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‘Is she pretty?’

‘She is.’

‘Do you have children?’

‘No.’ She looked at him with surprise and he explained. ‘We’re not long married. Since the war began.’

‘Here we have children straight away. I’ll have to,’ Valentina replied, sounding sad.

‘Don’t you want a family?’ he asked.

‘Yes, but not yet. I don’t feel ready. And I have so much I want to do before I get married – I haven’t properly left school. I don’t want to think about my own children yet.’

Fair enough. ‘Then before you marry, perhaps discuss this with your fiancé.’

She shot him a look that implied he was a dullard. ‘I will have no choice,’ she said matter-of-factly. ‘I am to be married as soon as I turn sixteen to the boy my father chose, and then I shall become a mother the following year. I will raise our children and work in the family bars, clearing plates and serving customers.’

Put like that, he understood her despair. ‘But you want to go to university.’

He watched her body language change from tense to relaxed, her mouth change from grim to smiling, and her accusing tone, which sounded as if she blamed all adults, himself included, for her path, shifted to something more fanciful. It touched his heart.

‘Yes, I would go to university and study what interests me, and then I would work in the area of history – especially Malta’s history.’ She met his gaze, almost defiant.

‘But that’s marvellous,’ he said. ‘Don’t lose those dreams.’

Again came the look of disdain. ‘I will have no opportunity to do this. Not like you did. Did your wife study?’

‘No, Delia didn’t go to university,’ he said, realising with acute embarrassment that he’d not once asked her if she’d held ambitions to do anything other than marry. ‘She, er… well, she was twenty-three. Ready for marriage,’ he said, as though that answered the teenager’s question.

‘She must have loved you so much to give up her future,’ Valentina said, sighing.

Peter felt the question hit him hard. Had she, though? Had Delia dreamed of doing other things? He didn’t think so, but then he’d never enquired. She’d been seeing another fellow when they’d met, and he’d been arrested by her prettiness, but he hadn’t been looking for anything more than a dalliance if it presented itself. He’d been enjoying bachelor life and didn’t want to be pinned down, but Delia’s mother had caught him up in her web – invisible but perfectly woven to entrap him.

Did Valentina sense his self-recrimination? Perhaps, because her next question caught him even more off balance. ‘Do you love her?’

‘I think I must, to be married to her.’ What a stupid answer, he thought immediately.

‘But you don’t know?’

This child. Did she know that these questions were making him ask so many of himself? ‘Of course I love her,’ he said, smiling. ‘And I love our cat.’

Her laugh rang out, and he was glad; he’d wanted to move them away from this subject he didn’t enjoy considering. The cat was a lie. They had no pets. It was just the two of them in their marriage, which was not exactly bad, but it lacked even the warmth of this conversation.

There was a rap in the doorway; Nurse Maria was back, frowning. ‘We can hear you laughing down the corridor.’

‘Sorry,’ he said, cutting Valentina a mischievous look.

Maria moved to his side, adjusting his pillow, and she looked at Valentina admonishingly. ‘Time to go, Valentina. Say your farewell. Flight Lieutenant Fox needs to rest.’ She left with a firm nod.

Peter smiled at Valentina. ‘Thank you so much for visiting me. Don’t give up your dream. Finish your studies if you can, and if I can help with your hope to pursue history and art, then I will. I’ll leave you an address where you can write to me.’

Her eyes were glittering at his words. ‘It’s history I really love, more than drawing.’

‘Then maybe it’s the history of artworks that you might enjoy for a career.’

Her pretty features scrunched into a grimace. ‘I’ll never be allowed to work – not like that. Only the bar.’

‘I know plenty of women in London who are working as curators, art restorers, librarians… custodians of art, for want of a better phrase.’ When he saw she didn’t know the word custodian, he added, ‘They protect our history in the world of art.’