She stood still, her heart pounding.

The dogs ran in circles around her and then, ever friendly, raced off towards Adam, barking at full throttle and with tails wagging.

He stopped a few feet away from her. Though she hadn’t noticed, it had started to snow again and there were snowflakes on his cap and eyelashes.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said simply. ‘So very sorry.’

He cleared his throat and then said, ‘Thank you. I got your letter. It was kind of you to write.’

She didn’t know what else to say. He looked terrible. His strong-boned face was drawn and haggard, his eyes bleak.

In the end she said, ‘Have you been to the house? Have you spoken to my father?’

He nodded, and as she began to walk again he fell into step beside her. ‘Yes. You’ve done a remarkable job. Your father gave me a tour of the wards. All your patients sang your praises.’

A flush of colour touched her cheeks. ‘They all just need somewhere in calm surroundings where they can adjust to the reality of what has happened to them. Most of them will never be able to work again, or certainly not in the way they used to.’

She didn’t mention his DSO or congratulate him on it. Somehow she didn’t think he would want her to. Instead she said, ‘Where have you been fighting?’

Beneath his cap, hair the colour of fire curled low in the nape of his neck. She wondered how long he had been on leave.

‘Flanders,’ he said. ‘Ypres.’

She said nothing, because there was nothing she could say. She knew from her nursing experience that the horrors experienced at the Front were so beyond all imagining they couldn’t be shared with anyone other than a fellow Tommy.

Compacted snow crackled beneath their booted feet and every now and again a powdering of snow fell from the branches of near by trees.

‘Your father tells me it’s known at St Dunstan’s that your husband is German.’

‘Yes.’

He wasn’t looking at her. They had come to the part of the river that ran through Shuttleworth Hall’s parkland and as they turned away from it, beginning to walk towards the snow-covered lawns, he said, ‘That must have been difficult for Max.’

‘Yes,’ she said again.

He came to a halt.

‘Have you thought how difficult it’s going to be when the war is over, Vicky?’

She stopped a yard or so in front of him and turned to face him.

‘In what way?’ she asked, noticing there was a deep scar running through his left eyebrow. A scar that hadn’t previously been there.

‘For your husband.’

Her eyes widened, startled.

‘He’s a Remer of the House of Remer, isn’t he?’

She nodded, aware of a bubble of fear beginning to rise in her throat.

He was looking at her now, his eyes holding hers. ‘The Allies are going to win this war, Vicky, and when it’s over there will be war trials. Have you thought of that?’