‘Can I get you a cup of tea?’

‘Am I disturbing you?’ She looked him up and down and turned a bit pink. She probably thought he’d just got out of bed. The state of him. He wouldn’t have answered the door to anyone else, but he hadn’t been able to resist her.

‘I’m writing.’ It was explanation and excuse for his disarray.

‘Oh!’ Her face cracked with interest. ‘A new play?’

‘No.’ She had no idea about the world. No one wanted him to write plays any more. How could she imagine they might? ‘More of a diary, a memoir.’

‘Then I am disturbing you.’ She looked as though she was going to run away.

‘I wasn’t doing that well. It’s nothing that can’t wait.’ At times it seemed his life was an enormous interval. Everyone’s was. The men in the trenches, sweethearts and mothers, politicians and artists were all waiting for the carnage to end. A tea break wouldn’t spoil anything, after all he was only beginning to pick up his pen again after a miserably long period where writing had simply been impossible. When he was Over There he had been paralysed. He’d felt inadequate – as a man, as a writer. The suffering, the carnage, he couldn’t call it his own; how could he presume to capture it? Then, in Richmond, all writing materials were confiscated. He hadn’t minded. He’d felt too helpless, thought the world too hopeless, to record or recall. It was only here in Blackwell that he’d thought perhaps . . . maybe . . . The feeling that he should at least try to document something, evolved into a belief that he could, and solidified into the fact that he must. Somehow, the clean air sluiced and slackened the tangle of depressed thoughts, although his ideas were not flowing consistently yet; he’d sat for two hours this morning and only written a paragraph. His mind jittered and jerked, spluttering ideas like an over-heating machine gun.

She stayed in the living room but didn’t sit down even though he invited her to. He was relieved she hadn’t followed him through to the kitchen. It would be a mistake. She must know the tiny dimensions of the room. They’d practically be on top of one another. She’d be able to smell the sleep on him. He’d be able to smell her soap again. He’d noticed it the minute he opened the door to her. She washed with a cake of Wright’s coal tar soap. Whilst pungent, it wasn’t a feminine, sweet smell; it was sterile, almost antiseptic, but since the war no one had bothered much about perfume in soaps. Resources, naturally, had to go elsewhere.

He took a deep breath, filled the kettle and over the sound of the splashing water on the tin called through to her, ‘I heard Mr Owens got his leave.’

‘Yes, but he returned yesterday.’

‘So soon?’

‘Oh, I don’t imagine they can win this war without him.’ Howard paused for a moment and tried to decipher her meaning. The words were those of a proud and loyal wife; the tone was inscrutable.