However, he’d always returned – sadly, quiet and lost in his own world – not at all like the jolly, fun-loving man Kitty had married. Now they were home again, he’d taken to haunting the abandoned airfield at Cliffe, wandering through the empty huts and hangars as if looking for the comrades he’d lost.

Peggy gave a deep sigh. Poor Kitty was terribly worried and rather frightened by the change in her husband, and both she and Charlotte had agreed he needed to be taken out of himself and given something to do – which was why they were now looking into the purchase of a second-hand plane so they could start up the air transport business they’d been planning since the men had been captured.

Peggy suspected that both girls also needed this distraction after losing Freddy, and wondered if the same thing was happening with Martin down in Somerset. She’d heard nothing from Anne since his arrival, and was very uneasy at the thought of her daughter and grandchildren having to cope with such a painful and distressing situation. She’d tried telephoning, but the line was either busy or no one answered, which was most frustrating, and she decided then and there that if she hadn’t heard anything by this evening, she’d ring again and keep on ringing until someone picked up at the other end.

Peggy raised the line with the forked wooden prop so any wind would catch the washing, checked the time, and went to lean on the garden gate to smoke a cigarette and ponder on what to do about Cissy.

For all her bright smiles and cheerful chattering on the telephone, Peggy could tell there was something eating away at her daughter – it was in her eyes and clear in the moments when she thought she wasn’t being observed – and Peggy knew she had to get to the bottom of it before things went any further. Yet, ever since the wedding, Cissy had avoided being alone with her, staying in bed until she’d left for work, disappearing each evening to the pub and coming home long after everyone was asleep.

What she did and where she went during those hours worried Peggy deeply, and she’d begun to wonder if Cissy had finally given up hope of Randy coming home to fulfil those promises he’d made so long ago, and was now attempting to drown her sorrows in one of the shady clubs that had sprung up in Cliffehaven.

And then there was Ivy whom, she’d soon discovered, she’d fretted needlessly over the whole time she’d been away. The girl had been remarkably cheerful considering the difficult decision she’d had to make, and had related the story of her time with the Johnsons and her brothers’ arrival in great detail and with much hilarity.