It was more than two years since she’d last seen him and, although his dear face still smiled at her from the photograph by her bedside that she kissed every night, she was starting to lose the most important memories: the sweet-clean smell of his shaving soap, the deep timbre of his voice that seemed to vibrate through his chest, the bubbling joy of his laughter. It was as though her mind was protecting her by blurring her knowledge of him, making him somehow less real. It seared her with guilt that the man she had loved for most of her life was slowly fading from her memory; that she was alive, and he was not.

But not as much as it did for betraying him while he was alive.

Bertie’s father was as good as his word. On the appointed day he collected her by taxi, purchased rail tickets for both of them to Victoria station and bought her a cup of tea and a sandwich. During the journey he was more animated than she’d seen him for several years, pointing out landmarks as they passed, discussing his plans for the development of Hopegoods now that the shadow of war was lifted, and dispensing advice about how she should comport herself while on tour, in particular how she must be wary of approaches from strangers. He seemed to relish this interruption to the daily routine, away from the responsibilities of the shop and his tearful, fearful wife.

At Victoria station he quickly spotted the Thomas Cook representative.

‘I’m Major Wilson. Call me John. Good to have you aboard,’ the man boomed, shaking her hand vigorously with a bone-crushing grip. Then, turning to Albert, ‘Don’t you worry, sir. I will take the greatest care of your daughter-in-law.’

The major was a bluff middle-aged man with a kindly smile, not tall but with a bearing that left you in little doubt that he’d brook no impertinence. It transpired that he had spent twenty years in the army including several years in the trenches before being invalided out with a gammy leg.

‘Hardest thing I ever did,’ he told Ruby as they waited for the others to arrive. ‘Leaving the lads there to face the Hun without me. Broke my heart. The army don’t want a cripple like me, no ruddy use at all, excuse my French.’ He grimaced, tapping his knee. ‘So when Cooks advertised for guides I saw my chance. Escorting people like your good self to the battlefields to pay their respects to their loved ones is the best way I can think of to honour my old mates. You have to make sense of it all somehow.

‘It’s your husband, isn’t it? Died at Passchendaele? A young man, I assume?’ he added, after a discreet pause.

‘Twenty,’ she said, trying to steady her voice. The major was waiting, watching, expecting more. ‘He was only out there nine months,’ she added. ‘We’d just got married. They never found him.’