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“Back to Craig Castle! What is it, your fourth time?” Jamie says cheerfully, releasing Maddie to swing the huge door closed behind her.
“Fifth,” his mother corrects. “It's lovely to see you again.”
There’s an awkward moment where Maddie isn’t quite sure whether to hug Esme or not because, well, this is Julie’s mother, and it’s the first time she’s been here since Julie died, and Esme knows who shot her, and then Esme wraps her arms around Maddie’s shoulders.
“So glad you’re back, Maddie, dear” she says quietly, and presses a kiss to Maddie’s cheek.
When she steps away, Jamie is frowning.
“On her first visit Maddie met me, and the second time we were both here…”
“And the third trip she spent an evening with me, and last time Julie was here too," his mother says.
Jamie’s eyebrows furrow. “You never told me that!”
“Because I didn’t want everyone to hear about it,” Maddie says levelly.
Jamie’s eyes don’t leave her face. “You flew without permission?”
Maddie shakes her head.
“Must you, Jamie?” his mother sighs.
“I just think somebody might have mentioned—“
“Julie came home for a few days without official leave,” says Esme, sharply, “and told me not to mention it. Then Maddie arrived in the midst of a gale, and I’m sure she’s been too wary of muddying your sister’s reputation to mention it.”
Esme catches her eye, and Maddie smiles.
“Now we’ve got all that sorted out, it’s high time you had a hot drink,” Esme announces, and leads on to the kitchens.
******
When Maddie walks into the Ops room, she’s met with a frown. “Not sure you’ll be flying today.”
“Why’s that?”
She looks at the board, and at the words Spitfire and Dyce and her heart soars. Spitfires are a joy to fly, and a trip to the North of Scotland gives her time to enjoy it.
“Weather.” Andy says, curtly.
“I’ll be fine,” Maddie says. The wind is gusty and the Peak District is shrouded by low cloud, but she’s flown in much worse conditions. She can land a Spitfire on the fogline.
“Take a look at the report,” he says. “I wouldn’t, if I were you.” His shoulder brushes hers as he moves away.
As Maddie leans in to examine the weather report she sees what he means.
Conditions at Manchester aren’t a worry: wind WSW 10mph and cloud at 1100 feet, expected to be clear with wind to 15mph by afternoon. The weather in Scotland is another matter. The Shetland Islands reporting winds that are almost unflyable: wind NNE 20mph, gusting 60mph.
The airfield at Dyce is on the East coast, surrounded by flat grasslands, and it gets a blistering Northerly wind. Landing a Spitfire with a 20mph crosswind isn’t impossible, but with a 60mph crosswind it might be, and nobody would dare fly a damaged plane home in those conditions.
Maddie hesitates, thinking hard.
It’s a long flight North and the weather may worsen while she’s in the air. On the other hand, there are plenty of Scottish airfields with more protected runways. If she can’t land at Dyce then she’ll be able to bring the plane down at Whitefield. And she can take the train from Dyce to Castle Craig. If the weather stops her from flying back then she’s got somewhere to sleep and wait it out.
Is she reckless to take a Spitfire up in this? The fighter pilots probably wouldn’t, but then she has five times as many flying hours as most of those boys, and is trained to land in poor visibility. And if she doesn’t fly now, then what? Just sit around in Manchester, staring at the sky? No, it’s better to be doing something.
******
The Spitfire engine purrs as Maddie flies North. The sky is overcast, so Maddie sees only occasional flashes of ground through the cloud, but she knows her way. Beneath her are the Yorkshire Dales, and the Lake District rises on her left, a patchwork of grass, rock, and a scatter of glittering lakes. Judging by the clock, she should be nearing Carlisle, and a moment later she glimpses the town below through a break in the cloud. A few seconds later, it’s gone.
As she continues towards Scotland, the wind picks up. Maddie knows that Hadrian’s Wall is down there somewhere, a grey line amidst green hills and sheep, but today it’s cloaked by low cloud. In this visibility she's navigating partly by her clock and partly by memory. She turns West a little on the approach to Edinburgh, circling around the city, and catches a glimpse of the grey-blue water of the Forth as she flies over. There is no sightseeing today, but Maddie remembers the view ahead of her now: beautiful Highland peaks stretching away into the distance.
