‘I’ll wake you if you do; can’t have you snoring fit to drown the dialogue,’ Snowy said. ‘But we’ll talk later when we’re comfortably settled in the café. I’ve got enough sweet coupons left to buy you either a tiny box of chocolates or a quarter of a pound of mint humbugs; which shall it be?’

Laughing, Tess said that she would settle for the humbugs, and they joined the queue at the box office.

Despite the fact that the war had been over for more than seven years, menus were still not exciting. But it is always nice to have a meal cooked by someone else and served in pleasant surroundings, so Tess and Snowy ate fish and chips with marrowfat peas, followed by steamed ginger pudding and custard, and it was not until they were sitting back and sipping their tea that Snowy told Tess his news. ‘You know I deferred my National Service until I got my degree? Well, I know you must remember that, since it was such a momentous happening,’ he said, quizzing her with his eyes. ‘But the dread moment has come at last. I’m to report to Catterick on the third of January, and from that moment on I am no longer a free spirit, but the property of His Majesty King George the Sixth, to send where he wills.’

‘Oh, Snowy, I’m so sorry. But we knew you’d get your call-up papers sometime soon,’ Tess said. ‘Don’t you envy Jonty? Now if, like him, you were a farmer . . .’

Snowy pulled a face. ‘I envy him one thing, and one thing only, and that’s his friendship with you,’ he said. ‘Not that you’ve seen much of each other lately. Despite all his promises to come up and see the shop he’s come neither near nor by, so I s’pose I needn’t envy him . . . need I?’

Tess was conscious of a familiar pang of annoyance. Why did Snowy have to be so jealous of Jonty? He kept nagging on about that wartime friendship – damn it, we were nothing but a couple of kids, Tess thought crossly – every time the other was mentioned. She thought now that Snowy might be using that old friendship as an excuse to get her to become engaged, but fond though she was of Snowy she did not wish to be tied down yet. However, he was staring at her across the table, his gaze intent. ‘Look, the army could send me anywhere; lots of the fellers go abroad, and even if it’s only to Ireland, taking one’s leave at home is difficult if not impossible. So you might as well say we shall be apart for the next two years. Please, Tess, say we can get engaged.’

Tess frowned and shook her head. ‘It isn’t on, Snowy, honestly it isn’t. My friend Lucy got engaged to her boyfriend – yes, you’re right, he was sent abroad – and spent two lonely miserable years not going to the flicks or to dances, not even to office parties, and when he came home he told her quite calmly that he was going to marry a girl he’d met in Malaya. Poor Lucy started to live normally again and met another national serviceman and agreed to go steady with him. Then he met someone else . . . Oh, Snowy, can’t you understand? When you come home, if you still feel the same we won’t just get engaged, we’ll get married if you like, but I won’t be like the owl and the pussycat . . .’ she giggled, ‘with a ring at the end of his nose, his nose, his nose, with a ring at the end of his nose.’