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‘I gather he was a friend of the family and actually engaged to someone else, rather than being Delia’s squeeze.’

‘Squeeze?’ Valentina frowned in confusion.

He laughed. ‘Sorry – I mean Delia’s date or long-time boyfriend.’

‘So what happened?’

‘The next thing I knew I was engaged. During my third trip home in 1940, Delia and I were married.’

‘You say this as if you had no part in the decision.’

He looked down. She was as astute as she was mature for her age. ‘You’re right. I allowed myself to be swept along, with Delia’s joy about a wedding and her mother’s determination to have her married well. I was a young, healthy, uninjured RAF pilot with medals, a big house, a solid income, and no skeletons rattling in the closet…’ He laughed at her instant dismay. ‘That means no dark secrets.’

She looked delighted by this metaphor, and he could all but see the wheels of her mind sending it to a place for safe storage.

‘But you seem so brave. Why didn’t you speak up for yourself, if it wasn’t what you wanted?’

‘Ah now, that’s quite a big question to answer.’ He smiled to cover his discomfort.

‘Try,’ she said, looking at him expectantly.

‘Well, when I’m up in the air, flying, I feel like a different person. It’s as though a new personality takes over and I’m the direct opposite of how I am on the ground.’

She looked perplexed. ‘If you know this, why not fix it and be the same person all the time?’

‘Good point!’ he said. ‘Except I can’t, I don’t think. I feel a freedom in my Spitfire that I never feel back at home in my marriage.’

‘Because you don’t love her?’

‘I do love her, Valentina. But I suppose it’s not like in the movies. I love how she looks, I love her neatness,’ he said, realising he was struggling to find things to say about her. ‘Er, I love how committed she is to us. She really does love being a wife and making a home for us.’

‘Everything I don’t want to do,’ Valentina said morosely.

‘Well, you might one day, I’m sure. But at fifteen, I completely understand why those things are not yet important to you. Delia was older and ready to become a wife.’

‘Do you have children?’

‘No. There hasn’t been time. Of the two years we’ve been Mr and Mrs Fox, I’ve been home only three times, each for fleeting visits.’

‘But,’ Valentina continued, ‘you agree that British girls are allowed some discussion in the choice of their husband. If Delia didn’t love you, she wouldn’t have been forced by her parents to marry you.’

‘No,’ Peter admitted.

‘So it’s different here. There is no care being shown by our parents to make sure we are good for one another, and they don’t listen when I say I don’t like him. It’s all decided for me, and I will never be happy, Peter. Never. I will marry him because I am forced to, and he will treat me however he wishes, and we will grow old hating one another. And then I shall die. In misery.’

He couldn’t keep the splutter of a laugh contained, though he really didn’t mean to make light of her despair.

‘And now perhaps I hate you for laughing at me.’ She folded her arms.

‘You don’t hate me.’ As he said it, he saw something flash in her eyes. ‘And I apologise completely. I was laughing more at your intensity, not for what you were talking about. I’m sorry.’

‘I am intense because I am angry. I think I could kill myself.’ She looked down, brows knotted.

So dramatic, like most young people. ‘Don’t speak like that, Valentina. Please. There’s enough death without wishing it on yourself.’

She shrugged. ‘If a bomb landed and killed me now, I think I would be happier dying by your side than knowing I have to marry Lawrenz.’

He tried to lighten the mood. ‘But that would mean that I’d be dead too… surely you don’t wish that?’