The filming was completed exactly on time. On the last day of February, David threw a party at the Café Royal. Very late, as we and the few remaining couples danced to the band’s final number, David held me closely and whispered into my hair.

“This time tomorrow, my darling, we shall be alone together by the sea. We had better sign the register under assumed names. How does Mr and Mrs David Williams sound? Given your lovely lilt, don’t you think a Welsh name will add verisimilitude? I could always try and do a Welsh accent too, for fun.”

I had not expected this. He had assured me, several times, that he was a gentleman. “Do you mean we are going to pretend to be married?”

“Ah.” I felt his breath on my scalp as he sighed softly. “How delightfully innocent you are!”

He was right; I was innocent. But Florence, Mary and I knew that being married to a man involved sharing his bed and succumbing to the advances he made there. Growing up in the moral confines of Haverth, it had taken a while to dawn on me that such things also happened between people who were not married, and sometimes resulted in a girl “getting into trouble”. If her baby’s father did not agree to marry her, children that arrived by this means were absorbed into the girl’s family. But tolerant though this might sound, shame and disapproval still attended the unmarried mother. Mam had made this very clear to me. “She’s no better than she should be,” she would say, shaking her head sadly when the offending female passed. “And her mother isn’t much better!”

This meant, of course, that if I were to get into trouble myself, it would reflect upon Mam’s upbringing of her daughter as much as on my own irresponsibility. Mindful of this, I guarded my virginity with vigilance. Eager though I was to hear about Florence’s adventures with Bobby Pritchard (though where he put his hands and what she said to him was about all it amounted to) no one had ever impressed me with the desire to abandon my own principles.

But now, at least, I knew that if I were ever to permit anyone to unlock the secrets of whatever married, or unmarried, people did in their beds, that person would be David. His caresses had shown me how easy it would be to be weak, and how difficult some women found it to resist. But I knew he loved me, and we would soon be married – really married, not pretending, like those poor souls who conducted illicit affairs.

“But if this troubles you, then we shall not be Mr and Mrs David Williams,” said David. “Why don’t you be Miss Clara Williams, and I’ll think of another name for myself?”

I smiled up at him. “Thank you. It is so good of you to respect my wishes.”

“How could I do otherwise? Now you have made your position clear, a man would have to be an absolute cad to suggest anything else.”

Eyes closed, I nestled my cheek against his chin. “We shall have a wonderful weekend,” I assured him. “But morality is as important as love, you know.”

These words were not my own but those of Reverend Morris, the vicar of Haverth. And he had not said them to me, but to Mary Trease’s sister Megan and her husband-to-be when they had gone to receive his pre-marriage advice. Megan had told Mary, and she had reported the phrase to me. “I think the vicar’s quite right, don’t you, Sarah?” she’d said stoutly. “If anyone tries to get me into trouble, however much I love him, I’ll think of the Reverend and resist!” I had agreed that I would too, and now the test had come, I had passed it. Reverend Morris, I could not help thinking, would be very satisfied indeed.