Maddie steers Eastwards, following the coastline. The Westerly breeze that prevailed in Manchester has been replaced by Northerly gusts that throw the plane around in the air, making it shudder. A strong gust tosses the Spitfire up and sideways, and Maddie’s stomach swoops uncomfortably. She’s glad not to be ferrying a passenger.
The clouds dissipate as she flies North, revealing a starkly monochrome landscape of white snow, black rock, and dark heather. On her right is the North Sea, grey as slate, except for the whitecaps around the coast. The landscape seems to get more bleak and spectacular with each passing minute: soaring white peaks to her left, and crashing white waves on her right. Dundee passes below, and Maggie starts to concentrate on navigation: there’s the inlet, and in another five minutes she’ll reach the river and start the descent.
Her Spitfire is still purring happily, but the wind is worse as Maddie loses height. She’s used to feeling in control when flying, but the gusts are sudden and unpredictable: one moment the plane is slammed upwards, and the next she’s dropping ten feet. It’s a relief when she sees the glittering line of the Dee, and can begin the descent towards the airfield.
There is a hard Northerly crosswind on the airfield, and Maddie has to sideslip and crab as she approaches. It’s a tricky maneuver, and Spitfires stall far more easily than a Lizzie, so she can’t afford to lose too much speed. Her hands are careful on the rudder and ailerons, correcting for the wind, and for a horrible moment Maddie thinks she’s mid-judged it and is about to be gusted off the runway and onto the grass. It certainly isn’t her most grateful landing, but she gets the plane down. When she opens the cockpit the wind nearly blows her over.
“Bloody good work!” says the officer who greets her. “Wasn’t sure you could land in that wind, and I’m sorry to say you might regret it.”
“As long as it doesn’t get any worse I should be fine,” Maddie answers, not quite believing it herself, and the man makes a face.
“Here’s the thing. The Hudson you’ve been assigned isn’t in good shape. They nursed it home on one engine, and we’ve managed to start the other since, but I’m not sure the second engine will still be running at Ringway.”
Maddie frowns.
“It’ll fly on one engine,” the man says quickly, re-assuring her, “but in these conditions…”
Maddie glances at the board with the updated weather report, and sees wind at 25 mph and rising. Gusts to 70mph.
“We’ve got plenty of flying time. I’ll wait.”
“I doubt you’ll be back in the air today,” he says apologetically, “but if you want a brew, the mess is that way.”
Maddie gets her tea and waits, but he’s right: by three pm the wind is howling across the airfield and all the trees are bent over sideways. Returning to the Ops room, she has to lean her weight full into the wind and almost falls through the doorway, breathless.
“Look, you’re not getting out of here today and the Shetlands think there’s snow coming,” the officer says, businesslike. “I might be able to find you a bunk with our girls, but I’m not sure if conditions will be flyable tomorrow.”
“I’ve a friend at Craig Castle,” Maddie says, and his eyebrows go up.
“Right! Far more comfortable than a hut. Well if you’re planning to get there you’d better head off before this weather worsens. Do they have a telephone?”
Maddie nods.
“Call this,” he says, scribbling a number on a scrap of card, “if you need a weather report. If it snows there’s a chance we’ll be grounded for days.”
“Thank you,” Maddie says, and he nods, briskly.
“I see you can handle a plane, but there’s no sense getting killed in miserable weather just because our lads brought back a Hudson shot to bits. Enjoy the castle!”
******
The walk from the station to the castle feels longer than ever, and it’s starting to snow by the time Maddie knocks on the door.
“Coming!” shouts a female voice, and the enormous door swings creakily open to reveal Esme.
“Oh wonderful, you heard she’s here! It’s Maddie, darling!”
For an instant Maddie is completely bewildered, and then there’s a thunder of running feet, and Julie appears in a doorway. “No! Maddie, what on earth-“
“Ferrying planes to Dyce and we lost the weather,” Maddie explains, and Julie’s eyes widen.
