Ella smiled, although it wasn’t without pain, and Flors realized that what she’d said must have jarred. Nursing didn’t hold good memories for Ella. In the past she’d had to nurse loved ones as well as having terrifying memories of nursing in the Somme and then in Belgium.

The horror of it all returned to Flors at that moment, but she straightened her back and, as if there hadn’t been a pause, announced, ‘Anyway, a nice cup of tea is waiting for us.’

Ella still didn’t speak as they washed their hands together in the huge pot sink. But she did hold on to Flors as they went outside with the laden tray.

The shade that Cyrus and Arnie had built provided a cool respite for them all from the rays of the blistering afternoon sun. This was a time Flors loved normally, when their cares were few; a time when as many of their families as possible met to drink tea or lemonade, and have a break until the sun cooled enough for them to continue their day’s work.

Paulo, Ella’s son, tall for his eighteen years, stood with the sunlight on his back. He reminded Flors of his father, also called Paulo, the lovely French officer Ella had met towards the end of the war and had married soon after it finished. Badly wounded, to the extent that he couldn’t walk, Paulo had eventually succumbed to the agonizing lung condition that was a consequence of the gas attacks in which he had been caught up. But he lived on in his son: that same clean-cut handsomeness, the rakish hair that flopped over his face and the piercing blue eyes. But for all his French looks, Paulo junior had the features of his mother’s Polish Jewish ancestry, too. And this was of grave concern to them all.

‘Don’t do that, Monty.’ Lonia’s voice broke into the silence. ‘You are so annoying.’

Monty pulled Lonia’s ribbon from her hair, leaving her ringlets to cascade over her face – a normal teasing gesture for his age, but one that seemed to cement Flors’s feelings about how Monty was turning out. He never took life seriously: not his studies or his work in the vineyard. He seemed to have no purpose, and his ‘I want, and I will have’ trait reminded Flors of the worst times from her life with her brother, Harold.

The secret that she and Cyrus held from their children reverberated through her. They had never found the courage to tell them they were half-brother and sister. Even now as the thought shook her, Flors felt the familiar fear of anyone finding out. Rowena knew, and of course Ella and Arnie did, and Mags and her husband Jerome. But all others who had known were no longer on this earth.