A Song at Twilight

by Lilian Harry

Genres: Historical Fiction; Sagas; Women's Fiction

Synopsis

A powerful novel from bestselling author Lilian Harry, set in and around a Devon airfield during the Second World War. It is 1943, and the quiet of Harrowbeer, in Devon, is disrupted by increased activity at the nearly airfield built at the beginning of the war. Among the squadrons moving in are pilots from Britain, Canada and Poland. The airfield, with its noise and its population, has a massive impact on the peaceful villages nearby - an impact that will affect some inhabitants for the rest of their lives. Alison, married to a pilot and newly pregnant, soon makes friends with the locals, particularly with May, who finds herself caught up in the life of the RAF, watching and waiting as the pilots and crew carry out their dangerous missions. Then, on the night when Alison's baby is born, her husband is reported missing and Alison and May find themselves facing a dilemma all too familiar to the wives and sweethearts of those who flew the Spitfires, Hurricanes and other aircraft to protect their country during this time of war.

Release date: August 19, 2010

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 279

Sample

October 1943

‘So this is Harrowbeer.’

Alison Knight stepped out of the Morris 8 and gazed at the hastily erected collection of sheds, huts and hangars. At the far side, she could see aircraft standing on the runways or parked in bays, protected by grass-covered ramparts. Airmen, mechanics and WAAFs were everywhere, driving trucks, walking or cycling briskly along the paths or lounging in the autumn sunshine outside their huts. Lifting her eyes, Alison could see planes tumbling in practice aerobatics over the rolling Devon moors. The air was filled with the roar of their engines.

She stared up at them, wondering if the man who had confessed to her that he was growing more terrified every day was in one of those planes. Throwing it around in the sky with such apparent nonchalance; hiding his fears from his fellow pilots; living a nightmare in his mind.

‘Alison?’ Andrew asked, concern in his voice. ‘Are you all right?’

She shook herself out of her thoughts and smiled at her husband. ‘Yes, I’m fine. Just taking it all in. What was here before?’ She turned to help Hughie out of the back seat and he stood beside her, stocky and square, his thumb in his mouth and one hand clutching her skirt, gazing up at the aeroplanes. Alison brushed a fair curl back from his forehead and he twitched away from her with exactly the same impatient gesture that Andrew sometimes used. Although as fair as his mother, all his actions and mannerisms came directly from his father.

Andrew came round the car and stood with his arm across her shoulders. ‘Nothing much, as far as I can make out. It was just empty moorland. Nothing between Yelverton, over there –’ he pointed at a stubby grey church tower rising from a huddle of buildings ‘– and a few small villages on this side. Buckland Monachorum, where there’s a decent little inn, Buckstone, which is really just a hamlet near the perimeter, and Milton Combe down in the valley. Our cottage is just outside the village on top of the hill. The nearest town is Tavistock, about six miles away.’

‘Plymouth’s quite near too, isn’t it?’ she asked, and he nodded.

‘About the same distance in the other direction, but it was more or less flattened during the Blitz. I hope you won’t feel too isolated, darling.’

‘Of course I shan’t. Not with all this going on, and you coming home whenever you can.’

Andrew squeezed her shoulders. ‘Even if I can’t stay every night, we’re close enough for me to be able to come home pretty often. You’ll see plenty of me, don’t worry.’ He ruffled his son’s fair curls. ‘Have to keep an eye on this young man.’

Alison leaned her head against him. ‘I could never see too much of you.’ She looked out across the airfield again and watched the planes in the sky, repressing a shudder as she thought of the terrifying weeks of the Battle of Britain, with Andrew in the air almost all the time, fighting somewhere over the Channel or France. In the end, he had been shot down over Kent, so help had been swift in reaching him, but the broken leg and ribs and other injuries he had suffered had kept him in hospital for nearly three months, throughout much of the Blitz of 1940 and 1941. Although he hadn’t crashed in the three years since then, Alison could never quite forget that it might happen again.

Andrew, however, seemed to think that he was now invincible. ‘I’ve had my crash,’ he would say cheerfully. ‘I won’t have another one.’ And he had been back in the air the moment the doctors had given him the all-clear.

As she stood beside him now, looking out past the huts and hangars at the Devon countryside, Alison could feel the vitality quivering through him. She twisted her neck to look up into his face and saw that abstracted expression that meant he was already, in his mind, somewhere in the sky.

‘Are you going to show me where we’re living, then?’

