Edward came in as she was pouring the tea. For a long time he stood in the doorway, just watching her. Anna moved stiffly, her body rigid, every muscle tensed. If he touched her again, she would throw the scalding contents of the teapot over him, she decided.

Finally he spoke. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

Anna paused, the teapot in her head. She didn’t turn round, or look at him.

‘I should never have behaved like that,’ he went. ‘I know I was drunk, but that’s no excuse for what I did. I hurt you, and I can’t forgive myself for that. I feel so wretchedly ashamed.’

Anna said nothing. She thought about him laughing and singing in the kitchen that morning. He hadn’t sounded like someone consumed with shame.

‘I – I couldn’t help myself,’ Edward said. ‘When I saw that brooch, and those letters – I just saw red. I thought you were hiding something from me.’

‘I wasn’t.’

‘I know that now. I should have trusted you. But I was a jealous fool.’ He was quiet for a long time. When he spoke again, his voice was broken. ‘I remember when I was away in the trenches, the men who got letters from their sweethearts telling them they had met someone else. I used to live in fear that one day I’d get a letter like that from you.’

Anna swung round to face him. Edward’s handsome face was desolate, like a lost child’s. She had never seen him so vulnerable, not even when he was poorly in hospital.

‘I always knew Tom liked you – no, he did,’ he insisted, as she opened her mouth to speak. ‘You might not have been able to see it, but I could. It nearly sent me mad when I had to go off to France and leave you here with him. I felt sure he’d take you away from me. And then when you wrote and told me what a hero he’d been, saving you from the fire and rebuilding this place …’ He lifted his gaze to meet hers. ‘It should have been me here looking after you, not him.’

‘It wasn’t your fault you weren’t here,’ Anna said quietly.

‘That doesn’t matter. The point is, I wasn’t and he was. And there was nothing I could do but watch and wait and hope that he wouldn’t take you away from me.’

‘No one could ever do that,’ Anna said.

‘I know.’ Edward’s mouth curved into the smallest of smiles. ‘I suppose deep in my heart I always knew you weren’t that kind of girl. But over there – well, your mind starts to play tricks on you. The day Tom Franklin got called up was a great relief to me, I can tell you.’

Anna had a sudden picture of herself saying goodbye to Tom at the station three years earlier, the look of wonder and disbelief on his face when he realised she had come to wave him off. He had no one else in the world who cared enough to see him go to war.