I shouldn’t even hesitate – Peter is quite capable of living in the mess for a while. She was being selfish. Her life was being interrupted again. She had just got a part-time job in the army library – not much, but something – and she was tutoring privately, A-level English. She had waited all her life to do something in her own right.

It seemed to Laura that she had led a life full of halted expectations. A hundred homes, a million coffee mornings and dinner nights saying and doing the right things. Being nice to people she often had nothing in common with, because it helped smooth the way for Peter’s career.

Peter had never asked her to do anything she was not happy with, but it was what she expected of herself. Behind her back Laura had sometimes been accused of being the one with the ambition. She felt no resentment while she was doing what was expected of an army wife. It was when she looked back; looked behind her at the years since the children had left and remembered the thrill of her degree. Now it seemed a faded and rather pointless piece of paper. Like something secret or precious placed in a drawer and years later drawn out with only the shadow of a memory of why it had been so important.

Laura was not so selfish that she did not ache for her daughter or grieve herself for the loss of a young life. But she could not live Fleur’s life for her. She could not take David’s sudden death or the aftermath from her. She could not make this terrible tragedy go away. Fleur had two dependent children. She was responsible for them. She was a grown-up. Laura and Peter could not take this hurt away.

David was no longer here to make all the decisions, to shelter her, like her father had, from all that she did not like. Grow up. Please grow up and show us what you are made of. Surprise me. Make me wrong. Make me proud of you.

Laura walked towards the twins and Fergus. In the night Saffie sucked her thumb and cried out for Ah Heng. Nikki lay for hours with her knees drawn up to her chin, motionless. Turning, she caught Peter’s eye across the garden. He was signalling that one of them should go and see where Fleur had got to. Laura smiled. Peter, despite the dangerous and thankless job he was doing, was still the gentlest man she knew.

At that moment Fleur emerged from the house. She looked so young, and despite her thinness and the sallowness of her dark skin she was effortlessly beautiful, her movements languid and graceful. The twins, with a small cry of joy, left Fergus and ran across the lawn towards her. Laura felt love for her daughter well up inside her. I’m hard on her. I always have been. Did I want another son?

She smiled at Fleur. ‘Darling, are you all right?’