LITMIR.BIZ

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gave his last one to Davy Hardcastle. ‘Good luck!’ they’d called out to him. ‘See you back at the billet! Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.’

      Henry smiles to himself. The Tower Ballroom. It had been his idea to come here all along, but the others had their own plans. O’Malley (it was always O’Malley; was there any place on earth the guy didn’t know?) had heard of a bar where the girls kicked up their heels, danced a merry jig on the tables, and if you were lucky, let you run the tips of your fingers up and down the finely stitched seams of their stockings, all the way to no-man’s-land where the gossamer silk ended, and a narrow strip of quivering bare flesh lay waiting to lead you all the way to heaven…

      Henry pays his entrance fee and makes his way up a vast staircase, two steps at a time, all the way to the top floor. The dull click of his right knee as he climbs. The heavy drag of his boots. He tries not to think about how disorientated he feels, how the heft of his body would fall slack and clumsy from lack of sleep if he let it. As he rounds a bend, the muscles in his calves protest and contract beneath his skin. He keeps his eyes fixed on the turn ahead. Pushes on.

      The scent of perfume, of anticipation, clouds the air. He wishes his uniform didn’t hang so loosely on his diminished frame, but there’s not much he can do about that now. Back at the billet he’d stumbled upon a hollow-eyed stranger in the mirror – a human coat-hanger – no body inside to speak of, just his air force blues suspended like a phantom before him. Henry tugs at the hem of his jacket and pulls himself upright. It’s an automatic movement, ingrained by now. But there are no commanding officers here. No roll call awaits. Just soaring melodies, couples whirling like spinning tops on the dance floor, and eight shimmering glitter balls rotating overhead.

      He reaches the top floor, passes through a pair of double doors and enters the ballroom at balcony level. A blast of music rains against Henry’s skin, and a sweet, invigorating rush of adrenaline surges like nectar through his limbs. To his left, row upon row of plush, upholstered seats fan out vertiginously one behind the other, each arranged to afford the best possible view of the dance floor. It takes a moment for his eyes to adjust to the low-level lighting, but he can tell at once that he made the right decision to come upstairs – there are far fewer people up here, and the spectacle is magnificent, like a view from Mount Olympus itself.

      ‘Bet you any money the Café de Paris never had anything on this.’

      Henry turns, sees the man in the silk tie standing in the shadows to his right.

      ‘The place in London,’ he continues. ‘Piccadilly. Got bombed in the Blitz?’

      ‘I never went there,’ Henry replies. He shrugs, his mouth curling into a smile. ‘I wasn’t old enough to get in at the time.’

      ‘Wouldn’t have stopped me,’ the man says with a wink. He leans in. ‘You’re a Londoner, aren’t you?’

      Henry, unsure where this is leading, smiles again. ‘I am.’

      ‘Thought so. I hear the London girls can give guys like you and me the runaround. They can be – you know, standoffish. Stuck-up. But let me tell you something, my friend, they go stark raving mad for it here. It’s the electromagnetism. A couple of spins on the dance floor, and the music releases all their inhibitions. Know what I mean?’

      His breath smells faintly sour, and, Henry detects, there’s an unnatural glassiness to his eyes. ‘Hey, fella,’ he says, nudging Henry’s arm, ‘I can spot a rookie a mile off. It’s your first time here, am I right?’

      Henry concedes a grin. ‘Maybe. Or then again, maybe I’ve just got a rookie kind of face.’

      The man sidles closer. ‘Well, Rookie, take it from me… if you’re looking for a pretty girl to dance with, you’re wasting your time up here. I suggest you follow my lead and make your way downstairs.’

      Henry takes a discreet step backwards. ‘Thanks for the tip,’ he says lightly. ‘I’ll bear it in mind.’

      He waits for the man to leave and looks around for a place to sit. Immediately ahead of him the first half-dozen rows are almost entirely empty, with the notable exception of one young woman seated alone in the front row. At first, all Henry can make out is the hazy outline of her silhouette. Her bird-like frame is perfectly still, her back draped in shadow, her head tilted forwards over the shiny gold barrier towards the dance floor below. He slips his hands into his pockets and waits to see if anyone joins her, but there are only a handful of spectators milling around, and behind him, two or three couples, lost in their own private dominions, quietly ensconced in the upper rows.

      Henry glances towards the staircase. He wonders if perhaps he should go downstairs and get something to drink, when some force – some strange, visceral, magnetic pull – draws his attention back to the young woman. Henry trains his eyes on the back of her neck. And yet she herself doesn’t look round once… She must be totally engrossed; he’s never seen such powers of concentration in a dance hall!

      Go over to her, he tells himself. Introduce yourself. Find out who she is.

      He takes a step and falters as the light from a glitter ball sweeps firstly over him, then over the girl. He can see her more clearly now: the lush India green of her dress, cinched at the waist; narrow shoulders; soft waves of sandy brown hair swept up in a bun and held in place by an array of decorative clips which glint and sparkle in the beam of light circling above them. Henry counts ten seconds exactly until the glitter ball completes its circuit of the room. The association is inevitable, instantaneous. Like a spotlight in a POW camp, he thinks. Thank Christ I never had to see the inside of one of those.

      Slowly, he makes his way along the second row until he’s no more than a foot or two away from her. As he nears the back of her seat, Henry flicks his eyes in her direction. A fine layer of down curves upwards from the nape of her neck, as though reaching for the light. And, he realises with delight, she’s not sitting still after all – she’s moving! Both hands tapping out the rhythm of the music against her thighs.

      Henry continues to the end of the row and glances behind him. The girl tips her head further over the barrier and a strand of waved hair slips loose from her bun and bounces against her cheek. He watches, transfixed, as with an almost hypnotic display of ease, she raises both arms to her head and clips it casually back into place.

      ‘Who is this girl?’ he mumbles under his breath.

      He can’t understand it. He hasn’t even seen her face, and yet all he can think about is how intoxicating it must feel to be on the receiving end of such an intense gaze. Like looking into a lighthouse. Like dancing a waltz with the sun!

      He doubles back along the front row until finally, somewhere between taking off his cap and smoothing down his hair, he comes to a stop beside her.

      ‘Wait!’ she cries, holding up her palm.

      Henry freezes.

      ‘This is the absolute best bit! See the couple in the centre of the dance floor? They come here all the time. They dance for half an hour like they own the place, then they’re gone. I thought they might be partners in the romantic sense, too, but Daisy downstairs in the cloakroom said someone told her they’re twins. It’s all just rumours, though. Either way, they’re definitely professionals. Look how perfectly they’re holding each other! No one else can touch them!’

      Henry turns and sees a handsome, dark-haired woman staring with queenly confidence into the fiery eyes of a swarthy, Mediterranean-looking male. Their bodies are pressed so closely together, you could barely thread a shoelace between them. As a couple, they’re flawless, incandescent. Henry hates them already.

      ‘Oh yes,’ he says, as the pair smoulder their way provocatively across the dance floor. ‘Not bad. Absolutely nothing intimidating about them at all.’

      To his surprise, the girl responds with a hearty laugh.

      ‘I’m sorry to

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