Chapter Five

Stepping out of the first-class carriage of the train, Miriam put a gloved hand out to the young boy dressed in an oversized porter’s uniform. Gripping his skinny arm tightly, more tightly than necessary, she stepped out of the brown-and-cream-painted wooden carriage and onto the busy platform. As steam hissed from under the train’s metal belly, she curled her nose, the smell of soot and the dry, dusty air making her cough. She’d got used to the clean air of the Scottish Highlands. Releasing her talon-like grip, Miriam cast a look back through the open carriage door to where a leather suitcase waited to be claimed.

‘Is that yours?’ the young lad asked, unsure of himself. Unsure of the job he’d just started that very same day.

‘Of course it’s mine!’ Miriam snapped. ‘I can’t see anyone else it might belong to, can you?’ She looked around to prove her point. She had been the only person from the first-class compartment to alight.

‘Sorry, miss.’ The boy hitched up his trousers and climbed on board.

Miriam watched with disdain as he struggled to lift the case, its weight nearly taking him with it as he lowered it onto the platform.

Tutting loudly as a naval officer jostled past her to reach the train just as the stationmaster blew the whistle, Miriam started to make her way towards the stairs that led up to the exit. The throng of fellow travellers and those who had come to meet them caused her progress to be slow. She glanced behind. The prepubescent porter was dragging the suitcase with two hands as though it were a dead body. The sight irritated her. A boy doing a man’s job.

As the chattering crowd moved like sloths up the two flights of steps at the top, Miriam felt a wave of well-being as she imagined her first sip of a large gin and tonic. She could almost hear the clink of ice and imagined the slight fizz as the bartender dropped in a slice of lemon. Impatience immediately followed. She had waited months for a drink, and now it was imminent it was as though she couldn’t wait another second.

Glancing back at the boy, she saw he was banging the suitcase up each step.

‘Lift it!’ she ordered. ‘You’re scuffing the leather! It’s not a sack of potatoes you’re hauling about.’

The young boy looked mortified. Spitting on the sleeve of his uniform, he started trying to rub the dirt off the side of the case, terrified he might have scratched it.

Miriam grimaced, closed her eyes and shook her head. She’d get one of the doormen at the Grand Hotel to give it a good clean and polish.

‘Let me give you a hand there.’

Miriam turned as a tall, well-built young man dressed in oil-stained overalls took the suitcase off the young boy and carried it up the rest of the stairs. He ruffled the boy’s hair before disappearing through the crowd.

When Miriam finally handed over her ticket and made it out of the train station, she breathed a sigh of relief. She looked down at the skinny young boy who was looking up at her expectantly, pleased that the suitcase looked none the worse for wear.

‘You’ll get a tip when you earn a tip,’ she said. ‘When you don’t have to get others to do your job for you.’

The boy looked downcast as he hitched up his trousers and walked back into the station.

Miriam felt her spirits rise once again as she thought of the Grand, her first gin and tonic in months and seeing her old friend Amelia. She wondered if any of the Admiralty they’d befriended were still billeted there.

‘Taxi!’ She raised her hand as a black cab pulled up.

She’d just caught the driver’s eye when she felt a presence next to her.

‘Welcome back, Mrs Crawford.’

Miriam turned to see Eddy, her father’s butler-cum-valet-cum-general-dogsbody, picking up her suitcase.

‘Mr Havelock has sent me to collect you. He wants to welcome you back in person.’

Miriam’s heart sank. She should have guessed her father would have learnt about her return. No doubt Margaret or Angus would have told him.

Miriam huffed loudly.

‘Well, I better get it over with, eh, Eddy? What Father wants, Father gets.’

Eddy didn’t respond. Instead, he picked up the suitcase, which weighed a ton, and humped it over to his master’s black Jaguar.

‘Ah, the prodigal daughter returns!’ Mr Havelock was standing in the doorway, rubbing his hands together in glee.

‘Hardly prodigal,’ Miriam said. ‘Being locked up in a sanatorium does not make for wanton or excessive behaviour – quite the reverse.’

Walking up the steps to her childhood home, Miriam thought her father looked full of it. Was the old man ever going to pop his clogs? Most men born around the same time as her dear papa had met their Maker at least a decade ago.