Andrew pulled himself back to earth again and grinned down at her. ‘Of course, darling. I just hope you’ll like it. It’s not awfully big.’

‘I don’t mind that. It’s not as if we’ve got masses of furniture, anyway. Just our crockery and cooking things, and bedding. They’ll be arriving tomorrow, so I’ll need somewhere to stay tonight. Oh, and my bike’s coming as well, so I’ll be able to get about.’ She looked beyond the airfield towards the village of Yelverton with its square-towered church, and past that at the hills of Dartmoor, topped with their rocky outcrops. Nearer at hand was a sharp escarpment which seemed, like a brooding Sphinx, to be keeping a watchful eye on these noisy intruders. ‘I shall be able to explore the moor and villages. It’ll be fun.’

‘It’ll be hilly, too,’ he warned her. ‘The village itself is at the bottom of a really steep valley. And I’m not sure I like the idea of you cycling about all on your own, with Hughie on that little seat. Dartmoor Prison’s not too far away, don’t forget – and remember the Sherlock Holmes story. You don’t know what might be lurking out there!’

‘I don’t imagine there are giant hounds, anyway,’ she laughed. ‘But I’m sure I’ll find someone to go with. There’ll be other wives coming down too, won’t there? And you might get a bike and come with me sometimes, when you’re off-duty.’

Andrew went back to the other side of the car and slid into the driving seat. ‘Not if I can help it! As long as I can scrounge some petrol, we’ll use this little beauty. Anyway, a lot of the moor’s out of bounds now. Get in, and we’ll go down to the village pub for a drink before I show you your new home. And I’ve fixed for you to stay at a farmhouse until you’ve got the place sorted out.’

He started the engine and the car chugged off down a narrow lane between high, grassy banks with hedges growing from the tops. Behind the hedges, Alison could see tall trees, fields and the occasional cottage. They came to a sharp left-hand turn and shot down a steep road into the village, with rows of old stone cottages on either side and a narrow stream bubbling beside the road. An old inn stood at the bottom of the hill, with a low wall running along in front of it.

‘What a lovely village,’ Alison said as she stood in the narrow street. She could hear the sound of children’s voices coming from nearby and the singing of birds from the trees that towered above the steep valley sides. An old man was sweeping up leaves along the edge of the road and the innkeeper was rolling a barrel along in front of the inn. ‘You’d never think there was a war on, it’s so peaceful.’

‘Well, it was until they built the airfield,’ he grinned. ‘I think we must have made quite a difference to the rural atmosphere. Anyway, shall we have a snifter now that we’re here? We can sit outside with Hughie – they’ve got a bit of a garden with a few seats. You’re not in too much of a hurry to see the house, are you?’

‘I have to admit I’m thirsty after that long train journey,’ she said as Andrew carried out a pint of beer for himself and lemonade for herself and Hughie. There were a few other customers already there, sprawled on benches in the sunshine – pilots in flying jackets and two or three WAAFs in their soft blue-grey uniform. Alison leaned back and let her eyes travel round the old stone walls of the inn and the nearby cottages, wondering what stories they could tell.

Andrew glanced up as one of the pilots approached them. ‘Here comes Tubby Marsh to say hello. Come on, Tub, park your bottom here and try to behave yourself.’

Alison followed his glance and felt her heart move a little. The man coming towards them was about the same age as Andrew, in his late twenties, and Alison had known him ever since before the war had started. For a long time, he and Andrew had flown in the same squadron but now they were both Squadron Leaders, although still in the same Wing. He wasn’t married but he’d had a string of girlfriends, and Alison could see the attraction. Chubby he might be, but his fair, boyish face had an engaging cheekiness that came as a relief from the serious business of fighting a war. Most of the pilots, especially when going through the major battles, treated life with a flippancy that masked their real fears, but with Tubby it had always seemed natural and unforced.

The rotund pilot beamed at Alison and sat down beside her. He took a sip from his tankard and said, ‘I see you’re still going in for self-denial and punishment. Why you ever married this buffoon, when you could have had me, I’ve never been able to understand.’

Alison smiled. ‘I didn’t know you then,’ she pointed out, and he thought for a moment, then nodded.

‘That must be it, then. Knew you must have some reason. Pity, though.’ He drank again and winked at Hughie. ‘And how’s this young feller-me-lad, eh? Remember your Uncle Tubby, do you?’

