Rita got up and pulled Violet to her feet, shoving open the door and leading her into the coolness of the hallway, with its faded wallpaper rubbed shiny from where years of Feenys had brushed against it to hang up their coats on the hooks next to the cupboard under the stairs. ‘We’ll have some tea,’ she said, pulling her friend into the kitchen. Violet made no protest but moved like an automaton. Rita set baby Ellen down on some cushions arranged in a corner of the sagging armchair, and went to the teapot. Violet stood blankly, her arms at her sides, staring seemingly at nothing. Rita turned her back to reach for the caddy and kettle, and then Violet bent suddenly forward. ‘Sick,’ she gasped, and bolted through to the back kitchen and then outside to the outdoor privy.

Rita ran the tap hard but could hear Violet heaving violently all the same. Then the noise stopped. Rita set down the kettle to boil and went out into the bright sunlit yard and drew her friend back inside. Her own thoughts were in complete turmoil, but her instincts were to calm Violet before she allowed herself even to begin thinking about what had happened.

Violet sank on to a chair at the table and mindlessly took the cup of tea Rita gave her. They stared in bewilderment at each other for a moment, and then Violet shook her head, as if by doing so she could make the news go away. ‘Safe,’ she said at last. ‘He was meant to be safe. I thought he was going to Canada.’ A sob broke from her. ‘He should have been going to Canada. What was he doing in France? It’s the wrong way; he shouldn’t have been there, shouldn’t have been there …’ Then the tears finally came and she let her head fall into her hands, her shoulders shaking with the exertion, her whole body trembling as the enormity of what had happened struck home.

Rita went across and rubbed Violet’s back, moving dumbly through her own pain and shock, wanting to let her friend know she was there all the same. Bitterly she remembered something Danny had said, not long after Eddy and Jack’s leave had finished. Danny had dropped a heavy hint that just because the Merchant Navy vessels had mostly been deployed in the Atlantic up to now, it didn’t mean that this was how things would stay. She’d brushed it aside as the sort of cryptic comment Danny was prone to these days, a result of him being too long underground and studying pages of gobbledegook. Yet Danny had known there was a risk. Probably Frank had too. Had Eddy? He’d said nothing when he was on leave. Neither had Jack. She pushed that last idea aside – she couldn’t cope with that on top of this morning’s news.