‘Well, have we got ourselves an adventure?’

The idea did appeal. A whole journey of chatting and really getting to know one another again. ‘Yes. Yes, we have.’

‘Hooray!’ With this, Jerome did a little jig.

‘Oh, Jerome, stop it.’

‘I hope never to stop making you laugh, Mags. You’re very beautiful all the time, but when you laugh, you light up the world.’

He took her hand and steered her towards her home. At the gate he pulled her close and kissed her hand. ‘I’ll see you in the morning and we can make the final arrangements. Goodnight, darling Mags.’

Mags watched him walk down the slope. When he’d gone a few yards, Jerome jumped in the air and kicked his feet together. She went into the garden in a fit of laughter. Suddenly her world had changed. She felt eager to get on with the next chapter, instead of trying to make meaningful plans just to give herself something to think about, other than her heartache.

Does my heart ache now? Somehow, Mags wasn’t sure that it did. Oh, Montel, I will always love you, but I feel you letting me free. Something settled on her arm. In the gas lighting she saw that it was a white feather: the symbol of those who have passed, trying to tell you something. A peace came over her. She clutched the feather – oh, she knew it had fallen from the geese setting off in their droves for warmer climes and carried on the wind, but to her, landing on her at that moment, it seemed as if Montel was saying, ‘Be happy, my Mags. Mon amour.’

She wouldn’t put it past him to have made tonight happen – even to seeing that Susan and Betsy were happy first. With this thought, Mags looked up into the stars and blew a kiss to the brightest of them all.

Chapter Thirty-Three

The journey to Blackburn with Jerome was filled with chatter. Mags and Jerome shared old memories of when they were children, which had them giggling at their antics and that of their peers, until their reminiscing reached the war years. So many of their friends had never returned.

‘I heard that you were in officer training, then I didn’t hear any more for a long time, Jerome, but I was so happy when I learned you had returned.’

‘The memories haunt me to this day, as I’m sure they do you, Mags. So many wasted lives. I was with Henry Moulds when he died.’

‘Poor Henry, always the prankster. Such a waste of millions of lives, and so many families broken. For me, it was mostly French and Belgian soldiers that I helped, and held the hand of when they were dying, though there were some German ones, too.’

‘I heard a little about what happened to you. Do you feel like talking about it, Mags?’

Surprisingly, she did. Everything poured out of her: things she hadn’t spoken of, details she’d spared those she’d told and, without realizing it was happening, tears rolled down her face, but she couldn’t stop talking. Never before had she released it all in this way.