‘She married me because she knew a good bet when she saw one,’ Andrew told him. ‘And because I knew the minute I set eyes on her that I wasn’t going to let anyone else have her.’

Alison looked from one to the other, then turned away, afraid that her thoughts might show. She nodded towards the inn sign, painted along the front of the long, low building. ‘That’s an unusual name – the Who’d Have Thought It. D’you know why it’s called that?’

‘Probably because the whole village is the last thing you expect to see when you come down that fearsome hill!’ Andrew said. ‘It’s pretty old. Francis Drake used to live nearby, at Buckland Abbey – remember we passed it just up the road? All the land hereabouts, and this village, would have been part of the estate. This old inn must have quite a history.’

‘It’ll get a bit more, now that the RAF’s moved in,’ Tubby observed with a grin. ‘Especially the Poles! I gather half of them are counts or princes or something, and they’re all a hit with the ladies. You’ll have to watch this pretty wife of yours, Andy.’ He looked at her with frank admiration. ‘That lovely frock is exactly the same shade as your eyes, and exactly the same as the sky when we’re flying above the clouds. How do you always manage to dress like a princess, when other women are cutting up old clothes?’

‘I’m cutting up old clothes too,’ she told him. ‘This was one of my deb dresses. In a year or two it will be a blouse and it’ll probably finish up as a scarf. Or even a handkerchief,’ she added ruefully, ‘if this war goes on for as long as Mr Churchill seems to think it will.’ She changed the subject. ‘Are there many wives here?’

Tubby set down his tankard. ‘Well, not many of the blokes are married. Didn’t have the sense that old Andy here had when he snapped you up. Anyway, ninety per cent of them are only about nineteen or twenty – haven’t had time to get caught yet. There are the WAAFs, though. They’re having a camp built just up the road from Buckland Monachorum – the next village. There’s a handy little footpath from there down through the fields to the Drake Manor Inn.’ He winked. ‘I dare say a few will be using that – quite a lovers’ lane, it’ll be. Probably give it a try myself, one fine evening.’

‘Tubby!’ she remonstrated. ‘Don’t you ever think of anything but girls?’

‘Not when I’m down here with my feet on the ground,’ he said. ‘Don’t give ’em a thought when I’m in the air, though.’

Alison bit her lip. She had begun to relax in the banter but Tubby’s words were a sharp reminder that the war was still being fought and that he and Andrew would be fighting it. She still had nightmares about the day Andrew had crashed – the realisation that he hadn’t returned from the sortie, the anxious wait for a phone call telling her that he had landed safely somewhere else, and then the news that he was injured. Guiltily, she had hoped that he would be kept out of the air completely, but she’d known as soon as she saw him in his hospital bed that he would be flying again at the first possible moment.

‘Look at Douglas Bader,’ he’d said. ‘If he can fly with tin legs, I’m darned sure I can with real ones. A few broken bones aren’t going to beat me. Anyway, the docs say they’re stronger after a break.’

She caught Andrew’s eyes on her now and knew that he understood what she was thinking. He gave her a little nod and said, ‘Come on, darling, you must be dying to see our new home. And Hughie’s getting tired. You’ve had a long train journey. Let’s be on our way, shall we?’

‘You mean you don’t want to sit here making conversation with me,’ Tubby said mournfully. ‘Well, I don’t blame you. I know I wouldn’t want to hang about with my pals if I were old Andy here, with a lovely wife to take home.’ He picked up his tankard again. ‘Run along, children. Enjoy yourselves. Don’t worry about poor old Tubby, left here all alone to cry into his ale.’

‘If you’re here all alone it’ll be for the first time,’ Andrew told him heartlessly, tossing back the last of his own beer. ‘We’ll not be halfway up the street before you’re flirting with the barmaid. Come on, Alison, let’s leave the old phoney to drown his sorrows. You’ll be seeing plenty of him, more’s the pity.’

‘You certainly will,’ Tubby said, winking at Alison. ‘I’m expecting a permanent invitation to chez Knight once you’re settled in. Parties every night, that’s what Andy’s promised us.’

‘You’ll be welcome any time,’ Alison said sincerely, getting up to follow Andrew to the door. She looked down at him and their eyes met for a moment. ‘You know that.’

The village street was quiet. A couple of women stood outside the little shop across the road, holding baskets over their arms as they chatted. The sides of the valley rose towards the blue sky, the trees tinged with auburn and gold. It seemed impossible to believe that there was a war on; that not far away, in another country, people were killing and being killed; that her own husband, whose arm she was holding now, would soon be back in the thick of it, risking both his life and their happiness; and that without those risks, taken by so many young men, all such happiness and freedom, and the very peace of this tiny village, might be lost for ever.

