‘Oh, Mary, how very generous,’ gasped Peggy.

‘It’s the least I could bring after all you did for me,’ she said, kissing and hugging Peggy and then Cordelia. ‘Let me know when Jim gets back,’ she said. ‘And please keep writing, Peggy. I really love getting all your news.’

‘I’ll walk up to the station with you,’ said Rosie. ‘Ron should be back from exercising the dogs now, so he can organise our lunch.’

Peggy walked with them to the gate and waved goodbye to Mary before they turned up the hill to take the back roads to the station. She looked at her watch and wondered where Fran had got to, but decided she was probably having a lie-in after all the excitement of the previous day.

She sat down and explored the large shopping bag of goodies and exclaimed over the jars of delicious-looking jam. There was blackberry and apple, gooseberry, rhubarb and apple and quince jelly. The honey was clear and golden; the jars of piccalilli and different chutneys positively stuffed with vegetables straight from the farm’s kitchen garden. And at the very bottom was a cooked ham wrapped in muslin.

‘Good lord, will you look at that?’ breathed Peggy. ‘What a wonderful surprise, and so generous.’ She quickly stuffed it all back in the bag. ‘I’d better put everything away in the larder before it spoils in the sun.’

She dashed upstairs and reverently placed the ham on a dish at the very top of her larder, and then quickly put away the jars of jam and pickles with those she’d made herself. The smell of that ham made her mouth water, but she firmly closed the larder door and went back down to the garden, already planning to serve it for tonight’s tea with some of the new potatoes Ron had brought round.

‘Mary’s a lovely girl, isn’t she?’ said Anne. ‘I was already down in Somerset when she came here to live, and so only got to know her through your letters. I seem to remember there was some to-do which involved Rosie, her awful brother, Tommy, and that Eileen who used to live in the flats that got bombed. But you never really explained what it was all about.’

Peggy firmly blocked the dark and painful memories of that time. ‘It’s a complicated story, Anne, and I don’t have the right to tell it. Let’s just be thankful that Mary and Rosie have forged a lovely friendship through what was an extremely difficult time for everyone. Tommy’s out of the picture and Eileen is dead, so that’s an end to it.’

‘Poor Rosie,’ said Cordelia. ‘Tommy was always a ne’er-do-well, and caused no end of upset.’

Anne nodded in agreement. ‘I wouldn’t put it past him to turn up again like the bad penny he’s always been.’

‘Well, he’d have great difficulty in doing that, Anne,’ said Peggy. ‘He was killed on the Normandy beaches. At least Rosie could take some comfort in the knowledge he’d been involved in something worthwhile before he died.’