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His wife was more enthusiastic suddenly. ‘Oh, yes. That is a good idea and they’re heated, Captain Blake. Do a few lengths and you’ll be more than happy to snooze by the fire afterwards.’

‘Perfect,’ he murmured, recalling the baths from his tour with Alex.

‘There’s a gentleman’s outfitters in the high street. I’m sure they’ll have swimming garments, or Bernard can probably lend you his bathing suit,’ she offered.

‘Thank you. If you could write down the shop’s name, I’ll make a visit.’

Within an hour Harry had entered the red-brick building he recalled from the previous day’s tour and paid his penny to move through the turnstile, clutching the towel his entrance fee allowed for and the package from the outfitters. He’d never worn a ‘speed suit’ but the outfitter assured him this was the very latest in swimming attire.

‘One hundred per cent wool, sir. Meets all the 1917 regulations for bathing modesty and proven not to lose its shape.’ The man sounded so enthusiastic, Harry had to take his word for it. ‘I’m told in the next year or so, sir, that we may even have rubber woven into swimming suits.’

Harry smiled to himself at the man nearly salivating with joy over this thought.

‘Gentlemen’s changing rooms just over there, sir,’ an attendant said, interrupting his thoughts. Harry walked around the perimeter, glad of the dense, humid atmosphere of the baths after the frigid cold he’d come in from. This was what he needed: challenging, repetitive exercise to lose himself in but especially to turn his mind vacant and escape the memory of kissing Alex.

He’d not slept, spending the majority of the night with the quilted eiderdown around his shoulders as he huddled in a chair by the window to stare out onto an ever-whitening York. He soon became mesmerised by the snowfall illuminated gently by the glow from a single light in the distance. The lamp was not in the street but set on the pathway opposite, behind the iron gates of St Olave’s to give the scene a secretive feel that matched his dilemma of illicit love and indeed duplicity. It was the very silence of the fluffy snowflakes drifting down with stealth to settle on every surface that seemed to amplify his conflicted feelings for Alex. His ardour for her was wrong on every level. He hated himself for taking advantage of her vulnerability with the sad state of her marriage. Love! It had arrived without any warning, without even a preamble. There was no reason for the two of them to have met and yet they had, with a series of events flowing in one direction and carrying them both to each other.

Harry hung up his clothes and changed into his new, slightly revealing one-piece. It fitted precisely as the man promised it would. He stepped out of the cubicle and noted in the long mirror that the knitted fabric was fine and clingy and he hadn’t realised just how hard and brawny years of trench life had made him. He had muscles now where previously he’d been soft and there was barely a hint of unnecessary flesh covering his skeleton. That said, when he’d arrived home he’d appeared unhealthily gaunt. Now that hollow appearance had filled and he suspected by the coming summer with some sunshine glow on his skin that his appearance would no longer tell a story of the ravages of war.

He remembered his towel and stepped unhappily across wet tiles. Years of working hard to keep his toes dry gave him a sense of discomfort at the feeling of cold moisture on his feet from puddles left behind by strangers. Keen to be in the water and less exposed, he tossed his towel onto a nearby bench and eased into the shallow end, where the tepid water only reached his waist. Already his mind was wandering back to Alex . . . and her last day.

He accepted wholly now that he and Alex were meant to meet. They were meant to feel an unexpected and shocking attraction. Clearly it amused the gods to mix up their lives and tamper with their emotions. Yes, indeed, he was meant to learn about the wreck that her marriage was. He was meant to act, bring Alex hope for love in her life. By the time daybreak had arrived and he’d stirred from his chilled and hunched position, Harry had become convinced that he was destined from the moment he found Sergeant Tom Fletcher to rescue Alex Britten-Jones from misery.

But should he? That was the painful question he was hoping he might answer over the hour and many laps of this pool. There was only one other swimmer this morning, which was the ‘Gentlemen’s Thursday’ for swimming. As he splashed water on his shoulders he noted his fellow swimmer was an older man, pepper-grey hair the only part of his head visible to Harry as he glided up the pool. Chlorine vapours were strong, riding on the steamy warmth indoors, and Harry anticipated red eyes by this afternoon. Nevertheless, he needed this time to think without disruption. He ducked down to immerse himself and take the shock of the cool before he decided on fifty laps as a minimum. Harry decided he would not go at his usual speed but would try to mimic the glide of the old timer two lanes across. At that rate he might even achieve one hundred laps. Harry struck out, pushing off the tiles and reaching for long, deliberate strokes. He marvelled privately at how good it felt to stretch out like this as he searched for his rhythm, helped by his eagerness to lose himself. All sounds above the water became disembodied and hollow, a distant noise on the rim of his mind. He kept his eyes squeezed shut against the sting of chlorine as he turned to breathe, and forgot about how he might look in his new woollen speed suit, not that the swimming attendant batted an eyelid when he stepped out feeling faintly ridiculous. He’d passed up on the bright blue and yellow ‘sporty’ – plain black was as racy as Harry planned to get when he was near naked around strangers.

