He scowled and grunted, and then eyed the little car. ‘Is very small,’ he grumbled. ‘I not fit in that.’

‘Bessie is big enough to take you and the wheelchair,’ she retorted.

He eyed her quizzically. ‘Bessie? You give the car a name?’

‘Yes,’ she said firmly.

He broke into a chuckle. ‘I will never understand you women,’ he said. ‘But if I can fit into that, it will be a miracle.’

Danuta was actually having second thoughts herself, but was determined not to let him see that. She wheeled the chair down to the car, and then came back to steady him as he slowly negotiated the ramp.

Opening the car door, she waited for him to position himself and then lower his rump onto the seat – which he did with an alarming thud that rocked the little car and made the springs complain.

Trying not to think about the damage he might be doing to her precious Bessie, she took the sticks from him, then lifted up his legs and tucked them into the well beneath the dashboard. It was a tight fit, for his head touched the roof, he took up one and a half seats, and his prosthetic knee-joints had to stay bent even with the seat ramped back as far as it would go.

‘I feel as if I am ship in bottle,’ he grumbled. ‘I hope we not go too far.’

Danuta closed the door on his grumbling and quickly folded up the wheelchair to put into the boot. It wouldn’t fit, no matter which way she tried, and she was almost at the point of giving up when a helpful porter came along with some rope and lashed the boot handle to the back bumper.

Thanking him profusely, she climbed into the car, found she was squashed between the door and Stanislaw and had to wriggle about to get comfortable behind the steering wheel. The handbrake was digging into Stanislaw’s bottom, and when she released it, he sighed gratefully.

‘I hope we are not going far,’ said Stanislaw. ‘We are like beans in a can, and it is very hot in here.’

‘Then we must open the windows,’ she said, winding hers down. They were indeed like beans in a can, she realised as she drove away from the recuperation centre, but it was just something they’d have to get used to if he wasn’t to be stuck at Cliffe every day.

‘Where are we going?’ he asked as she turned out of the driveway onto the country road.

‘You’ll find out any minute now,’ she replied, the excitement bubbling up inside her.

Stanislaw folded his arms. ‘We will have lunch there?’ he asked hopefully.

‘Probably not,’ she admitted. ‘But then you must have only just had breakfast.’ She drove past the fields where a farmer was ploughing to the accompaniment of a flock of seagulls, and then slowed to turn off through the open gates leading to the airfield.

‘Why we come here?’ he demanded, shifting in his seat and making the springs twang.