It was a slow journey, following the convoys of trucks and armoured vehicles with soldiers hanging from the sides, waving to passers-by. Now there was plenty of time to take in her surroundings properly. The first time she had been too excited to notice a thing. She followed the outline of the Solway coast, peering into cottage windows and farms and schools on her journey south. Gretna Green was renowned the whole world over for runaway marriages. It was ideally situated between England and Scotland for lovers to take advantage of the Scottish law that allowed marriage at sixteen without parental consent. This cluster of cottages, a church and hotel and railway station, was all there was to the village, but it had been the centre of drama and intrigue for hundreds of years. She looked again at the blacksmith’s shop and smiled. They must have a photograph taken outside to prove they’d done it the old way!

Netta walked to the modern end of Gretna, built around a cordite factory during the First World War. It showed a dour workaday face to the world, with plain barrack-like buildings and factory workers milling round a line of shops. There was nothing romantic about the Register Office but it served its purpose.

She was still half an hour early for their appointment, clutching a little bouquet of white heather wrapped in silver paper. Netta looked down the list of banns. They were sandwiched between a couple from Annan and a merchant seaman and his girl from Edinburgh. There it was in black and white: Raeburn Francis Hunter to Jeanette Kirkpatrick Nichols.

For all it was nearly the end of May, the wind from the Solway Firth was sharp and Netta shivered in her finery. Rae was late and as the minute hand of her watch crept from ten to twenty to thirty, the time for them to be going into the Marriage Room drew nigh. The first happy couple came out laughing and friends showered dots of homemade confetti over them. The bride wore a tweed suit with a fox fur round her neck and the groom wore the uniform of a Special in the Police Force.

Netta shivered, her teeth chittering, her heart thudding, feeling tightness like a band of steel close around her chest. He’s not coming, something’s happened… an accident on the way. Surely he wouldn’t jilt me? The Registrar peered around the door.

‘Hunter party step forward.’ He saw her weeping and sat her down. ‘Perhaps there’s a hold up, what with all the troops and lorries. They say there’s a ribbon of trucks from one end of Britain to the other. Just you wait there and see if he turns up. There’ll be some explanation, I’m sure.’