‘And your mother?’

‘A waxwork.’ He stared at the grey sky. Straight-necked mallards whirred above us. ‘Actually, more of a plaster saint. Never talks back to the Colonel. He never was a colonel, by the way, but that’s the way he behaves at home. I had to get away – it was stifling. I couldn’t breathe in that house. My mother wanted to wrap me in lint and keep me there, muzzled, because of my leg. She tried to do that pretty much all through my childhood. I had to prove to myself that I had a brain even if my leg was a joke. I loved writing and I wanted to do something active, not be some dried-up academic. They didn’t even send me to school, you see – because of the way I looked. I suppose they were worried about me being teased – I’d be no good at games and so on. So my father taught me when he had time, and I had a man who came to the house. Mr Lovely his name was – ’ Douglas chuckled. ‘Not a bad sort. Actually it was his idea that I look for a job on a paper.’

‘How very grim,’ I said. ‘It must have been so lonely.’

‘I lived through it,’ he said lightly.

Sometimes I sensed Douglas wanted to touch me, or kiss me. I found him watching me with a kind of hunger in his face. He would look away quickly when our eyes met. I often wished he could just hold me and that I could respond without fear or guilt, that it could all be more simple.

‘Go on,’ Lisa urged me. ‘You can tell me. You’ve fallen for him, haven’t you, Kate?’

‘Maybe – a bit,’ I admitted.

‘So what’s wrong with that?’

‘I’m afraid I’ll allow myself this – that I’ll let my feelings for him grow and then suddenly one day Angus will come home and I’ll have hurt everyone. It would be terrible. What I really wish is that he’d come back and things could be as they were before.’

‘They’ll never be that,’ Lisa said drily. ‘Never are, are they? You said ’e was dead.’

‘He almost certainly is. The latest from the Red Cross is that he was shot down over the sea. I know there’s no real hope.’

‘And you reckon this other feller’s worth it?’

I hesitated so that Lisa put her head on one side quizzically. ‘Yes – I think so.’

‘There you are, then.’

When I left Lisa’s that evening the fog had intensified, and hung dark and choking along the streets. Even though the road was no longer completely blacked out, it was very hard to see anything. I clicked on my ineffective cycle lamp and decided I would be safer walking until I reached the main road where the kerbs were painted in black and white stripes to make them easier to see. I set off up Stanley Street. Muffled figures passed me in the fog, a few saying ‘Evening’ as they faded out of view again. After a while I decided I’d be better off without the lamp as it seemed only to reflect off the fog.