But Douglas seemed to relax suddenly, as if he trusted my acceptance of him, and I found myself talking to him, animated in a way I had not been for months. He asked about my work and how I knew Marjorie and we laughed together. Then I felt caught out, laughing like that. Confused, I turned my attention to the music, thoughts churning in my head. How would I ever know if Angus was alive somewhere? Our last night together seemed such an age away. I ached to see him, for us to hold one another, yet at the same time, if that was never going to be possible, I needed to know that too. Would we have to wait until the war was over, and even then would we know for certain? And here was I, enjoying myself at a party and wishing that this man beside me, who I barely knew, would take me in his arms.

A group was standing round Marjorie, who had her back to us at the piano, all well into the swing of singing.

‘I’ll never smile again, until I smile at you,’ they belted out with incongruous jollity. The song cut through me. Should I never smile again? Had I to wait for a homecoming that might or might not happen? And how could I feel so damn sorry for myself just having to wait when for all I knew Angus might be going through the most appalling suffering? A lump grew in my throat. It all felt so hopeless, all these months of waiting and praying when I knew in my heart that Angus was dead.

‘Grim little number, isn’t it?’ Douglas leaned forward and spoke gently. ‘I say – you’re not crying, are you?’

‘No, I’m not,’ I said in a determined voice.

‘You are – nearly, aren’t you?’ he persisted with ungentlemanly intrusiveness. ‘Is it that – fiancé of yours?’

Dry-eyed now, I told Douglas about our correspondence with the Red Cross.

‘The open grave,’ he said. ‘You poor girl.’

‘Don’t be nice, I really shall start, else.’

‘I shouldn’t mind.’ His tone was kind.

‘But I should. This is supposed to be a party.’

Fortunately Marjorie decided to move on to the ENSA tune, ‘Let the People Sing’, at this point, which got some of them dancing again.

‘Good job it wasn’t “We’ll meet again”,’ Douglas said. ‘Or the floodgates would have opened.’

I laughed. ‘You’re terrible.’

‘Am I?’ He directed an uncertain smile at me.

‘Actually, no. In a funny way you’ve cheered me up.’

‘The feeling is mutual. Most girls, once they’ve found out about my gammy leg, start treating me like some sort of damned invalid with only half a brain.’

He sounded so bitter that without thinking I laid my hand on his arm as I would have done with a patient, then quickly withdrew it.

We spent most of the evening talking and I found myself forgetting about everything else in a way that I only normally did when we were exceptionally busy at work. Again I found that Douglas was more ready to ask questions and learn about me than he was to disclose anything about himself. The shreds I managed to glean from him were that he had a fierce satisfaction in his job and that he was an only child whose parents lived near Gloucester.