‘My name is Dorothy.’ Dorothea, but she didn’t say that. ‘My father always called me Dora.’

‘Dora,’ he said. ‘I like that.’

Tock, tock.

There were some logs in a basket. She fed the Aga. The hospital had heavy iron radiators that pumped heat and warmth throughout, like the old apartment in Charlottenburg. This stove just warmed one room.

‘Can I make you some more tea?’ she said. He nodded. There was a large brown pot on the dresser nearby and the tea jar was on the shelf. She opened the lid, smelled it. Real tea. She scooped some into the pot, poured on the water, turned the teapot three times. They stirred it in England, but she preferred this gentler German method.

‘Milk’s in the larder,’ Geoffrey said. ‘And some cake.’

She was glad of that. She’d missed tea, and supper, and her stomach felt hollow and empty. She wondered if Geoffrey had eaten. She poured the tea, added the milk, handed a cup to Geoffrey. Dollops of cream floated on the top. She wondered if she’d ever get used to drinking tea with milk, but people thought it odd to drink it black and she didn’t want to draw attention to herself more than was necessary.

Dora settled into the chair on the other side of the fire. She would have pulled her cape around her, but it was still damp.

Geoffrey dozed off after a while. She watched him opposite her, putt-putting in his sleep, she a soft companion to his softer silence.

Dora slipped away in an amethyst dawn. The storm had blown itself out, left the sky opaque and tender and the earth with a trail of branches and scattered leaves. By day, Dora could see how the house was set in a dip on the cliff, in the face of the wind, overlooking the escarpment and its spinney of gnarled trees and, through it, the beach fenced off with the deadly bracken of barbed wire. The sea still moiled from the tempest, the waves breaking on the shore with a rhythmic roar, but beyond, the ocean and its cupola of sky melted into one and soared to eternity.

Dora stood for a moment and breathed in the briny air. She wrapped her cape round her arms and set off, sidestepping the puddles and debris of the storm. The back roads were tricky, but after St Martin the route was clearer.

She passed some children on their way to school. They were thin, knees red with cold, knobbly and undernourished. Lots of the schools had been commandeered by the Germans, Dora knew, and the children had to walk farther to their new classrooms. She wondered how many had had breakfast that morning, how many mothers had gone without.

‘You must eat too,’ Dora would say. ‘If anything happened to you, what would the children do?’