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invited her to take a seat, vanished from the office for a while, then returned with two cups of coffee.
    â€˜Thank you,’ she said, ‘but isn’t all this an overly elaborate way to fire me?’
    â€˜Coffee’s as rare as a good night’s sleep these days, what with the air-raid sirens screaming fit to burst. Cheers.’ He sipped the coffee. The action of swallowing caused a drop of red liquid to emerge from beneath the eyepatch and roll down his cheek. He dabbed it away with a knuckle.
    Beth set her cup down on the table. ‘Well?’
    â€˜Well, what?’
    â€˜Fire me.’
    â€˜Don’t be ridiculous.’
    â€˜Ridiculous?’ Her anger rose.
    â€˜Drink your coffee. You won’t believe how severely rationed it is now. Ships bringing it across the Atlantic are targeted by submarines. Crews drown by the hundred.’
    â€˜So there’s blood in the coffee. Is that what you’re trying to say?’
    â€˜Peppery, aren’t you?’
    â€˜Why are you treating me like your personal enemy?’
    â€˜You really could smell gin on my breath from, what? Three rows back in the screening room?’
    â€˜Absolutely. Now fire me for making that crack about you being liquored up, and stop playing games. I don’t like it. What’s more, I won’t tolerate it.’
    Once more his fingertip rested on the eyepatch, as if still coming to terms with it being attached to his face.
    â€˜Miss Layne. Permit me to confess what happened ten days ago. It may help you make up your mind about me. Then act according to your conscience.’
    His manner irritated her, but she nodded. ‘Go on.’
    â€˜Ten days ago I sat in a café in London. There was an informal meeting, you see, with the director and location manager for the film I’d just finished scripting. We sat there with slices of cherry cake, cups of tea, and the director smoked his favourite tobacco. All profoundly normal. A waitress brought sandwiches to a young couple sitting at a table opposite. He wore a blue Royal Air Force uniform. She was a nurse. They were holding hands. I suggested to the director that wherever possible we film on the streets of Whitby and dispense with rickety cardboard sets, then . . .’ A stillness crept over him. ‘Then the café didn’t exist any more. Everyone was dead. The young sweethearts, my colleagues. The walls had vanished. Tables pulverized to splinters. There I was standing in the rubble, smoke and fire all around, and no sound whatsoever.’ He took a mouthful of coffee; as he did so, his eye alighted on the gin bottle. ‘A bomb had struck the building. Everyone died but me.’
    Beth said, ‘You must have been saved for a higher purpose.’ Then she clenched her fist.
Did I really say that?
The glibness of her own comment shamed her. ‘I’m sorry. That sounded crass.’
    â€˜No . . . I’ve had plenty of time to consider it. An eighty-kilogram bomb, containing high explosive, fell ten thousand feet from a plane on to the building. Everyone reduced to a smear of bloody red. An awful description, but it’s true. Yet all I suffer is a gash in my eyelid.’ He gave a grim smile. ‘A nurse needed a long needle and a lot of thread to reconnect that flap of skin. And I have to wear this pirate’s eyepatch for another week or so, but they tell me I’ll be good as new. I’d just begin to ‘see’ the location manager, or date her as you Americans would say.’
    â€˜She was your girlfriend? I’m sorry, Mr Reed.’
    â€˜Alec, please.’He held eye contact with her. ‘Do you think I have been saved for a higher purpose? Did God intervene, so I might achieve great things in order to aid a victory over Hitler? Or have some ancient gods, who are bitter and twisted through neglect, decided to save me for their own evil purposes?’
    â€˜Ancient gods?