“You’ve been flying in this? The wind was rattling our windows for hours and surely you can’t see a thing.”
“I landed this morning,” Maddie says. “We didn’t know about the snow when I took off.”
Esme clucks her tongue. “It’s a Northerly wind in spring. How do they not know to expect snow?”
“Because I doubt they’ve got any highlanders in the weather office,” Julie answers, quick as a flash, and Maddie's heart leaps at the reminder of how sharp she is. There's a hundred things Julie sees that Maddie will never wrap her head around, just as Julie will probably never understand how to tune an engine. Perhaps that complementarity is what makes them a sensational team. “How long will you be here?”
“Until it stops snowing and they clear the runway.”
“Then I hope there’s plenty more snow to come! Days of it!” Julie says, eyes bright, and something about her expression speaks of snowballs, sledging, and all the chaotic fun one can have in a snowstorm.
******
“Mmmmn, bliss,” Julie purrs. She’s nestled in a huge armchair in front of the fire, her shoes off and toes stretched out towards the heat. The mug in her hands is steaming gently. “Only way to keep the place warm in the winter is a log fire and buckets of tea.”
The heat of Maddie’s own mug is thawing out her frozen hands, and her ears are tingling from the temperature shock. When she takes a sip, the heat floods through her.
“How are you here? I thought you were, well, training or something.”
“Or something,” Julie agrees. “They’ve had us running all over the place like rabbits. I’ve been learning to read a map, and you know how well I take to that. You wouldn’t believe how much harder it is to find my way in a city - not a tree or a gatepost to climb for miles!”
“Nor a friendly farm to give you lunch,” Maddie says, and Julie grins.
“Not a one! Give me the countryside any time. But I muddled through, and supposedly I’m now capable of telling my East from my West.”
“Easy,” says Maddie, taking another sip. “Sun rises in the East and sets in the West.”
“You say that as though you’ve never lived in a country where you don’t see the sun for two weeks at a stretch,” Julie objects. “Besides, you don’t use the sun to navigate. You know which way you’re going.”
“Usually,” Maddie concedes.
“Well, I wish I could do that, but even if I practiced for twenty years I still wouldn’t be able to navigate like you do. I’ll just have to get by.”
Maddie thinks of those flights where Julie was jumping out of a plane with a parachute, plummeting down into unknown territory. They don’t need to talk about where she’s going, or about how dangerous it might be to go the wrong way.
“You’ll be fine,” says Maddie, hoping that it’s true.
Julie leans forward to grab another log, and shoves it into the fire. “Enough about me,” she says. “How are your family? How's the flying? Ferrying a sexy little Spitfire sounds like more fun than the Lizzies.”
The fire spits and crackles, flames licking around the new log, and Maddie basks in the heat and the joy of an unexpected evening with her favorite person.
They talk until late into the night, when Esme has tucked the Glaswegian boys into their beds and bade them goodnight herself. The fire is slowly dying as the logs crumble away and red embers fade to ash.
“I suppose we should get some sleep,” Maddie says, stretching.
With visible reluctance, Julie uncurls from the chair and pads over to the window, pressing her nose to the glass. “Still snowing. You can’t fly in that, can you?”
“Not from Dyce,” Maddie says, deciding not to mention the sole engine, because those sort of details just make non-pilots nervous.
“Then it looks as though I get you for another day,” Julie says, flashing that bright smile. “A day at Castle Craig in the snow! You don’t know how lucky you are.”
Maddie follows her upstairs by the light of a candle, and along the corridor to the room she stayed on her first trip to the castle - Julie’s room.
“There’s no spare beds made up, but mine’s huge, so if you don’t mind sharing…”
Maddie thinks of that night when she wrapped her arms around a tired, bruised Julie in the cold, single bed of a Nissan hut. She remembers how Julie’s fast, tense breaths had slowed as she eased into sleep, and the warm weight of her limbs.
“We’ll be warmer this way,” she agrees.
The last thing Maddie sees that night is the candlelight reflecting off Julie’s bright hair as she leans over to blow it out.
******
“Missed!”
