It hit him then, like a blow between the eyes, that he had no home to go to now. Nobody would care if he should die tomorrow and, deep down, he knew it was all his own fault. He had tried not to think of what he had done to Sunday and the family but tonight for some reason it was playing on his mind. Where were they now? he wondered. They would have been forced to sell Treetops, of that he had no doubt, so where would they be living? Was Sunday even still alive? She would be an elderly lady now. And what would his father think of what he had done to her if he were still alive? He shuddered to think, for Sunday and Tom had adored each other. She had never been the same since his father’s death, but it was too late to right the wrong he had done her.

The money he had stolen was tucked safely away in a bank doing no one any good, especially him. It had never brought him any joy, if truth be told, and certainly hadn’t protected him from the war. And Kathy! As he thought of her tears came to his eyes. He had taken advantage of her, thinking that when it became known it would hurt Sunday, but what about Kathy? He could only hope that Kathy had put him from her mind and moved on with her life. As guilt stabbed at him, he lowered his head into his hands and sobbed like a baby.

On the morning of David’s departure, the mood in the lodge was dark.

‘Please don’t go,’ Daisy sobbed as she clung to his leg with tears streaming down her chubby cheeks. ‘We loves you, Uncle David.’

‘And I love you too,’ he told her, his own voice husky as he stroked her silky curls.

Thomas added his own pleas to his sister’s. ‘We’ll be ever so good if only you’ll stay,’ he pleaded.

‘You’re always good. But I have to go back to the hospital now.’

‘Will you come back soon?’

‘I can’t promise how soon,’ David told them honestly. ‘But just as soon as the war is over this will be the first place I’ll head for,’ he promised, silently praying that he would be alive to keep it.

‘An’ when you come back will you be our daddy?’ Daisy implored innocently.