“I live up the stairs. This way,” I went on, not looking at her as I started to climb. “There’s no one here but me. My flatmates are all in France.” I prayed it was true as I heard her follow reluctantly in my wake. After all, I realized, no lamplight could mean that someone was there but already asleep.

“Only for a few minutes,” she said as we reached the landing. “I’d be grateful for that tea.” Her voice was still husky with tears, but cultured, polite.

We reached the door of the flat, and I took out my key, unlocking it and fumbling for the lamp just inside. As a rule I could light it in the dark or even with my eyes closed, I’d done it so often, but now my fingers were stiff with cold. Finally brightness bloomed, illuminating the flat, picking out the small area we called our kitchen, our sitting room, and the closed doors to our five bedrooms.

I breathed a sigh of relief. There was no luggage piled in a corner or coats thrown over the tall walnut clothes tree. We were alone.

“Here,” I said, pulling out a chair for her. “Let me take off my coat and in a moment I’ll have that tea for us. I can tell you, I long for a cup myself.”

I’d made a point not to look her in the face, knowing she’d be embarrassed for anyone to see she’d been crying. But now as I came back from my own bedroom and caught her staring around the flat, I could see the mark across her cheek, the swollen eye rimmed with black, and the deep bruising.

Someone had struck her, hard and fairly recently because the redness was only just giving way to a darker blue. I immediately looked away. I couldn’t help but wonder if she’d been attacked on the street-or in her own home. Was this why the deserter had come to England? To catch his wife in an infidelity? He wouldn’t be the first-nor the last-to suspect that all was not right in his marriage. She wasmarried. I’d seen the handsome rings on her left hand when she pulled off her gloves.