She glanced again at Tubby, remembering the last time they had met, only a week or two ago, before he and Andrew had been moved from Manston in Kent to this newer airfield in Devonshire. Then she turned back to her husband.

‘Let’s go and look at the house,’ she said. ‘Let’s go and see where we shall be living.’

‘RAF Harrowbeer?’ John Hazelwood frowned slightly, as if trying to remember something. ‘Where’s that?’

‘It’s near Plymouth,’ Ben said. ‘On the edge of Dartmoor. They were going to build Plymouth Airport there but they hadn’t got round to it when the war started, and now they’ve put an RAF station there instead. D’you know it, Dad?’

‘I know where it is. I used to go out to Tavistock on the bus when the regiment was at Crownhill, in Plymouth. A friend of mine was vicar at the church there.’ John had been an Army chaplain before retiring to become a vicar in the Hampshire village of Ashdown. ‘Isn’t it somewhere near Yelverton?’

‘That’s right. Funny sort of place – not what you’d expect of a Dartmoor village at all. It looks more like a spa, with Georgian houses all round a big village green.’ He grinned. ‘The ones on the south side are mostly shops, and guess what they’ve done? Taken off the top storeys of every one, so that the planes won’t hit them on take-off ! They look like a collection of shacks now, while the houses on the other side are still all right.’

‘Is it an operational airfield?’ his mother asked. She already had two sons serving – Ian, who had followed in his father’s footsteps and joined the Army as a chaplain, and Peter, now a Lieutenant-Commander in the Royal Navy, while her daughter Alexandra was a VAD nurse in a naval hospital near Portsmouth. All were facing danger, either from fighting or bombing and, like so many other mothers, she lived in dread of the orange or brown envelope that would bring a telegram telling her her son was missing or dead. She caught herself up and shook her head. ‘I’m sorry, that’s a silly question. Of course it’s operational. Don’t take any notice of me. I hope you’ll have good accommodation, anyway.’

Ben laughed and John looked at his wife with understanding and took her hand. ‘He’ll be better housed and fed than a lot of people in their own homes. The Services look after their men – if only because they’re valuable pieces of equipment!’

‘Like a plane or a lorry,’ Ben said, grinning. ‘They’re not going to let me go rusty, Mum, don’t worry.’

‘You don’t sit still long enough to go rusty,’ Olivia Hazelwood said. She looked at him with resignation. ‘I can see you don’t regret having joined the RAF, anyway.’

Neither John nor Olivia had wanted their youngest son to volunteer so quickly, but Ben had refused to wait until he was called up. He had signed on the moment he left school at eighteen, his ambition right from the start to be a pilot, and he’d passed his training with honours. Since then, he seemed to have led a charmed life, coming through unscathed where many of his friends had been killed or badly injured. He took it blithely for granted, never dreaming how many sleepless nights his mother had spent, thinking of him and her other children and wondering which she would lose first.

Her son’s eyes glowed. ‘Mum, it’s the best thing I ever did. You can’t imagine what it’s like – being up there, above the clouds, all on your own in the sky. It’s like being in another world. I can’t think of anything better, I really can’t. And to be able to do that and have a crack at the Germans – well, I still have to keep pinching myself to make sure it’s true. And the others are a grand bunch – all about the same age as me, nineteen or twenty. We’re all dead keen to get down to Harrowbeer.’

‘Well, make the most of the time you’ve got with us, won’t you,’ Olivia said quietly. ‘Have you told Jean where you’re going?’

‘Haven’t seen her yet. I came straight in to you. Is she around?’

‘She’s taken Hope down to the Suttons’. Why don’t you go and meet her? I expect she’ll be on her way back by now – it’s almost Hope’s teatime.’

‘Might as well.’ Ben uncoiled his long body from the armchair and loped out through the French windows. His parents watched him cross the garden and let himself out through the tall wooden gate set in the stone wall, and then looked at each other.

‘Oh, John,’ Olivia said, her voice trembling a little, ‘he’s so young. Just a child, still. And the way he’s talking about the others being young as well – doesn’t he realise, even now—?’ Her voice broke and she put her fingers to her lips as if to control their quivering. ‘Doesn’t he realise that it’s because so many have already died?’

