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minutes passed while my heart rate slowed. Okay, I was in the clear. But then another two clangs reverberated into the room. I couldn’t help myself. I grabbed the brass bookmark and tapped back, twice. He responded, with one tap, and I echoed it, concluding our peculiar goodnight.
    I was still mortified, but I convinced myself I shouldn’t be, that our conversation by water pipe was a friendly, silly gesture, that neither one of us intended it to be flirtatious. Otherwise I wouldn’t be able to look Joe in the face in the morning.
    I slid into bed, the worn cotton sheets soft on my bare skin. I wondered if Joe was sleeping naked tonight, too.

FIVE
    I spent a restless night, tossing and turning even after I again hung damp sheets between my bedposts and trained the fan on them, disturbed by worries more serious than what Joe thought of me. I brooded over mortality, the heartache of my husband’s early death, Bob’s heart attack, and I wondered how his wife and children would live. His wife wanted to work, and it looked like she’d get her chance. At least there were jobs for women now. During the Depression a man’s death often left his family destitute.
    Finally my thoughts turned to Rachel and her family. I recalled the newspaper story about the disheveled state of Holman’s office, and I fretted over the whereabouts, in that jumbled office, of Gerald Bloch’s file.
    ‘We should have eaten more of the ham,’ Joe joked, as he helped himself to creamed ham and peas before passing the platter.
    Phoebe Knox, from her place at the head of the table, dotted her plate with tiny servings of ham and peas, squash and sliced tomatoes. She’d left her room for the first time all weekend to go to church this morning, hiding her swollen eyes by drawing down the netting of her pillbox hat to hide her face.
    ‘The real question is, what’s for dessert?’ Ada asked, reaching for the breadbasket for a second biscuit. I pushed the butter dish down the table towards her without being asked. It puzzled me that Ada wasn’t fat. Must be all that late-night jitterbugging.
    ‘You do realize,’ Henry said, ‘that there’re no actual food shortages in the country, or gas shortages either. The government wants you to think there are, all the while using the gasoline for military purposes.’
    ‘It amounts to the same thing, doesn’t it?’ I asked. ‘Better the gasoline goes to the military than shipping fresh food all over the country.’
    ‘It’s not efficient,’ Henry said. ‘Not organized. The Democrats can’t win this war. Roosevelt will have to bring in Republicans to run the agencies. You wait and see.’
    General Bill Donovan, the Director of OSS, was a Republican. I hadn’t noticed that he was better organized than anyone else. Not to mention President Hoover, who’d organized us right into the Depression.
    ‘I don’t mind missing dessert for years, if that’s what it takes,’ Phoebe said.
    ‘Not everyone is making the same sacrifices,’ Henry said. ‘That’s what I resent. I’ll bet you a dollar that roast beef and chocolate cake are on the menus at the Cosmo Club and the Willard Hotel tonight.’
    ‘You’re not living at the Willard,’ Phoebe reminded him. ‘We have to eat up our leftovers.’
    Dellaphine shoved the dining-room door open with her hip and came in with a tray.
    ‘Dellaphine,’ Joe said, scraping the last of the ham and peas onto his plate, ‘dinner was delicious. And those peaches look great.’
    ‘Don’t be flirting with me, Mr Joe,’ Dellaphine said, holding the bowl for Phoebe to dish out the peaches into cut-glass bowls. ‘There ain’t no sugar.’
    ‘Not even just a teaspoonful to sprinkle over the fruit?’ Ada asked.
    ‘Not even that,’ Dellaphine said, the dining-room door swinging shut behind her.
    I liked the peaches fine without sugar, myself.
    ‘So,’ Phoebe said, too brightly, ‘what’s everyone doing this afternoon?’
    Henry intended to read the