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They’ve been asking me to go to see them and I said I might today.’
    The idea of going to see Mr and Mrs Price had but that moment jumped into her head and she surprised herself by putting it into words for she dreaded having to go. But when she thought about it, it was true: Alan’s parents had invited her and she had to go sometime. Might as well get it over with.
    ‘Mind, I don’t want you going upsetting yourself again,’ warned Bea, looking grave.
    ‘No, Mam, I won’t. I’m all right now. And, after all, I’m not the only one to lose her fiance in this war, am I?’
    Bea nodded. ‘Though, please God, not many more now, eh? Surely it can’t go on forever.’
    It was almost six o’clock when Theda came out of the Prices’ house in Shildon. The Eden bus wasn’t due for nearly half an hour but she had made the excuse that she felt like walking the two miles home for she’d felt that if she didn’t get out then she would go mad.
    ‘The fresh air will do me good,’ she had said to Mrs Price. She was too late for chapel but that didn’t worry her much; chapel didn’t mean a lot to her since Alan had been killed at Arnhem. Killed at Arnhem . . . Dear God, just hearing the words in her head sent such distress coursing through her; she wondered clinically if she could go mad.
    She set off down the road, desperately seeking something else to think about other than those awful words. The wind lifted her hair off her forehead where it had escaped from her headscarf, cold and damp on her flushed skin.
    It had been an ordeal sitting in the front room of Alan’s home, surrounded by photographs of him and listening to his mother talking about him. She had forced herself to respond, to add her own reminiscences to those of Mrs Price. The older woman needed to talk about her lost son. Poor soul, he had been her only child.
    Theda had steeled herself to sip the too-weak tea from one of the best china cups and eaten a piece of eggless sponge cake filled with home-made plum jam, though it had taken an effort of will to swallow it. And the feeling of desolation she had been keeping at bay ever since Mr Price had called to show her the telegram from the Ministry of War with the bald statement that Alan had been killed in action rose in her and threatened to engulf her altogether.
    Walking down the bank from Shildon, the fresh air made her feel somewhat better. At least she had got the visit over. As she walked, she found the tune that her brother had been singing so light-heartedly earlier in the day running through her mind, but this time it was Alan’s voice she seemed to hear singing it:
    ‘Oh, I wonder, how I wonder,
    If the angels way up yonder,
    Will the angels play their harps for me?’
    Oh, yes, she told herself as she rounded the corner into the pit rows of Winton Colliery. Oh, yes, Alan, they will indeed. And for her own brother, Frank, only eighteen when he was killed on Dunkirk beach.
    Frank had been one of the young ones who had been in the territorials and so had gone with his marras, his mates, who had all been out of work practically since leaving school, until the year before the war when the country found a need for coal and the pit winding wheels started rolling again. Of course, that was before the government stopped the miners going to war.
    ‘The young lads didn’t stand a chance on those French beaches, strafed by the Luftwaffe,’ Joss had said. She remembered it now and her mind filled with bitterness. But these days, even with the war nearing its end, she was bitter about everything. It kept her from thinking about . . . Her mind shied away, back to Joss.
    Joss had returned with the troopship coming from Bombay, just like in that other song, he had gone through the North African campaign and on to the Italian one with the Durham Light Infantry, and had survived, thank the Lord. Did the German wives and mothers and sweethearts thank God? she wondered.
    Theda controlled her rambling