‘He wasn’t always like this,’ she said. ‘He was a good man until he went off to war.’

‘Do you want to come and stay with me for a bit?’ Gwen asked. ‘Give him a shock? He’ll think you’ve left.’

Maggie shook her head. ‘That’ll only make it—’

‘—worse,’ Mrs Mason finished. The two women exchanged rueful glances. ‘When he comes back,’ the housekeeper continued and then she jumped and cocked her head, listening. ‘Oh, my good God, that’s him!’ She flapped her arms at them, shooing them out like flies. ‘Quick!’ she said, ‘Out the front! He can’t find you here!’

* * *

They walked silently back to Snowden through the village, subdued by what they’d seen. Maggie felt horribly guilty about leaving Mrs Mason with that man. Would she be safe?

‘How do you know all this, Maggie?’ Gwen asked. ‘That if Maureen pretended to leave him, it would only make things worse?’

‘Because,’ Maggie said, ‘my dad’s the same.’

She’d never admitted that to anyone before; that her dad was a bully. It was easier to say it to Gwen, someone she didn’t know very well.

Maybe that explained why her dad was bad-tempered and snappy, why they could never do right for doing wrong, why all of them – Maggie, Violet and Mutti – were scared of him. Perhaps it was because he’d fought in the Great War. Like Mrs Mason’s husband, it had sent him barmy.

They were passing the village green now and The Royal Oak and Maggie glanced over, wondering how often Mrs Mason’s husband drank in there.

‘We carry our own guilt here, you know,’ Gwen said.

Maggie looked at her. ‘What do you mean?’

Gwen waved her hand over the green. ‘Have you ever noticed how there’s no monument to the war dead, from the last one? Most villages have one but Snowden is a “Thankful Village”, which means we lost no men in the Great War. There’s a sign up in the church, if you care to look. It says, “All men who went to fight for King and Country in the Great War, came back again.”’

Maggie didn’t understand. ‘But … but that’s a good thing, isn’t it?’

Gwen wrinkled her nose. ‘In a way. All the men came back, they survived, but that doesn’t mean they were the same. And Snowden was surrounded by villages where men weren’t returning, so there was a mix of shame and guilt here. As though we hadn’t paid the price for peace. A couple in the next village lost all four of their sons.