The train jerked and Tess recognised that they were drawing near the end of their journey. She glanced around the compartment: a couple of soldiers, a woman with three children who had begun the journey noisily but had fallen asleep as the day wore on and an airman, who had irritated Tess earlier by constantly twirling his moustache. But now, as the train jerked to a halt and a porter shouted ‘All change! Norwich Thorpe; all change!’ the airman stood up and reached her rucksack down, handing it to her with a little grin. Then he picked up his own attaché case and gestured to her to go before him into the corridor and join the queue to leave the train.

‘Thanks very much,’ Tess said, smiling at him. ‘I don’t suppose you could help me to put it on my back, could you? Only I may be catching the bus . . .’

‘No sooner said than done,’ the officer said gallantly, taking the rucksack back and arranging it between Tess’s shoulder blades. ‘Comfy? Good girl. Now, if you were in the services during the war . . .’

Tess laughed. ‘I was in nappies during the war,’ she said. ‘Well, perhaps that’s a slight exaggeration, but I truly wasn’t old enough to join any of the services, though if I had it would have been the WAAF.’

‘Aye, you’re right there, the Waafs were a grand bunch,’ the airman agreed. He jumped down on to the platform and held out his hands, taking hers and swinging her down from the train. ‘If you are going in the same direction as myself we might share a taxi—’ he began, but Tess interrupted.

‘Thanks, but I think I’m being met,’ she said just as a tall young man, his sandy hair slicked to his head, approached them. ‘Ah, here comes my friend now.’

‘Ah, so I see; then I’d best be off,’ the airman said, sketching a salute; not that Tess noticed: she was staring too hard at Jonty.

‘Whatever have you done to yourself?’ she asked. ‘Is it Brylcreem on your hair? Because if so it makes you look like a lounge lizard, and I don’t like it.’ She spoke with all her usual frankness, then clapped a hand to her mouth and said through her fingers, ‘Oh, dear, if Gran heard me making personal remarks she’d give me what for.’

‘What for?’ Jonty said, grinning. ‘And it’s water, not Brylcreem.’ Tess thought the flash of his white teeth in his tanned face made him look even more attractive, but of course it would never do to say so; instead she jerked a thumb at the railway official waiting to clip tickets.

‘Shall we go? We’ve timed it quite nicely; if I remember rightly there’s a number seven leaving in twenty minutes, which will give us plenty of time to reach the stop and join the queue.’

Jonty took her hand and pulled her towards him, planting a chaste kiss on the side of her face and knocking her neat little hat to one side. Tess righted it as they queued for the barrier and scowled at her companion. ‘Less of that soppy stuff!’ she said sternly. ‘Else I shan’t sit next to you when we get aboard the bus.’ As she spoke she tucked her clipped ticket back into her handbag.