‘I’m glad you see it that way, sir.’ He paused, his keen eyes searching Jonathan’s face. ‘So may I take it,’ he added quietly, ‘that you will be reporting back to your unit in the very near future?’

Jonathan nodded. ‘Yes, officer, you may.’

‘Perhaps you’d call in at the station when you go for the train?’ He paused, glanced towards Esther, and back again to Jonathan. ‘Shall we say in a couple of hours?’ There was sympathetic understanding in his tone, but nevertheless an underlying firmness.

Esther gave a little cry and her hand fluttered to her mouth to still the sound. She watched, wide-eyed, as Jonathan slowly nodded agreement.

‘I’ll bid you good day then, sir.’ The policeman touched his forefinger to his helmet in a gesture of farewell, nodded to Esther and turned away.

As the man mounted his bicycle and rode off, a little unsteadily, Esther could contain her anger no longer.

‘How dare he? How dare he come here . . . ?’ She was shaking with fear. Fear that the moment she had dreaded had come. Now Jonathan would leave her.

Jonathan put his arms about her. ‘Don’t, my darling, it had to come.’ He put into words her dread. ‘We both knew that one day I would have to go. I’m lucky it was not the military who came looking for me. They would have arrested me on the spot.’

‘Why?’ she cried. ‘You’ve done nothing wrong? They—’

‘Esther, my darling. I should have gone back weeks ago. But I—’ His voice broke with emotion and he buried his face in her neck, his words becoming muffled. ‘I couldn’t tear myself away from you.’

‘You mean – you mean you’ll be in trouble when you get back?’

Jonathan did not answer her.

She tightened her arms about him, as she realized at last how much he did love her. He loved her just as much as she loved him. She knew what it must have cost this man in terms of pride and principle to have overstayed his term of sick leave and run the risk of being put on a charge.

‘Oh, my love, my darling,’ she murmured.

At that moment over his shoulder, parked a little way along the lane Esther saw a pony and trap. Sitting in the trap were two women, one tall and stout and the other thin and angular.

Esther stiffened and as Jonathan lifted his head to look at her, she gave a low growl of rage and tore herself from his grasp. She was running across the yard, her skirts held up in one hand and shaking her other fist and yelling at the two women in the trap.

‘You bitch! You fat old beezum, Martha Willoughby. And you, Flo Jenkins, you wizened old maid—’