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A burly police sergeant called on Rose and Beth a few days after the attack.

Rose invited him in for a cup of tea, and he told them that Ronald Birch was about to be discharged from hospital, but had been cautioned against attempting to go anywhere near Mrs Cullen’s home and advised to leave Bristol immediately.

The sergeant looked across the room to Beth and chuckled.

‘He’s got a sore head, but was still adamant that you are Mary Price, his stepdaughter.

Nothing like sticking to a lie for grim death!

He said he’d left London two years ago after his wife, Mary’s mother, died, and went to various cities to try and find you. ’

Rose knew how hard it must be for Beth not to show interest in what Ronnie had claimed. To do so might expose her, or at least make the sergeant suspicious that she was Mary Price. Yet Rose felt as an elderly lady, and perhaps a busybody, she could ask some questions on Beth’s behalf.

‘What did his wife die of, then?’ she asked casually.

‘Birch said it was tuberculosis. He got all worked up and angry that Mary had gone into service, probably to a big house with all modern amenities, yet she didn’t care that her mother was living in damp, insanitary conditions.’

‘I dare say the poor girl left home to get away from such a nasty stepfather, and surely it’s a man’s job to look after his wife?’ Rose said. ‘Why wasn’t he called up anyway? Even through all that dirt I didn’t think he looked old enough to be exempt.’

‘He claimed he was fifty-eight but had lost his identity card,’ the sergeant said, pursing his lips, clearly not believing a word of that. ‘I made an enquiry to find out more about him, but haven’t heard anything back yet.’

‘What part of London was he from?’ Rose asked, looking the picture of innocence.

‘The East End. He said he buried his wife in Whitechapel, where they were living when she died.’

The sergeant finished drinking his tea and got up.

‘Now be careful, you two. Don’t answer the door unless you are expecting a caller.

I don’t think for one moment he’ll come back here now he knows how competent you can be with a shovel,’ he grinned.

‘But if you see him hanging about, or he should come to your door, telephone the police immediately.’

‘We will,’ Rose nodded.

‘Well, that went quite well,’ Rose said after Beth had shown the sergeant out. ‘I half thought we both might be charged with assault. They can do that if they think the force used in self-defence was excessive. Good job we are frail little women!’

Beth laughed. ‘Nothing frail about us two. Do you think Ronnie was telling the truth about my mum dying?’

Rose didn’t answer for a moment. ‘I don’t know,’ she said eventually, rather hesitantly. ‘Do you think he even married her?’

‘I think it probably is true about her dying, but I can’t imagine Ronnie ever being sentimental enough to go through with marriage. I also doubt Mum would’ve ever been sober enough.’

Rose paused before answering. It struck her as odd that Beth used the word ‘sober’. Most people, when asked about their mother, would’ve said ‘well enough’. It was clear the scars from childhood were still raw.

‘When the war is over, you could go to Whitechapel and check the burial records. Just so you know for certain.’

‘I never want to go back there,’ Beth said firmly. ‘Dead or alive, I don’t care.’

Rose was sitting in a chair in the garden.

It was now May, and very pretty with the little cherry tree dripping with pink blossom and masses of small rockery plants billowing over onto the paths.

She had been reading, but she’d stopped to study Beth.

She was kneeling, planting out some pansies she’d grown from seed.

The last few days of warm sunshine had given her face, arms and legs a golden tan.

Her chestnut hair was loose on her shoulders, and very shiny.

She looked quite lovely, though Rose was aware Beth saw herself as very plain.

She rarely mentioned Jack now, but Rose knew this wasn’t because she’d stopped caring, more that she was trying to prepare herself for bad news.

Rose knew next to nothing about army procedures when a soldier was missing, but she thought– as probably did Beth– that poor Jack had been blown up, and it had been impossible to identify his body.

The Red Cross were very thorough. If he’d been in a POW camp or hospital, they surely would’ve found him by now.

Besides, even if Jack was unable to write a letter himself, he would’ve got someone else to do it for him, to put his parents’ and Beth’s minds at rest.

Every day when she and Beth went up to the shops in Clifton Village, they heard about someone’s son, brother, father or nephew who had either been killed, taken prisoner, or was recovering from serious injury here in an English hospital.

They also saw many men on crutches, with missing limbs, or head injuries.

