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peacetime the park was very pretty, but ugly slit trenches – now filled with weeds and rainwater – had been gouged out of the area facing Toorak Road. The Americans had built an army camp in the middle of the park when they arrived in 1942, but at present it housed hundreds of AWAS Signals Corps women.
    I was well aware how lucky I was that Dolly had offered to share her flat with me. When I first arrived in Melbourne I’d been billeted in a big old house with far too many very young AWAS girls. The food was appalling and there was no central heating. I’d been cold, lonely and malnourished. It must have been obvious how miserable I was in the army accommodation, because Captain Gabriel, who was in charge of the AWAS girls at Goodwood, mentioned that Dolly Harper had a spare room in a flat nearby. Six weeks ago, I’d moved in.
    ‘Oh, it’s no bother,’ Dolly had said as she showed me around. ‘I’m lonely. And anyway, I’ve been told I’m unpatriotic to have a spare bedroom when accommodation is so scarce.’ She’d paused then, and given me a quick, slightly embarrassed smile. ‘Actually, Captain Gabriel practically ordered me to rent my spare bedroom to an AWAS girl, preferably one in APLO. They like to keep the people who work in Intelligence together, because there’s less chance of letting things slip that way. I was simply waiting for the right girl to offer it to.’
    Dolly and I crossed Park Street and walked carefully along the wet footpath. It was already gloomy and the evening was drawing in. To our left across Toorak Road, Fawkner Park was a mass of darkness out of which AWAS girls appeared, bustling past us in small groups, giggling as they splashed through puddles and headed out from their barracks in the park. They were on their way to the trams and a night on the town.
    A couple of jeeps roared by, full to bursting with American marines. They were followed by a big black sedan, weighed down by a large charcoal-burning contraption in the boot space. There were few vehicles on the road nowadays, other than jeeps or sedans driven by military personnel or trucks painted in camouflage colours. Petrol rationing was strict and if you did have the temerity to drive a personal vehicle you risked being stopped by the transport police and asked for your permit. ‘Is your journey really necessary?’ inquired the posters on the trams and the walls of buildings in the city.
    A few minutes later we reached Avoca. The flats had been built in 1939 and were very modern and Art Deco. Over the entrance was a rounded cantilevered porch, and the doors were flanked by a couple of circular planters, sitting just below the level of the two rounded porches that belonged to the ground-floor flats. Our first-floor flat had a matching curved balcony, which looked out over Fawkner Park. The flat was large and full of light and I loved living there.
    We pushed through the double front doors into the lobby; the glass in the doors had been painted over because of the brownout, so we waited until we were inside and the doors were closed before we turned on the hall light. The ground-floor flat to our left was currently unoccupied. The flat directly above that, across from us on the first floor, was occupied by Violet Smith, a WAAAF corporal who had been a singer in civilian life. Dolly disliked her. I suspected it was because Violet was very pretty, sang like an angel and was only twenty-three years old. Violet had been seeing Lieutenant Cole, Dolly’s superior officer at APLO, for the last month or so.
    Mrs Campbell, who was eighty-nine, had the flat immediately below ours.
    The door to the right opened a crack. A small, round face framed by a halo of fluffy white hair peered out at us.
    ‘Hello, Mrs Campbell,’ I said.
    Mrs Archina Campbell was a tiny Scottish woman with a gentle demeanour and a sharp intellect, who managed to get around well, despite having a clubfoot.
    ‘Just like Lord Byron,’ she told me when we