She went to his side, wrapping her arms around him. He tried to push her away, muttering, ‘Oh just leave me . . .’ but she held him tightly until his shoulders stopped shaking and the sobs subsided.

Such loss, such sorrow. She hardly dared ask anything more for fear of upsetting him further, but the truth was slowly dawning: Mark’s relationship with Ray had been more than simple friendship. But was it love, as most people understood it? Like love between a man and a woman? Was this what Nancy had meant by that word, the word Kath still found difficult to say, even in her head?

‘Oh Mark,’ she whispered, finally. ‘You loved him, and I’m sure he loved you back, so you must try to cherish that memory for the rest of your life. And you do have someone to talk to. I don’t properly understand, but that doesn’t matter. I will never breathe a word to anyone else, and I will never judge you. But I will always be here.’

He pulled back and managed a weak smile.

‘Thanks, sis.’

14

All morning Vic had been in his room, fidgeting and unable to settle, gazing out of the window or trying to read. It felt as though he was about to go on trial. He’d written the letter and then noticed a silly spelling mistake, cursed loudly, crumpled the paper into a ball and thrown it across the room before penning it once more. The envelope was now tucked into his inside jacket pocket.

Just be yourself, Johnnie said. At times he sensed his friend as an almost physical presence, but more often it was just a voice. Tell the truth as far as you can without breaking the law. He meant the Official Secrets Act, of course. The penalty for breaking it was death, and more than once in the past few days Vic had actually wished himself dead. Living with this terrible guilt was almost unbearable.

At least you’ll know, one way or the other, after this.

‘Thanks for the reassurance, mate,’ he said. Johnnie would have laughed at this point, and Vic would have felt a little better. But now here he was, racked with nerves as he waited with the rest of the team outside the boss’s office, like schoolboys steeling themselves for a caning. That would have been painful, but at least it would have been over quickly. He’d have almost preferred it to the grilling they now faced.

Making it worse was the knowledge that there would be no familiar friendly face on the other side of that heavy oak door. Robert Watson-Watt, the man Vic had seen as his mentor, had recently left the Manor, having been promoted to a more senior position in the Air Ministry.

Vic remembered so clearly that very first day, being ushered in to the boss’s study: thickly carpeted, with its leather-lined walls and carved woodwork, hard-buttoned leather sofas either side of a grand marble fireplace, and that wonderful view through stone-mullioned windows. What an inspiring vision Watson-Watt had outlined to him that afternoon, filling Vic with an almost religious fervour to use his knowledge for the protection of the country against air attack. The big man’s genial, unfailingly positive presence was already much missed by everyone at the Manor.