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That evening, Mr Ramsey telephoned to tell Beth he had arranged the memorial service for Jack in Falmouth. It was to be the following week.

‘It’s a tall order, as you’ll have to change at both Plymouth and Truro.’

‘I don’t mind that at all,’ Beth said. ‘I’ll arrange to have time off work.’

‘Bless you, Beth, it will mean so much to us to have you there. Let me know your arrival time and I’ll meet you at the station the day before. We hope you’ll be happy to stay with us.’

‘That is very kind of you,’ she said.

‘I just wish we weren’t meeting you for the first time for such a sad occasion,’ he said sorrowfully. ‘We know Jack wanted to marry you, and so we see you as part of our family.’

‘That is a lovely thing to say, Mr Ramsey. I’ll organize train tickets immediately. Meanwhile is there anything I can do to help you and Mrs Ramsey? Anything I can bring for the wake?’

‘Just yourself, my dear,’ he said. ‘That will be more than enough for Jack.’

As Beth had walked home earlier across the Downs, her head had been buzzing with the memory of Harry’s kiss.

It made her feel lighter, more optimistic about the future, and happier.

But after the phone call from Mr Ramsey she felt guilty that she was even thinking about another man when Jack was barely cold in his grave.

Rose, ever perceptive to moods, brought it up later that evening.

‘When you came in this evening, you had flushed cheeks and brighter eyes. Even your voice was bouncier. Then Mr Ramsey called and all that went. I understand that being asked to attend a memorial service in Cornwall for the man you had hoped to marry is enough to flatten anyone’s mood.

But clearly something good happened earlier in the day. So tell me about that?’

It was tempting to claim Rose was mistaken, but the truth was that Beth wanted to unburden herself.

‘I swear you have witchy powers,’ she said, trying to make light of it. ‘Yes, something did happen. Harry was discharged today. He said he was going to miss me, but he also kissed me.’

Rose pursed her lips. ‘A real kiss?’

‘Well, not a smooching one, but on the lips,’ she said, blushing furiously. ‘Now I feel guilty.’

‘Well don’t, dear, I’m rather glad that someone or something has made you perk up.

From what you’ve told me about the sergeant, he sounds a good man.

Now you must concentrate on this service for Jack, meeting his parents, thinking about what you are going to wear, and making that sad journey to Cornwall.

But once that is over, you can start living again.

You are far too young to stay alone, grieving, for ever. ’

‘Rose, you are just amazing sometimes, so unjudgemental. I was afraid you’d tell me off.’

‘I’m human just like you,’ she said. ‘You hardly knew Jack, but you’ve been faithful and devoted to him for a very long and difficult time. It’s enough.’

Mr Ramsey was right, it was a long journey to Falmouth, and it had turned much colder. Rose had lent her a black moleskin coat that, although like velvet, was surprisingly warm and fitted her perfectly, and a black felt hat.

‘Duncan bought me that coat just a couple of years before he died. He said it was a pity moles only came in black, but I could be stylish in it for his funeral. Of course he died in the summer, so I didn’t wear it, but it is rather stylish, Beth, and black suits you.’

Beth sniggered at Duncan saying it would be good for his funeral. Everything Rose said about him pointed to a funny and caring man. ‘I feel like a film star in it,’ she said. ‘I’m glad you didn’t wear it for his funeral as I’d take extra sadness with me.’

Rose had made a big Dundee cake for her to give to the Ramseys. She’d used the last of the dried fruit she had stored, another example of her generosity. ‘Just don’t leave it on the train,’ she warned.

Beth had bought some lovely hand cream for Mrs Ramsey, some cigarettes for both Mr Ramsey and Jack’s brother, Andy, and a lipstick for his sister, Dawn. They weren’t imaginative presents, but there wasn’t much in the shops to choose from. The lipstick had been the last one in the chemist’s.

She had planned to read on the train, but once on it she found a previous passenger had made the viewing hole in the window bigger, and looking out and seeing Somerset, Devon and Cornwall was far better than reading.

