Thinking of being in her husband’s arms and kissing him made Ada blush; what a thought to have in front of two consecrated nuns!

‘Well, today is all about cooking,’ she announced briskly. ‘I want to feed my husband well, so I thought I’d get some dishes ready in advance. I don’t want to spend every precious minute while Jamie’s home sweating over a stove.’

‘I can give you a meat-and-onion pie to take back; it’ll be all right for a day or two in that nice cool larder of yours, and I could drop off an egg custard and jelly tomorrow if you like?’

‘That would be marvellous,’ Ada smiled. ‘I always said you were an angel,’ she added and planted a kiss on her favourite nun’s wrinkled old cheek. ‘Could I cadge some ground ginger and black treacle to make sticky gingerbread slices, please?’ Ada begged.

Sister Mary Paul nodded, then trotted off to the pantry to find the precious cake ingredients, leaving Ada chatting with Sister Theresa.

‘I’m sure that once he’s home Jamie will want to do some fell-walking,’ Ada said.

Gaping at her friend in disbelief, Theresa cried out incredulously, ‘You can’t possibly be thinking of joining him?’

‘The fresh air will do me good,’ Ada assured her. ‘And I’ll only do what I can.’

Rolling her eyes, Sister Theresa declared, ‘I’d let Dr Jamie be the best judge of that.’

A few days later, as Jamie’s train made its way across Morecambe Bay, chugging slowly over metal tracks built on stout wooden plinths drilled deep into the seabed, his thoughts were only for his wife. Darling, sweetest Ada. How he admired her strength and determination, and how she always faced the future with a brave smile on her beautiful face. As ever, he thought how lucky he was to have her as his wife. Her image was a constant in his mind, as he carried out grim amputations and tended the dying in the Front Line clearing station where conditions had been growing grimmer and grimmer as the Germans made their relentless advances.

Determined to think of only the positives in his life, at least for the time being, Jamie wondered what it would be like to finally share a home with Ada. No more slipping away to the Watendlath farmhouse where they had spent their honeymoon and other subsequent holidays. Now he and Ada could lie in bed late and make breakfast at leisure – in their underwear if they chose, he thought with a broad grin. Gazing out across the wide sweep of the bay with its vast stretch of sparkling golden sand, Jamie willed the train to pick up speed. His heart pounded with excitement as it rattled along the margins of the marsh, filling up fast as the incoming tide swilled into rock pools dumping shrimps, cockles, mussels and aquatic insects for the oystercatchers and avocets to gorge on.