She should have learned to knit. Or be sitting safely in her office, sipping tea weak enough for four cups a day till the next ration coupons were due, while deciding the ideal amount of salt gravy to add to each can of Higgs’s ‘bully beef’ for the army.
Instead, Sophie Greenman née Higgs, Countess of Shillings, buffeted by invisible air currents, clung to her seat in a grey plane in grey cloud, as if the war had sucked away all colour. Even the grey waves of the English Channel below them had vanished. Perhaps the entire world had disappeared into the impossibility that allowed another world war to happen.
More likely German fighter planes would flash through the cloud at any moment, spitting fire and death. Her first warning would be pain, and then unconsciousness (she hoped) as the plane dropped, flaming. She fought to keep a pleasant smile on her face in case the pilot next to her glanced in her direction. But he focused on his controls and the grains of grey beyond the cockpit.
What was she even doing there…?
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