He found George waiting outside for him and dropped into the passenger seat of the car, looking dazed.

‘Railway station is it then?’ When Tom shook his head, George frowned. ‘Where then?’

‘Home,’ Tom told him with a broad smile. ‘I’ve been classed as unfit so this is the end of the war for me. I just wish to God that it was for the rest of the chaps still fighting, God bless them!’

‘Amen to that,’ George agreed with all his heart as he turned the car towards home.

It was in August 1916 that Sunday saw the sight everyone dreaded: the telegram boy cycling up the drive. Her heart turned over. It had to be news of Ben – who else could it be? Feeling slightly sick, she went to the door to meet him and once the brown envelope was in her hand she stood staring at it as if it might bite her.

Cissie found her still standing there in a state of shock some minutes later.

‘Where’s Tom?’ Sunday asked in a wobbly voice.

‘He’s helpin’ George scythe the grass – but give that here,’ her friend ordered. ‘Best see what it says before we fetch him, eh lass?’

She took it from Sunday’s shaking hand and quickly split it open, then breathed a huge sigh of relief. Like Sunday, she had thought the worst. ‘It is about Ben but he ain’t dead.’ She gave Sunday, whose face had drained of colour, a quick hug. ‘He’s been injured in Flanders and now he’s in a military hospital in Portsmouth.’

‘Does it say what his injuries are?’ Sunday asked tremulously.

Cissie shook her head. ‘No, but there’s a telephone number to ring. We’d best fetch Tom now an’ let him do it. An’ let’s just thank God that he’s still alive, even if he is wounded.’

She scuttled away then as Sunday stood gripping the edge of the banister rail. They had all been reading the war reports religiously and she knew of the terrible conditions the troops had been forced to fight in at Flanders. The men were wading waist-deep in stinking mud made deeper still by the relentless rain that had been lashing the battlefield. Men who were unfortunate enough to slip off the duckboards that had been thrown down on the morass were reported to be drowning in the sludge, dragged down by the weight of their equipment. Guns and horses were being sunk irretrievably. Sunday wept as she thought of what Ben must have endured. He was alive, admittedly – but would it be the same Ben they had known who came home to them, if or when he did? Common sense told her that he couldn’t be the same. He had seen things that no one should ever see and the experience was bound to have affected him. But then she knew that they must all cling on to the fact that he was alive whatever his injuries were. Somehow when he came home they must help him to recover.