted the brass button stick around the next one and began again. ‘Been made to whitewash the potatoes this time?’
    ‘I don’t think I can stand this country much longer.’
    We all looked up then. The tremor in Pansy’s voice was real and so unlike her that it caught our attention. Cheerful, willing Pansy, always ready to take on someone’s work or to make someone’s life easier. Complaining is part of army life – where would we have been without a good moan? – but if she sounded like that, we knew she must be pretty miserable.
    ‘They say it’s the hottest summer here for fifty years. It’s a beast of a country,’ Grace agreed in a cheerful tone. Stripped to her khaki undies – hilariously military – she was squinting into a scrap of mirror, trying to put her long, blond hair in pin curls. ‘Has it taken all of one week for you to discover that?’
    ‘I can’t stand the flies … I can’t stand them. Really. The kitchen is full of them. The flypapers are black with them. There are flies licking the sugar, flies drowning in the milk if you leave it out for just a moment – and the milk is watered down, anyway, before we get it. All the milk is boiled. All the water is boiled. It’s so hot in the kitchen, they might as well boil me – I wouldn’t notice! The cockroaches are as big as mice…’
    ‘I hope you don’t dangle your feet out of bed like that at night,’ warned Vee solemnly. ‘The cockroaches’ll eat the hard skin off your toes – quick as you like.’
    Pansy screamed and pulled her feet on to the bed as though she’d been bitten.
    ‘Saves you having to bend down to cut your toenails,