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Despite many letters and phone calls to the Red Cross and the War Office from Beth, Rose, and Jack’s parents, by the spring Jack had still not been traced to either a hospital or a prisoner-of-war camp.

Mr and Mrs Ramsey had received a few letters from his captain, always encouraging them to be optimistic, telling them it was possible that Jack’s details had been entered wrongly, or omitted accidentally on registers, and that letters from POW camps were notoriously slow in getting back to England.

Yet he also said that none of the other soldiers in Jack’s unit had seen him being injured or captured. He explained that they were under heavy fire that day, and therefore it wasn’t possible to keep tabs on everyone.

Beth had kept in close contact with the Ramseys, and Jack’s father was angered by a suggestion from some ignorant person that Jack had deserted.

He said that was as improbable as Jack being wounded and and falling into a ravine, with no one noticing.

Beth wished Mr Ramsey had never said that, as she began to imagine that was what had happened.

Rose insisted that was ridiculous, but the little worm of the idea had burrowed into her head and wouldn’t go away.

Christmas had passed very quietly, and on 31 December Rose and Beth had walked down to the Victoria Rooms, originally built as a concert and banqueting hall and meeting place to commemorate the start of Queen Victoria’s reign.

It had been given to Bristol University in the 1920s, to house the Student Union, and the rather splendid fountain at the front was quite likely to have coloured water from time to time, the ink tipped in by students.

It was the usual gathering place for people to see in the New Year, and Rose remembered a particularly raucous occasion when one of the students who got in the fountain had nearly drowned.

One of the many reasons Beth adored and admired Rose was her interest in and enthusiasm for young people.

Few ladies of seventy-two would venture out on a bitterly cold night just to join younger people and celebrate the New Year.

She got a tin whistle out of her pocket at midnight and blew it loudly, kissed three young airmen on their cheeks after singing Auld Lang Syne, and joined in a conga line.

It was so cold this year the water in the fountain was beginning to freeze. The sight of so many men in uniform home on leave was yet another reminder of Jack being missing, so Beth was glad when Rose was ready to go home.

‘I just hope those three boys come home safely,’ Rose said as they walked back, Rose holding Beth’s arm. ‘I think this year will be when we really see what the RAF can do with the big planes, bombing German cities. It seems to me we are gearing up for a big finale.’

‘Do you mean we are going to win?’ Beth asked.

‘Did you ever doubt that?’ Rose asked incredulously.

It was another thing to love Rose for. She was such a positive person.

She refused to grumble about her age, rationing, shortage of food and the complete disappearance of so many things in the shops.

She not only made do and mended her own things, but often the neighbours’ too.

Beth had met many of them over Christmas, when Rose invited them in for a drink and mince pies.

She’d made two beautifully dressed rag dolls for the little Jewish girls who’d arrived on the Kindertransport from Germany and were living with a couple in Pembroke Road.

Beth had noticed that she was raiding the larder and giving away food to these and other people. There was no end to her generosity.

Towards the end of January the news broke that the Allied landings at Anzio in Italy had begun.

At first Beth felt sure, if Jack was in a POW camp in Italy, that all prisoners would be liberated.

But that hope died when it became clear that the Germans were fighting back tooth and nail.

Besides, it was also possible the Germans had already moved all the prisoners back to Germany.

Following Rose’s lead in helping others, Beth began knitting in earnest– hats, scarves and gloves.

She found that many of the haberdashery shops had odd ounces of wool, leftover dye-lots they couldn’t sell, so she bought them.

It didn’t matter to her what colour the wool was, she was knitting multi-coloured striped items. When the weather grew really raw in February she took a big pile of finished articles to the women who ran the clothes stall in Christ Church Hall to help people who had lost everything in bombings.

It made Beth happy to see children in her hats, scarves and mittens.

She also became respected by the rather starchy women who ran the stall, and felt less guilty of her crime now that she was helping people– plus knitting these things took her mind off Jack’s plight.

