Vivian had swung it by suggesting Enid join them; she had after all delivered Mabel, so if anything was to occur Vivian would be in good hands. ‘We can visit Michael too. We should.’

‘Yes, I’d like to.’

He needn’t have worried about her. It turned out she had sailor’s legs, and the crossing had been straightforward. He’d proudly watched her as she kept the excitable Mabel and Freddie in order on the boat, instructing them to breathe deep lungfuls of sea air, laughing as audacious seagulls swept over her head and landed on the railings close by. She’d quietly, firmly squeezed his hand when he’d flinched from their hungry, angry squawking, a sound that would forever remind him of his two journeys to war. She had an air of confidence that enhanced her beauty. She was still turning heads even when she was beyond blooming and was now simply spreading. The journey was important to them both. To them all, even though Mabel might not understand as much yet. This was what he’d promised he’d give Aubrey’s daughter. This at the very least. He hadn’t been able to save the man, but he could acknowledge him. Honour him. They all deserved that.

‘So we’re going to picnic with your daddy,’ he said as he eased himself down next to the children, putting his cane to one side. He was excited to see what the children would make of the French food: baguettes, soft, ripe cheeses, almond pastries.

‘You’re my daddy.’ Mabel’s eyes shadowed, concerned for a moment. Howard wriggled closer to her side, kissed her head. Her silky hair, so like her mother’s, smelt of lavender.

‘True. You know you are a lucky girl to have two daddies. Me and Aubrey. But he came first.’ Howard found it easy to be generous; he had to be, always. He was lucky. More than that. He was jammy, fluky, beyond blessed.

‘Tell me how you became my daddy.’ Mabel stared up, wide-eyed, old enough to know that he found it impossible to resist her pouts and entreaties. Vivian passed around the sweet, sticky lemonade and the hard stick of bread. Freddie grabbed it and swung it like a sword.

‘I’ve told you this story.’

‘Again, again. Tell me again.’ She didn’t yell, but calmly insisted.

‘Well, I was lying in the hospital bed . . .’

‘Getting better from your wounds.’ Mabel pronounced the word with incredible care and an endearing sense of solemnity. She knew this story as well as any bedtime fairy tale, but its familiarity seemed to cause ever-increasing wonder.

‘Getting better from my wounds and reading your mother’s letters, when a huge bomb was dropped on the hospital.’

Both Freddie and Mabel gasped. Even infants understood. Bombing the sick. Indefensible. One of the hundreds of indefensible things that had occurred. Vivian blinked slowly. Enid blanched. Neither woman would ever forget the nightmare that had scorched their lives, threatening to burn the reason for their existences. Vivian knew how things had gone, and that they had gone; these events were in the past. Yet every time he told the story, she was immobilised with the fear that it could have turned out some other way, as though retelling the story might play with the fabric of time and the outcome, so impossibly fortuitous, might be altered into something impossibly bleak.