‘Yes, I did.’ Kathy looked sheepish. ‘I suppose it took the twins to make me realise what a lovely man he was and how stupid I was to spend my life thinking that I’d ever meant anything to Ben. For years I prayed every day that he would come back, and then when he did and took the children away it turned into a nightmare. Still, I don’t like to think about that now. Things turned out all right in the end, thank goodness.’

‘You must really hate Ben for what he did.’

Kathy stared into the fire for a moment before slowly shaking her head. ‘I did at first,’ she admitted. ‘But then I slowly came to realise that he was very unwell and not really responsible for everything he did, and I was able to forgive him. And now Mum has her money back as well.’

‘Hm, but she doesn’t own Treetops anymore, does she?’ Livvy said regretfully.

Kathy shrugged. ‘Maybe not but she still lives here and who knows what the future might hold? They do say everything happens for a reason, don’t they?’

The two sisters lapsed into a companionable silence, enjoying the peace and quiet after such a busy day, and making the most of each other’s company. All too soon, Livvy would be returning to her base and who knew when they might be together again?

Chapter Fifty-Two

March 1945

By 1945, the tides of war had truly turned in the Allies’ favour and everyone was feeling more optimistic that the end of the war might be in sight.

Livvy had still not heard from Giles and when John told her that he had been informed that his grandson had been transferred to the Belsen Camp in 1944 her spirits had sunk. Belsen had been set up as a camp for Jewish prisoners so they had no idea why Giles should have been sent there. They’d heard many horror stories of the atrocious conditions the prisoners were forced to live in and now their hopes of seeing him alive again were slim. It was reported that the camp was severely overcrowded, and the prisoners were living on starvation rations in appalling sanitary conditions that led to outbreaks of typhus, tuberculosis, typhoid fever and dysentery. When John rang Livvy at her base to tell her the news she openly wept.

‘Stay strong, darling,’ her mother urged her on the phone. ‘Giles is a young man and he’ll come through this.’

Livvy wasn’t so sure, but she never gave up hope completely.

Kathy was also worried about David. The year before he had been brought back to England on a hospital ship, suffering from a severe case of dysentery, and when she had visited him at a hospital in Portsmouth, she had barely recognised him. He was so thin that he was almost skeletal, and he looked years older than his age.