Maggie waited while Charity ripped it in two and held the larger piece out to Maggie. She took the smaller piece instead and thanked her.

‘You’re probably right,’ Charity said. ‘About Ray, I mean. Gill was talking to Nancy the other night and apparently …’ Maggie shuffled closer to Charity, to hear the gossip more clearly. ‘Apparently, Ray used to be sweet on Pam!’

Maggie almost fell backwards off the wall.

‘What d’you mean, sweet?’ With a mouth full of corned beef sandwich, it had come out like gobbledygook and Charity laughed.

‘Yes, they were courting last summer. Fancy! No accounting for taste, eh? I wonder who threw whom over? Perhaps Pam threw him and he still holds a torch for her.’

Maggie’s mind started spinning. It was the strangest thing. Posh Pam and that way she had of looking down on most people – and Ray Maguire? No, she wouldn’t have put those two together at all. It was strange but she felt rather let down. Suddenly she was seeing Ray in a very different light.

Charity was still talking about Ray. ‘Of course, you know better than me but I do think he’s a good egg. Did I tell you he was in the pub the other week and he’s not half as stuffy as I thought, especially when he’s had a drink.’

‘Ray?’ Maggie asked. ‘Tall, thin—’

‘—the one who took us blackberrying that time? Yes, it was definitely him. He’s all right! And …’ Charity opened her eyes wide. ‘I’ll tell you something else: he knows every single word to “Knees Up Mother Brown”!’

Chapter 32

Ray saw him first. They were cycling up the drive towards the gatehouse on a Saturday afternoon, about to take the tandem on the road for the first time. His stomach was full of butterflies and he wasn’t sure why. It was hardly Piccadilly Circus out there.

It was him – that blasted airman again. The proverbial bad penny. In his uniform, arm still in a sling, leaning casually against the wall in front of the gatehouse. He was chatting to a smart young woman wearing a camel coat and a wide-brimmed hat. She and the airman seemed to know each other rather well. They were having a right old laugh. Any second now Maggie would hear them and—

‘Hey!’ Ray called back, as the tandem swerved. ‘What have I told you about leaning out?’

Maggie had seen them, he could tell. She’d stopped pedalling.

‘Now,’ he said, determined to act unconcerned, ‘once we’re on the road, I’ll shout if I spot a pothole or change down a gear, because it might throw you off balance.’

She didn’t answer and by now, they’d reached the couple.