back of their throats. As she looked down at her hands, she found they were filthy; she was covered in soot and dirt.
Turning into Julia’s street, Diana looked up from under the metal rim of her grey helmet. A perfect dawn was stretching up the road to greet her. It brought tears to her eyes. It was so beautiful. And she realized that all night there had been a fear in the back of her mind that she would never see one again, let alone one this lovely. At one point, in the early hours of the morning, as the bombing had started to cease, Diana had looked up at a sky that was awash with a million stars and wondered how the two could survive together. The ravages of war and the beauty of nature. The sky feeling endless and tranquil, like a deep black ocean. How could it stay so calm, watching over the devastation of the world below it?
She couldn’t believe she’d been working all night. The second team had come to relieve her at four o’clock, but it appeared that the night’s trauma was over, except for the sounds of ambulance bells and firefighters as they continued to respond to a city alight.
How long would it take to put out so many fires? Diana wondered.
Once the all-clear had sounded, Diana had decided to come straight to Julia’s, as she had arranged, instead of going to her barracks. She wanted to talk to someone, and the rest of her crew would have just gone straight to sleep. But she needed to reach out and find some comfort, her centre, feel some normality, to draw on the feeling of home in the midst of a world gone mad.
She opened the gate, shuffled down the path, and knocked at the door. As she waited for Julia to answer, she stretched out her neck. The whole of her shoulders was knotted, and her back was aching, her feet sore. When Julia opened the door, she was ecstatic to see Diana, and concerned at her exhausted, traumatized appearance. She helped her into the house, took off her coat and her helmet, and pulled off her boots. Diana was glad to be inside. Bringing her into the kitchen, Julia poured her a brandy as Diana sat down at the table. Even her arms ached as she tried to lift the glass to her mouth.
‘Well, that was fun,’ she joked as she shook her dark curls and inadvertently scattered brick dust around the kitchen table. ‘Is Lizzie all right?’ she asked.
‘She arrived just before you. She’s gone to bed,’ said Julia as she fussed around the kitchen, making tea.
‘It’s pretty bad out there,’ Diana told her.
Julia slumped down in a chair at the table next to her. ‘Agnes knocked on the door at two o’clock to tell me a friend of hers had told her that the docks took quite a beating.’
‘It’s been slammed over there,’ Diana confirmed. ‘We could see it from where we were in Westminster. The fires were that high. Hard to believe this is real, isn’t it?’
Julia nodded.
Diana looked down at her hands and couldn’t believe the amount of grime and dirt under her fingernails and even plastered up her arms. After her tea, she stood up. ‘I’m going to go and have a wash.’
‘Why don’t you have a proper bath?’ said Julia.
Diana nodded. ‘That actually sounds really good.’
‘I’ll run you one,’ said Julia as she went upstairs.
Diana was so grateful, and could see Julia liked taking care of her and imagined she must be really missing her family. When Diana went up half an hour later, she couldn’t believe that Julia had surpassed the water level past the six inches they had been told they must abide by.
‘I think you need a good soak and to relax,’ said Julia with a smile.
Diana nodded, making her way into the bathroom, undressing, and sinking into the hot water. She tried to push from her mind all the sights and the sounds, but her ears were still ringing with the impact of the bombs and flashes continued to roll around in her memory. And suddenly, she thought of her dad. No wonder he had not wanted her to join the war effort. He had lived through this too, except he’d been in a trench like a sitting duck. She could only imagine what it would have been like to have bombs dropping literally on your head in a trench. No wonder