BrokenTune

‘The Crusades? That’s even more dangerous than the Blitz, isn’t it?’

‘Far more dangerous, particularly when one knows where and when all the Blitz’s bombs will be falling, which I will. And it’s less dangerous than— Sorry, I’ve been doing all the talking. I want to hear about your assignment.’

‘There’s nothing much to tell. It’s mostly washing up and dealing with children and irate farmers. I’d hoped I might meet the actor Michael Caine – he was evacuated when he was six – but I haven’t, and— I just thought of something. You might meet Agatha Christie. She was in London during the Blitz.’

‘Agatha Christie?’

‘The twentieth-century mystery novelist. She wrote these marvellous books about murders involving spinsters and clergymen and retired colonels. I used them for my prep – they’re full of details about servants and manor houses. And during the war she worked in a hospital, and you’re going to be an ambulance driver. She—’

‘I’m not going to be an ambulance driver. I’m going to be something far more dangerous – a shopgirl in an Oxford Street department store.’

‘That’s more dangerous than driving an ambulance?’

‘Definitely. Oxford Street was bombed five times, and more than half its department stores were at least partly damaged.’

‘You’re not going to work in one of those, are you?’

‘No, of course not. Mr Dunworthy won’t even allow me to work in Peter Robinson, though it wasn’t hit till the end of the Blitz. I can understand why he wouldn’t let me …’

Yeah, um, I'll switch to another book for now. There is something about the writing in this that just annoys me.

However, I'll keep going with this next week. It sounds like an audiobook that may work for me during the working week.