When I woke up, Wilfred’s sharp screeching had stopped. He must have gone home. No, Queenie, he was never there. And that wasn’t fog, that was bricks and glass and wood and soot billowing in thick folds of dirty cauliflower smoke. One of my shoes was gone, my coat was ripped, and my skirt was up round my waist, knickers on view for anyone who wanted a look. Crunchy slivers of glass were in my hair. The taste of blood was in the corner of my mouth.

Perhaps I was dead. My back was against a wall, slumped where I’d fallen, unable to move, watching silently with an angel singing in my ear. A doll falling slowly from the sky towards a tree: a branch stripped of all its leaves caught the doll in its black spikes. A house had had its front sliced off as sure as if it had been opened on a hinge. A doll’s house with all the rooms on show. The little staircase zigzagging in the cramped hall. The bedroom with a bed sliding, the sheet dangling, flapping a white flag. A wardrobe open with the clothes tripping out from the inside to flutter away. Empty armchairs sitting cosy by the fire. The kettle on in the kitchen with two wellington boots by the stove. And in a bathroom – standing by the side of a bath, caught by the curtain going up too soon on a performance – a totally naked woman. A noiseless scream from a lady who was gazing at the doll in the tree that dangled limp and filthy in a little pink hat. The lady landing hard on her knees started to pray, while a man in uniform turned slowly round to vomit.

But surely the dead don’t feel pain, that’s the whole point. Population, that’s what I was. Smouldering like a kipper, I was one of the bombed. If it was a doodlebug I hadn’t heard its low moaning hum. Hadn’t had time to plot where it was going to come down. But surely I’d been walking among houses? A woman had called out from a window, ‘Herman, get in here,’ and I’d thought, How common. The boy running past me had made a face as he went by. And a tabby cat was stretched on a step. Too everyday to remember but surely there were people walking, looking at watches to see if they were late for a train, arm in arm, carrying bags? There was an old man reading a paper and a pub on the corner with a sign that swayed. Where had they gone? Now it was all jagged hills of wreckage, crumbling, twisting, creaking, smoking under far too much sky. There was only this bleak landscape left.

‘Can you get up, love? Can you hear me? Can you get up, missus? Are you all right? Can you move?’ A man’s face was very close to mine, breath as foul as a dog’s. I could only just hear him but I knew what he was saying – I’d said those sort of things so many times myself. I pointed in case no one but me had seen the naked woman in the bathroom. He looked round. ‘Don’t you worry about that, we’ll take care of that young lady. Let’s see if you can move. Tell me your name. Can you tell me your name?’

I said, ‘Queenie,’ at least I thought I did.

‘Can you hear me, love? What’s your name?’

‘Queenie.’

‘Right, Queenie, let’s try to get you up. You don’t look too bad. I’ve seen worse turned out of pubs on a Saturday night. Up you get.’

Three men were putting up a ladder, trying to find a footing for it in the quicksand of rubble. While the naked woman – her dark pubic hair a perfect triangle – stared out from the shattered room as if a bit puzzled as to why she was now so cold.

‘Can you walk to the ambulance? Course you can.’

Bits of me that should have slid easily together cracked so painfully I needed oiling. Glass sprinkled down from me as constant as a Christmas tree shedding its leaves. One of the men started up the ladder – he trod each rung as dainty as if it were mined.

‘Come on, Queenie, can you walk? Don’t you worry about what’s going on there, that’s being taken care of. You just watch where you’re walking.’

The man was with her now, up there in the once-private bathroom, beckoning her to come to him, to step to the ladder. But she stood like stone, unwilling to admit there was anything amiss. He tested the sheared floor, bouncing on it gently, then stepped off the rungs. When he reached her he wrapped his coat round her urging her to put her arms into the sleeves. She obeyed like a sleepwalker.

I took four steps, the man helping me along. I knew it was four steps because every one was as difficult as for a newborn. At first my ankle wobbled. My shoeless foot was lacerated. On the third step I almost tripped. It was on the fourth that my torn naked foot landed on something soft. Looking down, I saw I had stepped into the upturned palm of a hand – the fingers closing round my foot with the reflex of my weight. I could feel its warmth coming up through my sole. ‘Sorry,’ I said, expecting to hear a cry of pain.

‘Just keep your eye on that ambulance, that’s where we’re going. Queenie, can you hear me? Can you hear me? Come on, love – not far now. We’ll soon have you nice and safe.’

The hand was wearing a gold ring, clothed in a blue woollen sleeve, but lying there attached to no one. My foot was being cradled by a severed arm that merely ended in a bloodsoaked fraying.

So many people at the hospital told me I was lucky. A nurse, a policeman, even a little old woman with an oversized white bandage over one eye said, ‘Never mind, it could have been worse.’ Some cracked ribs, a sprained wrist and a cheek swollen to the size and colour of an overripe plum. After a rocket attack – yes, I suppose that was blinking lucky.

‘I’ll be all right, I’ll be all right,’ I kept telling Arthur. He fretted round me like a mother. He fetched tea, then sat close, watching my hand trembling the cup up to my chin. I had to put it down before too much was spilt. He brought a cloth, gently wiped it round my face. He then placed the cup in my hand again. This time his hand, for once steady as a rock, enfolded mine, bracing it until the warm sweet drink was safely in my mouth.

‘Bit of a turn-round, eh, Arthur?’ I said. I wasn’t lucky, I was pathetic. Years of war, all those bombed-out people who could joke and smile at me with a steady gaze just after they’d had everything wiped out, and here was I, shaking so much that an old shell-shocked veteran had to help me get tea to my lips.

‘Trust me, eh, Arthur, to get killed when the war’s nearly won. Funny, really, when you look at it like that. Don’t you think it’s funny? Eh, Arthur, do you think it’s funny?’

He had to help me to bed, walking me up the stairs – I was an invalid.

‘I heard someone call my name. Just before the blast someone called me. Who was it, d’you think? Do you think it could have been Auntie Dorothy or my little brother Jimmy, warning me, you know, from beyond?’ I didn’t ask him if he thought it was Michael seeing me in the street, although I wanted to. But Arthur was tucking in the bedclothes and plumping pillows that still had an improper whisper of Michael Roberts on them. I couldn’t do up the buttons on my nightdress, my fingers were all quivering thumbs. ‘Come on, Queenie, pull yourself together,’ I said. Arthur, sitting me on the edge of the bed, carefully did them up for me. ‘Thank you,’ I told him. He tucked me in, swaddling me tight enough for an anxious baby. Then, lowering his head, he slowly moved towards me. And I knew he was going to kiss me. But he was going to kiss me on the mouth. I turned my head to the side. He hovered, fearful as a lover gone too far. Softly, slowly, his lips opened.

‘I would die if anything happened to you,’ he said, one careful word at a time.

‘Arthur, you spoke.’ His voice, deep like Bernard’s, was posh as the BBC. I was as stunned as if the wardrobe had told me it could take no more clothes. ‘You spoke. You can speak.’ I waited, wanting him to say something else. Talk to me. All those things he’d seen he could tell me now. Explain how it was for him. What he felt, what he thought. Recite me a poem, perhaps. But he didn’t – he just leaned forward again, this time to kiss my forehead. And I couldn’t help it – I started to sob. Bring me back the blinking chiming clock, the knitting needles going clack, clack, clack, and Bernard pulling his chair closer to the wireless before giving me a tut. I had had enough of war. Come on, let’s all just get back to being bored.