John Hazelwood squeezed her hand. ‘I know, my love. But that’s the way the young have always been. They all think they’re invincible, even when there’s overpowering evidence that they’re not. Ben is quite confident that nothing will happen to him, and perhaps that’s his protection. After all, he’s been flying for two years now and nothing has happened to him. As for us – we have to put our faith in God.’

‘And how many others have done that?’ she asked bitterly. ‘Hundreds – thousands – who have done just the same and yet still been killed. You’ve been in the Army, John – you served in the Great War. You know just how much protection God gives!’

There was a brief silence. Tears slid down Olivia’s cheeks. Her husband lifted his head and met her anguished eyes.

‘John, I’m sorry. I never meant to say that …’

‘It’s all right,’ he answered quietly. ‘You’re not the only one to ask such questions. And the only answer I can give you is to remind you of the way in which His own Son died – one of the most cruel and agonising of deaths. There’s no more I can say than that.’ He paused, then added, ‘I had to remind myself many times in the trenches. Watching fine young men die in the most squalid circumstances. Trying to give them strength. Writing to their families … Many, many times.’

‘But you still kept your faith,’ she said. ‘You never lost it.’

‘Didn’t I?’ he said ruefully. ‘Well, I think I mislaid it a few times! It was certainly very hard to find. But there was nothing I could do but act as if it were still there – and one day I woke up and found it back, as strong as ever. The dying, the killing, the suffering – they’d almost destroyed it. But the courage and the cheerfulness and the stubborn, stalwart faith of some of those young men – they were what saved it. And saved me as well. After that, I could go on and do my job, and feel in touch with my God again.’

‘And now you never question it.’

‘Oh yes,’ he said, ‘I question it. When I hear about the bombing and think of all those innocent people killed, when I think of all that terrible suffering, happening all over again, I can’t help questioning it. But it’s always happened, hasn’t it? There have always been wars. And what’s the use of a faith that falters when it doesn’t understand? I ask my questions, just as we all do, and then I remind myself again of the Cross. And somehow that helps me to go on.’

‘And so we have to let Ben go,’ she said. ‘And Ian, and Peter, and Alexandra. I just want to protect them, John. I want them to be back in their prams, like little Hope, where I can keep them safe. I know it’s stupid – we brought them up to be independent and strong, and we have to let them go. But it’s so hard, and it seems hardest of all with Ben. He’s our baby.’

‘Not any more. He’s a grown man now, and we can be proud of him. Try to think of it that way, my love. We can be proud of them all.’

‘I am,’ she said, and smiled at him. ‘And I’m proud of you, too. You’re my strength, John. And I won’t ask that question again.’

‘Ask it as often as you like,’ he said, and leaned across to kiss her.

Ben sauntered along the lane, his hands in his pockets, whistling a snatch from Glenn Miller’s ‘In the Mood’. He glanced up through the dark, coppery leaves of the beech trees at the sky and thought about flying. It really was, as he had told his mother, a different world up there. Looking down on the countryside laid out like a colourful map far below, spotting the things you knew so well on the ground, soaring like a bird and throwing your plane around the sky in a tumble of aerobatics. It was the biggest and best game in the world and he could still hardly believe his luck at being allowed to play it. He had never, in all his life, been so happy as he was when he was in the sky.

He knew, of course, that there was a serious side to this too. The skills he had developed, the handling of an aeroplane in all conditions, even the ‘circus acts’ – the somersaulting, flips and rolls – were all part of a deadly purpose: that of engaging with an equally skilled enemy, seeking to kill and avoiding being killed. Already, Ben had seen squadrons leave the aerodrome in strict formation and return in a ragged skein, like hunted geese. He had seen pilots come into the mess, red-eyed with exhaustion, ridden with anxiety for their friends who had not come back. He’d watched them as they waited for the phone call that would tell them that someone had come down safely miles away and would be returning, or that they were injured but alive. He’d seen their shock as they received the news that some would not be coming back; he’d seen the look on the face of a pilot who had watched his own best friend spiral into the sea in a ball of flame. He’d suffered it all himself, in the past two years – the exhaustion, the shock, the grief. He knew just what it was all about.

But it was all quickly covered up; it had to be. Next day, perhaps sooner, they would be called into the air again. They could not afford either the time or the energy for grief or fear. It must all be buried while they got on with the job of fighting the war.

‘Ben!’

