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Beth pulled back the bedroom curtains to see it was raining heavily again, the third day of rain. Dejected, she sighed and got back into bed. It was now May. She’d hoped to do some gardening today as the tulip bulbs she’d planted back last autumn were over and the weeds had sprung up round them.

She picked up the framed photograph of Jack and her in Trafalgar Square from her bedside cabinet, and her eyes filled with tears. Missing Jack and worrying about him was awful, but on top of that she was lonely and felt imprisoned by the bad weather.

But the photograph always cheered her, a reminder of the best of days, Jack in his uniform and she in her gorgeous tea-dance dress.

She wished it was possible to get colour photographs, but even in black and white it was a good picture.

The famous fountain and the head of one of the big stone lions were a superb backdrop, and their faces shone with how they felt about one another.

With Jack off to Plymouth to join his ship, she had spent the day after the tea dance crying, until Margery came upstairs and, seeing her tear-stained face, told her to pull herself together, pointing out that Jack couldn’t help having to cut their time together short.

‘He’s a soldier, he must obey his orders.

We all have to do our bit, Beth. My Sid has to fight fires, I have to support him and all the people who come and stay here, some of whom have lost loved ones.

You have to support Jack if you love him. ’

‘How can I if he’s hundreds of miles away?’ Beth sobbed out.

‘By writing to him, so he knows he’s got you to come home to. Now, dry your eyes and come down and have a cup of tea.’

Beth stayed another couple of days at No. 18. She helped Margery tidy up the garden, whitewashed the walls in the cellar, and took down all the net curtains in the house and washed them. Just doing some practical jobs made her feel better.

‘I think I ought to go back to Ireland tomorrow,’ she said as she and Margery gave each of the bedrooms a spring clean, Margery pulling out the bed to clean beneath it, and turning the mattress before remaking it, while Beth wiped the window frames clean then slid the sparkling nets back onto their canes and rehung them.

‘I can’t leave Kathleen to look after the place any longer. ’

‘That’s probably for the best,’ Margery sighed. ‘You associate this place with Jack. But heaven knows I shall miss you terribly.’

Beth got down from the window and embraced the older woman. ‘I wish my mother had been like you, I’d never have left home,’ she said, nuzzling into Margery’s neck.

‘Perhaps one day you’ll come back and tell me your whole story,’ Margery said softly.

Beth just hugged her tighter. She knew that if she was ever to tell anyone about herself, it would be this kind, unjudgemental woman.

‘I’d better take a walk to the station and find out if the ferries are running. If not I’ll have to call Patrick,’ she said as she broke away. ‘I’m going to miss you too, so much.’

Beth arrived back in Dunmore with a head full of plans: decorate the cottage, tidy up the garden, look for a dance teacher, volunteer at the local hospital.

But summer turned to autumn so quickly, with too much rain to do the garden, a shortage of paint preventing her decorating, and she couldn’t find a dance teacher.

As for volunteering at the hospital, the sharp-featured sister she spoke to said, ‘We need a couple more nurses, but not a do-gooder that will get in our way.’ That was enough to make Beth turn tail and run.

News reports from England were deliberately vague, presumably to keep people’s spirits up.

But on her weekly visit to the cinema in Waterford, she learned on Pathé News that the RAF had dropped 100,000 bombs in an hour on Düsseldorf in September and that the army had recaptured Tobruk.

They learned the German siege of Leningrad was still going on, the RAF had bombed Berlin, but, closer to home, that 173 people were crushed to death trying to get into Bethnal Green Tube station.

Beth couldn’t help wondering if there were people she’d gone to school with.

Margery wrote most weeks, telling Beth about guests, going out of her way to amuse her with the funnier tales, but there was also mention of bombing quite close to Blandford Street. She’d had no bookings yet for Christmas but she supposed people were waiting until nearer the time.

When Beth wrote back she didn’t say that there were times she felt she could go mad with boredom and loneliness– not when London people were in fear of their lives– so she stuck to telling Margery about what she was knitting, little bits of local news, and that she was always anxious about Jack.