Not as many wounded as Rose remembered after the Great War, thank heavens.

She recalled how busy Duncan was in his practice at that time, seeing men with both wounds that wouldn’t heal and shell shock.

Many of these men he made no charge for treating.

As he said, ‘They fought to keep us safe, the least I can do to show my appreciation is to try and make them whole again.’

‘Why the tears?’ Beth suddenly asked Rose, snapping her out of her reverie.

Rose wiped her eyes with a hanky. ‘Just thinking about Duncan and something he said. I hadn’t realized it had made me cry.’

Beth crouched down beside Rose and took her hand between hers. ‘Tell me?’

Rose related the little story, and saw Beth’s eyes well up too. ‘He sounds like such a good man,’ she said.

Rose smiled at Beth and patted her cheek affectionately. ‘He was. He used to get very angry about the way servicemen were neglected when they came home. But he’d be very happy to know I’ve got you here for company. If we’d known you when you were a little girl we would gladly have adopted you.’

There was nothing Beth could say in answer to that, she was too choked up with emotion.

Two days later it was tipping down with rain, and Beth and Rose were making some pasties to eke out the tiny meat ration. The telephone rang and Rose went to answer it, leaving Beth to cut the pastry into small circles.

‘It’s Mr Ramsey for you,’ Rose called, covering the receiver with her hand. ‘He sounds distressed.’

Beth leapt to the phone. ‘Hello, have they found him?’

Rose watched Beth’s face drain of colour. ‘No!’ she shrieked. ‘No, that can’t be true.’

Beth slumped down on a dining chair to listen to Mr Ramsey. Clearly Jack wasn’t dead, but something very serious was wrong. Rose could only stand by helplessly, her heart going out to both Jack’s parents and Beth.

Finally, Beth put the receiver back, her eyes as dead as a fish’s on the fishmonger’s slab. ‘His legs were blown off,’ she said, then rested her arms on the table and dropped her head onto them, sobbing.

Rose felt faint. This was not a problem that could be solved easily. There were prosthetics, of course, but to a young man, losing his legs would be living death in his eyes.

She sat next to Beth and pulled her into her arms.

‘Where has he been all this time?’ she asked, knowing that platitudes were almost an insult to someone getting such awful news.

‘The Red Cross manager who contacted the Ramseys thinks he was taken to a hospital in Sicily, then moved to Italy as a POW, where he was moved several times more, before ending up in a sick-bay of a German POW camp. It’s all unclear because he was wrongly identified in the beginning and was, and still is, too sick to communicate properly. ’

‘What can I say? It’s a nightmare, for both his parents and you,’ Rose exclaimed. ‘Is there anything we can do?’

‘Only write to him. Mr Ramsey said he’d put the details in the post for me. But I can’t stand the idea that he’s lost his legs! That’s too gruesome for words. How will he work? How will he be able to bear it?’

Rose thought that her last question was the major one. How would he? Getting married, having children, running down the beach in Cornwall, playing football, all things which must now seem out of reach to him. But she wasn’t going to say that.

‘Duncan used to tell me that it was amazing what people can teach themselves to do when they come to terms with serious injuries and disabilities.’

‘Maybe, but if it were me, I’d want to end it all.’

‘That is defeatist talk,’ Rose said sharply. ‘We will have no more of that.’

In the days that followed, Beth felt completely crushed.

All her dreams and hopes for the future involved Jack.

She had compiled a list of things she wanted to see and do with him when the war was over.

She’d kept a diary of her feelings day by day.

Put all his letters in a scrapbook, and even begun to knit him a jumper.

Now all she saw in her head was the picture of him in a wheelchair.

She was absolutely certain she could still love him, despite the lack of limbs, but would he want that?

She realized because she had spent so few hours with Jack, she knew only one small bit of him, the physically fit, bright, ambitious, kind and sunny-natured bit.

She’d never seen him angry, challenged in any way.

Was it even possible for any man to rebuild a life after being dealt such a huge blow?

It was a week later that a letter from Jack arrived for Beth. It wasn’t written by him and it came via the Red Cross. It seemed as if her first letter to him hadn’t yet arrived.

‘Dearest Beth,’ she read, her face alight with joy that after so long he was actually dictating a letter to her,