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there would be just the two of them. And although she would be pleased to see her husband, it wasn’t the same without children.
    She was invited to go with Sheila and the children to Melling next time they went. ‘You can meet our Eileen and her little boy, Nicky. If it’s the weekend, then Nick will be there, her husband, and our dad’ll be doing the garden. You can meet them too.’

    In London, Nick Stephens sometimes wondered if his job in the War Office had been invented specifically for him. Someone somewhere had felt sorry for him and arranged for him to sit in a room in an office in Dover Street, off Piccadilly, and make lists of statistics, as well as a record of news items from the press and the wireless and debates in Parliament that were in any way concerned with the Royal Air Force. He couldn’t imagine what use the statistics were to anyone and was convinced he was being paid to waste his time.
    The someone somewhere who was keeping an eye on him obviously felt the same about him as did Eileen, his wife, in whose eyes he could see nothing but pity because he wasn’t a real man any more, just as he was no longer a member of the Royal Air Force.
    In case this was true, he was often tempted to give up the position, but what would happen then? He couldn’t get another job, not a real one, not with only one arm. He would have to live in the cottage in Melling, live with the endless pity showing in his wife’s eyes.

    One evening late in February he emerged from the office in Dover Street and made for Piccadilly and the basement bar where he would spend the next hour – or possibly two or three – getting totally plastered before making his unsteady way back through Green Park to his lodgings in Birdcage Walk. There he would fall into a drunken slumber, waking up with a hangover that wouldn’t disappear until lunchtime the following day.
    God, this was an awful life! Was he destined to live like this until the bloody war was over? And the terrible thing was that even then he genuinely couldn’t think of a single thing he wanted to do. Flying a plane had always been his ultimate ambition. Nothing else held any interest.
    The streets were dark – properly dark, that is, as black as a night could be without a moon, a star or a single speck of light to be seen. There was something about the lack of light that made him lose his sense of balance, so that he felt lopsided. Traffic lumbered past, ghosts of buses and cars and the occasional lorry. He was worried about crossing the road, staying upright. If he wasn’t careful he’d lose his other bloody arm. If he was lucky, he might be killed and there’d be nothing at all left to worry about.
    Except there was Nicky, his son. He wanted to see Nicky grow up, become a man. And there was Eileen, his beautiful wife, who he would never stop loving.
    ‘Oh, sod it,’ he said out loud.
    ‘Is that you, Nick?’ A woman’s voice he vaguely recognised.
    ‘Yes,’ he said curtly. ‘Who’s that?’
    ‘Doria Mallory. I work in the office next to yours. Do you mind if I hold on to you? I’m absolutely lost here. Have you any idea where we are? I always lose track the minute I step outside the building.’
    ‘Opposite Charlie’s, I reckon.’ If you turned left coming out of Dover Street, it was twelve paces down.
    ‘Charlie’s?’
    ‘It’s a bar. I’m hoping to go there if I can get across the road.’
    ‘Oh, may I join you for a drink? That would be wonderful. A gin and It is exactly what I need right now.’
    ‘Are you old enough to go to pubs?’ She didn’t sound it.
    ‘I’m eighteen; nearly nineteen.’
    ‘Oh, all right then.’ He would have preferred her to go away once she had helped him across the road.
    She was unfortunately on his left side, which meant she had to hold on to the empty sleeve that he normally tucked in his pocket. Somehow they managed to get to the other side of Piccadilly all in one piece and Charlie’s was quickly located,