Marrying for love didn’t get you anywhere. Look at Mutti and Dad; presumably they loved each other, once. And Lord and Lady Ashford, too. That must have been a love match. Maggie remembered the first time she’d seen them, on the lawn at Snowden House. She’d thought they were the perfect couple. But Lady Ashford practically lived at The Dorchester and now she had this American man. This ‘very good friend’.

No, love didn’t last; there were no guarantees but if you were friends – and she and Jack were friends – and went into marriage with your eyes open, then you had as much chance – more, in fact – of being happy.

Chapter 49

Maggie pulled Charity’s coat around her and shivered as she emerged from the Underground. She squinted in the bright morning light. You never knew, after a night of bombing, how the city landscape might have changed, so she stood for a moment to get her bearings.

She was buffeted by people rushing past, desperate to get home. If they still had a home to go to.

Maggie remembered, with a shivery sick feeling, that she didn’t.

She’d make her way back to her street, where they’d still be clearing up and ask someone there, what she needed to do next.

Perhaps the WVS canteen van would be back and she could get a cuppa. She couldn’t stomach anything to eat but her mouth was so dry she doubted whether she could even manage to speak.

Maybe things would turn out all right. Dad might have been down in a shelter, after all. Or perhaps he’d been with Kath Deacon in her house? Kath’s house was still standing, from what Maggie had seen. If he’d been in there, he might have survived.

Her eyes roved over the passers-by. Please, please. She’d give anything to get a glimpse of him now. She could even cope with the sarcastic greeting he’d be bound to give her. ‘Oh, found your way home, at last, did you?’ or ‘Who are you? Who? Maggie who?’

’Course, he mightn’t be talking to her because she’d disobeyed him for the first time in her life and run off to the country. She wouldn’t care. She could stand up for herself these days. He could say what he liked; she’d simply be glad that he was alive.

There, that was him! Her heart lifted. And fell, a second later. No, it wasn’t. It was another chap in a grey overcoat and cap, hands in his pockets, shuffling along the street towards her.

Maggie braced herself and turned into the street, as she’d done yesterday. This time, she was prepared for it.

It was the same mess as before: smoke, dust, craters and ten-feet-high piles of rubble that used to be people’s homes.