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high heels, their balance was no longer good enough, but she could. Daphne could. Sometimes he glanced at those Saturday or Sunday supplements the newspapers included and it was the trend now to show pictures of grey-haired models in their sixties and seventies along with the young ones. Daphne reminded him of one of those graceful elderly women, long necked and slender. He got slowly to his feet.
    She and Stanley kissed, on the cheek, quick pecks and no hugs. Alan held out his hand and Daphne took it. Her fingers were thin and cool. All his memories of her were coming back, but it was the least significant of them that he now referred to.
    “I don’t suppose you remember, but you told my fortune.”
    She smiled, showing perfect teeth that were probably crowns on implants. “And what was your fortune?”
    “You predicted a long and happy life.”
    “It’s been long obviously. And happy?”
    It was Rosemary who answered, with a touch of asperity, “Very happy, thank you.”
    Made impatient by the interruption and subsequent delay, Quell said, “I’d like to hear what Mrs. Furness and Mr. Winwood have to say about these tunnels of yours.” He turned to Daphne. “Were there any grown-ups—adults, I should say—there with you.”
    “They didn’t know we were there. They didn’t know the tunnels were there, as far as we knew.”
    “Until my father kicked us out,” said Michael Winwood.
    Alan said, “I remember one grown-up coming. Just the once, I think.” He looked from one to another of the now old children. “It was Lewis Newman’s uncle. I don’t know what he was called. Lewis called him Uncle James.”
    “He was young,” said Rosemary. “I mean they said he was young. I couldn’t tell whether someone was, say, twenty-three or forty. Lewis said, ‘Dad says he’s young to be an uncle.’ I knew my dad was forty and my mum was thirty-eight, so he must have been a lot younger than that.” She looked doubtfully at Quell. “Maybe it’s not important.”
    Quell was looking as if nothing he had heard came into that category. Even so he asked everyone for his or her memories of the tunnels, and one by one they gave him what they remembered. He neither made notes nor recorded what they said. Perhaps he had a good memory. When it was done and he had heard about the air-raid warnings, the bombs they’d expected but which never came to Loughton, the shrapnel from gunfire that lay in the streets for them to collect, the food they ate and hated but got used to, the sanctuary of the tunnels they called, for some reason he never fathomed, “qanats,” he asked for mobile numbers or addresses from all of them. He might want to get in touch. He said he’d like to know if they knew of anyone going missing when they were children, anyone disappearing. Please to let him know if they could remember. Rosemary wrote down her home phone number and Maureen produced from a drawer a compliments slip with the name of George and Stanley’s firm on it.
    Stanley had taken Spot out into the garden as he was in danger of having an accident on the carpet. Michael Winwood said that as they lived not far from each other, she in St. John’s Wood and he in West Hampstead, Daphne was going to drive him home. Daphne produced a card from her handbag, and then a strange thing happened. Two cards must have been stuck together, for as she leant across the table to pass one of them to Quell, its fellow detached itself and fell on the floor. While Rosemary was fetching her coat from the hallway, Alan quickly put his foot over the card. He was pretty sure no one but Daphne saw him. She met his eyes and gave him a tiny smile with closed lips. By the time Rosemary came back, he had retrieved the card by dropping his handkerchief and contriving to pick up card and handkerchief together.

    D APHNE’S CAR WAS not the expensive, subtly coloured, high-powered Italian vehicle Michael would have expected, but a silver Toyota Prius and by no means