Jack’s letters were both amusing and loving.

Without saying where he was or what he was doing, he managed to convey the heat there, the atmosphere of the crowded, rather squalid towns, and the camaraderie in his unit.

But more recently his letters were slow arriving, sometimes three or four coming together, then nothing for a few weeks.

She tried very hard not to think that his letters might stop altogether one day.

Christmas had been dismal. The only cards she got were from Margery, Mr Boyle and Kathleen.

She saw people she knew walking past her cottage, yet none came to the door.

A handmade card eventually came from Jack, arriving at New Year.

He’d drawn a forest of Christmas trees in pencil, with various little animals and birds perched on the branches.

She had no idea he could draw, especially so well, and she put it between two sheets of cardboard to be safe until she could get it framed.

Christmas had never been a good time for her.

Her mother was always drunk and bad-tempered, Ronnie either creepy, trying to get her to sit on his lap, or violent if something set him off.

As a child she had often wondered who had the happy Christmases she read about in books.

Christmas with the Bradleys had just been hard work.

They had cocktail parties before Christmas, then family and friends arrived on Christmas Eve and stayed for three days.

On top of all her usual chores there were extra fires to be lit in bedrooms, dresses and shirts to be pressed, she had to help cook in the kitchen and wait at table too.

Cook, who had in the past worked for titled people in country mansions, used to snort with derision at the Bradleys’ attempts to appear monied and grand.

‘They are merely middle-class nobodies, pretending to be upper class. No one with any class expects the maid to wait at a dinner table. Nor do they expect a cook of my standing to manage without an assistant and scullery maid.’

At least in the past, however much work was involved, Beth had the company of the other staff, there was friendly banter between them and laughter.

But as Cook and Ruby, the maid, left in 1939 when war was declared, Beth had been expected to fill all the roles– cooking, lighting fires, cleaning, laying the table and everything else in between.

The only thing the Bradleys did themselves was to answer their own front door.

Her Christmas present from them was a new apron.

It had been tempting to strangle Mrs Bradley with it.

‘You must get up,’ Beth finally said aloud, aware it was past ten and Auntie Ruth had always said staying in bed was a bad habit to get into.

She thought maybe she should write to Margery and ask if she could visit her.

The bombing in London wasn’t so bad at the moment, and the Irish Sea would be calmer by now.

It struck Beth as she washed and dressed that once upon a time she would have thought her present way of life to be perfection.

No worry about money, good food, no hard work or people bullying her.

The cottage was lovely, and there was no doubt the view of the sea from the windows was breathtaking.

During the winter she’d often sat on the chair in the bedroom watching the fury of the storms, waves crashing into the sea wall with such ferocity it was a miracle the wall didn’t crumble.

‘You should count your blessings,’ she said aloud. ‘Would you really like your old life back?’

By the afternoon it had finally stopped raining and the sun was trying to get out from behind the clouds.

Beth put on a cardigan and went out into the garden.

She hadn’t been out there for over a week because of the heavy rain, and to her surprise it looked very pretty.

The laburnum tree was heavy with its tassels of yellow blossom, there were forget-me-nots, and daisies she hadn’t planted, plus clumps of green leaves thrusting out of the soil.

She had no real idea what they were but they were healthy and strong.

Her spirits were suddenly lifted. It seemed like a message that the miserable times were over, and there were good things in store for her.

She went back into the cottage to get her raincoat, thinking she would go on a bike ride, something she hadn’t done for weeks.

It was exhilarating to cycle fast and feel the wind in her hair. She stayed on the coast road, which in reality was more of a track. There were a great many puddles and many of them she rode through, lifting her feet the way children did and laughing at the joy it gave her.

All at once she noticed up ahead a man standing out in the middle of the lane.

On seeing her he waved his arms to stop her.

He was around thirty, with dark unkempt hair.

He wore working men’s clothes and a red bandana tied around his neck.

Reason told her to ride on, but then a murderer or robber was hardly likely to lie in wait for his next victim on such an isolated road.