Nancy held the letter and stared at it, unable to fully comprehend its contents. She sank into a chair and read it again. The message was still the same. As the Allies had advanced through France and the might of Germany had crumbled, prisoners of war had been rescued and freed. Some were already in Britain, in reception depots. Private Sidney Kerrigan was one of them, at present in a depot in Amersham near London, but soon to be on his way back home, once he was in better health.

Sid was coming back. It didn’t seem real. Sometimes she struggled to remember what he looked like, it had been so long. She had photos of them on their wedding day, when he had stood there in his suit and made those promises to her, and yet her brothers had found him the evening before, out with Harry Calendar’s sister, so those words were just so much hot air. He must have changed though. She knew she had – she looked different and she’d grown up as well. What would he be like now, having spent so many years in a prison camp? Would he even want to see her? Would he be at death’s door, like the men in some of the pictures that had begun to appear in the papers? The Red Cross had passed along his letters, but they had never given much away, just asking after his mother and Georgie. He’d never been one for letters, even before the war. She had written equally basic ones back to him. Heaven only knew what his mother had said to him in hers.

Nancy got up from her seat by the window in the parlour she rented from her detested mother-in-law, and began to pace around the room. Things were coming to a head, there was no doubt. Sid’s arrival home would force the issue one way or the other.

She was pregnant again. Just like before, she’d tried to persuade herself it wasn’t true, but there was no getting away from it. She and Gary had been careful, but apparently not careful enough. It might have been that time at New Year, or more likely just before he had dumped her. Whenever it was, he’d left her with more than a broken heart. She couldn’t bank on having another miscarriage this time. She had to think, and think fast.