She was happy to hear him, she always was, but she couldn’t talk now, not after what she’d heard. She knew if she asked him to ring back, he’d say to her, What are you doing that’s so important? Why can’t you talk to me now? She couldn’t lie to him, not directly, couldn’t answer him either. She breathed in deep, tried to sound normal.

‘So you’re coming to London,’ Dora said. ‘That would be nice.’

‘Not only coming,’ he said. ‘Moving. I’m rattling round that house with no one for company. The neighbours are not my cup of tea. My children are too busy to visit. And you, Doralein, never set foot outside London unless there’s neon lights.’

‘I don’t like the countryside,’ Dora said. It wasn’t true. She loved it in the abstract, the vistas and the skies, the silence and the dark. But the lowing of cows, the smell of their byre, the houses and hedgerows, they were rambling memories, with burs and thorns.

‘So I gather,’ Charles was saying. ‘There’s another reason. You’ve gone silent on me these last few weeks. Are you all right?’

‘I’m fine,’ Dora said. Charles, more than an acquaintance. Her friend. Her oldest friend, with a hinterland, a shared history. Why didn’t she tell him about Barbara? Why didn’t she tell him about her war, her real war? Not the ersatz war she fed him, mending and making do on Jersey until the British put a stop to it all. Because, she thought, her war didn’t compare to his. She couldn’t march to the Cenotaph every November with the other veterans, ribbons pinned to their lapels, heads bowed in homage to their dead comrades, brave, strong. He could do that, with pride. Sidling off afterwards to the Reform for lunch and reminiscence over claret and roast beef. A good war. That’s what a good war gave you. Freedom. Freedom to choose your memories, to forget, to forge a fresh path. Dora knew plenty of war dead, but women didn’t count in the same way.

‘So when are you going to marry me?’ Charles went on. ‘I’ve proposed twice. I’m keeping count. If I propose a third time, will I be lucky?’

She twisted the telephone cord round her fingers. ‘Let me think about it,’ she said. Dora put the receiver down, shut her eyes. She needed a moment or two before she went back to Barbara.

Truth was, she’d lost her nerve. She was used to loneliness now, solitude. It was her condition. Her decision, that day when the war was over and the world had changed.

Jersey: February 1944 – May 1945

‘I am told that you were a nurse,’ Nurse Hoffmann said.