Best of all, the curacy came with a two-bedroomed flat just twenty minutes’ walk away, in the heart of what they call Bloomsbury, which is where, Mum told us, lots of famous writers and artists used to live before the First World War. There were still great gaps in the terraces, like broken teeth, where houses had been reduced to piles of rubble by German bombs. In fact, our own had cracks in the walls and the windows didn’t fit very well, so that the rain came in at the corners and we had to hide the damp patches with strategically placed pieces of furniture. But we didn’t mind. There were parks nearby, and Mum seemed happy enough. Until she got ill, that is.

Neither of them had ever talked about it to us, but I’d come to understand that Pa had had such a difficult time as an army chaplain that his nerves were shredded and he suffered terrible nightmares. So when he was demobbed, the church authorities offered him the curacy at St Martin’s, because the work was not too demanding and there would be plenty of others around to support him. Now, so it seemed, they thought he had recovered enough to take on his own parish. We would be moving out to the country.

‘It’s a great honour,’ he said, his face more cheerful than I’d seen it in a long time. ‘I’m thrilled. We’ll have a lovely big vicarage, and lots of countryside all around for you two to explore. It’ll be a new start for all of us.’

It was so unexpected. We’d never lived in the country, except for a few brief months when we’d left London to avoid the Blitz. Moving to a new parish would mean leaving school, all of my friends and the people at St Martin’s who’d been so kind when Mum was ill. It would be a complete upheaval of our lives.

‘Couldn’t they find you a parish in London?’

‘I suppose if I waited . . .’ He paused to think, pulling his left earlobe. ‘But don’t you think it’ll do us all good to get out of the city for a while? The war’s taken a toll on everyone, darling. Not just on the buildings, but in our hearts and minds. We’re all a bit broken. What I hope is that living in the countryside for a while will heal us, help us grow stronger.’