She had come away with him.

The thought made him shake his head with delighted incredulity. Just like that. A token of resistance but nothing more. It was a brave and fantastic thing, when you thought about it.

He’d telephoned ahead to a small but smart hotel near the Warrington Playhouse and made a reservation in the name of Mr and Mrs Henderson. He’d considered using a pseudonym, Smith or Jones; it would have been more sensible and circumspect. He was notorious enough not to want to attract attention at the best of times, least of all when he was running around with another man’s wife. A mixture of pride and mulishness made him decide against it. It was wrong that society dictated that sleaze and scandal must follow them wherever they went, since when he was with her he felt pure, unalloyed joy. He felt magnificent, munificent and alert. He would not capitulate, not entirely. Besides, he liked the idea of calling her Mrs Henderson. That impossible thing.

They sat opposite one another for the first leg of the journey. She remained straight-backed and formal, except when she caught his eye, then she beamed or put her hand to her mouth in a mock gasp. ‘What?’ he asked.

‘I’m not at all lonely.’

He understood: they were a couple alone and yet not lonely. They had stepped outside society. People in love did. It didn’t seem strange. He distracted himself from the intensity of his happiness by looking out of the window. It always seemed to Howard that everything and everyone in this brave little country was holding their breath, simply waiting for the war to end; even the small farmhouses exuded a sense of grim endurance; sagging grey hamlets begged for peace. Only the sheep were disinterested, unaware, and now – at least temporarily – he and Vivian too.

They had a forty-five-minute wait at Derby; they scoured the platform for familiar, unwanted faces, but there were none. He bought her a quarter of red boiled sweets, then he helped her on to the train, which meant he was able to hold her arm. Touching her in public was a privilege and caused a surge of gladness to carouse through his body. Just that, his fingertips on her elbow. This time she chose to sit next to him, and as the train juddered and clattered towards London, through countless increasingly dimly lit stations, she sometimes rested her head on his shoulder. He liked it best when they went through a tunnel or cut through the high sides of an embankment and were temporarily thrown into darkness. They used the cloak to steal kisses. He didn’t care where they landed: her lips, her eyelids, her nose. It was all the same to him.

They arrived in London at ten and neither wanted to go out to eat. That appetite was second. They made love until they were both weak and exhausted. When they needed to sleep, they didn’t; they climbed on one another again, skin slipping over skin, pink flesh pushing hard, up, over, in. Eventually they lost consciousness in the early hours and slept entwined in one another’s arms.