‘I wish they’d let me throw the party in my house,’ Lilian said. ‘It’s bigger and we could have got more people in.’ She looked around disparagingly at the modest little property that stood at the far end of Crimea Street on the outskirts of London.

‘It’s where it all began,’ Pippa reminded her. ‘They met when he came to stay here with the family the last Christmas before the war, and all over the house there are places that remind her of him as he was then.’

‘I suppose now you know them better than any of us,’ Lilian said.

Pippa was her youngest child, several years younger than her siblings, arriving when the others were all at school and Lilian had resumed her career as a midwife. Lilian’s mother had come to the rescue, announcing that, as they lived only three streets apart, she could take on most of the baby’s care. The result was that Pippa had always been close to her grandparents, regarding them almost as extra parents.

She was spirited, even rebellious and in her teens this had led to difficulties with Lilian, resulting in her taking shelter in Crimea Street. The trouble had been smoothed out. Mother and daughter were friends again, but Pippa now lived with her grandparents, keeping a protective eye on them as they grew old and frail.

On the surface it was a perfect arrangement, yet Pippa was a worry to all who loved her. With her brains and beauty she should have been doing something more demanding than a dead-end job, and her social life should have consisted of more than staying at home almost every evening.

All the fault of Jack Sothern, Lilian thought bitterly. He’d seemed like a decent fellow, and everyone had been happy when he became engaged to Pippa. But he’d broken it off ruthlessly just a few weeks before the planned Christmas wedding, leaving Pippa devastated.

That had been nine months ago. Pippa had seemed to recover, but the life had gone out of her, as though she was emotionally flattened. She still smiled and laughed with a charm that won everyone over, but behind her eyes there was a blankness that never changed.