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not novices. We are forced to have English lessons! But I explain I can translate, teach my men myself. We are frustrated. So some of my men play the fool in the air, and now one of them dies without need. But I can see that you must rest. Thank you for what you did. I will myself inform the pilot’s family of your brave actions,’ and the squadron leader made for the door, opening it.
    ‘Oh no, please don’t. Please. It was not … it was nothing. It was stupid, in fact.’
    Please don’t, oh, no, no, please don’t go. He was such an
interesting
person.
    ‘Brave,’ the man repeated, firmly.
    ‘I’m an only child too,’ blurted Dorothy.
    ‘I thought that was so,’ he said, stepping through the door, out into the bright afternoon sunshine, obviously determined to escape.
    She knew she was being ridiculous. But she liked the way the sun shone on his black hair. Again, he took her hand and kissed it. He nodded to her, and said goodbye. He left. She crept through to the lounge and watched him through the lace curtains, the lace curtains that had become yellowed by the girls’ cigarette smoke, and needed laundering. The man had climbed on to a bicycle, and he rode off in the direction of Lodderston and was gone, swallowed by the May blossom, the blue sky, the thick green hedges, the heat haze rising from the road.
    Dorothy wandered back into the kitchen. She picked up the wild flowers, she smelled them again, she filled her best enamel jug with water and arranged the flowers, lingering over the task. She placed the jug artfully on the mantelpiece. She stood a while, looking at the flowers. She took out her notebook and wrote feverishly for minutes, perhaps half an hour. She felt she had something to write about. Finally. She smelled the back of her hand where he had twice kissed it. She breathed in, long and deep. Nothing. She picked up the teacup that he had drunk from, and held it to her nose. She smelled the rim, the handle, examined it closely. Impetuously, without any thought of guilt or disgust, she ran her tongue around the rim of the cup, but it tasted only of tea.
    He cycled away. He’d wanted to stay longer, of course. He wanted to look back at this Englishwoman, who he knew was watching him through the lace curtains. He wanted to wave. But he thought he had better not. He couldn’t explain, even to himself, how he had felt, sitting in the woman’s kitchen, drinking her sweet strong tea, listening to her gentle voice. He could have listened to her for the rest of his days.
    It was odd how a person of significance could just appear in your life, unexpectedly. He had not known what to expect, knocking on her door. He was there to thank her, as he thought he ought to do. He was carrying out just another of his many duties. And when the door opened, there she stood, instant, charming.
    He would see her again. He knew this. He had to see her again. He knew. He would return as soon as he could. And he felt – he was certain – she would want that, and there would be no need for a pretext.

5
    A photograph: black and white, a man, perhaps in his late thirties, handsome, with a moustache, his arm around a woman. She is short, with obviously blonde hair, a little younger than him, and she smiles broadly into the camera. On the back of the photo it reads: Harry and Nora, Minehead, August 1958. And under that, in a round teenage hand, it says: Nanna and Grandpa Lomax.
    (Found inside a paperback edition of
A Bouquet of Barbed Wire
by Andrea Newman. It’s an old copy, but in good condition, so I placed it on the general fiction shelves priced at £1.00.)
    I drive to the clinic. Jenna sits resolute alongside me, staring at the people and buildings and trees and vehicles that we pass on our journey. Apart from giving me terse directions, she says nothing. I try to make conversation, but now is not the time, and so I silence myself. We listen to Radio 4 until the building looms before us. A small ignominious brass