One of Joyce’s WAAF friends was given a military medal the other day for what she did during the bombing on August 18, the same bomb attack that has left me with a bit of a limp, which Joyce says is fetching and heroic. I’m not so sure about that but anyhow, I have been too preoccupied with George in the past few days to think much either about myself or Joyce. The top brass have decided that his Hurricane squadron has been at the sharp end of this battle for long enough. Two days ago they announced that they were getting sent to Wales for a rest. After so many young lads had been killed or badly injured I felt relieved that at least George and a handful of the others who’d been there since the start of the summer, would be given a break. But George didn’t agree.

‘Bugger that,’ he said when he heard the news, and I’ve never seen him so angry. ‘Do they think that I’ve stayed here all summer fighting and watching my friends get killed one by one, just so that I can bugger off on a holiday to Wales at the end of it?’

‘I don’t suppose there’s much you can do about it,’ I said, ‘they’ll be bringing a new squadron in to replace you.’

‘Then I’ll fly with them,’ said George. ‘I’m not moving from here until we’ve beaten them back. Otherwise what is the point? I’ll finish what I started.’

‘With the greatest respect, Mr Sheridan,’ I said, ‘even the best of us need a rest at some point. And you being a married man, it’s more than just you that’ll get hurt if something happens to you.’

‘Listen, Frank. I’ve been here long enough to know that I’m a bloody good pilot and I also know what it takes to stay alive in the air. If I took a rest now I’d just go soft and it would be like running away. I’m simply not prepared to do it. And that’s that.’

I doubted whether he would be allowed to stay but after a day of argument and negotiation with the Squadron Leader and the Group Captain, he came back to the hangar in triumph.

‘I’m staying,’ he said grinning, ‘and you’re staying with me, Frank. Together, we’ll show them what we’re made of: the stubborn pilot ace and his violin-playing mechanic, the strangest duo in the RAF.’

For the first time since I’d known him I wondered whether George was perfectly sound in his mind. He seemed so elated by this turn of events that I genuinely began to wonder whether he wants to stay to fight, or whether he wants to stay until he dies. Maybe they’re one and the same thing. But I still have faith that he is, as he put it, a ‘bloody good pilot.’