Cate’s smile seemed bittersweet. “Put it this way,” she said. “My insides feel like a freight train is chugging through them, and my hands shake so often that I’ve started to almost permanently fist them. So hearing you call me brave? It makes me feel like a fraud.”

“You’re not serious?” Addy asked, barely believing what she was hearing.

“As God is my witness,” Cate replied. “But I’ve had to believe in myself all these months, Addy. There was no one there to hold my hand, and the men I nursed, well, some of them had a fate worse than death, and my job was to make them feel like everything would be fine.” She took a big breath. “And some of them didn’t make even a day in hospital before their bodies gave out on them, some of them were so badly burned their howls and whimpers will haunt my nightmares forever. It takes everything I have to keep those memories at bay.”

“That must have been unbearable, for you I mean,” Addy murmured. “I’m so sorry.”

“I lost my fiancé, too,” Cate said, staring at the bread as if it might hold all the answers. “He was a good man, and he didn’t even last a month, and part of me will always wonder if someone kind was nursing him at the end. If he’s not alive somewhere, that is, because he was classified as presumed dead, so there’s always that question in my mind.”

Addy cleared her throat, because it had suddenly turned dry and raspy. “Just like my brother Louis. We lost him right at the beginning as well. He was so strong and full of life, we didn’t for a moment think that when we waved him goodbye he’d never come back.”

“We’re not so different after all then, are we?” Cate’s smile was kind. “We all learn to cope as best we can. So whenever you look at me and think I’m holding everything together so well, just remember I’ve had more practice than you at faking it.”

Addy touched Cate’s hand. “Thank you for opening up to me,” she whispered.

Cate smiled. “Thank you for making bread.”

And they both laughed so hard, despite it all, that when Harry walked into the kitchen, he looked at the pair of them as if they’d gone stark raving mad.