‘Are you off to bed as well?’ he had asked.

‘Yes,’ she had said. ‘I think so.’

Still wearing his white dinner jacket, his evening shirt now open at the throat, he had walked towards her to kiss her goodnight, as she had known he would.

It had always been a kiss on the nose. It had been a kiss on the nose when she had been six and he had been nine.

Putting his hands on her shoulders he had lowered his head and had kissed her on the nose.

Instead of responding with a smile and wishing him goodnight, God bless, and going off to her room, she had laid her hands slowly on his chest and lifted her head so that her eyes met his.

‘Kiss me properly,’ she had whispered.

There had been shock in his eyes and then agonized indecision.

‘I can’t,’ he had said, his voice strangled. ‘If I did…there’d be no going back, Nancy.’

‘I know,’ she had said, feeling triumph seep into her very bones. ‘And I don’t want there to be any going back, Claus.’ The sexual attraction that had sizzled between them unacknowledged for so long, had been almost unbearable. She had slid her arms up and around his neck. ‘I want you to make love to me. I want it more than I’ve ever wanted anything else, ever.’

Still he had paused, his mouth only a millimeter from hers. She had known what was holding him back. Always a realist, he had been considering what would happen if their new relationship as lovers should one day come to an end and their old relationship be impossible to recapture.

Always a romantic and viewing it as being a needless concern, she had raised herself on her toes, pressing her lips against his. From that moment on, there had been no need for her to take the lead again. He had kissed her as she had longed for him to kiss her—and the knowledge that there could be no going back had filled her with joy.

Snow was still falling as she parked at the back of the Station. In a pair of sensible boots she had bought in Berlin a year ago and a capacious tie-belted trenchcoat, she stepped from the car.

She’d forgotten to wear a hat or a headscarf and by the time she gained the cover of the waiting room her fair hair was speckled with snowflakes.

‘Bah gum, lass. Is that confetti in yer ‘air?’ a wizened figure, hunched comfortably over a coal fire asked.

‘No, worse luck.’ Nancy regarded Little Ridding’s stationmaster-in-name-only with something like disbelief. ‘How come you’re still alive?’ she asked with her usual crushing directness. ‘You must be at least a hundred.’

‘A ‘undred and one,’ he said with satisfaction. ‘I got a telegram from’t King last year, but I doan’t suppose I’ll get anything this year.’

‘Yes, you will.’ Nancy warmed her hands in front of the fire. ‘I’m going to do a piece on you for the Yorkshire Post. “A Hundred-and-One and Still Going”. It will make a lovely caption. You don’t mind if someone comes to take your photograph, do you?’