‘A year, from October 1914.’

She sighed and turned to lie flat on her back, the sheet pulled up only as far as her waist. She was satisfied to note that his eyes rested on her breasts. He stubbed out his cigarette and kissed a nipple slowly.

‘What did you do? Day to day? I understand that your friend was reporting, but what about you?’

‘I talked to the soldiers, helped Basil gather information, and then, when it was needed, I did what I could for the wounded.’

‘You’re not a doctor.’

‘No. I fetched them water and morphine. I carried them on stretchers. Dug their graves.’ He fell on to his back too as he delivered that last sentence.

Vivian wondered whether he still thought she judged him. Condemned him for not fighting. She remembered his face as he took the feather from that bossy bitch in the street. He was ashen, shocked, horrified. At the woman? At himself? She wanted to convince him of her loyalty. It was a straightforward, un-thought-through loyalty: she loved him and so wanted to be nice to him. She did not care too much if she agreed with him, or if it was morally ugly to be loyal to one man while married to another. None of that mattered to her.

‘It seems so unfair that all the time Aubrey was in service but stationed in England, you were out there actually doing something, and yet he is seen as a hero and you are vilified and despised.’

‘He’s out there now, though, isn’t he, and I’m here with you, which is hardly fair. I can’t think badly of the man. It does you no credit to do so either.’

Vivian felt chastised. He thought so deeply about everything. ‘Why must you be so honourable? I’m just saying that you might have joined up and not been sent away. Or you could have got yourself a job in a mine or shipbuilding, just before the recruiters came to town. Plenty did.’ Thus circumventing a need to declare oneself a pacifist, or go on trial. ‘There are ways to avoid the war that would have caused you less trouble.’

‘Only a few ways, and none of them honourable. Besides, your husband wasn’t trying to avoid the war, was he?’

Vivian sighed and admitted, ‘No. He was not. He volunteered almost instantly. They just didn’t send him to the Front for such a long time.’

‘Well, then.’

‘Well.’

She found it uncomfortable that her lover insisted on thinking the best of her husband. Howard saw Aubrey as a soldier and therefore was obligated to respect him. Vivian saw Aubrey as a man, a cold, clumsy, inaccessible man, and could not respect him, certainly not love him. Obligation be damned. She had tried. Failed.

She rolled on to her side again and kissed the freckles on his shoulder. ‘What was it like, really?’ she asked again, nudging closer to him, her breast pushing into his arm.