It transpired that they’d married at the registry office just two weeks before and Diane was now securely installed in his father’s house, and had already embarked on what she termed ‘brightening up the old place’. Both downstairs rooms were transformed: his father’s heavy furniture had been replaced with pale plywood cabinets, uncomfortable chairs and curtains in garish yellows and pinks that gave Vic an instant headache and the urge to run away.

Where was the painted screen, and the coffee table with its brass tray engraved with elephants? The Indian ivory ornaments on the mantelpiece had been replaced by a parade of porcelain figurines: frolicking shepherdesses, kittens with red ribbons, even a ghastly, grinning Toby jug. Not a single reminder of Vic’s homeland, his childhood or his beloved mother remained.

‘Why didn’t you tell me you’d got married?’ he whispered when Diane went off to the kitchen to make tea.

His father flushed. ‘She wanted to make it a quiet affair. We didn’t want to bother you, son. You and your important work.’

‘What have you done with your own things, the stuff from India?’

‘Oh, we sold it as a job lot,’ his father replied breezily. ‘Didn’t want any of that old-fashioned stuff, did you?’

Vic bit his tongue. What else was there to say? It upset him to think of his father spending the rest of his days under the thumb of his new wife; but at the same time he felt mildly relieved that someone else would be there to look after the old boy. And whatever would he have done with that furniture anyway, without a home of his own?

Diane emerged, bearing a tray with a flowery tea set and a plate of little shop-made cakes iced in pastel pink and yellow, matching the floral curtains. His father watched adoringly as she placed the tray onto the oval occasional table that now dominated the centre of the small room.

‘Isn’t she just the ticket? I’m a very lucky man, don’t you think?’ his father said, patting her on the bottom in a disturbingly over-familiar way.

She giggled and gave him a noisy, sloppy kiss on the cheek. ‘Isn’t he such a dearie?’ she said. ‘It’s me who’s the lucky one.’ As she continued to coo and fuss Vic felt his stomach turning, and after tea he excused himself, claiming the need for fresh air.

Dusk was already falling as he walked the streets of Tunbridge Wells. It was twilight, not yet time for the blackout. Through every window he could see glowing fires, Christmas trees twinkling with coloured lights and families with glasses in hand, trying to put from their minds for just a day or so the dismal realities of a country at war and in perilous danger of invasion.

It began to drizzle and then to rain more heavily, but he hardly cared. In the town centre he encountered a beggar sheltering in the doorway of a closed shop, holding out a sign that read: Spare a penny for a veteran.