‘Did your letters to each other get through?’ Jepson had asked, and had seen the quick glance between them.

‘Yes, right up until Christmas,’ said Winnie Crowther.

‘The trouble is that there’s nothing to say about life in camp,’ said her husband. ‘The monotony is terrible. I was bored rigid for four and a half years while Winnie never stopped working and putting herself in danger. And now that she has stopped, I worry that she’s probably terribly bored herself.’

‘No,’ she’d said indignantly. ‘Of course I’m not.’ She’d taken her husband’s hand and squeezed the fingers, and her expression had been briefly identical to his – a troubled awareness, perhaps, that the road ahead wasn’t the straight track of the fictional reunion, but something branching and unmarked.

Jepson had left shortly afterwards, noticing, on his way out, a small pile of library books on the table – Modern Interior Decoration, Gardening Today, Home Carpenter.

‘Making plans?’ he’d asked, and for the first time, Crowther had almost smiled.

‘My wife brought those back for me this morning as a surprise,’ he said. ‘Which was very kind of her, and very understandable, given that I wrote about little else for four years, but do you know what?’ He turned to his wife. ‘I’ve had it up to here with the whole subject, Winnie. I never again want to read about the difference between a shade and a tint. I have no further interest in gazebos or lampshades. If we ever get a garden, I’ll insist that we also buy goats.’

‘Goats?’ she’d repeated, sounding amazed. And as the astonishment in her voice had given way to a breathy noise that was very nearly a laugh, it seemed to Jepson that something hopeful had just happened – the flags dispensed with, the ships within hailing distance now. Though he had always been sentimental, had always hoped for happy endings, and not only his own.

‘And what did you do today, Noel?’ he asked. ‘Apart from making this pie, which is very good, I must say.’

‘Thank you. I finished reading The Road to Wigan Pier and then I went to the library. Oh, and I also saw a female cuckoo in the clump of elders opposite the fishmonger’s.’

‘“In May she sings all day,”’ said Mr Reddish.

‘Yes, except it’s the males who give the eponymous call. The females make more of a throaty, chuckling sound. And I researched dessert recipes for tomorrow.’

‘A victory sponge?’

‘I’m actually thinking of attempting an adapted version of a croquembouche, if we have enough eggs.’

He chose to omit the most memorable moment of the day, which had been the arrival of a letter from Genevieve Lumb, signed with a firmly inscribed kiss and containing the information that she would be spending the whole of the summer – the whole of the summer! – with her grandparents, next door. She was also writing a play about Boadicea and Suetonius and needed his help with the Latin. The writing paper had smelled faintly of coal-tar soap and he had held it under his nose for several minutes.