‘I don’t understand your parents, I can’t pretend I do. I know there must be things you’re not telling me and I don’t want to pry.’

She didn’t meet my eyes. ‘It’s not your problem. You’ve made that very clear.’

I was stung both by the injustice of this and the bitterness in her voice, but before I had time to respond she had done one of her quick changes and was on to something else.

‘You’re nearly done aren’t you – qualified, I mean?’

‘Yes, in the summer. I can’t wait.’

‘What will you do?’

‘Depends a bit on the war. I want to get out of the hospital. I’ll go for the Health Visitor’s training if I qualify. There’ll be a stint of midwifery first of course. But I’m set on that. “Prevention is better than cure” as they say. And I could do with getting away from all the petty rules in here. Matron saw me with a bit of my hair hanging loose from my cap the other day and I thought she was going to send me to the gallows!’

We sat talking for a long time. I felt like hanging on to her, delaying her leaving because I knew I was unlikely to see her again for a good while.

‘It’s going to be awful not having you around,’ I said. ‘You will write to me, won’t you?’

‘Of course I shall. After all, whether we’ve got men in our lives or not, we’re still best friends, aren’t we?’

I reassured her. I knew she felt pushed out because of Angus. ‘Of course we are.’

But as she left, I knew, sadly, that there were more and more things in our lives that we were unable to talk about. I couldn’t automatically confide everything to her now that Angus was gone. Our lives were increasingly separate and we couldn’t hold on to the absolute closeness of childhood.

Chapter 11

‘For goodness’ sake Katie, find something useful to do,’ Mummy said, though in a less acerbic voice than she was capable of. She was almost smiling.

I couldn’t settle to anything. I was home after my exams and Angus was about to arrive on leave to ‘await further instructions’. Now all I could do was to wait. Restlessly I kept going to the window and pulling back the nets to look out along Chantry Road, willing him to be there against the bright flowers of the gardens.

‘There are endless things need doing in the garden,’ Mummy went on. ‘The lettuces are going to seed already – oh, and my blue dress needs rinsing through. You could peg that out for me.’

Dreamily I stood and washed out the faded blue dress in the scullery’s deep white basin, silver bubbles of water tickling up round my hands, my thoughts far away. It seemed so long since I’d seen Angus.

‘I’ve passed!’ I had written to him ten days before. ‘It seems like a miracle. After all, this has hardly been the ideal time for performing in exams.’