‘You did in my day.’ Dora pushed her chair back and pulled the jacket up on her shoulders.

‘Could I explain?’ Barbara said.

‘Explain what?’

‘Why these photographs are important to me. Why I have to know why my mother had them.’

‘I am not interested,’ Dora said. She put her hands in the pocket of her jacket so Barbara could not see her shaking. ‘Nor can I help you. Goodbye.’

‘May we meet again?’

Dora walked out of the door, into the street. She couldn’t – wouldn’t – contemplate how Hummel had come by those photographs.

Jersey: January – May 1943

‘We live a topsy-turvy life,’ Geoffrey said. ‘We farmers. Dawn to dusk, dusk to dawn. Always on duty.’

Back to front, upside down. Dora had never felt like this. It wasn’t just that the days were turned inside out. She was turned inside out, looping the loop, tangled vapour trails across the sky. She understood now what it meant, being head over heels in love, for love somersaulted, bounced. Love was reckless. Breathless.

She wished she could have someone to ask, Is this what it’s always like? It would have to be a special friend who could keep a secret and Dora had no one like that. Certainly not her landlady, Miss Besson, nor the other nurses she lived with. Dora had never felt so alone, or so exhilarated. She saw herself as a rocket blasting into the sky with blazing engines. Excited. Terrified.

Geoffrey had a gramophone. He kept it in the sitting room, but if they left the door open they could still hear the music in the kitchen, the only room he could keep warm now there was no coal. He polished the records before he placed them on the turntable, winding the handle, balancing the needle.

Sang in her ear as he waltzed her round the kitchen table that winter day. The record finished in the room next door.

‘I’ll put another one on,’ Dora said, added, ‘don’t worry. I’ll be careful. I know how to do it. Wind the gramophone first and all that.’

His collection was small and modern. American music. Dance. Nothing like her father’s collection of operas and symphonies. Dora riffled through the records, picked ‘Moonlight Serenade’, pulled it from its cover and picked up the duster to clean it. The fabric was soft, perfect for removing the static and dust, but there was no mistaking. This was one of Geoffrey’s underpants, and Dora blundering into something so intimate. She wanted to laugh, clapped a hand over her mouth in case he heard, guffawed into her fingers. And there he was behind her, taking the garment away and wiping it round the black shellac. He held the record by the edges and lowered it gently onto the turntable.

‘Now you know one of my secrets,’ he said, taking her hand and leading her back into the kitchen.