‘I’m going to come here when I go to school,’ Nancy announced to the world at large, looking approvingly around at St Dunstan’s magnificently impressive Great Hall.

‘You can’t, silly,’ Max said, as his mother and grandfather seated themselves on the chairs he had saved for them, his mother a little reluctantly he thought. ‘Only boys can come to St Dunstan’s. You’re going to have to go somewhere else.’

‘Well, I won’t.’ For a four-year-old, Nancy had very definite ideas and a very strong will. ‘If I want to come here, I will.’ She wriggled onto her chair, saying to Vicky. ‘Tell him I’m coming here, Mama. Tell him.’

‘I see the headmaster has lost no time in adding DSO after Adam’s name on the Old Boys’ Board of Honour,’ Arthur Hudson said, wondering for how long his bulk was going to be comfortable seated on a wooden chair. ‘William will be pleased. These things matter to a man with an only son.’

Suddenly, a line of gowned and mortar-boarded figures began to make their way onto the platform and, as everyone in the main body of the hall rose to their feet, Vicky saw Adam step onto it with them. He was in uniform, his medal clearly displayed.

St Dunstan’s Upper School pupils were seated in a long phalanx down the left side of the hall and the Preparatory School pupils in a similar phalanx down the right side. At Adam’s appearance there was a rustle of excitement from their ranks and murmurs of admiration.

He took his place next to the headmaster. His hair was shorter than it had been when she had seen him last, but was still visible beneath his cap. Against the black of the gowns and mortar boards the red was so distinctive it seemed to sizzle.

The opening hymn was William Blake’s ‘Jerusalem’.

‘And did those feet, in ancient time…she sang, trying to avoid catching his eye.

She failed.

He gave a nod of recognition and a hint of a smile.

‘Walk upon England’s mountains green…’ she sang, her heart fluttering somewhere up in her throat.

As the hymn came to an end and the prize-giving proper got under way, she fiercely reminded herself that she had experienced a similar kind of foolishness once before. On the first evening of her twenty-first-birthday trip to Berlin, Berthold too, with his sweet smile and gentle manner, had had the most extraordinary effect on her. Those awakenings of passion had, however, never fully flowered. Much as he loved her and she him, deep sexual need had never played a part in their relationship. Theirs had been a young love, inexperienced and naive—and because of Berthold’s passive nature it had remained inexperienced and naive.

Where Adam Priestley was concerned things would be very, very different. Except, of course, not only was she married to a man she would never willingly hurt, she was also innately honourable. As was Adam Priestley. And as well as instinctively knowing that he was not the kind of man to pursue an affair with a married woman, she knew that he had loved his wife deeply and was still grieving for her.