‘They are away on a short honeymoon – please try to come home to see your grandfather. He is not too well . . .’ The letter continued with news about her mother and Lilian and the farm, but no further mention was made of Danny or Rosie.

Slowly Kate got up from her bed, biting her lip. She knew she had hurt Rosie, but until this moment she had not stopped to think how her absence from their wedding had hurt so many people. Beth Eland and Enid Maine, Rosie’s mother, too. But more than anything she could not bear to think that her stepfather was disappointed in her.

She would apply for leave. She was sure that Philip, understanding and kind, and now knowing the full circumstances, would grant her compassionate leave to go home . . .

‘Get down, Grandad, get down! Do you want to be killed?’

The old man was dancing up and down in front of the window, waving his arms, his bare legs, thin and white, sticking out from under the flapping tails of his night-shirt. ‘You dirty swine! You . . .’ But his expletives were drowned by the roaring of engines as another enemy plane, its swastika plainly visible, swooped by, low and vicious, strafing the front of the farmhouse with a shower of bullets. Kate threw herself at the old man, pushing him to the floor and landing on top of him, knocking the breath out of him. He lay there gasping, but still found the strength to swear volubly. As the plane roared past, there was a rat-a-tat-tat of bullets against the brickwork. Just above them the glass of the window shattered and bullets whistled over their heads to embed themselves in the far wall of the room.

‘There, are you satisfied now?’ she panted. ‘You nearly got us both killed . . .’ Her words were drowned by a loud ‘crump’ which rattled the very foundations of the farmhouse. Every door and window rattled and more glass shattered. Soot billowed from the chimney stack like a black shroud, enveloping them both.

‘Oh my God! That’s a bomb and it’s bloody close.’ Now she was scrambling up, oblivious to further danger.

‘Kate, don’t . . .’ he wheezed, struggling to his feet, but she was out of his room and running through the house. There was glass everywhere. It looked as if every window was shattered. As she passed through the living room, soot covered everything. In the kitchen, pots lay smashed on the floor where they’d been vibrated from the shelf and the door stood drunkenly, half off its hinges.

Kate rushed out into the yard. ‘Mam! Mam!’ She looked wildly about her. Hens were rushing to and fro squawking loudly and flapping their wings in the pretence of flight. From the stable came the whinnying of the frightened horses and hooves struck repeatedly at the door.