Even as she spoke, Dee’s voice rose, full of affectionate laughter. ‘Darling, I’m all right. Will you stop fussing?’

Everyone heard that, but only she heard his murmured response. ‘No, I won’t, and you know that I won’t. You’ve been telling me for years to stop fussing over you and I’ve never listened yet, so why don’t you just give up?’

‘I never give up where you’re concerned,’ she whispered back. ‘You should know that by now.’

‘I do know it. I rely on it.’

He touched her face gently. It had never been a beautiful face, but it had always been rich in warmth and generosity, qualities that the years had left untouched. Watching them, the family knew that what he’d first seen in her years ago, he saw there still.

The elderly couple were shown into the main party room and went around the collection of family photographs, pausing occasionally to murmur to each other, words that nobody else could hear. When it came to baby Polly, Gran lifted the picture and they looked at it together before they met each other’s gaze and nodded.

‘I swear there were tears in Grandpa’s eyes,’ Pippa murmured afterwards.

At last they were seated together on the sofa while family members approached them, hugging and murmuring words of congratulation. Champagne was poured and glasses were raised in toasts. Speeches were made. Everyone wanted to have their say.

Then Stacey got to work, talking to the camera.

‘…one of the last of a dying breed…heroes of World War Two, who gave their all for their country…night after night, climbing into their Spitfires, taking off into the darkness, not knowing if they would return to their loved ones…how proud we are that one of them is still among us…’

‘Is she going to witter on like that for ever?’ Mark growled under his breath.