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As Christmas approached, Beth was almost holding her breath, praying that Harry wouldn’t be given orders to leave immediately.

He had been coming to Lamb Lane every day.

He brought the tree in from the garden, and they decorated it together.

The three of them made paper chains too and hung them up.

He said he could get them a nice fat chicken from his aunt and uncle’s farm, and of course Rose invited him to come for Christmas dinner.

‘Should I ask your parents too?’ she said with her usual generosity.

‘Bless you, that’s so kind,’ Harry replied.

‘But the last few years while I’ve been away, they’ve been spending the day with their neighbours and their small family, turn and turn about.

It’s my folks’ turn this year and they’ve got everything organized already.

But they’d really have liked to meet Beth and you, Rose. ’

‘Maybe we can do something at New Year, if you’re still here, Harry?’ Rose suggested.

They went to the Berkeley for the tea dance, and Beth wore her glamorous coral dress. Harry said she was the most beautiful girl there, and for the first time in her life she believed that.

She felt she was walking on air and basking in warm sunshine because she was sure Harry loved her. Nothing had ever felt so right or good, but she needed a quiet moment with him to tell him about her past.

After the tea dance they took Rose with them to the pictures to see Dear Octopus with Margaret Lockwood and Michael Wilding. It was a heart-warming film, and everyone in the packed cinema was beaming as they came out.

While they’d been inside, it had become much colder with a thick frost. As the pavements were slippery, Harry took both Rose and Beth’s hands.

‘If I go down, we’ll all go down together,’ he joked.

‘I expect we’ll have really deep snow in Germany,’ he said a bit dolefully.

‘Good job my mother knitted me some thick socks.’

‘I wish you wouldn’t keep mentioning Germany,’ Beth reproved him. ‘I’ll be miserable once you’re gone.’

‘No you won’t,’ Rose piped up. ‘I won’t allow it.’

At that Beth smiled because she knew Rose had fallen for Harry’s charm too and wanted to keep him around.

But then he was very easy to be with. Beth found it hard to imagine him on the parade ground bellowing out instructions to his men.

Even harder to imagine was him armed with a gun and shooting the enemy.

She wondered again how men like him could adjust to coming back to civilian life.

In the last couple of days before Christmas, Beth found herself jumping each time the telephone rang, fully expecting it to be Harry telling her he’d got his orders and he’d be leaving that day.

But Christmas Day came the same as the previous days, with him arriving on his old bicycle, a bulging bag strapped to the carrier as usual.

One day it had been vegetables from a farm near his parents’ home, yesterday he’d brought the promised chicken.

But on Christmas morning he had not only presents but a change of clothes, as he’d be staying the night.

Two sets of neighbours popped in during the morning for a sherry and a mince pie, only staying for a short while, but their presence created a festive atmosphere.

The chicken had been in the oven for some time, with Harry in charge of basting it. Rose prepared the vegetables, while Beth laid the table with a starched white cloth, the best glasses and two floral arrangements she’d made with red candles, holly, and silver baubles.

Rose was overjoyed when her son Myles called from Canada mid-morning. She had tears of joy running down her cheeks as she spoke to him.

‘It’s all so perfect,’ Beth whispered to Harry. ‘He couldn’t phone last Christmas, and although she laughed and said that was the drawback of having a surgeon son, I knew she felt sad.’

‘There’s many a Christmas I would’ve liked to speak to my folks,’ Harry said. ‘When the war is over, I’m going to get a telephone put in for them.’

Rose took Beth to one side just before the lunch was ready and Harry was out in the garden sharpening the carving knife.

‘I’m going upstairs for a rest after lunch,’ she whispered. ‘You must use that time to tell Harry about you.’

‘Not today!’ Beth exclaimed.

‘What better day? Tomorrow we’ll be at the pantomime, and the day after he’ll surely have to rejoin his regiment. I’m not going to go over why you must tell him, and soon. You know why. You will feel much better for it, I promise you.’

‘But what if he’s appalled and doesn’t want me anymore?’ Beth asked, her eyes filling with tears.

‘He’s not that kind of man, any more than Jack was. So just do it, or risk him worrying so much about what you are hiding that it spoils everything for you.’

The crackers pulled and a bottle of wine consumed, the three of them were glowing from the heat of the fire.

