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homes. And the airmen who were honing their terrible skills most efficiently in Spain were the men of the German Luftwaffe : the men who would be attacking Britain if it did come to war between those two countries.
    There was supposed to be a non-intervention agreement about the Spanish Civil War. Germany and Italy were blithely ignoring it. The suspicion was growing that what folk were learning to call the Axis Powers were using Spain as some dreadful sort of training ground, a rehearsal for a larger theatre of war.
    There was widespread revulsion at the prospect of Britain once more involving herself in a European war. The dreadful years between 1914 and 1918 had blighted the lives of one generation and made an indelible mark on the next.
    Aware of the strength and depth of pacifist opinion, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain was trying desperately to stop Britain being dragged into war, adopting a policy which had come to be known as Appeasement. Let the Nazis have something of what they want, ran this philosophy, and we’ll be able to pacify them, keep the ravening beast at bay, the hounds of war firmly on the leash.
    The trouble was, anyone who had a conscience was becoming more and more uncomfortable with the reality of Appeasement. Liz knew that Eddie was one of them. He was not in principle opposed to fighting for what you believed in.
    A year ago Liz had needed all her powers of persuasion to stop him from throwing up his studies and going off to join the International Brigade fighting in defence of the beleaguered democratic government of Spain against the fascist rebels led by General Franco. In the end she’d told him it would break their mother’s heart if he went off to war - and that had been the argument which had finally convinced him to stay at home.
    Now, with the international crisis growing more serious every day, she knew he was having a great deal of trouble reconciling his political convictions with his innate sense of honour and decency, although he wasn’t going to let go of those convictions without a fight The two men were talking about the Soviet Union now, a country which Eddie idolized.
    ‘Eddie, Eddie,’ her grandfather was saying, shaking his head in despair, I’ll grant you that the October Revolution was one of the great events in human history, but it’s been corrupted. Look at the show trials in Moscow last year. What were they, if not the revolution eating its children?’
    ‘No, no,’ cried Eddie, ‘don’t you see? They have to constantly keep purifying the revolution - and if that has to be done by blood,’ he declaimed, tossing his tousled locks, ‘then so be it.’
    Liz snorted. ‘This from the man who has to ask his mother to take a spider out of the bath? And then asks her to be sure not to kill the poor wee thing?’
    Eddie scowled at her.
    “The end justifies the means,’ he said. ‘That’s what we have to remember.’
    ‘Edward, my child,’ said Peter MacMillan, ‘if you don’t mind me saying so, what you’ve just said is - excuse me, Lizzie - a load of shite.’
    They were off again, amiably trading insults and casting aspersions on each other’s intelligence, shrewdness and political judgement. Liz wouldn’t interrupt. They were both enjoying themselves far too much.
    She looked at the old clock on the mantelpiece. If she listened carefully she could make out its reassuring tick-tock underneath the men’s raised voices.
    Dry your tears and lift up your head . She could hear her grandmother’s voice saying it. She lifted her chin. I’ll do my best, Granny.
    Liz stretched her legs out, then hurriedly drew them back up again as her feet hit the cold patch of sheet at the bottom of the bed. As she did so, the memory of yesterday evening’s confrontation with her father came flooding back. She curled herself up into a tight little ball of misery. So much for her resolution to count her blessings.
    She had thought that turning eighteen would solve all of