The Remembrance Sunday ceremony always started at the outdoor war memorial in the square, then moved into the church. I was getting ready to leave for this, twisting up the front of my hair and fastening it with a jade comb, when Zac slipped his hands beneath my knitted dress. Before I knew it, he was tipping me back onto the bed and I was pulling him on top of me and there was a pile of sea-green wool on the floor.

Afterwards, when I stood in front of the looking glass to try again with my hair, he pressed against me from behind, wrapped his arms around me, and rested his hands on my belly. He whispered that he knew my period was two weeks late and my breasts were bigger, which he loved. I wondered that he could know these things, that he could be watching my body that carefully.

I had loved my brief time of hugging the secret of a pregnancy close and just for me. My breasts had been tingling for the past few days. Little electric sparks shot through them. I’d planned to share the news with him tomorrow, on his birthday.

So I said my period had a tendency to skip around, and my breasts were the same as ever, and it was too early to tell, and he smiled at our reflections and said, ‘Then we will see.’

When Zac and I arrived at the war memorial, we found Peggy and James waiting for us close to the Cross of Sacrifice. Peggy invariably got there early on Remembrance Sunday, because she liked to have a good view of the ceremony. She was resplendent in a white fur Cossack hat and scarlet coat.

Zac put his mouth by my ear. ‘She looks like a giant poppy,’ he said, and I nearly sprayed the mouthful of the takeaway coffee I’d just sipped.

James stood beside Peggy, his silver hair sticking up, straight-backed as ever in his black greatcoat and red scarf. He was his usual quiet self, and gave me his usual kiss on the cheek with his usual near-smile, and made his usual half-joke that he was still waiting for me to come back to the pharmacy to work for him again. Peggy put on a display of exaggerated patience as she allowed James to finish, then threw her arms around me.

Zac reached into his coat pocket and produced a wooden cross. Two names were already written on it, in his precise, perfectly controlled lettering. Edward Lawrence, RAF. Matilda Lawrence.

‘You are lovely.’ I put a hand to his cheek. ‘Thank you.’

‘That was thoughtful.’ Peggy tried to smile at Zac but managed only a stiff movement of the upper corners of her mouth. She beamed warmth democratically on everyone – waiters, people behind supermarket tills, neighbours. Zac was the one person for whom she could muster nothing more than cold politeness.