Everyone had told her all three counties were picturesque, and she’d have a job to decide which she liked best. They were quite right; the scenery was lovely, one sweet little cottage after another, fields of sheep and cows, fast-flowing rivers, and ancient churches.

It was a far cry from London’s East End, and Bristol too, with so much bomb damage to the city centre, but the beauty of these new counties brought on a wave of sadness that Jack wasn’t showing them to her.

It was dusk when she arrived in Falmouth, and the man who came striding towards her could be none other than Mr Ramsey. He was just an older version of Jack, his features the same, but with a little less hair.

‘Welcome to Falmouth, Beth,’ he said without even checking who she was. ‘You look every bit as beautiful as Jack said.’ He took her case in one hand, and put the other on her elbow and led her out of the station. ‘We only live ten minutes away, but the hill is a bit steep, I’m afraid.’

After they crossed the road, Mr Ramsey said, ‘That bag in your hand looks heavy. Let me have it.’

‘It’s a Dundee cake,’ she explained. ‘Mrs Cullen, who I work for, made it. It should be lovely– she’s great at making cakes.’

‘How kind of her,’ he said. ‘We haven’t had any fruit cake since the start of the war. It seems to be much harder to get foodstuffs daily.’

‘It’s the same in Bristol. But Mrs Cullen had tucked things away in the larder long before the war began. Mind you, she’s given so much of it away now, she’s very kind. But tell me, before we get to your house, how are you and your wife coping?’

‘Taking it one day at a time. Struggling a bit. It was as we thought, an infection Jack had been harbouring almost since he was injured,’ he said, his voice cracking with emotion.

‘Just awful. I think Jack would’ve preferred to be blown up entirely rather than this terrible, prolonged and painful ordeal. ’

‘Yes, I think he would,’ Beth agreed. ‘But I kept hoping for a miracle.’

‘Me too, but don’t let’s talk about this back at the house.

My wife finds it terribly upsetting. I think that every day since we got the bad news, she’s broken down in tears.

Though none of us are our normal selves.

If you’d come a couple of years ago you would have thought what a noisy, busy family we were.

We are all quiet now, but maybe after this service we can start to come out of that. ’

‘Grief has its own timetable,’ Beth said, something that Rose had told her. ‘We just have to wait until it passes.’

Mrs Ramsey was small and rotund, in her fifties, but grief had put lines on her face that were probably not there before, and the way she’d twisted her greying hair into an untidy bun and the somewhat grubby floral overall over her dress suggested she didn’t care about her appearance anymore.

But she hugged Beth tightly, murmuring that she had imagined meeting her for the first time to celebrate their engagement.

She got all choked up then and had to go upstairs to recover.

Dawn and Andy were very welcoming, making her tea and offering her a sandwich. But they were subdued, as if they didn’t dare speak of anything that might inadvertently trigger a memory of Jack.

Their house was much as Beth had expected, small rooms, all in need of redecorating like most people’s homes now.

Many photographs, not just of Jack, but Dawn and Andy too.

Dawn was a peroxide blonde, petite and pretty, with her mother’s dark eyes.

Andy also had the dark eyes and a square jaw, and Beth was glad he wasn’t like Jack.

He was shy; he’d only been in the navy for a year, but didn’t seem to want to speak about that.

Dawn was chattier. She was working as a receptionist at the doctor’s surgery and was no longer seeing the fisherman.

She smiled when she said that his smell had put her off a year ago.

‘I want to go and work in London when the war is over,’ she went on.

‘Will you tell me the best shops to apply to?’

Beth was glad when it was time to go to bed. She would be sharing a room with Dawn, and she was so tired she just hoped the younger girl wouldn’t keep chatting.

Fortunately, Dawn didn’t chat, and Beth must have fallen asleep the moment her head touched the pillow, as suddenly light was coming in round the curtain and she could hear seagulls. It was after eight.