Maddie and Julie are pressed up against a wall of the castle, with a pile of snowballs at their feet. It’s still snowing and the air is cold enough to cloud their breath, but Maddie is warm and panting. Julie’s cheeks are bright red.
“You aim for Jock and I’ll take Wullie,” Julie whispers, a snowball in each hand, and Maddie nods.
The next moment Julie lunges forwards, throwing herself around the corner of the house and launching her snowballs. Maddie hears the soft poof of impact and an outraged “aar!” that surely signifies a hit. She grabs a snowball herself, and jumps forward to throw it, narrowly avoiding a collision with Julie.
A flurry of snowballs are soaring in her direction. Maddie tries to dodge and throw at the same time, but it’s only half successful: her snowball narrowly misses the target, who ducks behind a tree, and there’s a retaliatory volley from the boys. She ducks to avoid a snowball that is coming straight at her head, and another hits her shoulder.
“Bother!” Maddie says, ducking back behind the wall.
“You’ve been hit!” Julie says, aghast, and from her tone you’d think it was a real battle. “Do I rescue my fallen comrade or fight on alone? Better to go down in a blaze of glory, I think.”
Maddie watches Julie nudge the pile of snowballs closer to the corner with her foot, take a crouched position just behind the edge of the wall, and then spring her attack. The next minute is a fury of shouting and flying snow, and at the end of it only two boys escape unscathed.
“An honorable defeat,” Julie concedes, shaking hands with the beaming Tam and Mungo. “Now, I think I we should build a memorial for our dead.”
The snow memorial starts off as a single project, but before long disputes break out and large snowballs are being rolled in three different directions.
Julie and Maddie’s snowman — “snow-woman,” Julie insists. “It’s wartime, after all. Women doing men’s work all over the country,” — isn’t the largest, but it’s carefully sculpted and handsomely decorated with Julie’s tartan scarf.
By the time they finish the light is fading, and it takes Julie and Maddie's combined efforts to curtail the snowman construction and shepherd the boys inside.
When Maddie pulls off her boots she’s glad to see that the Air Force boots have kept her socks dry, but the rest of her is colder and damper than she realised. Her back is wet from where snow drifted down her collar, and the legs of her trousers are soaked through from kneeling to build snowballs. She’s just considering whether an hour standing in front of the fire would dry everything out when Julie says, “I’m wet through.”
“Me too,” Maddie admits, slightly shame-faced, because her uniform trousers are really not designed for snowball fights, and she has a nasty feeling there will be a muddy patch on the knees.
Julie meets her eyes. “Oh. We’d better get those washed. You’ve got a skirt, haven’t you?”
Maddie nods.
“Then I’ll find you a blouse and jumper. Come on, best get it done now so your trousers can dry in front of the fire. We don’t want you losing marks in parade.”
Maddie doesn’t point out that there isn’t a parade, exactly, because she knows what Julie means: according to policy, every ATA pilot represents them all, so they all need to look smart. Muddy knees on her trousers looks bad for Maddie, and it doesn’t reflect well on women pilots. Maybe it’s not fair that they’re held to higher standards, but it’s the truth.
She follows Julie up to the bedroom, and strips off her wet trousers while Julie is rummaging in a chest of drawers. By the time she has the skirt on, Julie has made a heap of warm, wooly garments on the end of the bed.
“All the sleeves will be too short for you, but this should be warm” Julie tells her, gesturing at a blue woolen vest and a jumper in blazing orange.
Maddie reaches for them gratefully, shivering, and pulls the vest over her head, jumper quickly following. The sleeves do stop a few inches above her wrists, but the jumper is lovely: a soft, warm wool, and it smells faintly of Julie. Maddie can’t stop herself smiling at that.
Julie herself is in the midst of changing, and Maddie watches her remove the damp wool trousers. Somehow, Julie looks smaller without clothes, as if the force of her personality makes her appear more substantial than her slight, physical form. Maddie watches her wriggle into a skirt, body lithe and pale, except for the scatters of freckles. It's odd to think that without the war Julie would have been living a different life entirely - perhaps she would have been in Paris right now dressed in a silk gown and furs. No doubt Julie is lovely in an evening dress, elegant and poised, but it would be artificial somehow. It's hard for Maddie to imagine her looking more beautiful than this.