‘Perhaps not quite prodigal,’ Mr Havelock tried to keep his tone light and welcoming, ‘but some might say such establishments are extravagant and expensive.’

He stood aside so that Miriam could enter the impressive hallway, which was as large as most people’s living rooms. Eddy followed.

‘But it has clearly been worth it. You look splendid, my dear.’

Miriam patted her short blonde hair, which had been set into curls. She’d been told she looked the spit of Betty Grable, which had pleased her no end.

‘A compliment from Father, no less,’ Miriam said, eyeing Mr Havelock suspiciously as she shrugged off her coat and held it out for Eddy to take.

Miriam followed her father into his study. Of all the rooms in her childhood home, this was the one she disliked the most.

‘As I’ve been shanghaied within seconds of stepping foot back into my home town, I will have to ring the Grand if I’m to be here long, so they can relay a message to Amelia that I’m going to be delayed.’

Having reached the large oak door, Miriam forced herself to look at the man she now despised. The man accused of raping young girls. Of fathering illegitimate children. Of incarcerating her mother because she was going to report him, expose him for the man he was – and the crimes he had committed.

‘Unless the reason I’ve been brought here will not take long?’

‘Not long. Not long at all,’ Mr Havelock replied, forcing a smile and ignoring the edge in his daughter’s voice. ‘Come in. Agatha has kindly made you some sandwiches and a pot of tea.’

At the mention of tea, Miriam felt like screaming. She’d drunk enough tea to sink an armada these past few months. She wanted a proper drink. And she wanted one as soon as possible.

‘First of all, Miriam, I want to say how lovely it is to have you back. It’s been nearly eight months since I’ve seen you. Far too long.’ Mr Havelock kept his tone warm. He congratulated himself on sounding genuine. He leant forwards, his hands clasped as though in prayer, a balloon glass of brandy to his right. Miriam wondered if the drink was to torment her, or was just her father – oblivious to anything that pertained to anyone but himself.

Miriam looked up at one of the Aboriginal drawings her father had brought back from one of his many trips abroad. She pulled up a seat and sat down.

‘Well, I have to say, Papa, my feelings about being back here are mixed, to say the least.’ Miriam eyed the brandy and the original flat-bottomed ship’s decanter. She took a sip of her tea.

‘I’m sure your feelings are very mixed,’ Mr Havelock sympathised. ‘You’ve had quite a year of it so far. But I have to say that you’re looking like your old self. Your time away has done you good.’

Miriam took a bite of her sandwich. She watched her father, unsure of what to make of him. Since she’d heard what Pearl and Bel had disclosed on Christmas Day last year, in her mind her father had morphed into a monster. But now that she was here and he was in front of her – well, he was just like the man she’d always known. Arrogant. Egotistical. But not exactly the Devil incarnate.

‘I don’t want to beat about the bush,’ Mr Havelock said, lifting his hands palms up, working hard to show his daughter that he did not want any kind of confrontation. ‘I’ll get straight to it. What happened when I saw you last …’ He paused, shaking his head sadly. ‘I don’t think Christmas will ever be the same again.’

‘I’ll second that,’ Miriam agreed. Her recall of that afternoon was a little sketchy. She had drunk a lot that day. More than usual. But she remembered enough: Pearl and Bel turning up at the house, threatening to tell the world that her father was Bel’s real father – and that he had also sired a child by Gracie the maid, who had given the child up for adoption before taking her own life. They’d come armed with a report that she vaguely remembered went some way to proving what was being said, with Bel adding that she would make it clear her mother had not been a willing participant in Bel’s conception. And if that was not enough of a shock, she’d listened with incredulity as they had exchanged their silence for Jack’s return!

She could still feel the all-consuming sense of injustice. She had worked so hard to get Jack banished to the Clyde – had gone as far as hiring a private detective to find out secrets about those close to her husband’s mistress, forcing him to abandon both the woman and their bastard and live in exile over the border. Only for her father to agree to Bel’s demands and allow Jack to come back home after a two-year hiatus.

She was being punished for the sins of her father.

Miriam took another sip of her tea, forcing back the sense of outrage that had come to the fore.

