London experienced a ‘little Blitz’ between January and April of 1944, which began with the raids on Friday 21 and Saturday 22 January. This raid did not hit the Bethnal Green area and the events I describe in Bethnal Green are entirely fictional. Bethnal Green Station was still under construction at the start of the war and was used extensively as a shelter during this period though it escaped any direct hits. The ‘horrible death by suffocation’ to which Nancy Levin briefly alludes at the end of Chapter One refers to the 173 civilians killed in a crush entering Bethnal Green Station during a raid on 3 March 1943, an incident that falls outside the scope of this novel but which is well-documented, as are the fates of the Polyanthus, the St. Croix and the Itchen.