What she couldn’t tell anyone was that she was also worried sick that something had happened to Gary. She hadn’t heard from him since D-day, and she was as certain as she could be that he’d been part of that operation. Realistically she told herself that he wouldn’t exactly have been sitting around with time to spare, writing long letters home. She didn’t want to begin to think of what he would have seen or what he would have been through. It shouldn’t surprise her that she hadn’t heard. The trouble was, if the worst happened, then she wouldn’t know. They’d gone to such pains to keep their relationship a secret that none of the men serving under him would think to seek her out and tell her. Nobody at his base would know to do so. She was just the nice lady who served the tea or helped to organise dances, sometimes having a few turns on the dance floor, nothing further than that. When it came to information she would be last to find out – if she ever did.

She missed him. Their first and only night together had been everything she had hoped for and more. At last here was a man who treated her as she’d longed to be treated – and who knew what he was doing. He’d made Stan Hathaway look like an amateur. She’d never experienced such pleasure and he’d still been there in the morning, murmuring about what a privilege it was to make love to a woman like her. She’d never known anything like it. She was desperate to have that again, to make up for everything she’d been missing up to now. It had been worth the risk of leaving Georgie overnight with the Parkers; she’d invented a twenty-four-hour bug when she’d picked him up and thought she’d just about got away with it.

Nancy had known she had to be careful, as she didn’t want to chance a pregnancy, what with Sid still being a prisoner of war, so it had reassured her to find that Gary had thought of this beforehand. That was another thing the Americans were known for – always having a supply of French letters, or rubbers as they called them. Well, she wasn’t going to object. It was one less thing to worry about, and heaven knew there were plenty of other anxieties to fill her head.