He came to with a start and found that he had been standing quite still, staring up through the coppery canopy at the infinity of blue. A young woman was walking towards him with a small girl trotting beside her. He grinned and waved.

‘Hello, Jeanie. How are you? And how’s my little Hope?’ He squatted down and held out his arms and the toddler broke into a lurching run and fell into them. He swung her in the air, and she squealed and laughed.

‘Do you remember me, sweetheart?’ he asked, holding her above his head. ‘Do you know your Uncle Ben?’

‘Well, she should do,’ Jean remarked. ‘You’re her godfather, after all. Anyway, it’s not that long since you saw her.’

‘It’s three months.’ He set her down gently on her feet and touched the little girl’s smooth cheek with the tip of his finger. ‘And she changes every time I see her. I can’t believe she’s the same tiny thing she was when she was a baby, all red and wrinkled.’

‘She never was!’ Jean said indignantly. ‘She was never wrinkled.’

‘Well, red, anyway.’ He turned and they began to walk back to the vicarage together. ‘And how is everything with you, Jean?’ he asked. ‘Are your mum and dad really all right now? Are they happy about Hope?’

‘I don’t know about happy, exactly. Having a baby without being married – well, you know what people can be like. And they always told me I’d be out of the door if I ever brought trouble to the house. But they’ve come round to the idea now, and nobody could be cross with Hope, could they?’ The little girl caught both their hands and laughed with pleasure as they swung her between them. ‘I mean, look at her. She’s the sweetest baby there ever was. And they know Terry and me were going to get married. If it hadn’t been for the war and him going off so sudden, we would have done. And if he hadn’t been killed …’ They were silent for a moment, then she went on more brightly, ‘It’s your mum and dad who saved us – having me out here and letting me stay at the vicarage and all that. I honestly don’t know what I’d have done if it hadn’t been for them.’

‘I think you’ve been just as much help to them,’ he said seriously. ‘I know they didn’t want me to join the RAF – not so soon, anyway. I could have waited for call-up. But having you around the place, and now Hope – well, it’s given them something else to think about. I suppose you’ll stay here for the rest of the war now. You won’t want to go back to Portsmouth, although the bombing does seem to have stopped.’

‘Oh, I’ll stop here as long as they’ll have me. Can’t take this little one back to Pompey, with the state it’s in.’ She touched the baby’s soft hair again, her fingers gentle and caressing, and Ben glanced at her face, remembering the pinched misery and fear that had been there when he had first met her. Now there was a tender motherliness in the curve of her cheek, and a calmness and contentment that he hadn’t noticed before.

‘I’ll still work my way, though,’ she added, glancing up and misinterpreting his expression. ‘I won’t take advantage. I’m doing all I can to help your mum, and I’m doing some war work as well. Making scrim and collecting sphagnum moss, like Judy did when she was here. I can do all that. I take Hope along with me, she’s as good as gold.’

Ben nodded. He had met Judy – Terry’s sister – when she was in Ashdown, staying at the Suttons’ farm where her young cousin Sylvie was evacuated while she recovered from the effects of bomb blast. It was through her that Jean had come to Ashdown when Terry was killed and her pregnancy was discovered.

‘Anyway, what about you?’ she asked. ‘You’re still flying Spitfires and Hurricanes all over the sky, and killing Germans for us?’

‘Well, only Spitfires,’ he said with a grin. ‘Actually, that’s why I’m home this weekend – I’m going to a new airfield in Devon. Some of the blokes I’ve been with are going too, but we’re joining a new squadron. I’ve got to be there first thing Monday morning so I’ll be off on Sunday night. Catching a train.’ He stopped. ‘I’m not sure how much I should be telling you.’

‘Go on, I’m not a spy!’ She laughed at him. ‘Still, you’d better not say too much. I know all those posters say walls have ears, but I reckon trees could have as well. And you know that song about whispering grass!’ She glanced around at the woods that lined the narrow country road. ‘I still think it’s a bit creepy out here, you know. The first time I heard an owl, I thought it was a ghost – I was scared out of my wits. And then another night I was sure someone was being murdered, but your dad told me it was just a fox. What an awful noise!’

‘You’re just a townie,’ Ben said affectionately, and they walked on together, chatting, swinging Hope between them. Now and then they passed someone they knew – a villager or an evacuee – and everyone smiled and said hello, most stopping to speak to the toddler as well. ‘You don’t get that in Portsmouth,’ Ben observed after the fourth person had done this. ‘Nobody even looks at you in a town –