“That’s better,” Julie announces, shrugging into a warm jumper herself, and collecting up her damp clothes to dry in the airing cupboard.
The next hour is busy: washing Maddie’s trousers with soap to scrub mud from the knees, hanging everything to dry, and then lighting candles and setting the table for dinner. Esme has prepared a feast of vegetable pie followed by bread and butter pudding, and Maddie daren’t ask how much of their butter and milk ration that used, but the food is a hundred times better than she’s ever had on base.
“It’s so nice to have raisins,” Maddie says, taking another bite and savouring the sweetness bursting across her tongue, and sees Esme smile.
“The nice thing about a big house is we have a few things tucked away.” After they finish pudding, Esme produces another treat and makes them each a cup of coffee with her small bag of carefully-hoarded coffee.
It’s been dark for hours by the time they finish supper, but when Maddie wipes the condensation from the window and peers out she sees that the snow has finally stopped. The sky is grey, but the wind seems to have dropped.
“Flying tomorrow?” Julie asks.
Normally Maddie is excited at the prospect of flying: at the feeling of the plane responding to her fingers and the view of the land passing beneath her, but tonight she can’t help wishing that the snow would keep falling. There’s something magical about being together surrounded by snow, like a moment caught in time. Here, amidst the snowball fights and wood fire in the hearth, the laughter and warmth, the war seems to recede.
“Perhaps,” Maddie says, thinking I hope not.
“In that case, we need to make good use of the evening,” Julie announces. “What’s it to be? There’s a piano in the drawing room and I know some lovely German songs, or we could pull the dust-sheets off the billiard table, or dancing—“
“Dancing,” Maddie says, because she’s no idea what a billiard is and speaking German is a little too close to the prohibited subject of Julie’s job and what all this training is in aid of.
“Then we’ll need the gramophone,” says Julie, and bounds off.
The carpet in the drawing room proves too slippery and the library is too crowded, so in the end they push the kitchen table to one side and put the gramophone on top of it. There is a whole stack of gramophone records, but Julie rejects most of them: “too stuffy,” she says of Bach, and pushes aside some traditional Scottish songs with the remark that “we can’t have a ceilidh with only two people.” There are a bunch of children’s records mixed in, and Maddie is just setting aside one marked Fairy on the Clock when Julie smiles and seizes it.
“This will do! I’ll teach you to Foxtrot.”
“Foxtrot looks terrible complicated,” Maddie warns.
“As if I’d accept an excuse like that from a woman who flies planes. Come on!”
Back in the kitchen, Julie takes a stance in the middle of the room.
“I’ll lead,” she says, holding out her arms, and there’s nothing for it but for Maddie to join her. She puts her right hand in Julie’s right and her left hand on Julie’s shoulder. It’s odd to be dancing with somebody shorter than herself, but not uncomfortable.
“The basic step is easy. Back with your right foot, back with your left foot, then two quick steps to the right. Slow, slow, quick, quick. Let’s try without music.”
Maddie nods, and when Julie says “Slow, slow,” she lets herself be guided backwards across the stone floor. They manage three repetitions of the basic step before they have to either stop or bump into the oven.
“Easy, see?” Julie says, which would be hard to argue with if Maddie hadn’t once watched Julie dance a Foxtrot with one of the Flight Officers and seen them alternate between gliding along together and skipping across the floor at double speed completely separately but with every move in time. She can’t see the similarity between that and the steps Julie just taught her, which implies that things are going to get a lot more complicated.
“Shall we try with music?”
“As long as it’s not too fast,” Maddie agrees, and Julie just flashes a smile over her shoulder as she lifts the needle into place. There’s a hiss of static, and then a surge of energetic strings.
Fairy night is full of busy fairies… the gramophone trills.
“This is fast!” Maddie objects, but Julie just takes her position and holds up her arms insistently.
