Written for readers who have finished Book 1.
In the vestry safe, at the end of the row of registers, stands a fat government-issue book stamped FIRE PRECAUTIONS LOG, its covers gone soft at the corners. It belonged to Edward Sutton, Arthur's grandfather, a young drainage fitter who stood on the roof of St Botolph's through the worst winter of the bombing with a stirrup pump and a bucket of sand, watching the eastern sky while his wife and baby son slept in the town below. His name is inside the cover in a hand very like Arthur's own. Most of the pages are wind, watch-times and the all-clear. Arthur takes it out most summers when he counts the plate, turns a few leaves, and puts it back.