I reached for it, but she kept hold of the corner and in a desperate voice said, ‘I’m sorry. I know how badly you want to go, but I hope they don’t need you, darling.’

I opened the envelope carefully, raced down the letter searching for the words accepted or rejected, but saw neither. Confused, I read through it quickly until reaching the line: Report for duty . . .

Overloaded with emotion, I couldn’t speak and felt a tear trickle down my cheek.

‘Oh, Gertie, I’m terribly sorry.’

‘I got in, Mother. I made the grade.’

‘Oh!’ Mother pressed her hands against her heart and stared at me, her only remaining child. She scooped me into her arms with the fiercest hug, then raced out of the door.

I went to the kitchen window and saw her standing beside the wicker laundry basket, staring across the landscape, fists balled at her sides. She picked up a pillowcase but the wind caught it, blew it across the garden until it lay pinned vertically to the hedge. Mother hurried after it, peeled the pillowcase off the laburnum, then she grasped it against her breast and rocked from side to side. I knew she was crying.

Over the next week, I had my typhoid and tetanus injections, and a smallpox inoculation that produced a horrible scab like Arthur’s, and made me feel wretched. Life at home became difficult – my damp-eyed mother hugged me too often, Father hardly spoke. Mother knitted mittens, socks, and balaclavas at a furious rate, as if the more soldiers’ feet she saved from trench foot, the more favour she would gain with God to keep her daughter safe.

*

My application to assist the Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Military Nursing Service was approved. Orders arrived telling me to join the hundred and one qualified medical staff on HMHS Britannic, in a few weeks’ time. It is impossible to describe how thrilled I was.

When I broke the news to my parents over dinner, Father finally snapped.

‘Right, young woman. You learn to swim before you go anywhere near that ship, otherwise I’ll make you a ward of the court and you won’t be going anywhere until you’re twenty-one. Do you understand me?’

In dismay, I stared across the table at Mother who lowered her eyes and passed the gravy boat. Neither of them knew I’d lied about my age in order to be accepted in the VAD. ‘But how shall I learn to swim? Can you swim, Mother?’ I asked, breaking the silence.

‘What a ridiculous question, of course not.’

‘I’ll teach you, Gertie,’ Father said, sticking a finger inside his starched collar and giving it a tug. ‘Do you have something appropriate to wear?’

I felt the heat of a blush in my cheeks.