‘On that ghastly day,’ Mr Havelock began, ‘I wanted to talk to you, but you just upped and left. Then the very next day – on Boxing Day, no less – you headed off to the Highlands.’

Miriam opened her mouth to speak, but her father beat her to it.

‘I know, it was a shock, and you were worried about Jack coming back. I understand.’

Miriam looked at her father. ‘Do you? Do you really understand?’ Her voice was getting louder by the second. ‘I had managed to banish my cheating husband from my life – had worked my socks off to get the dirt I needed to use against him – only for it all to be undone in the blink of an eye. And then,’ she gasped, ‘I had to deal with the fact that he would be back within days.’

‘And you were right in your supposition.’ Mr Havelock pressed his hands together. ‘Your estranged husband certainly wasted no time in returning. I believe he was back here – with his other family – late on Christmas Day.’

Miriam felt herself prickle at the mention of Jack and Gloria and their love child. Again, she looked at her father’s brandy.

Mr Havelock watched Miriam’s reaction. He had seen her eyes flickering to his drink. He needn’t have worried about her returning home a committed teetotaller.

‘But let’s not talk about your soon-to-be ex-husband just yet,’ he said, taking a sip of his Rémy and savouring it. ‘How’s Margaret? Is she all right? She sounded very tense when I spoke to her last.’

‘She’s fine, Father. Fine. I think she’s just been a bit worried about me. I’m her little sister, after all. She’s always been a bit protective of me.’

‘Well, there’s no need for her to worry about you now – not now you’re back home.’ Mr Havelock shuffled in his seat and straightened his back.

‘So, Miriam,’ he began. ‘We need to address what was said about me on that frightful day.’

Miriam felt her heart start to race. She would have preferred to simply sweep it all under the carpet. Shove the family skeleton back into the cupboard with all the others, lock the door and throw away the key.

‘I need you to know,’ Mr Havelock gave his daughter a grave look, ‘that none of it was true. Not one word.’

Miriam didn’t know what to say. Instead, she took another sip of her tea.

‘There’s a lot you don’t know, Miriam. About your mother. What she was really like when she was at home. When you and Margaret were away at school. Her oddities.’

Miriam thought of her mother when she and Margaret were young. There was no denying she was eccentric.

‘But I categorically deny – hand on heart – that I ever touched that Pearl woman. That washed-out wreck of a woman. I would never have touched her with a bargepole,’ he said, knowing that Miriam would have no idea that the woman who had stood in their dining room last Christmas Day had once been quite stunning. Petite. Blonde. Almost angelic-looking. The way he liked them.

‘They were plainly desperate. And her daughter Bel is clearly cut from the same cloth. A fraudster. A con artist. Helen’s been taken in hook, line and sinker.’

Miriam was trying to keep her concentration. This was important. She tried to push back thoughts of a cool gin and tonic.

‘Anyone in their right mind could see they were desperate. The state they turned up in, with their shabby coats and worn-out shoes.’

Miriam vaguely remembered Bel wearing a black dress. Or was that Helen? She could recall a flash of Pearl and Bel leaving, putting on their damp coats. Yes, they had looked shabby. Hadn’t they?

‘They both obviously realised you share an uncanny resemblance and decided to try and cash in on it. And they very cleverly decided to do it on Christmas Day, knowing we’d all be here, enjoying a family day together.’

Miriam thought her father might be recalling that part of the day, before Pearl and Bel’s arrival, with rose-tinted glasses. All she could remember was wishing it was time to leave and go to the Grand. Rather like she was now.

‘You were right.’ He looked at his daughter with admiration. ‘Totally spot on when you told that horrible woman and her child that they were imposters trying to “bleed us dry of our hard-earned cash”.’

Miriam felt herself warm a little to her father. It was not often he praised her words or actions.

‘In hindsight,’ Mr Havelock continued, ‘I thought it very conniving but also very astute of Bel to get herself a job at Thompson’s. To spend months getting on Helen’s good side.’ He let out a sharp, mirthless laugh. ‘And guess what? As soon as the big shakedown was over and done with, she packed in her job. She’s not working there now. The last I heard, she’d adopted twins from the orphanage.’

