He stands with his back to her, his wet shirt hanging over the chair, dripping onto the cobbled floor as he towel-dries his hair. She is unable to find her voice. Only when he discards the towel does he notice her standing in the doorway.

‘I thought you might need some dry things.’ Her cheeks flush with embarrassment. ‘I’ll just leave them on the bed and then they’re there if you need them.’ Her feet feel heavy as she advances into the room. She places the stack of clothes upon the bed and turns to leave, but she stops as her eyes fall upon a bundle of letters lying on the apple crate. She has seen them before, buried in his kitbag. Her fingertips trace her name across the first envelope.

‘I wrote to you every day.’ Jack’s voice is gruff. ‘I just never had the courage to send them. I thought it better that I didn’t.’

Gwen faces him slowly and as she does so, she notices for the first time the network of scars that bear testimony to his six years of service, his six years of survival. She is seized by a morbid fascination as the stitched white scars and puckered skin exert an irresistible draw. Her eyes stray from one to the next: the straight scar on his lower arm; the circular blemish in his shoulder; the line that tracks around his side; a silvered patch on his chest.

‘Dear God, Jack … what happened to you?’

‘It doesn’t matter what happened to me … what matters is they never stopped me.’

‘How did you get that one?’ She gestures to what she presumes is a bullet hole in his shoulder.

‘Dunkirk.’

‘And that one?’ she asks, braving a step forward as she points to his arm.

‘Shrapnel, Gazala, ’forty-two.’

‘And that one?’ she whispers, drifting closer. Her fingers brush the stitched line at his side.

‘Primosole … ’forty-three.’ His eyes bore into her, but she does not meet them. ‘Each time I thought I’d drawn my last breath I thought of you, Gwen … and another breath would come.’ He swallows hard. ‘All I wanted was to see you. To come home. To have a chance, Gwen … the chance of having you love me …’

‘And that one?’ Her fingertips slowly trace the puckered patch on his chest; it rises and falls under her touch. She lifts her gaze. Their eyes lock.

‘Don’t, Gwen,’ he whispers huskily. ‘If you don’t mean it, don’t come any closer. I beg you.’

Gwen’s hand drops, but her gaze remains. She takes a single step forward.

He pulls her to him, his lips finding hers with an urgency that mirrors her own. Her fingers curl around his shoulders before sliding across his back and tunnelling through his hair, drawing him ever closer – for her need, her desire is every bit as great as his.

She abruptly pulls away. His hands fall from her waist.