‘I love you, too, Daisy,’ he said.

Behind her, Daisy heard Ethel’s wry voice. ‘You do remember, I see.’

(vi)

Lloyd was eating toast and jam when Daisy entered the kitchen of the house in Nutley Street. She sat at the table, looking exhausted, and took off her steel helmet. Her face was smudged and her hair was dirty with ash and dust, and Lloyd thought she looked irresistibly beautiful.

She came in most mornings when the bombing ended and the last victim had been driven to the hospital. Lloyd’s mother had told her she did not need an invitation, and Daisy had taken her at her word.

Ethel poured Daisy a cup of tea and said: ‘Hard night, my lovely?’

Daisy nodded grimly. ‘One of the worst. The Peabody building in Orange Street burned down.’

‘Oh, no!’ Lloyd was horrified. He knew the place: a big overcrowded tenement full of poor families with numerous children.

Bernie said: ‘That’s a big building.’

‘It was,’ said Daisy. ‘Hundreds of people were burned and God knows how many children are orphans. Nearly all my patients died on the way to hospital.’

Lloyd reached across the little table and took her hand.

She looked up from her cup of tea. ‘You don’t get used to it. You think you’ll become hardened, but you don’t.’ She was stricken with sadness.

Ethel put a hand on her shoulder for a moment in a gesture of compassion.

Daisy said: ‘And we’re doing the same to families in Germany.’

Ethel said: ‘Including my old friends Maud and Walter and their children, I presume.’

‘Isn’t that terrible?’ Daisy shook her head despairingly. ‘What’s wrong with us?’

Lloyd said: ‘What’s wrong with the human race?’

Bernie, ever practical, said: ‘I’ll go over to Orange Street later and make sure everything’s being done for the children.’

‘I’ll come with you,’ said Ethel.

Bernie and Ethel thought alike and acted together effortlessly, often seeming to read each other’s mind. Lloyd had been observing them carefully since he got home, worrying that their marriage might have been affected by the shocking revelation that Ethel had never had a husband called Teddy Williams, and that Lloyd’s father was Earl Fitzherbert. He had discussed this at length with Daisy, who now knew the whole truth. How did Bernie feel about having been lied to for twenty years? But Lloyd saw no sign that it had made any difference. In his unsentimental way Bernie adored Ethel, and to him she could do no wrong. He believed she would never do anything to hurt him, and he was right. It made Lloyd hope that he, too, might one day have such a marriage.

Daisy noticed that Lloyd was in uniform. ‘Where are you off to this morning?’

‘I’ve had a summons from the War Office.’ He looked at the clock on the mantelpiece. ‘I’d better get going.’

‘I thought you’d already been debriefed.’

‘Come to my room and I’ll explain while I’m putting on my tie. Bring your tea.’