She could hear a whistle, men shouting, a cheer. She left the town and walked along the Henley road, between fields and high hedges, occasionally glimpsing the river to her left. It was only after a mile or so that the war began to reassert itself. An anti-aircraft battery became visible in the woods. A squad of sweating, red-faced soldiers in PT kit ran past her. A camouflaged lorry emerged from a drive ahead. There was a guard post.
She showed her pass at the barrier.
‘Do you want a ride to the house, ma’am?’
‘I’m fine, Corporal, thanks. The walk will do me good.’
A lot of Britain’s secret war was fought at the end of long, sweeping drives like this one, running through neglected parks, between overgrown rhododendrons and dripping elms, to hidden country houses where codes were broken, special operations planned, the conversations of captured Nazi generals bugged, spies interrogated, agents trained. Kay had walked this drive for the past two years – always with an unwanted memory of school – and at the end of it stood Danesfield House, a mock-Elizabethan mansion, built at the turn of the century, as sparkling white as the icing on a wedding cake, with crenellated walls, steep red roofs and tall red-brick chimneys. Its ornamental gardens ran down to the Thames. When she had first arrived, the grounds had provided a pleasant place to stroll between shifts. Now they were disfigured by dozens of long, low temporary wooden office blocks and ugly semicircular corrugated-steel Nissen huts that served as barracks, in one of which she lived with eleven other officers, four to a room.
She stood on the threshold of her hut for a moment and offered up a prayer that no one would be in, then braced her shoulders, opened the metal door and clumped in her heavy WAAF shoes along the wooden floor. Four doors led off to the right of the corridor – the toilet and shower room was closest to the entrance – with a coal-burning stove in the centre of the hut that had been allowed to go out. Her dormitory was at the far end. The shutters were closed, the room in darkness, the air permeated by a strong smell of Vicks VapoRub. It seemed to be empty, but then the blankets on the bed in the furthest corner stirred and the shape of a head turned to look at her.
‘I thought you were in London for the weekend.’
Kay stepped over the threshold. It was too late to turn around. ‘Change of plan.’
‘Hold on.’ A shadow moved. A clatter as the shutters were opened. Shirley Locke, an economics graduate from University College, London, who seemed to have had the same streaming cold for the past two years, only in the summer she called it hay fever, secured the shutters and clambered back into bed. She was wearing a flannelette nightdress with a pattern of pink roses buttoned up to her sharp chin. She put on her glasses and raised her hand to her mouth. ‘My God, Kay, what have you done to your face?’
‘Car accident.’ It was the first lie that came into her mind. She had already decided not to mention the V2. The questions would have been endless.
‘Oh no, you poor thing! Whose car was it?’
‘Just a stupid taxi.’ She opened her cupboard and put away her case. ‘Had a blowout on the Embankment and hit a lamp post.’
‘When did it happen?’
‘This morning.’
‘But why are you back? Couldn’t your chap have looked after you?’
‘Who said anything about a chap?’ She made for the door. ‘Sorry – got to dash. See you later.’
Shirley called after her, ‘You do know you’ll have to tell us about him one day, don’t you? Your mystery man?’ And then, when Kay was halfway down the corridor, the nasal voice came again: ‘You should get that cut looked at!’
Danesfield House had lost its gracious character. Renamed RAF Medmenham after the nearest village, it had acquired instead a stuffy bureaucratic smell, a compound of dust and pencil shavings, cardboard files and rubber bands, like the inside of a desk drawer rarely opened. The chandeliers had been taken down, the plasterwork boarded over, linoleum laid and printed signs put up everywhere. The ballroom, for example, had become ‘Z Section/Central Interpretation Unit’, and it was here that Kay headed that Saturday afternoon.
By this time it was after half past three. The winter light was fading. Beyond the terrace, a low sun glinted on the Thames. Inside