“Slow, slow, quick, quick,” Julie repeats, and when Julie starts to move Maddie does her best to keep up. In a matter of seconds they’re close to bumping the table, but Julie just shuffles round to face the opposite direction and counts her in to repeat the moves in the opposite direction.
They must hurry for they have to put away the last light of the sun, they must hurry for the night is coming and the moonbeams must be spun…
Julie is poised and elegant, moving as if she had all the time in the world, and Maddie is glad that Julie’s steering because she can’t help looking at her feet.
“Slow slow quick quick,” she mutters to herself, and then manages to go quickly in the wrong direction, left instead of right, and almost pulls Julie over in a tangle of legs.
“Back to the end and we’ll do it again,” Julie says cheerfully, eyes bright and hair shining, and Maddie takes a deep breath and follows.
Ir isn’t hard, really, just a lot faster than the dances she’s used to. Anybody can waltz after a few attempts, but Maddie’s feet are used to wearing heavy airman’s boots, not skipping along in these short, fast steps.
Fairy on the clock, fairy on the clock, making time for work and play, dancing all the hours away… the gramophone sings, as the strings bounce energetically along, and Maddie counts “slow, quick, quick” to find her timing before they start again.
The song comes to an end just before they reach the end of the room, and they count the final beats aloud together.
“I think you’ve got it,” Julie says, beaming. “Now let’s try a turn.”
Maddie replaces the gramophone needle back at the beginning of the record, and rejoins Julie at the end of the room. As the music starts up again, Julie explains the move: a quarter turn anti-clockwise.
“Slow, slow, quick, quick,” Maddie chants to herself as they move backwards, then sideways, and then Julie guides her through the rock forwards, back, and then two neat steps to the side that swivel them round another way. Without pausing, Julie guides her on again.
“Look up!”
“I’ll treat on your feet if I do that,” Maddie warns.
“Nonsense. Your feet know where they’re going. You’re the one that can navigate.”
“In the air,” Maddie points out, but when Julie repeats the instruction to look up she gives it a tentative try.
In a sense, it’s less alarming when she’s looking at the room instead of the floor, because now Maddie has some idea where they’re going. Their distance from the far wall means they must be near the door, so it’s no surprise when Julie steers her round a quarter turn, and they head off again towards the oven.
Before long Julie is guiding her through new moves: a promenade that involves two slow and then two quick steps to her right, and a spin where the major challenge is ducking low enough to swivel under Julie’s arm. Once Maddie’s socks skid on the floor and she almost falls, but Julie’s there with a steadying hand on her back.
“Shall we add one more step?” Julie asks, her cheeks pink and eyes sparkling
“Just the one,” she agrees, and watches Julie demonstrate a very stylish sway.
“The timing’s off,” Maddie objects. “That’s too many quicks.”
“They’re so much fun that this move throws in a couple of extras,” Julie says lightly.
“I knew this was getting more complicated,” says Maddie as Julie resets the gramophone, and then Julie grabs her hand and tugs her back to their starting position.
“Trust me,” Julie says, smiling up at her. “I’ll talk you through it. Slow, slow, quick, quick. Right slow, left slow, quick, quick, quick, quick.”
Maddie loses track a little on the final steps. “Again,” she says, “sorry, those extra quicks…”
It still isn’t graceful on the second attempt, but Maddie’s feet more or less go where she wants them, and by the third effort the sway feels almost natural: a slow slide to her right, and then back again. Maddie is glad there is no mirror to make her self-conscious, but Julie is the picture of elegance: her shoulders dip and hips sway as she moves through the step, always perfectly in time.
“Now let’s put it all together,” Julie says, and although Maddie shakes her head, it’s apparently too late. The music starts again, and Julie sweeps Maddie up in her arms, and steers her into the dance, moving backwards then sideways, then swinging through a turn, before a promenade and another turn, then a sway to the right, left again, and suddenly Maddie’s feet are lost. She narrowly avoids Julie’s toes, takes a sudden step backwards to regain her balance, and they both tumble against the kitchen table.
“Sorry,” Maddie blurts out, from where she’s half lying on the table-top, Julie sprawled across her.
