Over the months and years she had become Ruby’s closest confidante, her best friend, the one person, she felt, who could truly understand what she was going through: the daily pain of bereavement.

‘I don’t want to go, Mum,’ she said. ‘It feels a bit distasteful to me.’

‘They’re very set on it, you know.’ Mary handed her a mug of cocoa. ‘Mr B. called round this morning. I was in a hurry getting out for the bus, but he would have his say. Ivy’s convinced Bertie’s alive somewhere.’

‘It’s that wretched sister of hers, the one who went to the spiritualist.’ Ruby sighed, pushing aside the milk skin with the back of a teaspoon.

‘It’s your decision, love. I told him it was up to you.’

‘If I have to go, would you come with me?’

‘How could we ever afford that?’

‘We could ask him to pay for you, too.’

‘Shush, girl, I won’t have us being in their debt. And anyway, I can’t take more time off work if we’re going to take up Auntie May’s offer of the beach hut.’

‘I’m afraid, Mum. Of the mud, and those battlefields, and all. Of finding his grave, even.’

Mary put down her mug and leaned over to stroke her arm. ‘You never know, it might help, my darling.’

Ruby wasn’t convinced, although she was starting to accept that she had no option but to do her duty by Bertie’s parents. She would have to wrap that protective carapace of unfeeling tightly around herself, to harden her heart and concentrate on surviving.

As the date approached she tried not to think too much about it, but found it impossible to dispel the nausea of fearful anticipation in her stomach.

It was after the wedding that Ruby had taken the job as a sales assistant at Hopegoods. Albert had inherited the business from Ivy’s father and Bertie had worked there too, ‘learning the trade’. It was always assumed that he would take over when his father retired.

‘I can’t just stay at home kicking my heels, with you going off to France,’ she’d said to him one day. ‘You won’t mind, will you, if I get a job? I have to feel I’m doing something for the war effort.’

He’d smiled at her then, the heart-melting smile that lit up his face and crinkled the corner of his eyes, and pulled her to him, kissing her on the forehead, which was where his lips naturally reached.

‘Dearest Rube, you must do what you wish. When I get home, and we start having little ones, then you can be a lady of leisure.’

She applied to become a clippie on the buses in Ipswich, but the places were all taken. She was offered a job in the munitions factory but her mother vetoed it. ‘It’s so dangerous. And I couldn’t bear to lose you too, my darling. Why don’t you ask Mr Barton if he has any vacancies at the shop?’