Cissie, in the meantime, had kept the children occupied as best she could but it had been no easy task. Although they had explained to Peggy that Bobby had died, she would not accept it and every single day she asked when he would be coming home. Bobby had been her hero, the one person in her who had always defended her and stood up for her. Many a time he had taken the beating their father had intended for her, or given her his food when there wasn’t enough for the two of them, saying he wasn’t hungry, and now without him she was bereft.

‘Time is a great healer,’ Sunday told Edith as she sobbed on her shoulder. ‘And one day you’ll be able to remember the joy Bobby brought you in the short time you had him, and smile.’

At that moment Edith very much doubted it. Already now she was fretting about what might happen to Peggy. One thing she was sure of, should the authorities try to take her away from them, she would fight them like a tiger.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Ben dragged himself back to his hut, his eyes burning from lack of sleep, and the terrible sights he had witnessed that day.

Admittedly, unlike the last war when he had fought on the front line with the rest of the men, this time he was not in the thick of the fighting. His job was to keep the horses fit so they could pull the carts that moved the heavy guns and equipment wherever they were needed. Soldiers also used the horses when they patrolled the tricky desert terrain around them. But sometimes, when he needed to take the terrified horses into an area where there was heavy fighting, the sight of so many fallen soldiers, and the smell of cordite, blood and death, on top of the deafening explosions and the rattle of gunfire, brought back the dreadful memories of those nightmare years during the last war. He couldn’t seem to get away from it, even in sleep. On the rare occasions when he did manage to nap, his dreams were full of images of the beautiful animals he was tending dropping like stones, their nostrils flaring with panic as they frothed at the mouth with fear. Even though this time the horses weren’t often in the line of fire, the screams of those long-dead horses he had watched mown down on the battlefields of France echoed through his nightmares and brought him starting awake in a tangle of sweat-drenched sheets.

His biggest dread was that he might be confronted with one of the horses he had reared at Treetops, as he was sure they would have been requisitioned by now, but thankfully as yet that hadn’t happened, which was one blessing at least.