Julie’s eyes are twinkling. She leans in and presses a kiss to Maddie’s cheek. “No apologies needed,” she says, and then wriggles off and extends an arms to help Maddie up. “One more for luck?”
“I think I’d better call it a night before I squash you,” Maddie demurs, and Julie frowns.
“Only if you promise to dance with me again.”
Promises are precarious things in wartime. Maddie thinks of all the promises that end up broken: travel plans cut short, engagements ended by downed planes or falling bombs.
“Promise?” Julie insists.
It doesn’t seem practical to make a promise like this, but perhaps that’s not the point. In a family that lives half in the realm of story, with the windows open so the children can always fly home, perhaps a promise is more myth than logistics. And doesn’t everyone need a bit of myth?
“I promise,” Maddie says, and Julie smiles, squeezing her shoulder.
“You should practice without me. Put those ATA boys through their paces. You can tell Jamie I’ve ordered him to dance with you, toes or no.”
“Then I’d have to tell him we were both here without leave,” Maddie points out, as she helps Julie to move the kitchen table back into place.
“Tell him we were foxtrotting on base, then,” Julie says, as they return the gramophone and record to the drawing room. “Dancing in the kitchen can be our secret.”
The house is dark, and Julie lifts a finger to her lips as they make their way upstairs, trying to step lightly on the creaky staircase. There is a crack of light under Esme’s door, but the lights are out in the bedrooms of the Glaswegian boys. Maddie and Julie tiptoe past.
The sky is dark and clear outside Julie’s bedroom window, and there’s no sign of wind. If the conditions are the same in the morning then the boys at Dyce will have the runway clear of snow by lunchtime. She should head back.
“I’ll need an alarm,” Maddie says regretfully, and winces as she calculates what time she needs to be awake to call the base before making a seven-o-clock train. “Five thirty?”
Julie hands her the alarm, then says “I’ll check your trousers,” and disappears in what is presumably the direction of the airing cupboard. She returns with Maddie’s dry trousers, which are slightly crumpled, but no worse than one might expect from a couple of long flights and a 24 hour weather delay.
“I’m not sure I want to go back,” Maddie mutters, not really meaning to say it aloud.
“Like school holidays,” Julie agrees, as she starts to undress. “You know you have to go back, but there’s always a little regret about the end of the adventure.”
Maddie unbuttons her own skirt, folding it neatly over a chair, and pulls off her socks. It’s more of a wrench to remove the warm orange jumper, and she can’t help pressing her nose to the fabric once more before she puts it down, inhaling the smell of wool and a faint scent that is simply Julie.
When Maddie slides into bed wearing her knickers and vest, Julie turns off the lamp. The room is dark, except for a shaft of silvery moonlight through the crack in the curtains.
“Brrr,” Maddie says, as her bare legs meet the cold sheets, and Julie slides closer, pressing up against her side. Her skin feels very warm.
“We can nestle together for warmth,” Julie says, wrapping her arm around Maddie’s shoulders. “Like penguins.”
“Do penguins really?” Maddie asks, because she’s never met anyone else who knows these things. There’s probably a journal about penguins in the library and if she asks then Julie will recount tales of a relative who was a polar explorer. It’s that kind of family.
“Really,” Julie assures her, snuggling closer. “All winter long.”
Maddie turns her head to look at Julie, and her nose brushes Julie’s cheek. They’re very close. All of a sudden, her chest tightens. Julie’s eyes are dark, but her cheeks are still flushed from dancing. She’s incredibly beautiful.
“Penguins huddle in flocks, of course,” Julie continues, voice soft. “But I think it’s better with just the two of us.”
Maddie knows the kiss is going to happen before it does: just the barest shift, and then Julie’s nose brushes the side of her own, their lips meet, and her eyes flutter shut. It’s warm and soft and quiet. The night seems to close in around them, velvety black and hushed, as the world recedes.
“Do penguins kiss?” Maddie asks, when Julie’s mouth moves away to press kisses beneath her ear.
“I’m sure they kiss, and dance beak to beak,” Julie murmurs, her breath warm against the skin of Maddie’s neck.