They would be having the wake in the Red Lion, a public house close to the station and the church, and as Beth’s train home was leaving at three p.m., Mr Ramsey suggested he drop her case off at the pub this morning.

‘We wish you could stay for another night,’ Mrs Ramsey said as she dished out boiled eggs for breakfast. ‘But will you come again one day, perhaps next summer?’

‘I’d love that,’ Beth said. She felt so sorry for Mrs Ramsey, who looked drawn and exhausted by her grief.

Dawn said last night that she had lost a great deal of weight since they heard Jack was missing.

‘It was so cruel that the army and the Red Cross took so long to find him. Poor Mum was imagining all kinds of terrible things. Then she finally gets to hear that one of those things has happened.’

She told Beth too that Jack had said in a letter that he hoped Beth and she would become good friends. ‘I told him that if he loved you, then I would too,’ Dawn said, and her eyes filled with tears. ‘You haven’t disappointed, Beth, you are every bit as lovely as he said.’

The memorial service was harrowing, an outpouring of grief from everyone present.

So many people there, young and old, plus at least a dozen of Jack’s old school friends, now in uniform, and some men who served with Jack and were home on leave.

The vicar, however, red-faced, middle-aged and balding, seemed rather more interested in the sound of his own voice than portraying the life of a brave young man who had come to this church since a baby.

The organ was very wheezy and the hymns were played too slowly.

But Mr Cox, headmaster at the senior school Jack attended, spoke affectionately of the boy he called ‘a bright spark with great promise’.

There was also a letter from Jack’s captain in the army, read aloud by Mr Cox.

He said he felt great regret at hearing Jack had died as a POW, and that Mr and Mrs Ramsey, his brother and sister and other family members should be very proud of him, an exemplary soldier, courageous, tough, and well-liked by both his fellow soldiers and officers.

His death was a great loss to the British Army.

Beth found it impossible to eat anything at the wake.

She had just a small glass of sherry and watched the clock to leave.

Most of the people there were in groups chatting quietly, but if they noticed Beth they didn’t come over to speak.

She didn’t blame them– why should they care about a stranger?

And she guessed none of the Ramseys were in the mood to introduce her to people.

Aside from feeling isolated, she had been biting back tears all day and felt unable to deal with anyone’s memories of Jack on top of her own.

She had imagined before she got here that sharing stories would be uplifting, but now she felt she’d been plunged into that dark pit of misery again.

It was after midnight when Beth got back to Bristol.

She was cold, forlorn and barely able to put one foot in front of the other, dreading the walk home.

Fortunately there was a taxi waiting, when she had expected they would all have gone, and within ten minutes she was opening the front door at Lamb Lane.

‘You poor love,’ Rose said as she came in. She was ready for bed in her pink dressing gown. ‘You look exhausted. I’ve put a hot water bottle in your bed, and now I’ll make you some hot milk and a sandwich.’

‘The milk will be lovely but don’t worry about a sandwich,’ Beth said. ‘I think food would just stick in my throat.’

‘That bad, eh?’ Rose raised an eyebrow.

‘Yes, unbearably sad. Jack’s mother looked like she was about to collapse. But they were good people, I’m glad I went, even if it was a very long way. They were very touched by you making the Dundee cake.’

‘Did you have any of it?’

‘No, they didn’t take it to the wake. I expect they didn’t want to share it with so many people.’

‘I didn’t tell you before, but I made a little one for us too. Would you like a slice now?’

Rose opened up a tin, and wafted it past Beth so she could smell it.

‘Umm, maybe I could manage a small slice, then,’ Beth said.

The cake was delicious and comforting. ‘I couldn’t wait to get back here,’ Beth admitted. ‘I think that means this is where I belong.’

‘I think you belong here too,’ Rose said, and got up and leaned over Beth to hug her. ‘But one day soon you’ll meet the man you are destined to spend the rest of your life with. And no one will be happier than me when that happens.’