She caught a bus that for once wasn’t diverted, nearly all the way to her front door. She still couldn’t think of this as any kind of home and, as she’d foreseen, her attic room had been perishing cold over the winter, but now spring was here it had started to improve. Sadly relations with her tight-lipped landlady hadn’t.

The woman was waiting for her as she stepped into the narrow hallway, with its mean selection of coat hooks and little else apart from a sorry-looking plant that Laura sometimes secretly watered. ‘Miss Fawcett. A word, if you please.’

‘Good morning. Lovely day for once, isn’t it?’ said Laura brightly. She didn’t intend the woman’s gloom to rub off on her.

The landlady ignored her cheerfulness. ‘A young man called for you. He was most offhand, rude even. I’ll thank you not to bring down the reputation of this house with such guests. He looked most irregular. His hair was sticking up all over the place, not at all like a gentleman from any of the services.’

‘Was it dark blond by any chance?’ Laura asked.

‘I assume you know him, then?’ the woman fired back.

Laura fixed her with her most solemn gaze. ‘If it is the person I’m thinking of, then I can assure you that he has served his country in ways that you or I can scarcely imagine. The fact that one of the only traces of this is visible in his slightly irregular haircut is nothing short of a miracle. If that is all, then I’ll go to my room.’

The woman sniffed. ‘Indeed. That’s as maybe, but I’d be grateful if he wasn’t seen around here again. Meanwhile, he left you this.’ She took a small envelope from her pocket, then spun on her low heel and made her way back to her own quarters at the rear of the house.

Laura mounted the stairs wondering how soon she could transfer to a different billet. It was true that Freddy still didn’t look much like the average airman in uniform, but he had improved tremendously under his doctor’s care, the regime of proper food and special exercise, alongside careful debriefing, working wonders for his health in every way. That the narrow-minded landlady could insult him so readily was deeply enraging. Still, she probably knows no better, Laura muttered as she stepped into her cramped room and sat down on the window seat to read his note.

A moment later she was on her feet again, almost leaping for joy. The message was terse, evidently written in a hurry, most likely with the unsympathetic gaze of the landlady curtailing his time.