‘That’s you all strapped in tight’ Sally said fussing over Jemima in the cockpit. Somehow she had been assigned as Jemima’s rigger a role that gave them an excuse to associate openly. Nothing had been said but Jemima had her suspicions about who made it possible. She may have been a fusspot but good old Auntie Hope was a real brick. ‘Is anyone looking?’

Jemima shook her head though her view largely consisted of Sally’s bust at that moment, not that she was complaining or had much chance as Sally landed a resounding kiss on her lips. ‘Good luck’ she said ‘I’ll give you the rest of it when you come back’.

‘Are you cold?’ Mike asked Polly handing her one of the cigarettes he had just lit. His arm was already about her shoulders as they walked back from the airfield.

‘F-f-f-freezing’ she said through a cloud of tobacco smoke and condensed breath. She took his question as an invitation to get closer so she wrapped her arm around his waist, pressing herself against his side.

‘You should have worn trousers’ Mike said looking down at her stockinged calves ‘you’ve lovely legs but it is the middle of winter’. He chucked her under the chin with his free hand,

‘Hoist upon my own petard’ she said trying to stop her teeth from chattering ‘I didn’t think it was worth changing into them when I’d have to put a skirt on when I got back to the mess’.

‘But you always come straight back to the lodge from the airfield’ he looked down at the small figure burrowing deeper under his arm.

‘Oh I didn’t think of that’ she lied

Jemima had never been as uncomfortable in an aeroplane as she was that night, not even in the open cockpit of a Moth. Her bottom was still a rosy pink from Sally’s attentions that morning and no matter how she shifted her weight she always found a tender spot. It was during one particular manoeuvre she spotted the light dawdling below the starboard leading-edge. Nosing the Master over for a closer look she was lucky to catch a glimpse of its silhouette against a patch of moonlit river. ‘Dornier!’ she thought just as the radio crackled into life.

‘Hedgehog to Midnight you have a customer, bearing north-east, angels…’

‘I have a visual identification’ Jemima broke in tipping the wing over to begin a diving intercept. Slow as the older German bomber was it could still outrun a Master with enough warning she told herself although the pilot seemed oblivious to any danger, flying a straight course with the navigation light pinpointing his position to anyone with a pair of eyes.

‘He must see me by now’ Jemima whispered to herself as she jockeyed into position under the bomber’s port wing and repeated it over and over as the dark shape crawled across her gun sight. She was still saying it as she pressed the firing button and watched the first strikes hit the fuselage two hundred yards away.

Jemima struggled with the controls as the Master buffeted by the force of the explosion yawed wildly pieces of the doomed Dornier striking it at random. Worse still was a sickly smell that had invaded the cockpit as she had flown through the ball of flame that marked its demise. It was perhaps a minute before she could announce her success to the world and only one word would do.

Any listener on the ground that night or in the air who thought that they had heard the full gamut of radio transmissions, from triumph to tragedy was struck by the novelty of a very feminine voice screaming ‘owzat!’ in a distinctly Yorkshire accent.

Everyone without exception had run down to the airfield as soon as the news got back to Helton and they were all peering through the growing fog hunting for the returning aeroplane. Three Masters were already being rolled into hangars when the first faint hum of a Kestrel engine announced Jemima’s imminent arrival. Mike had ordered a flare path lit even though it was frowned upon, as Helton had no radio beacon for Jemima to home in on and he like everyone else waited with his heart in his mouth (and an arm around Polly) willing the little pilot safely down.

Oblivious to their concern Jemima brought her plane down neatly within the flare path, rolling to a sedate halt well inside the runway’s limits. Only when she began to haul the canopy back did she become aware of figures running towards her through the mist, so many people, more she thought than there were at the base. She shook her hair free from the flying helmet, climbed onto the combing and jumped down to meet them.