‘And I you. More than ever.’

The week passed with terrible speed. We saw each other so rarely that Angus’s leaving again seemed to overshadow even his arrival home. In many ways it was a blissful week, but for the sense of what was brewing in Europe. And I noticed a strange restlessness in Angus.

I sat beside him one evening in the Harveys’ house on their battered, comfortable sofa. Angus had his arm around me and we had been talking softly, but I noticed that he seemed tense. I leaned round, holding his slight body, trying to take in the fact that he was here with me. All that was in focus was the front of his white shirt, the row of translucent pearl buttons. I stroked my hand over his ribs. He felt even thinner than when he’d left.

‘What’s the matter?’

‘It’s odd being home.’ He sighed. ‘All the time I’ve been away I’ve been dying to be back here with you. That’s the most important thing, seeing you.’ I pushed myself up so that I could look into his face. ‘It’s nothing to do with you,’ he assured me. ‘It’s just so comfortable here. I feel as if I’m being cosseted like a child again when I’m supposed to be out there doing a job.’

‘But they’re only trying to make you welcome. Give you some home comforts.’

‘I know. It’s quite unreasonable of me. I feel . . . everything’s changed. This wretched war has turned us all upside down. But you must know, Katie, nothing could change the way I feel about you.’ He leaned towards me for a kiss.

One baking hot afternoon we caught a train to a country station outside Coventry, with our sandwiches and lemonade, fruitcake and apples that Mrs Harvey had packed for us.

‘You have a lovely afternoon now,’ she’d told us. ‘You both deserve it.’ Her voice was wistful on our behalf, knowing how rare and brief were our times together.

We walked out into the Warwickshire countryside, finding fields into which it was possible to believe the war had not yet slunk its tentacles. The corn was turning yellow. Bees moved in and out of the poppies and morning glory and a breeze moved the wheat stems.

‘It’s so beautiful,’ I said, stopping, breathing in the smell of the fields, the air free of smoke. ‘It’s so long since I’ve been out of Birmingham. You almost forget there is anything else.’

We stood quietly for a few moments looking out over the gold field edged with the trees’ black shade and sprinkled with red.

‘I do think it’s right to fight for it,’ Angus said suddenly. ‘I’ve thought a lot about what your father said, before William and I joined up, and I can see he’s probably the most, I don’t know – saintly of us. But I do feel with every fibre of me that you have to stand up to the likes of Hitler, and I want to be part of defending all that this country stands for against what they’re doing.’ He spoke with a forced casualness, avoiding sounding pompous as William would have done. I reached out and squeezed his arm.