When Squadron Officer Joan Worralson (better known as "Worrals") and Flight Officer Betty Lovell ("Frecks") were demobilized, they were in much the same position as a million other girls, when peace left them on the threshold of an unknown world called civil life. As Worrals put it, visibility, as far as the immediate future was concerned, was zero.

While they were deciding what to do with the rest of their lives, the two friends took a flat together in Knightsbridge and it was here that Bill Ashton dropped in one afternoon to announce cheerfully that he was on his way to Africa.