He stopped reading, his voice choked. ‘Sixty thousand, Vicky. In one day. And that is only the first day of the campaign. How many dead and injured are there going to be by the time it ends?’

Overcome with emotion he shielded his eyes with his hands and then, not speaking again, rose to his feet and unsteadily left the room.

The agony of the Somme ground on all through the summer and into early autumn, and when it was over British casualties numbered 450,000. All that had been gained was a tiny tongue of ground just over a mile deep.

Whether Adam Priestley was one of the many thousands who had endured the horrors of the fruitless campaign she had no way of knowing. She only knew he hadn’t died during it, for if he had, Violet, a close friend of Adam’s parents, would most certainly have told her.

Berthold’s Christmas letter was despairing.

Dearest darling,

How can it be that we have already been separated for over two years? There is no good war news, only bad. Zelda had another daughter a few months ago and she and all the children are at SN. J works ceaselessly. I do my best to be a support to him, Wastl my only companion. Write me news of the boys and Nancy. Is Paul still captain of his House rugby team? How is Max enjoying St Dunstan’s? And is Hugo still being patient with Nancy and not cross with her when she follows him everywhere? I miss you more than words can say.

Your loving and lonely husband, B

She put it with all his other letters in her sandalwood box, wondering what name Zelda had given her new baby, knowing it must be a very German name for Berthold to have been so mindful of the censor to have included it. The censor’s looming presence made all their letters to each other inadequate and stilted. He could not call her his Liebchen and nor could he tell her any real news. She wanted to know what he was doing to ‘support’ Josef. She wanted to know what Josef was doing. And the only real information she had was the useless fact that Zelda and her children were sitting out the war at Schloss Niedernhall.

Work was her salvation. As a convalescent home, Shuttleworth Hall never had an empty bed.

None of the patients with her was ill in the sense of being sick. All were recovering from the loss of limbs or attempting to adjust themselves to blindness. Right from the beginning she had worked hard to create an atmosphere of camaraderie, almost—though she knew it would seem strange to some people—a house-party atmosphere. Paul, Max and Hugo had never been shielded from the hideous injuries some of the men had sustained. They simply accepted the patients as they were, disabilities included. Pity was not an emotion she allowed. She was fiercely convinced her patients didn’t need it.

‘They need to feel normal,’ she said time and again to her little band of staff. ‘They need to feel they still fit into society; that their lives aren’t over. Pity isn’t a help to them, so please don’t give it.’