‘It’s me – Kath Motts. From those revision classes, remember?’ It was only as she approached that she noticed the thin white stick in his hand. Burned and blinded, too.

‘Of course I remember.’ Adam gave a lopsided smile. ‘Sorry, everything’s a bit of a blur these days.’

‘Heavens, Adam, whatever happened?’ She sat beside him on the bench.

‘I joined up. Conscripted. No choice.’

‘Surely you were too young?’

‘I was nineteen,’ he said, simply. ‘And anyway, I wanted to do something useful. My brother was out there already, and there’s nothing much left for me at home, so it seemed the logical thing to do.’

‘How did you get these . . .?’ She gestured to the scars before remembering he couldn’t see her hands.

‘Bomb. On the beach at Dunkirk. We were trying to shelter in an old fishing boat, but they bombed it and it caught fire. Still, I’m lucky to be alive. Most of the others didn’t survive.’

‘How on earth did you get home?’

He gave a half laugh, a sort of snort. ‘Bloody irony is that if I hadn’t been burned, I probably wouldn’t have made it out of there at all. They were taking the injured first, so they hauled me across the sand and plonked me on the deck of a trawler. I was howling, of course, but they carried on dousing me in sea water the whole way home and that’s probably what kept me alive, the docs said.’

Kath chewed a nail, wondering how you could possibly return to normal life after an experience like that, and so terribly maimed. ‘Is there anything I can do, Adam?’

‘Not a lot,’ he said. ‘Just don’t feel pity for me. It hurts too much. I’m trying to learn Braille so I can carry on with my studies. There’s a lovely lady in the library who’s helping me.’

‘Would you like to come back for a cup of tea? I think there’s cake.’

That crooked smile again. ‘That would be lovely, Kath. Thank you.’

She called at his house a week later to be greeted by a bleary-eyed man – his father, she assumed – who was plainly drunk.

‘Could I speak to Adam?’ she asked, reeling from his breath.

‘Gone,’ the man slurred. ‘Rehabili-whatsit.’

‘Rehabilitation?’

‘Tha’s the one.’

‘When do you expect him home?’

The man shrugged. ‘Who knows? Maybe never, poor old lad.’

‘Please tell him I called, could you, when you see him next?’

‘Will do, missy.’

She never saw Adam again.

Londoners who had been evacuated to the town just after the declaration of war were told they should go home, now that the threat of an imminent German invasion meant Felixstowe was no longer a ‘safe area’. The young woman and her baby billeted in Mark’s old room went with them. Although they didn’t miss the baby’s night-time crying, everyone was sorry to see her go.

Then on one fine June morning, as if to reinforce the point, a German plane broke through the air defences and flew over Bawdsey, dropping high-explosive bombs. Fortunately their aim was poor and the bombs fell harmlessly onto farmland. No one was hurt either in the village or at the Manor, which was still fully operational as an RAF base. But, Kath thought, what if she and Ma had been at work in the kitchens, and the bombers’ aim had been more accurate? They weren’t surprised to learn soon afterwards that all female staff, including the WAAFs, had been evacuated.