Maddie starts to object to this terrible lie and even more terrible pun, but Julie kisses her again, firmer this time, and she stops thinking.
It isn’t like the scenes in romantic films, where the girl melts elegantly into her suitor’s arms. There are moments when they seem to have too many knees and elbows, and Maddie slides the wrong way, or Julie’s hair gets in her mouth. If this is horizontal dancing then it’s a dance without an agreed set of steps and where they keep changing the leader, but even so, it’s perfect.
Afterwards, they lie sweatily together, Julie’s head on Maddie’s shoulder.
“Far better than Foxtrot,” Maddie whispers, and Julie chuckles.
“If you set the alarm earlier we can try it slow, slow, quick, quick in the morning.”
As it turns out, they try again during the night and there is nothing slow about it.
******
“Come on!” Julie calls from the front door, as Maddie bids Esme goodbye.
“And thank you for the wonderful food, and for being so welcoming, and—“
“We’ll miss the train!”
Esme gives her a hug, and then waves them both goodbye as Julie hauls the huge door open.
They run down the driveway, skidding a little on the snow, until Maddie gets too breathless. Perhaps it’s best to be in a hurry, alternating between fast walking and a jog, because otherwise there is too much temptation: trees to kiss Julie against and a probably-ever-so-romantic sunrise starting to peek over the horizon.
They run into the station as the train is nearing the platform, and tumble through the train door breathlessly, almost collapsing on the seats. The train is almost empty, and they have a carriage to themselves. Maddie looks at Julie out of the corner of her eye and knows she’s having the same wild idea, but the next moment Julie shakes her head.
“Back to work,” she says, in that thick Scottish accent. “You’ve a plane to fly, aye?”
The train winds through the snowy hills, and they watch the sun rise from the window, tinting the sky pink and then fading into a watery blue. It’s cold and crisp, but once the sun has been up a few hours the snow will start melting. Perfect flying conditions, just as the officer at Dyce told Maddie this morning.
This train seemed slow on the journey out, but now it’s puffing towards RAF Dyce faster than Maddie would like.
“Write to me if you can,” she tells Julie, who gives her a look that says Don’t I already?. “Just…when you get a chance,” Maddie says, leaving all the worry and uncertainty about Julie’s job unspoken, and Julie nods.
“You too, lassie.”
She can see Dyce station approaching, and the runway beyond it.
“Thank you for three perfect days,” Maddie says quietly, wrapping her arms around Julie’s shoulders as the train starts to slow. Julie hugs her fiercely, and then tilts Maddie’s head down to capture an equally fierce kiss. They don’t come up for air until the train has rolled almost to a stop.
“Until next time, then,” Maddie says, the words seeming hollow and inadequate, but Julie smiles brightly, and unfastens the door for her.
It’s hard to walk away with Julie watching from the window, but when Maddie looks back Julie is waving.
“Au revoir!” Julie calls, as the train pulls away, and waves until she’s out of sight.
At Dyce the men are on the runway, shoveling hard. It’s half clear already, but Maddie picks up a shovel to join them, enjoying the distraction of simple, manual work. She’s sweaty by the time the runway is ready, and it’s a struggle to focus on the task ahead instead of being distracted by thoughts of Julie’s damp skin and loose hair.
Fly the plane, Maddie she tells herself sternly, and goes to double-check the weather and flight assignments.
The Hudson is just as battered as she was told, but both engines start obediently. Maddie takes off into a slight headwind, and flies South in clear skies. The damaged engine starts to sputter as she passes Edinburgh, and it’s stopped working entirely by the time she reaches the Lake District, but in good flying conditions like this the plane is steady even when underpowered.
As she flies towards Yorkshire, Maddie sees the trail of steam from a train puffing along below. She doesn’t know, can’t know where Julie is traveling, but it’s impossible not to wonder if she’s down there.
Just in case, Maddie blows a kiss out of the cockpit window, and imagines Julie smiling and looking up from her book. Then she focuses her eyes ahead again, calculating the speed of her flight and the best approach for landing, and guides the plane on through the bright, blue sky.