He was aware he’d already glided through almost ten laps; it was surprising how time was passing as he allowed his mind to wander. Even if they were never to see one another again, kissing Alex would be his idea of perfection, the benchmark by which all other women before and after her would be considered. Alex had tasted delicious, of warm berry from the raisin-like sherry she’d sipped moments earlier, and Harry could conjure the fragrance of violet that danced sweetly off her from the warmth of the fire. Her skin was velvet-like beneath her ear and satiny at her neck where he felt her pulse against his lips, and he knew if life were different for them, they would have toppled into bed together and admitted to being in love before they’d barely made a crease in the sheets. He knew he wasn’t imagining it. He hadn’t kissed her, she hadn’t kissed him – they’d kissed each other with a passion he hadn’t felt since those heady, carefree teenage days with his young French lover. It felt right with Alex, even though he knew it was so very wrong in reality. If life were different, he would propose to her this very day, marry her tomorrow, if she’d let him. How weak and lovesick he sounded; he could barely recognise himself. But Alex already wore someone’s ring and someone else already wanted to wear a ring from . . . he banished that thought, couldn’t face it yet.

If Alex were prickly, difficult, domineering, demanding, he could understand how any man would want to find excuses not to be home. But he’d seen nothing in her to make a husband want to be away, to avoid sleeping next to her as often as Matthew did. He mentally shook his head as he cut through the water and wondered what he might be prepared to give for one night of sleeping with and next to Alex . . . To make her cry out passionately, to hear her rhythmic breath as she slept in his arms, to watch her open those chocolate-coloured eyes to the first sounds of morning, snuggled in the cradle of his body . . . skin on skin.

Matthew! What the hell is wrong with you, man?

Harry burst out of the water at the shallow end, breathing hard and not entirely from his exertions but more his frustration. He realised he’d done more than eighty laps, perhaps not one hundred but then he’d begun to quicken up for the last twenty, coursing along at the racing speed he preferred. No wonder he felt weary. He leaned back against the tiles, flicking water from his burning eyes, and dragging hands through his hair to slick it back from where it flopped haphazardly.

And it was only when he’d opened his eyes properly that his attention fell upon a group of three people who were staring at him. One of the intruders was Alex. He felt her gaze rove across the semi-nakedness of his body. Not a single amusing quip came to mind that could save them this unexpected and awkward meeting.

‘Captain Blake!’ Her surprise was obvious, even dropping the small envelope she carried. Two men beside her bent at the same time to retrieve the envelope.

‘Er, good morning, Mrs Britten-Jones,’ he replied, desperately trying to cover his shock at being near barebodied, glad that his hips at least were below the waterline. ‘This is a surprise,’ he added, hating to state the obvious.

‘Er . . . indeed. I’m sorry, gentlemen. This is Captain Harry Blake. He took the tour with me yesterday.’

Her guests murmured their salutations and he said nothing, still breathing deeply from his exertions, which fortunately went some way to cover his shock.

‘How nice that you remembered the pool from the tour,’ she added lamely, wiping dampness from the dropped envelope.

‘Yes, I . . . well, I didn’t quite know what to do with myself today . . . what with the snow.’ What an idiot he sounded. ‘Forgive me, I thought all your touring had been finalised?’

‘Perhaps you’d like to go through, Mr Jackson, Mr Bowyers?’ Alex gestured through the door. ‘This chlorine is rather powerful. I’ll join you in one minute.’ Her visitors dutifully departed towards the main entrance. She returned her still hungry gaze to him. ‘The person who was supposed to tour today has been taken ill. I couldn’t let the guests down as they’d travelled up from Birmingham in this shocking weather.’

‘Of course. You don’t need to explain. How are you?’

She shook her head. ‘Rattled. How about you?’

He cast a look around to check no one was watching them. The old fellow was just climbing out of the water halfway to the deep end; the attendant was showing the visitors out. They had only moments, surely.

‘I have to see you.’

‘We can’t. Harry . . . Matthew is —’