‘It just shows, doesn’t it, ma’am, that them German soldiers are no different to our lads at heart,’ Jinny said when she and Rose were discussing the incident, a baby each on their knees as they undressed the twins ready for their evening bathtime. ‘Me da says it’s them few at the top like the Kaiser and his cronies who make the wars and it’s ordinary men and lads on both sides who have to fight each other.’

‘I think your father is right, Jinny.’

‘Me da reckons the Kaiser has a few surprises for us up his sleeve. What do you think, ma’am?’

‘I hope he’s mistaken.’ Rose cuddled little James’s naked warm body into her, kissing the top of his downy head. Once the Kaiser and all these men of war had been small infants, innocent and dependent on others. What happened in a man’s mind to turn him into a creature intent on violence and domination? What had happened in Nathaniel’s? In spite of herself she always was on tenterhooks once darkness fell and she wasn’t sleeping well, even though William’s men were outside. She had spoken to them once when they were sitting hunched over the brazier in a sheltered spot near the stables, and they had assured her that no one would get past them.

‘We can hear a deer breathing at a hundred yards,’ one of them had said cheerfully, his gnarled hands stretched out over the coals. ‘Years of watching for poachers, see, ma’am? It sharpens all your senses, does gamekeeping. Whoever this bloke is, he won’t get the better of us.’ He’d adjusted the shotgun at his feet. ‘You sleep easy, ma’am, you and the bairns.’

She had appreciated their sentiments but they thought they were just dealing with a vandal or thief, or someone with a grudge against William, because that was what her father-in-law had told them. Nathaniel was different, he wasn’t normal. She knew William had employed someone, a private investigator, to find out where Nathaniel was living, but even if they found him and, as her father-in-law had put it, put the fear of God in him, she had no hope that that would be the end of the matter.