She had long since stopped looking over her shoulder for Ronnie too. She believed she had been mistaken– after all, it made no sense that he would’ve come to Bristol.

Beth telephoned Mr Boyle in Waterford from time to time, but he didn’t seem fazed by being left to manage her cottage, and had new dates booked to tell her about.

He paid Kathleen and the utilities from the rental money, and asked if she wanted the balance sent to her.

She asked him to hold on to it for the time being.

Kathleen, it seemed, was still happy to take care of the cottage and was appreciating Beth’s letters, but apologized for not always responding, as she wasn’t a good letter-writer.

Both Kathleen and Mr Boyle, however, were concerned that she still had no news of Jack.

They both thought she should stay with Mrs Cullen, who sounded lovely, and they prayed for good news.

March came in with a hint of spring in the air, and green shoots of bulbs appeared in the garden, which cheered both her and Rose.

Then, right at the end of the month when the garden was bright with daffodils, it turned really warm, and Rose thought it would be a good day for cleaning out the old workshop.

Leaves had blown in under the double doors back in November, and the whole place was dusty and untidy as they’d tended to just dump stuff in there when it was too cold to linger long enough to put things away properly.

Rose opened the doors wide onto the lane, and Beth swept the floor vigorously.

‘That’s creating even more dust on everything,’ Rose wailed, running her fingers across the tools.

‘I’ll go and get the mop and bucket,’ Beth said. ‘Once the floor’s washed, we’ll only need to dust the tools with a damp duster.’

Rose was bending over trying to pull out a couple of boxes because she saw leaves and sweet wrappers had blown in beside them, when she heard a man say, ‘Where is she?’

Without moving or even looking round, she sensed it was the man Ronnie. He had a rough voice and his tone was threatening.

‘Where is who?’ she asked, straightening up and holding her broom tightly for security.

‘Don’t yer give me none of that, I’ve seen Mary with you. Get ’er!’

Rose offered up a silent prayer that Beth would stay in the house, and said, ‘My good man, I have no idea what you are talking about. There is no Mary here, so kindly go away.’

‘There’s nuffing worse than a posh bitch,’ he snarled, taking a threatening step forwards. ‘Now call ’er!’

He was in an even worse state now than when she saw him three months earlier, with unkempt beard and hair, a long black coat covered in stains, boots tied on his feet with string, and the collar on his shirt black with filth. He smelled appalling too.

‘Fuckin’ get ’er!’ he yelled and from his coat pocket pulled a brown cudgel shiny from constant handling.

It was about two feet long and Rose remembered, as a girl, village boys making such things from tree branches, whittling them with a penknife so they had a fat ball shape at one end, becoming gradually narrower to fit their hand.

They threatened boys from other villages with them, but she never heard of them hitting anyone.

But she guessed this foul-mouthed man wouldn’t hesitate to hit her with it. Her broom was no deterrent.

‘Come now,’ she said in her loudest voice, hoping Beth would hear and telephone the police, ‘there is no one here by that name, but I can see you are in need, let me go inside and I’ll get you something to eat and some money for you.’

‘Money? I don’t want no fuckin’ money from you, just that little bitch to come out and see me. I was like a dad to ’er and she owes me.’

Rose moved sideways just enough to be able to reach a chisel that had been left on the side instead of in its place on the wall.

‘Look, I’m sorry you are distressed,’ she said, ‘but you’ve got the wrong place. There is no girl here. Just me, and I’m a widow.’

Her hand closed around the chisel handle, but at the same moment the door through to the house opened and Beth saw Ronnie. She dropped the bucket of water, slopping it all over the floor, and leapt to Rose’s side to protect her.

‘This man seems to think someone called Mary is here,’ Rose said, looking intently at Beth in a silent message to follow her lead. ‘This is Miss Manning, my housekeeper, and I doubt she’s ever seen you before.’

‘No, I haven’t,’ Beth spoke up. ‘So clear off now or I’ll call the police.’

‘Hoity-toity!’ he exclaimed. ‘You learned to talk posh too. But I knows who you really are.’

