She reached to the pocket of her skirt for a handkerchief, and blew her nose. She felt exhausted-limp, like a doll. Julia had moved across the room to shovel ash on to the coke in the grate; but she had risen, and was standing at the mantelpiece, without having turned around. She didn't come to Helen's side, as she had before. She stood as if gazing down at the fire, brooding over the smothered coals. And when she spoke at last, her voice seemed distant.

She said, 'It wasn't like that, you know.'

Helen was blowing her nose again, and hardly heard. 'Like what?' she asked, not understanding.

'With Kay and me,' said Julia, still without turning her head. 'It wasn't the way you think it was. Kay let you imagine it, I suppose. It's awfully like her.'

'What do you mean?'

Julia hesitated. Then, 'She was never in love with me,' she said. She said it almost casually, putting down her hand to flick a piece of ash from her trouser-leg. 'I was the one. I was in love with Kay for years. She tried to love me back, but-it never took. I'm just not her type, I suppose. We're too similar; that's all it is…' She straightened up, and started picking at the paint on the mantelpiece. 'Kay wants a wife, you see. I said that once before, didn't I? She wants a wife-someone good, I mean; someone kind, untarnished. Someone to keep things in order for her, hold things in place… I could never do that. I used to tell her, she wouldn't be happy until she'd found herself some nice blue-eyed girl-some girl who'd need rescuing, or fussing over, or something like that…' She turned her head, and met Helen's gaze at last. She said, with a sort of infinite sadness, 'That was rather a joke on me, wasn't it?'

Helen stared at her, until she blinked and looked away. She went back to picking at the mantelpiece. 'Does it matter, either way?' she asked, in the same low, casual way as before.

It mattered terribly, Helen knew. At Julia's words, something inside her had dropped, or shrunk. She felt as though she'd been tricked, made a fool of-

That was silly, for Julia hadn't tricked her. Julia hadn't lied, or anything like that. But still, Helen felt betrayed. She became aware, suddenly, of her own nakedness. She didn't want to be naked in front of Julia any more! She quickly pulled on her skirt and her blouse. She said, as she did it, 'Why didn't you tell me?'

'I don't know.'

'You knew what I thought.'

'Yes.'

'You knew it, three weeks ago!'

'It was the surprise of hearing you say it,' said Julia. 'It was thinking of Kay- You know what she's like, she's such a bloody gentleman. She more of a gentleman than any real man I ever knew… I asked her, you see, not to tell. I never imagined-' She lifted a hand, and rubbed her eye. She went on tiredly, 'And then, I was proud. That's all it was. I was proud; and I was lonely. I was fucking lonely, if you want to know the truth.'

She blew out her breath in a rough sort of sigh; and looked back again, over her shoulder. 'Does it make a difference, what I've told you? It doesn't make any difference to me. But if you want, you know, to call the whole show off-'

'No,' said Helen. She didn't want that. And she was frightened by Julia's having raised, so casually, the possibility of their parting. For one terrible moment she saw herself completely alone-abandoned by Julia, as well as by Kay.

She put on the rest of her clothes without speaking. Julia kept her pose at the fireplace. When, at last, Helen went to her and put her arms around her, she moved into Helen's embrace with something like relief. But they held one another awkwardly. Julia said, 'After all, what's changed? Nothing's changed, has it?'-and Helen shook her head and said, No, nothing had changed… 'I love you, Julia,' she said.

But there was that shrinking or dropping inside her, still-as if her heart, that before had seemed to yearn after Julia, to swell and expand, was drawing in its muscles, closing its valves.

She finished dressing. Julia moved around the room, putting things away. Now and then they caught each other's eye, and smiled; if they moved close to one another, they reached out their hands, automatically, and lightly touched, or drily kissed.

Outside, over London, bombs were still falling. Helen had forgotten all about them. But when Julia went back through the curtained doorway and left her alone for a moment, she moved softly to the window and looked out, through one of the cracks in the talc, at the square. She could see houses, still silvered with moonlight; and as she watched, the sky was lit by a series of lurid sparkles and flares. The booms produced by the explosions started a second later: she felt the slight vibration of them in the board against her brow.

At every one of them, she flinched. All her confidence seemed to have left her. She began to shake-as if she'd lost the habit, the trick, of being at war; as if she knew, suddenly, only menace, the certainty of danger, the sureness of harm.

'God!' said Fraser. 'That was close, wasn't it?'

The bombs, and the anti-aircraft fire, had woken them all up. A few men were standing at their windows, calling encouragement to the British pilots and the ack-ack guns; Giggs, as usual, was yelling at the Germans. 'This way, Fritz!' It was a kind of pandaemonium, really. Fraser had lain very rigidly for fifteen minutes, swearing at the noise; finally, unable to bear it, he'd got out of bed. He'd pulled the table across the cell and was standing on it in his socks, trying to see out of the window. Every time another blast came he flinched away from the panes of glass, sometimes covering his head; but he always moved back to them. It was better, he said, than doing nothing.

Duncan was still in his bunk. He was lying on his back, more or less comfortably, with his hands behind his head. He said, 'They sound closer than they are.'

'They don't disturb you?' asked Fraser incredulously.

'You get used to it.'

'It doesn't trouble you, that a bloody great bomb might be heading straight for you and you can't so much as duck your head?'

The cell was lit up by the moonlight, weirdly bright. Fraser's face showed clearly, but his boyish blue eyes, the blond of his hair, and the brown of the blanket across his shoulders, had lost their colours; they were all versions of silvery grey, like things in a photograph.

'They say if it's got your name on,' said Duncan, 'it'll get you wherever you are.'

Fraser snorted. 'That's the sort of thing I'd expect to hear from someone like Giggs. Except that when he says it, I really think he might imagine there's a factory somewhere on the outskirts of Berlin, stamping Giggs, R, Wormwood Scrubs, England into the casing.'

'All I mean,' said Duncan, 'is, if it's going to get us at all, it might as well get us here.'

Fraser put his face back to the window. 'I'd like to think I had a shot at improving my chances, that's all.-Oh, bugger!' He jumped, as another explosion sounded, rattling the glass, dislodging stones or mortar in the duct behind the heating grille in the wall. There came cries-whoops and cheers-from other cells; but someone called, too, in a high broken voice, 'Turn it off, you cunts!' And after that, just for a moment, there was silence.

Then the ack-ack guns started up again, and more bombs fell.

Duncan looked up. 'You'll get your face blown off,' he said. 'Can you even see anything?'

'I can see the searchlights,' said Fraser. 'They're making their usual bloody muck of things… I can see the glow of fires. Christ knows where they are. For all we know, the whole damn city could be burning to the ground.' He started biting at one of his fingernails. 'My eldest brother's a warden,' he said, 'in Islington.'

'Go back to bed,' said Duncan, after another minute. 'There's nothing you can do.'