Spud had learnt nothing from the tragedy and we caught him many times searching the Hunstanton mined beaches for live ammunition. There was nothing we could do! We couldn’t keep a fifteen-year-old boy in the house day and night, and you can’t punish him more than by wounding him quite badly and killing one of his close friends. Peter always wondered what happened to him after we all went back to London after Christmas. I expect he either grew up to be a millionaire or spent all his adult life in and out of prison – who knows?

The Doodlebugs stopped coming and soon after we got back to London the V2s started to arrive. Horrible though they were they didn’t cause us so much anguish of mind. Perhaps this was because the war was coming to an end. We were winning and it was now only a question of time. If one of the V2s landed, and they were not all that frequent, it could be heard all over London – but if you heard one you were safe. The bomb arrived before the sound of the bomb so if you were hit you would never know.

One morning I wheeled Gale up to Blackheath village to buy some buttons in the large drapers, and she grizzled and wouldn’t stay in her pram outside one of the palatial entrances. So I unstrapped her and lifted her onto my hip and we went in. As I stood waiting to be served I saw with amazement bricks and debris detaching themselves near the ceiling and beginning to fall. There was time for me to step across the aisle and crouch down with Gale under the counter before they landed and the noise of the explosion came. Suddenly I couldn’t see my hand before my face for dust.

Quite unharmed I picked my way, still carrying Gale, to the open door. There was Gale’s pram, still on its wheels but packed with shards of jagged plate glass. With Gale seemingly quite unperturbed on my hip and pulling the pram behind us I turned uphill. At the top we emerged into clear air to confront a small crowd of people applauding each survivor. A V2 had fallen just the other side of the village.

Still carrying Gale and pulling the pram I walked slowly down Lee Park, dreading what I would find. The windows were out of most of the houses but strangely enough the old avenue of lime trees was undamaged. We came to the house next door. Their windows were out too. But amazingly as I turned into our gate I saw that our house, number 44, was the first that had escaped unharmed.

Before we even washed I phoned Peter at school. “Don’t worry – we are all right and so is the house but a V2 has fallen in the village. I don’t know about the Old Man’s house, but that would have been empty anyway.”