Douglas was sitting up with a newspaper spread over his legs. He usually read a whole range of papers at the weekend: Times, Express, Daily Worker, some of them several days old. Work: always work. I lay back contentedly with my head on my bent arm. All I could see was the branches of our apple tree and the pale blue sky.

‘It’s so quiet without Eric and Lizzie,’ I said. Gladys had departed tearfully soon after the war ended, begging us to keep in touch. ‘Mummy really misses Gladys, I think. She’s invited them to come back for holidays if they want to.’

Douglas looked up. ‘That’s good. She’s a staunch character, isn’t she?’

I watched a tiny curl of cloud unfold itself slowly across the sky. Only now it was over, the images of the war seemed to bombard me, a delayed realization of what we had all been through. ‘Even now I keep expecting something to appear – I’m always looking out for planes.’

Douglas folded his newspaper untidily and flung it on the grass, then lay back beside me. ‘You don’t throw off habits like that in five minutes. I dreamt the other night that there was an air raid on, and I was all set to get out of bed and down to the shelter.’

I laughed, and we lay together looking up into the blue. Though I was happy, I had an odd feeling of disconnectedness now we had peace. It was as if we could not pick up the threads of our life before the war, that we were cut off at the roots. And now the war was not our main preoccupation I found myself missing Olivia far more acutely. She belonged to the peace. She should be here. I also missed my father.

I rolled over and looked down at Douglas. ‘What about your family? Don’t you think you should contact them?’

Douglas had mentioned to me only recently that his mother wrote to him without fail every week and had done all through the war. ‘She knows I’m all right,’ he said in the dismissive tone he always used when talking of his parents. ‘I’ve dropped her a line here and there.’

‘But shouldn’t you go and see them?’

‘What you should do is not always the question, is it?’ he said, surprising me with his harshness. ‘And besides, I don’t think we’ve got a lot to say to each other.’ He sat up and held the camera to his face, altering the focus. ‘Lie still.’ I waited patiently as he took yet another photograph.

‘I don’t understand you,’ I said. ‘What is it about your parents that’s so terrible?’

‘Don’t let’s talk about them.’ He moved closer and we sat leaning against the high garden wall, Douglas putting his arm round me. I saw his pale, flecked lashes. As we began to kiss, sitting side by side, I ran one hand over his strong hair, then down his back, stroking the raised muscles each side of his spine. He kissed me strongly, hungrily, arms tight around me. I was beginning to respond to him, when suddenly his hand was on my breast, grasping me clumsily and hard. I gasped, drawing back. Douglas snatched his hand away again.