Maggie shrugged. She couldn’t have looked less interested if she’d tried. ‘I see,’ she said. ‘When you said you’d been working, I thought it was something important. So, you were in here all the while, tinkering with this, while I was almost trampled to death?’

He would ignore that. She was still upset from wrestling with that horse. She’d come round, any minute now.

Ray patted the tandem’s front saddle. ‘If I spruce it up, oil it and mend the tyres, it’ll be as good as new.’ He gave a mock bow. ‘Cinders, you shall go to the ball!’

She gazed at him blankly.

‘You and me! Captain and stoker! We’ll cover those twenty miles to your sister in no time!’

She spluttered, hardly managing to speak. ‘What’re you talking about? You and me? On this … this contraption?’

Ray winced. Contraption? He held out his hands. ‘To tell the truth, I’m not good with horses.’

‘You’re not? You let me—’ she started but he cut her off.

‘Oi!’ he said. Who did she think she was, talking to him like this? ‘I didn’t let you do anything!’

He couldn’t believe how wrong this had gone. They were rowing, properly rowing. She thought he was a coward, she despised him.

What about the times he had been brave? Did they count for nothing? Running alongside the train, heaving her aboard and hurting his arm in the process. Climbing the ladder in the library to find a map, despite being sweaty and shaky, and worried that if he fell it might be the morning before anyone found him.

The horse, though, had been a step too far.

His chest felt tight; he didn’t trust himself to speak. He shrugged. ‘I thought you’d be pleased.’

Maggie turned to go. She was calmer now, colder. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘you bloomin’ well thought wrong!’

Chapter 19

Dakin the butler had brought in the mail on a silver tray. The arrival of the first post was the highlight of every morning.

Nancy had a letter from someone in the crew of the warship she’d adopted, there was one for Miss Sharp, another for Ray, which he barely glanced at before tucking it into his jacket pocket. Maggie wondered, fleetingly, if he had a sweetheart but no, surely he’d have looked more pleased.

There was an airmail letter for Pam.

‘That’ll be from Jim!’ she announced. She propped the blue envelope against her cup and continued buttering her toast and talking to Nancy, sat next to her.

Maggie couldn’t believe her eyes. If she’d received a letter from her fiancé overseas, she’d have ripped open the envelope that very second.