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married in 1913, when I was twenty-one, the same age my mother had been when she married my father. Adrian, my husband’s name was. He was nice, just like me, and we were very much in love. Then the War came, and because Adrian was such a nice, reliable chap who loved his country, he joined up straightaway, and he was given a commission and he changed, as they all did, I expect. When he came home he was still nice, but it was like talking to a stranger, and I couldn’t reach him, and I worried that it was my fault, that I didn’t love him enough, because I hadn’t missed him as much as I thought I would, but really it was the War’s fault. And then…’
    She broke off. When he would have touched her, she pushed him away. ‘No, let me finish.’ She had picked the polish from two of her nails. Now she started on a third. ‘And then, Adrian was killed. At the Somme. July 1916. He was shot in the head. Died instantly, didn’t suffer, they told us, but they told everyone that, I’m sure. He was twenty-six. I was twenty-four. We’d been married three years. I hadn’t seen him for eight months. I thought – for a while, I really did think that I would die too.’
    ‘God Vera, I am so sorry.’
    Once again, he made to take her in his arms, but she pushed him roughly away. ‘No. Please don’t or I won’t finish, and I would like to. I had a – I suppose you would call it a breakdown. I went to pieces. I simply went to pieces. I drank. I took morphine. One of my friends gave it to me. She was a VAD. I would have taken anything that stopped me thinking, to be honest. My mother took away the pills the doctor prescribed to help me sleep. She was probably right to. I would probably have used them. So selfish. It was utterly pathetic of me and so completely selfish, I am beyond ashamed.’
    ‘Vera, for heaven’s sake…’
    ‘No. Don’t make excuses. I loved him, and he died, and I had every right to be unhappy, but not to – to try to destroy myself, and to cause so much grief to my family. I think my mother feared for my sanity. It was my friend, the VAD, who finally helped me pull myself together. She lost her fiancé. She was devastated, but she kept going, albeit with a little chemical aid. Looking at her coping made me see how ridiculously, shamefully weak I was being, and so self-indulgent when what I ought to do was get up out of my bed and make myself useful.’ Vera smiled a bitter little smile. ‘So I did what all good girls of my class did, and I became a VAD too.’
    Justin was so shocked by what she had told him, by the strength of the parallels between them, he wondered fleetingly if she had made it up. But why should she? Besides, no-one knew. None of his friends. His father – no, his father would never tell.
    ‘Which hospital,’ he asked, not that it mattered, unless she knew someone – but why would she talk about him? She didn’t know him. In the grand scheme of things, his was hardly a remarkable case. She told him. ‘You must have brightened up the wards just by being there,’ Justin said.
    It was an inane remark, uttered to buy him time. Vera’s lip curled. ‘Oh, obviously,’ she sneered, ‘I floated from bed to bed, flirting and smiling and expecting everyone else to do the work.’
    ‘I didn’t mean that. I know they wouldn’t tolerate such a thing for a moment.’
    ‘Do you? You’re right, as it happens, though I don’t know how you – oh, but I forgot, you were injured. Which hospital were you in? Wouldn’t it have done you good, to have a pretty face to talk to once in a while?’
    ‘I wasn’t really interested in flirting.’
    She took his hand, curling and uncurling his fingers around hers. ‘No? Some men aren’t. They want to talk about their children, their wives, their mothers, even. All they need is a sympathetic ear. I could do that too. But some of them, especially the ones that have been horribly mutilated, it does them good to flirt. What happened to you,