I moved beside him again and he sat up, sighing, running his hands through his dark hair. ‘I’ve been longing to have you – completely – for such a long time.’ He looked away from me, embarrassed.

‘Darling – ’ I sat beside him and kissed his face. ‘I want it too.’

‘Do you? Don’t you think it’s wrong – outside marriage and all that?’

‘Probably. But that doesn’t stop me wanting it.’

Angus laughed delightedly. ‘I love the way you’re so honest. D’you mean you’d really . . .?’

‘Yes. Especially now you’re going away. If it wasn’t for the war it would be different. Only I’m not sure about in your parents’ house.’

‘I can’t think of anywhere better. Trouble is – I don’t have anything in the way of protection. I certainly don’t want to go and leave you pregnant.’

Hesitantly, I said, ‘It’s all right – as long as you don’t actually come into me, isn’t it?’

I moved my hand down and touched him, hearing him take a sharp intake of breath.

‘You don’t mind – if I touch you?’

I guided his hand to my body. We unfastened our clothes, timid, then bolder, learning each other, lost in it. We lay together for a long time.

Much later I let myself out into the starry darkness of the January night.

It was a month of partings. William left shortly afterwards for the army. After a restrained farewell to Mummy and Daddy, he kissed me goodbye stiffly, suddenly garbed in adulthood and self-importance in a way that I found mildly ridiculous. He’d grown a little moustache which had gingery lights in it.

‘Take care of yourself, Kate.’ The whiskers prickled against my face. ‘Keep an eye on the parents, won’t you?’

‘I will,’ I promised, absolving him, as required, of any guilt on that front. ‘Good luck, William.’

A week or two later Olivia came to see me at the hospital. I’d just knocked off from my shift and had invited another of the nurses to my room for a cup of tea. Brenda Forbes had a room close to mine in the nurses’ home and we spent quite a bit of time together. She was a sturdy down-to-earth girl from a family of nine children. Her father owned a hardware shop in Alum Rock on the east side of the city. I found there was no side to Brenda and I enjoyed her sense of humour.

‘Been up and down like a fiddler’s elbow all afternoon,’ she groaned as we walked along the corridor to our rooms. ‘My feet are killing me. Don’t half stink after work, don’t they?’

‘Yes – since you put it so delicately, I must say washing my feet is the first thing I want to do after a shift.’

Brenda pulled the starched cap off her long dark hair. ‘One of these days I’m going to get myself a glamorous job.’

Laughing together, we burst into my room. And there was Olivia. She sat on my one hard wooden chair, her hat still on, face all made up, her smart suit looking incongruous in my austere little room. I felt strangely deflated at the sight of her.