‘Of course I understand the pull of one’s country. I’m sure I’d feel the same if I was forced to live in exile. But you’ve been through enough, Danuta, and the thought of you endangering your life again fills me with dread.’

Danuta dried her hands and put her arms gently round Peggy’s neck to kiss her cheek. ‘I will of course think very long and hard before I decide what is best,’ she murmured. ‘Now, I must go to bed. I am tired.’

Despite the bone-aching weariness that consumed her, Danuta lay awake long after the house had settled for the night, the heartbreaking images of the people and places she’d left behind etched in her mind. Her home had been bombed, the pleasant, wealthy neighbourhood she’d grown up in utterly destroyed, the residents scattered.

She and the remnants of her family had been forced to rent a cold-water flat in Warsaw where they were subjected to frequent searches by the Gestapo, and had to witness many of their neighbours being rounded up and loaded into trucks, never to be seen again. The bitter winter combined with starvation and disease had taken its toll, and Danuta had buried her loved ones in the iron-hard ground before leaving to fight with the resistance. She’d continued to work with them, learning skills that would prove useful much later.

And then she’d helplessly witnessed the Germans slaughter her comrades and her lover, Jean-Luc. She’d escaped the same fate merely by chance, and knowing she was carrying Jean-Luc’s baby, she’d taken the long, perilous journey through Europe to find sanctuary with her brother in England.

It had been to no avail, for her baby and her brother now lay at rest in St Cuthbert’s churchyard.

She reached for the gold medallion Aleksy had given her and, clutching it to her heart, she rolled onto her side to look at the faded photographs that had survived her escape from Poland. Her family had been destroyed by this war and she was the only one left to remember them. If she went home and fell into Russian hands, they would soon discover that she’d been sought by the Germans for her work with the resistance, and death would follow – if she was lucky. Once she was gone, their family with its long history would be obliterated from memory.

Danuta gave a soft, tremulous sigh. She’d fought hard all through the war for the right to be free, and knew better than most how precious that freedom was, and how tenuous life could be. To disregard those precious gifts and endanger everything she’d striven for since leaving home would be an insult to those who’d perished. Her war was over, her fighting done.

Danuta turned out the light and closed her eyes. She would live the life she’d been granted, and fulfil the hopes and dreams of those who’d loved her, and whose spirits still walked beside her. It was the only gift she could give them.