Population, we called them at the rest centre. The bombed-out who’d had the cheek to live through the calamity of a world blown to bits. Leaving the cardboard coffins empty but filling up the classrooms of the old school building with their tragic faces and filthy clothes that made miners fresh up from the pit look like Christmas fairies. They came in as a crowd like you’d wade through on the Underground or elbow during a department-store sale. And that’s how some saw them – population, not people. Not mothers called Mavis who, stunned speechless, clutched two small children crying for their mum to make the banging stop so they could get to sleep. Not a ten-year-old son called Ralph, trousers soggy with wee, who tried to save bunks with carefully placed socks, jumpers and a fierce face. Not a husband called Sid, whose bloodstained arms held each one of his family in turn to tell them he’d go back to recover what he could from their bombed home. Not a young woman called Christine, who clawed at a warden’s back begging him to find her fiancé who was lost under a toppled wall. Just population. A mass whose desperation made them seem like the feckless, and whose drab presence drained the classrooms of all colour until even the white potties in the corner glinted like diamonds. I would never forgive Hitler for turning human beings into that.

And it was my job to find out who they had once been and where they had once lived. Even the ones who couldn’t remember or couldn’t hear because a blast was still ringing in their ears. It was raucous some days at the rest centre, me straining to hear those weary fragile voices. Other days were so frighteningly silent I wished someone would scream or even start a chorus of the dreadful ‘Roll Out The Barrel’. And sometimes when there were just too many – when even I had to fight my way in – I’d forget a queue, just turn round to the first person I saw and say, ‘Do you need helping? Good, then I’ll start with you.’

Twelve-hour shifts, fourteen sometimes, I had to do at Campden School rest centre. And when I got home Bernard would complain that there was nothing on the table except dust. It wasn’t for himself that he was worried, he took an unusually long time explaining, it was for me. ‘I’m just worried that this job is proving too much for you, what with everything . . .’

Meanwhile at the rest centre two women were sitting there grinning gratefully at me. Violet and her sister Margery. Both husbands were away. One in North Africa, the other in Northampton. They’d got three children between them – twelve, eight and another who, they told me, was a bit slow.

‘The house is completely gone,’ Violet said. They’d lost everything but they giggled. Hysterical euphoria, I was warned, what with the relief of them all being safe. Dug out of their Morrison shelter when Margery tapped on the ceiling rose, which was just in reach, with a teaspoon. ‘Our ration books are still there in the sideboard, you see.’ Another chuckle. ‘It’s under there somewhere but it’s not a priority, they told us, to find things like that. People and persons, that’s their job, they said.’

‘Right, well, to get replacement ration books,’ I began, ‘you’ll need to apply to the administrative centre at the town hall. Or your local food office. Just go to one of those places – I can tell you what bus to get – and fill in a form for yourselves and each of your children . . .’ Both of them were staring vacant as shop mannequins.

‘Shall I write that down?’ I asked.

‘Write what down?’

‘What I just said.’

‘What was that?’

‘About the ration books.’

‘We lost them with the house. They’re in the sideboard, you see. We need to get new ones.’

I should have been asleep on my days off. Lulled drowsy by ordinary daytime noises I’d thought so loudly disturbing before the war – postmen, delivery lorries, kids playing cricket in the street. But as often as not those precious days were spent craning my neck trying to calculate how long a queue could go on. Six sausages and a loaf of bread later and I’m still trying to work it out. If I cooked the dinner and Bernard and Arthur ate it sharpish, I could wash the dishes, and a few clothes from the basket, iron my dress for work, a shirt for Bernard, then maybe get an hour and a half sleep in my feather-pillowed, clean-sheeted, highly sprung bed before they started – the bombers – and I had to go to the Anderson to kip in Armageddon.

Didn’t seem any point being at home for just a few hours when in the morning I had to fight my way through an upside-down world. Roads that should have been familiar turned to wastelands strewn with mountains of wreckage, the displaced intestines of buildings spewing everywhere. Coughing in the fog of rubble dust. Stepping lightly over this, teetering over that. Forced round corners to avoid a factory still ablaze. Gushing streams of water lapping at my heels. Glass crunching under my feet. One morning, looking up a road near home, I recognised nothing. I was a foreigner to this newly modelled place. I had to ask a warden, ‘Have you seen Longbridge Road?’ And even the warden was puzzled, looking around him as if he’d mislaid his hat. ‘It used to be around here somewhere,’ was all he could offer. I had to start spending nights in the rest centre, too, because those few miles to work were taking me hours! But Bernard didn’t like it. He turned up at the centre more than once, standing in the doorway on tippy-toes, scanning the classroom until he’d found me.

‘I just need to know you’re alive,’ he’d say.

‘Oh, yes,’ I’d tell him. ‘Very much so.’

‘You say you lost all your clothes in the fire,’ I said now, ‘and your coupons.’

‘Miss, what I’m standing up in is all I’ve got, is what I’m telling you.’ And that was no more than tatty rags. The man’s son was wrapped in a blanket with no shoes on. ‘My boy here was in bed. I was making a quick cup of tea. I only had time to grab him when I see the thing falling out the sky. Then suddenly nothing and we’re on fire. My neighbours are screaming, I can hear them through the wall. I get him out. My wife, she was in the shelter – well, she’s in the hospital now. Dunno what happened to next door.’

‘There’s clothes in the other classroom. You could go in and get something for your son and—’

‘We tried that, miss. One of your colleagues pointed it out to us when we came in. But there weren’t any trousers left, well, not to fit ’im, and my boy really don’t wanna wear a dress.’

‘Okay,’ I said, looking for advice in my little book. ‘To replace your clothing coupons you’ll need to get the form CRSC1 from the administrative centre. That’s CRSC1. Fill it in, then forward it by post, to the Customs and Excise office at the Board of Trade in Westminster. That’s in . . . SW one.’

‘Right – is that it, then?’ he asked.

And I had to tell him, ‘Yes, I’m afraid it is.’

‘Well, I suppose we could have another go in the classroom next door.’

There were just not enough bunks. People were having to sleep on the floor.

‘But my house has gone. Surely there is some compensation I can have now so I can find another property?’

‘Well, madam, you could try writing to the Assistance Board or send to the War Damage Commission for a form C1 but they don’t usually pay out until after the war.’

‘Usually! What are you talking about? How many wars have we had where this has happened? And please, miss, don’t get me wrong but what exactly will they do with my claim if, God forbid, we don’t win?’

Sometimes the food ran out and all we had to offer anyone was a blinking cup of tea.

‘Have you no other relatives that could take you in?’ I couldn’t stop this woman crying and why should she? Her husband, her mum, her dad had all been killed at the mouth of a shelter. She was at least eight months pregnant. Her only reply was a very slight shake of the head.