‘Are you all right, darling? You seem sad suddenly.’

He looks at her open and still guileless face. ‘Oh, just middle-aged angst…you know…if you could have your life again the things you would change. The things you would undo.’

‘What would you change, Alex? An army life?’

‘Maybe. Or a less selfish life. A more secure and settled life for you.’

Beattie comes back into the room. ‘You’re talking rubbish. I’ve had a wonderful life. So have the girls. How many women get to be a general’s wife with all the privileges? Now get your letters written and walk the dogs and come to bed.’

She kisses his nose and he catches hold of her hands. ‘You always were the strong one, Beattie. A general’s wife had to be his PA, admin officer and a hundred things besides. I got there with your help; because of you…’

‘Piffle! This is so unlike you. You were fiercely ambitious, even when I first met you…’

She stops, remembering his sudden breakdown after Malaya. He had still been recovering from the accident that killed David Montrose and the tragedy of that poor child tipped him over the edge. That poor Montrose woman. It is a time neither of them ever refers to. She had to cover for Alex for months or he would have been discharged or deemed medically unfit to fly. As it was he had abruptly given up flying and changed regiments.

‘Don’t be long. You look tired,’ she says, all at once feeling anxious.

‘I won’t. Good night, Beattie…God bless,’ he adds softly.

He pours himself another whisky and swivels his chair round to his desk. He writes four letters, seals the envelopes and lays them neatly in formation on the wooden surface.

He finishes the bottle of whisky and then with unsteady fingers pulls the newspaper towards him. He turns to the page and he is back in the horror of that time and place in Malaya.

So small the grave.

He unlocks the small drawer in his desk, closes the French windows, calls his dogs and lets himself out of the back door. He walks down the lane that runs past the house towards the wood. He moves without a torch, deep into the heart of it; he knows the paths by heart and heads towards the river. The dogs, surprised at this change of routine, shuffle happily beside him sensing rabbits.

The man is not in the woods of the English countryside but back in the heat and smell of that place and that time. The heat, the beautiful laughing man wrapped around white linen sheets under a mosquito net, their limbs entwined. Their flying suits thrown off, in a heap on the polished floor. They are abandoned in the supposedly empty house. Wife and children are at the dentist. The Amah is on her day off.

They are unaware of the sick child, not at the dentist but waking beside her sleeping amah. She calls out suddenly from the other side of the mosquito net, grizzly with fever, waking them. Thank God, only waking them.