The chicken was flavoursome and moist, the vegetables perfectly cooked and the gravy in a class of its own.

No one had room for Christmas pudding, and they decided they’d eat it the next day.

‘If you don’t mind, I think I’ll have a little lie down,’ Rose said, after gathering up the plates and putting them in the sink. ‘I’ll do those later.’

‘I get the feeling she’s leaving us alone on purpose,’ Harry said as Rose’s footsteps retreated upstairs.

‘She is,’ Beth sighed. ‘She made me promise I would tell you about my past this afternoon, before you have to go back to your regiment.’

Harry got up, took her hand and led her to a sofa. ‘It’s scary for you to talk about it, isn’t it?’ he said.

‘Yes,’ she replied, hanging her head. ‘I’ve been an imposter for so long, I’m terrified of telling the story. Rose is the only one who knows.’

‘Well, as Rose is the most principled lady I’ve ever met, if what you’ve done hasn’t disturbed or frightened her, I don’t think I’ll be too shocked,’ he said with an encouraging smile. ‘So just come out with it, sweetheart.’

It was so hard for her to know where to start, even harder to find the right words. But she began with the September day when she met Elizabeth in the Lyons Corner House by Trafalgar Square.

Beth had relived that day a hundred or more times.

It was so vivid she could visualize Elizabeth’s face, her smart clothes, her poise and confidence.

As she told the story, it was like watching a film or a play.

She hardly dared look at Harry, fearing he might be judging her and finding her wanting.

On and on she went, the air-raid warning, everyone scampering for the shelter, and Elizabeth leading her into Trafalgar Square Tube.

She described the crowded scene on the platform, and then the huge blast, and soil and debris raining down on them.

‘I must’ve blacked out at that point,’ she said, only then daring to lift her eyes to look at Harry. His dark eyes were wide, not with shock as she had expected, but concern for her.

She went on then to say how she woke up in a hospital bed and the nurse called her Elizabeth Manning, not her real name, Mary Price.

‘I should’ve spoken out then, but I didn’t,’ she said, wiping angry tears from her cheeks. ‘The kind nurse told me Mary Price was dead, but that she had saved me by putting a big handbag over my face. All I got was a nasty cut on my head that needed stitches.’

On she went with the story, stumbling over words here and there, but now she’d got going she really wanted Harry to know how dishonest she’d been.

But he still didn’t say a word, just listened, even when she related about the money, the fine clothes in the suitcase, and that she intended to go to Ireland and claim the other woman’s inheritance.

Finally she got to the end of the story, Clancy’s Cottage by the sea, a new life of ease and comfort. She stopped then, waiting for his response.

‘Now tell me about your life before all that,’ he said firmly. ‘The whole thing, what happened to the little girl that made her so pleased to not be Mary Price any longer.’

That was far harder to tell. She was fine telling him about her job in Hampstead, and she had mentioned Auntie Ruth too.

‘Your mum?’ he said. ‘Why aren’t you telling me about her? I sense there is a man at the bottom of this, a stepfather, or your mother’s fancy man?’

‘Fancy man’ was an expression Beth had heard countless times in Whitechapel. As a child she hadn’t understood the meaning, but she’d learned since then that the expression usually meant a good-for-nothing man or a spiv who used vulnerable women.

She nodded. ‘Ronnie. I don’t think they were married. Mum met him after my dad died in the Great War. She was very poor, struggling I suppose.’

‘And Ronnie said he’d look after you both?’

Again she nodded.

‘And how long before he hit you and your mum, and worse?’

‘About two years in he was hitting us.’

‘And the rest?’

Beth looked up at him, her eyes brimming with tears. She felt he knew the whole story, a sixth sense had told him, but he wanted her to say it. She didn’t know why she was finding it so hard to say the right words, when his face held nothing but loving compassion.

‘He made Mum go on the streets, and I was ten the first time he raped me.’

She watched his face, and saw his lips quiver and tears spring to his eyes.

‘I hoped I was wrong,’ he said in a small voice. ‘I sensed something when I first met you, but I told myself it was just the sadness about Jack. Rose knows all this, I take it. That’s why she excused herself so you could tell me.’

‘Yes, and I’m so sorry if it’s ruined Christmas for you, but she felt I must tell you.’

‘She was right to insist, Beth, something like this cannot be left untold and festering. But I want you to finish the story now.’