Geoffrey climbed into bed and pulled the blankets up to his chin. He was an easy man and never complained. Some men got difficult in their dotage, but not Geoffrey. Joe had looked after him for decades now and wasn’t sure what he would do were Geoffrey to die tomorrow. He was fond of him, loved him even, though that could be misconstrued, he knew, and there were gossips in Gorey who eyed the pair of them with disgust.

‘I’d like to see Dora again,’ Geoffrey said. ‘Before I die.’ He reached for his hearing aid. He seemed far from sleepy and the drink had made him talkative. Joe had no idea that he’d really loved the nurse, and that made the matter a whole lot worse.

‘Don’t get your hopes up, old man,’ Joe said. ‘It may not be her.’

‘And people change,’ Geoffrey said.

‘They do change, that’s for sure.’

‘I’ve thought about nothing else but her.’

‘Sure you have,’ Joe said. But Geoffrey had never shared this with Joe, until now. Joe had wondered, all those years ago in the war, whether the nurse had been his proper sweetheart but had put it out of his mind once the war was over. Joe reasoned that if they’d been sweethearts, Geoffrey would have said something. It could all be part of his own imagining, Joe told himself, and imagining had got him into no end of difficulty.

‘So why did you never look for her?’ Joe said.

Geoffrey squinted. ‘What’s that?’

He adjusted his hearing aid as Joe leaned forward and repeated himself loudly.

Geoffrey shook his head. ‘I thought she was dead,’ he said. ‘I grieved for her. I died for her every day for forty years.’ He pulled out his handkerchief and wiped his eyes. ‘I didn’t know where to begin then. The world was such a muddle in 1945 and I was broken.’

And all along Joe had had her details, without realising it.

‘You see, Joe,’ Geoffrey said, looking up at him with rheumy eyes. ‘She was Jewish.’

Joe took a moment to absorb the news. He’d never imagined that. No wonder the old man was so excited by the prospect of Dora, for wasn’t it a resurrection?

What could Joe tell Geoffrey now? It would have broken his heart.

Jersey: April – May 1943

‘By the way,’ Pierre said, not long after Joe had re-opened the boxing club. ‘Do you want company on your birdwatching?’

‘You?’

‘No. A friend of mine would like to meet you. Bit lonely. Could do with getting out a bit.’