So for the past three years she’d been working in haberdashery under its redoubtable manager Ada Turner, a widow known to all as Mrs T., who was wedded to her job and appeared to have no outside interests. She never spoke about any family, where she lived or what she did on her days off, but she knew by heart the reference number for every one of the two hundred colours of threads, and the right yarn for each purpose: general stitching, heavy duty work, overlocking and serging, embroidery, quilting and patchworking, and the beautiful luminescent pure silk threads for very fine work.

She could guide customers to the appropriate fabric for their garment, advise them what stiffener to use, or which was the correct zipper from the dozens that they stocked, and help them to choose from more than a hundred styles, varieties and sizes exactly the right type of button. They loved her. If she was away from the counter for any reason, customers would linger over the pattern books until she returned. When she arrived back and took over a transaction that Ruby had already started it made her feel very much like second best.

At first Mrs T. and the other staff were wary and even mistrustful of Ruby, the boss’s daughter-in-law. But she’d kept her head down and worked diligently to gain their trust and respect. Initially she felt bamboozled by all the information she was expected to absorb but as her knowledge grew she discovered that she enjoyed the work and getting to know her ‘regulars’. The books of dress patterns were so enticing she couldn’t wait to start trying them out herself.

She dusted off her mother’s old Singer and started with modest items at first, petticoats and aprons, but soon became more adventurous, making skirts and even, most recently, a jacket of green wool serge, nipped in at the waist with darts at back and front. It was the first time she’d worn anything other than black since those terrible days of 1916, but it was sombre enough, she thought.

She was wearing it now, here on the deck of the ship, along with the black skirt she’d made to match, and a cloche hat, purchased at the shop with her staff discount. Over her arm was the summer raincoat that Alfred senior had pressed into her hands a few days before. ‘You might need this,’ he said. ‘It rains in Flanders.’

It was, she could tell from the label, from a top-quality manufacturer, the very latest style in charcoal cotton twill, more luxurious and certainly more costly than she’d ever hoped to own. How proud Bertie would have been, she’d thought to herself, glancing at her reflection in the shop windows on her way home from work, enjoying the unaccustomed swish of the fabric around her calves.

Paradoxically, it was moments like these, brief moments of unexpected happiness, that seemed to bring home her loss more profoundly, rocking her stability, threatening to crack the mask. What always followed, she discovered, was an even deeper sense of despair and hopelessness, when the ache of missing him twisted like a knife lodged in her heart.