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Valentina’s head shot up again. ‘No! I didn’t mean…’

‘I know you didn’t,’ he said. ‘But you don’t know what the future holds. You might be surprised. And one day you may have a daughter who needs a mother with a modern attitude to marriage, and you can protect her, make sure she marries only for love. You’ll know that she can have a full and happy life, even if she’s poor.’

Valentina nodded, eyes serious. ‘That’s what I would wish for her. I think you are rich if you are happy.’

He smiled. ‘Heavens! Now you’re a philosopher.’

‘You’re making fun of me.’ She looked injured.

‘No,’ he said, shaking his head, ‘I wouldn’t dare. You’re my precious little friend in Malta and very important to me.’

‘I am?’

‘Of course. Come on. Let’s go into the cathedral. I want to show you something.’

The tougher conversation could wait. All the bitterness fled from her expression, he noted, and he was pleased he’d found the right words to get her past her mood. He hoped what was inside would give her something powerful to cling to through these darkest of days.

NINE

Valentina had gone to the cathedral with the vaguest hope of seeing the pilot. Peter had come to represent something so exotic in her mind that he’d become a touchstone for her – a means to escape. She knew it was unwise, childish even, to take this attitude, but life ahead looked so bleak.

Her thoughts had taken flight and she’d imagined herself being swept up in the arms of her Spitfire pilot and flown to his country to live as his beloved. These daydreams nourished her. She couldn’t speak of them to anyone because she had no best friend she could share these romantic notions with. Only another girl who knew her and understood her need to be loved by someone who deserved her could possibly understand. And her only friend like that was gone.

Lost to her fantasy, she had jumped, startled, when Peter – the subject of her focus – suddenly limped up to the cathedral and grinned her way. She felt a momentary panic that he might have been able to listen in on her daydream: her in his arms, both wearing expressions of pure contentment as they stared out at the horizon. It never got much further than that, but it was enough to sustain her. The fact that he was married was studiously ignored in these moments.

‘Oh!’ She’d jumped up, instantly blushed and rushed towards him. Was she hoping he had come specifically to find her and say, I’m in love with you, and I think we should run away together? She admonished herself privately. How would that look, with her in her Sunday dress and sandals? She didn’t possess a single grown-up frock or heeled shoes. No one had ever affected her like this, not even that time last year when she’d experienced a sort of crush on the local priest and had needed to keep that to herself too.

But Peter.

Peter was not a crush, she thought now, as they began to slowly walk into the cathedral together. Everyone would jeer and say that was exactly what it was. A child trying to pretend she was a match for this man who was in his twenties – and married! The women of Valletta would pray for her soul if they knew her thoughts.

It didn’t matter. This was different. This was love.

It didn’t make it less real simply because it couldn’t be. The fact that the world saw her as a child didn’t dilute how she felt. If she were only five years older, perhaps, he might take her more seriously and there would be a chance… slim at best, but a chance nonetheless for her to spend her life with someone she loved rather than with someone she was destined to loathe.

He’d have to divorce Delia, of course. Was divorce possible in England? She felt sure it was, if women were able to choose when they married and whom. Delia would get over it; there would be more men lining up for her.

It was so unfair. Delia had all the choice and freedom in the world, while Valentina had none. She only wanted one thing, and that was Delia’s husband. She felt as though she knew him better than any other woman could, and she knew how to talk to him and make him smile better than another woman ever could.

He would not break his vows for her though. She understood that the look in his eye was one of fondness, not love. The glance you’d give an amusing youngster in your midst.

She couldn’t blame him. How could he see her any other way? He couldn’t look into her heart. He couldn’t imagine her as a grown woman, or sense how her body felt around him. How could he possibly know that just by standing there, smiling at her, he was sending feelings through her body she had not felt before. She wanted to stop the world and stare at him without being observed; she wanted to look at the tiniest details of him – the sweep of his eyebrows, the darkly golden eyelashes, the soft tracks in his forehead that showed when he pushed his hair away from his face or the wind swept it aside. And those lips. It was as though an artist had been asked to draw the most sensual, perfectly shaped lips possible. Full, with an even plumpness top and bottom, and what looked to be soft to kiss. She felt more heat rush around her at the thought. And then there was his voice, which was soft and resonant. He never spoke loudly, so it had a soothing quality.

‘Where are you, Valentina? You seem miles away,’ she heard him say now.

‘I think I am,’ she admitted.

‘Well, now I’m going to take you back in time. I know how much you love your history,’ he said, and those lips parted now to smile broadly at her. In those slate-coloured eyes that matched the blue-grey wool of his RAF tunic, she saw kind amusement, as though he was interacting with someone young and impressionable. She hated it and yet she felt powerless to change it. But she also didn’t want to lose his attention.

She realised he was waiting. ‘You’ve disappeared again, Valentina. I would love to know where that imaginative mind of yours is travelling.’

‘I was wondering how you view me,’ she said, startling herself at her honesty.

‘How I view you,’ he repeated. ‘That’s an intriguing query.’ They had paused in the entryway to the cathedral, and while she was desperate to go inside, this mattered more in this moment.

She held his gaze, hoping he would answer.

He looked away first, then took a moment, she assumed to gather his thoughts. ‘Er, well, let me see. Firstly, you’re a lifesaver – I owe you a debt.’