It was after dark, there was a knock at the door and I’d called to Arthur to get it. He’d been dead three years. But whenever there was a knock at night I called his name. It was daft, I know. I called it, then shouted, ‘Oh, don’t worry I’ll get it, Arthur.’ It made me feel safer. I only opened the door a crack. But even with one eye and a dim light I knew him straight away. The way he stood was casual as a cowboy. A coat slung over one shoulder, hooked on a finger. As I pulled the door wider he turned full to face me. ‘Sergeant Michael Roberts,’ I said. But he was out of uniform, dressed sharp in a dark double-breasted suit with a hat cocked jaunty on his head.

‘No, just plain ol’ Michael Roberts now,’ he replied.

Of course I invited him in. Thought nothing of it, although he stepped in sheepishly, checking around him as if someone might jump out shouting, ‘Boo.’ He hadn’t died, as I’d sometimes wondered. No, nothing like it – he filled the parlour, every inch of it, with life.

‘You are alone?’ he said.

‘Yes.’

‘Only I thought I hear you call out – your father-in-law?’

‘No.’ I turned my face away from him in case a tell-tale blush called me liar.

‘Your husband?’

‘No.’

Slowly his playful picture-house grin lit his face up like limelight. And she was gone. That Mrs Bligh. That thumb-twiddling old drudge who’d not long finished her washing-up. Her hands still hard from scouring soap. That grouch who’d not used makeup or scent for weeks. She took off her tatty apron and scarpered. For this woman – the one he looked at like a delicious dish to be savoured – she was handsome. She was breathtaking. The most desirable thing he’d ever seen. So exquisite he stared without a blink lest all at once she vanish.

He’d been flying a Lancaster in a raid over Germany. Got shot down over France. Plane was a blaze of fire. They scrambled to get out. Parachuting down he got split up from the rest of his crew. Kip, the pilot, went down with the aircraft. They never found either. (Franny’s sister collapsed when she was told.) Ginger got out. Michael saw him floating down to earth like a tiny cigarette match against the dark. The silk wings of his parachute were on fire. Never saw anything of him again. Michael was lucky. He even had a soft landing. Sprained ankle, that was all. Spent the next few days pulling turnips out of the ground and eating them raw. He was found eventually by a farmer. The funny thing was, it was his black skin saved him. They looked on him more as an oddity than a threat, other locals coming round to rub the colour. They hid him, then handed him to the Americans who passed him to the British in the end. And he got home. Well, back to England. Never flew again.

He’d been anxious about the raid because he’d mislaid his good-luck charm. He didn’t like to fly without it. He told me all his crew had them – a piece of ribbon from a sweetheart’s hair, a tooth from an old pet dog. Kip evidently always had a tin of corned beef with him. And Michael’s, as I thought, was that little leather wallet. The one with the photograph of the old coloured gentleman and his seated wife. And that little girl.

I was excited to tell him I’d found it, that I’d kept it for him. His lip trembled as he took this picture wallet from me. Like a little child ready to sob. But he wasn’t caught by tears. He just held it reverent as a Bible. Opening it with such caution as if the contents might flutter up and fly away. I breathed with relief as he stared a look of wistful longing at each of the pictures in turn. Because the truth of it was, I’d nearly thrown it out several times. The tatty thing only got a reprieve because it got shoved down the back of a drawer and was left there. I had thought about telling him that I’d gone to the station to find him with it. To give it back to him before his train left. And about the bomb blast that held me back. But mine seemed such a silly feeble story beside his heroic tales of derring-do I didn’t bother.

‘Are they pictures of your family?’ I asked.

He didn’t answer me for a good while. Just sitting there drinking in every shadow and crease of the photographs. I didn’t ask again because I knew he’d heard me. It was softly spoken and out of the blue when he said, ‘I lost them all in a hurricane.’ If I’d have asked any more questions, I’m sure he would have wept.

But then he surprisingly bucked up – made me quite jump. Looking up at me his roving eyes started nibbling me all over. He placed his large hand on top of mine. ‘Tell me, you ever felt the force of a hurricane?’ One by one he slipped his fingers between mine, forcing them apart while gently increasing his squeeze.

‘No,’ I said.

He put his lips against my ear his tongue lightly licking the lobe. ‘Would you like to?’ He bit me.

And I said, ‘In Herefordshire, Hertfordshire and Hampshire hurricanes hardly ever happen.’

Three days and three nights he stayed with me. We kept inside, living like mice. I would scuttle around trying to make us something to eat – avoiding windows and their inquisitive light. Then I’d bring it back to him on a plate. Bread and jam mostly. We’d eat it in bed like newly-weds. Feeding it to each other, before licking the sticky corners from each other’s mouth and wriggling about to get rid of the crumbs.

But I knew it wouldn’t last (and not only because the jam had run out). He was on his way to Canada. Toronto. He’d trained there and talked of it, throwing his arms wide to demonstrate the open skies, the endless vistas of this wondrous vast place. No small island that, only needing a few fingers and a cupped palm to describe it. He didn’t want to go back to Jamaica where he came from. Each time I asked why, he smothered the answer with kissing. Until he finally snapped at me, ‘Why are you so concerned? Mind your business, nah?’ And sulked – crossing his arms, closing his eyes. I had to tickle his toes with my hair just to see him smile again.

I dreamed of him begging me to go with him to Canada (not just me, all the Queenies did). We knew my answer – I would have gone. Locked up the house, waved the neighbours goodbye and started a new life. But he never asked. And neither did I. He left on a Monday morning at nine o’clock. I watched him walk away, hoping for a whiff of hesitation – an over-the-shoulder glance that expelled a sigh. But with his coat casually thrown over his shoulder, his hat cocky, his gait was as purposeful as a fleeing thief.

I didn’t kid myself that Michael loved me, that I was his best girl or anything soppy like that. He had nowhere to go in London while he waited for his ship to sail. I was a piece of luck – no more, no less. A lonely pretty almost-widow to spend his last nights with. But I didn’t bloody care. I knew I was pregnant. If that miserable doctor I’d seen before the war was right, then I had to be. They might not strictly have been conjugal relations but, by God, I blinking enjoyed them.

I was so sick, though, my precious rations floating in the toilet every morning and every night. I wanted rid of the baby at first. I bound myself in an old roll of bandage I found in a drawer. Holding my breath to squeeze in the unwelcome swelling. I wrapped it tight as a mummy, round and round, until bending to put my shoes on took most of a morning. I even had to encase my breasts, once they resembled two barrage balloons. I wanted it kept from nosy-parkers – Mr Todd and his horrible sister. Nudging, pointing, whispering. ‘What a how d’you do? Poor Bernard, what did that blessed man do to deserve her? The darkies are bad enough but now an illegitimate child. Whatever next in that house of ill-repute?’ I wasn’t ashamed, I just didn’t want prying eyes making it sordid.

I’d hump things round the house – a chest-of-drawers from one side of a room to the other, a wardrobe that simply had to be taken up two flights of stairs. The heavier the better. And in between I’d jump the stairs – three at a time to the top and two at a time to the bottom. Every bath I ran was so hot I feared I’d blister. But none of it worked. I cursed those bloody old wives – could they get nothing right? Then one night as I was lowering myself into the bath for another scalding, I felt a tiny kick. A little bounce inside me. A tiny foot protesting that our bath was too hot. A little elbow nudging to ask me what I was doing. I turned the cold tap on in panic. Lowering myself down in cool water I swear I heard it sigh. I felt queasy thinking that the little mite was probably scared of me. Who else alive was there who could protect it? I was so sorry and I told it so over and over.