He moved closer, reaching out to grab Beth’s arm. Quick as a flash Rose stabbed his arm with the chisel. It was so sharp it went right through his coat and he yelped.

‘You’ve had fair warning.’ Rose’s voice was loud and clear. ‘Come one step closer and this will go through your heart.’

Beth snatched up a large shovel. ‘Go and call the police,’ she said to Rose. ‘I’ll deal with this man.’

She had the vivid memory of being too small and frightened to fight him off, but she was a strong woman now.

She lifted the shovel above her head, hating him so much she wanted to split his head open with it.

Rose had backed up through the door to the kitchen, and Beth heard the ping of the phone as she picked it up.

‘Last chance,’ Beth said, taking a step nearer him and standing feet well apart to keep her balance. ‘Go now, or you get this. How dare you come here disturbing an old lady.’

Her blood was up, and as he lifted his cudgel and took another step towards her, she whacked him with every ounce of strength she had. He fell to the workroom floor like a sack of potatoes. As he lay there crumpled up, she lifted the shovel to hit him yet again and kill him.

‘No, Beth!’ Rose’s voice from behind stopped her. ‘Enough! The police are coming.’

Beth began to cry then with shock, and the memories the man on the floor had brought back. However much she wanted to kill him she knew Rose was right to stop her. Murder would mean prison.

The police arrived very quickly, followed five or ten minutes later by an ambulance, and Rose took charge.

While Ronnie was examined she told them he was a stranger who had threatened her.

They pronounced him alive but unconscious, and Rose stood by the ambulance men wringing her hands as if distressed.

To the police she explained how the man had barged into the workroom, convinced she was harbouring someone he knew.

She repeated how he had sworn at her and threatened her with his cudgel, how Beth came into the workshop then, spilling the bucket of water she’d brought with her, and had insisted on dealing with the man, but in reality getting Rose to telephone for help.

Beth had picked up the shovel to hold the man at bay, and only hit him with it to stop him attacking her and possibly Rose too.

Faced with Beth’s tear-stained face, and Rose’s dignified, detailed account of events, the police were entirely sympathetic. Rose pointed out his cudgel, now on the ground.

‘If he’d hit either of us with it, which he threatened, I don’t think we’d have recovered. Beth was very brave to stop him.’

Ronnie was taken away on a stretcher, and the police said they would arrest him for threatening behaviour once he regained consciousness.

‘I don’t think we want to press charges. Just warn him not to do it to me or anyone else again,’ Rose said. ‘I think the bump on his head will probably act as a deterrent.’

When the ambulance and police had gone, they mopped up the water on the floor, washed it over properly and then closed and locked the double doors.

‘We’ll sort the rest in a day or two,’ Rose said. ‘Now, let’s go and have a cup of tea and try to put what happened into perspective.’

Beth was still shaking with shock at what she’d done, very much aware, if Rose hadn’t intervened, of what might have happened. ‘You were very calm,’ she said to Rose. ‘Thank you for supporting me, and backing me up in claiming not to know that horrible man.’

‘He had done you so much damage in the past, it was the least I could do,’ Rose said with a nonchalant shrug. ‘Let’s hope the police make him leave Bristol and never return. It’s been an unpleasant drama, but thankfully it’s over now. That man was a really nasty piece of work.’

‘I wonder if my mother is still alive,’ Beth said in little more than a whisper.

Knowing there wasn’t a good answer to that question, Rose just went to Beth where she sat at the dining table, and put her arms round her, resting her face on Beth’s head.

‘I like to think of you as the daughter I never had,’ she said softly.

‘If your real mum is alive, at least she got away from Ronnie. But I think it’s more likely she’s passed away and that’s why he’s sleeping rough. ’

‘When and if Jack comes back, do I need to tell him everything?’ Beth whispered, as if afraid of being overheard.

‘You know you do,’ Rose replied. ‘And I’ll be around to help you. But let’s light the fire and put the wireless on, and maybe we’ll have a large sherry each for shock.’