I might have fainted at that moment… only a light snow was beginning to fall in the gardens of Ardenlea. The snowflakes that touched my face had a reviving effect.

‘When Jim returns’, I said to Oldfield, ‘he will be unconscious.’

She nodded.

‘And he can’t walk anyway…’

She nodded again.

‘So I should have thought that keeping him here would be well within your powers.’

I turned on my boot-heel and walked. (Not that I knew where I was going.) It is now nearly midnight, and I will return to Ardenlea in a moment, posting this on the way. Not a word of this to the children, dearest. I don’t know how to thank you for all your kindness in looking after them. As you now see, I cannot hope to be there on Friday, but will write again tomorrow.

With all my love, as ever,

Lydia.

PART ONE.Blighty

York: September 1914

In the North Eastern Railway police office, which faced on to platforms four and thirteen at York station, Constable Scholes was telling how he’d lately encountered a man who had been carrying an owl in a Third Class carriage of a train going between Leeds and York. Scholes was talking, as ever, to his best pal, Constable Flower. Being only constables, the two shared a desk, and at that moment Flower was sitting at it and Scholes was sitting upon it, by which any man who knew the office would have been able to tell that the Chief wasn’t about. I was listening in while assembling the papers for the prosecution on a charge of Indecent Exposure of a man called John Read who’d walked out of the Gentlemen’s lavatory on platform eight while in a state of undress.