‘Do you really think you’ll find another man to marry you, with so few of them left?’ Isabel’s voice wavers. It is Isabel who is on the verge of tears now. Harriet has never seen her mother like this.

‘I’m not certain I wish to marry at all.’

Isabel slaps her cheek. ‘Of all the selfish creatures! There are young women desolate out there. Poor girls, whose fiancés died in that dreadful war, and you, you, are turning your nose up at the best match you could possibly hope for when you are in such disgrace. And why? You’ve heard gossip? Is that it?’

Harriet stands squarely to her mother, her cheek stinging. ‘It isn’t gossip. I know it.’

‘You know it? How do you know it?’

Harriet slumps onto the bed. ‘Because I know the woman. I saw her in Selfridges this morning, and she told me that Ralph was her lover.’

‘Nonsense.’

‘It’s true, Mummy. It really is.’ She hangs her head. ‘I can’t bear it…’ What it is she cannot bear she has no way of describing to her mother. Her part in Ruby’s expulsion from the Forties, the way Ruby had spoken to her, as well as Ralph’s betrayal. Ruby. All of it.

Two fat tears form in Isabel’s eyes. She brushes them away and sits beside her daughter. She picks up Harriet’s hand and strokes her daughter’s knuckles in silence.

‘He was supposed to be marrying me in July,’ Harriet says eventually. ‘But he might even be with her now. He won’t want to bring the wedding forward – even if that is what you and Daddy decide.’

‘She will mean nothing to him,’ Isabel says, sniffing, her profile proud in the light coming in from the window. ‘She will be a distant dream, if that. And you, Harriet, will be the wife at his side, the mother of his children, the support that he needs, the one he turns to for counsel every day. You.’

‘I don’t think I want to live my life wondering who he is picking up in nightclubs or taking to hotel rooms. I always expected that I would marry a man who would respect me, love me, cherish me, like Daddy cherishes you.’

Isabel’s head dips only a little.

‘Please tell me that Daddy has never been like that. That he has never…’

Isabel crosses her ankles and sits a little taller. ‘Of course not. Your father is a man of great scruple.’

They sit in silence again. Isabel pats her daughter’s hand one last time and stands. She then turns back to regard her from the door.