Rosie looked up at her friend, who had just come off-duty. ‘Naw, Freda. I were having a to-do in me brain.’

Freda laughed. ‘If I know you for a hundred years, Rosie, I’ll never cease to find you funny. It’s your sayings. A “to-do” in your brain? What’s that, when it’s at home?’

Rosie laughed, too. ‘You knaw: when you’re trying to solve a problem and you knaw you should do one thing, but you really want to do another.’

‘Yes, I know. Is this over you wanting to serve abroad?’

‘Aye.’

‘Rosie, it isn’t all that’s bothering you, is it?’

‘Don’t ask, Freda. I’m trying me best to ignore that part of me.’

‘It’s Albie, isn’t it? The German POW brought in with appendicitis. I know how you feel. I’ve known these last months, since he first came in when his plane ditched in the sea.’

‘Did it show?’

‘Not to anyone else, but since we have become closer, I could see what was happening, where Albie was concerned. Meeting him struck you like a bullet. Look, if it helps, he’s being moved from surgical to medical, so you’ll be caring for him. Though prepare yourself, as he isn’t well.’

‘What? Why?’

‘His appendix burst and he has peritonitis. He’ll probably be in your high-dependency beds when you get back from your break.’

‘Eeh, naw.’

‘Look, Rosie, take some advice from me, and try your hardest not to show how you feel.’

‘I don’t have to be told, Freda. I’m well aware of how folk look on fraternizing. I’ll get back now, but I don’t mind telling you, I hope I’m assigned to give Albrecht special care. I can’t bear to think of anyone but me doing it. Not that I don’t trust them to give him the best of care, but things have changed a bit since the beginning, when the German pilots were first brought in. A lot of folk have lost brothers and sons, husbands and fiancés, and there was that bomb in the town. Attitudes towards the Germans around here are changing.’

‘You’re right, they are – and you can’t blame people. Most of us knew the girl who was blown to smithereens a couple of weeks ago. And then there’s that pilot who is terrifying everyone. He flew as low as three hundred feet the other day. Mrs Davis was hanging out her washing and she saw his face as clear as day. She thought he was going to shoot her, but he just stuck his tongue out at her. Pig!’