‘But, Father,’ Miriam said, thinking of the dossier that purported to back up the claims that Bel was her father’s daughter, ‘what about the report?’

‘Load of old Trollope.’ Mr Havelock dismissed it immediately. ‘A work of pure fantasy. A very convincing one, it has to be said. But a load of baloney, as the Yanks would say. There’s not even any proof that dreadful woman ever worked here.’

Miriam was quiet, desperately trying to recall exactly what the report had said. She couldn’t remember there being any concrete proof, but, still, the contents had been convincing. She had believed Bel was her sister. Or rather, half-sister.

‘So there was nothing in the report that constituted actual evidence?’ Miriam asked.

What a relief it would be to find out this was all some elaborate set-up. That her father was not a monster. Just a man.

Mr Havelock studied his daughter’s demeanour and could see that he was doing well.

‘Of course there wasn’t!’ he said. ‘Lies. All lies!’ Mr Havelock drove the point home.

‘But what about Mother?’ Miriam asked.

‘Ha! It was your dear mama’s fault that we’re sitting here now having this horrible conversation. Her sickness has continued to contaminate – even after all these years.’

Mr Havelock took a large gulp of his brandy, making a show of needing to ease his faux pain. His lifelong suffering.

‘It was your mother who unwittingly started this entire debacle,’ he said, wearily. ‘I didn’t get her put away because she was going to report me to the authorities, like that woman and her daughter tried to make out. I got her put away because she was ill. Mentally ill.’ He let out a bitter laugh and looked at his daughter with sadness. ‘This is the reason I’ve wanted you back here. You’ll never know the anguish it has caused me, knowing that you left believing such revolting lies about me. Your own papa. No wonder you took to the drink.’

Miriam exhaled, relieved that her father understood and empathised.

‘It feels wrong to be talking to you about such things as a father, but it is necessary, otherwise I will lose you. And I don’t want to. I lost my wife a long time ago and you and Margaret are all I have.’ Mr Havelock took a slow drink of his brandy.

‘But, Father,’ Miriam challenged, ‘you were the one to get dear Mama put away in the asylum. You didn’t even let us say goodbye to her.’

‘There was good reason,’ Mr Havelock said with utter conviction. ‘Yes, I had your mother sectioned, but you have to believe me when I say it broke my heart. And it would have broken yours too, had you seen the state of her just before they took her away.’

Mr Havelock sighed.

‘I don’t think a day goes by that I don’t think about that time. But there hasn’t been a minute I’ve regretted my actions.’

Mr Havelock looked at his daughter long and hard.

‘I really did not have a choice. Your mother has always been a little different. It was partly why I fell in love with her.’ Mr Havelock took a sip of his brandy. He was actually quite enjoying the role play. ‘But she became ill. Very ill.’ He tapped the side of his head. ‘Mentally unstable. Of course, you and Margaret were totally unaware. It wasn’t as though you were here a lot anyway. Thank goodness. Thank goodness for boarding schools and finishing schools, eh?’

Miriam didn’t agree or disagree. She had enjoyed school, but she had missed her father and her mother.

‘It was horrible to see and hear your mother that awful, awful day.’ Mr Havelock pulled a sour expression, as though he had just eaten something unpalatable. ‘In her head, it’s the truth, which is why she is so convincing.’ He took a deep breath. ‘I would never – ever – have got her put away against her wishes. The reason I had your mother taken to the asylum that abominable, unforgettable day all those years ago …’ He paused. He had to get this right. ‘It was not just because your mother had finally lost her marbles, but because she had started to become delusional. The psychiatrist who persuaded me to section Henrietta said it was as though her mind had taken a step over to the dark side and was unable to come back again. He thought it might have been partly due to all those Gothic novels she liked to read.’

Miriam remembered how her mother always seemed to have her nose in a book when Miriam was a child.

‘Henrietta had begun to imagine that I was …’ Mr Havelock paused as though it pained him to say the words ‘… defiling the young girls who worked as maids. The sickness of her mind had conjured up the most appalling – quite perverted – scenarios in which I was raping and impregnating the poor young girls that came to work as maids here – in this very house.’ Mr Havelock waved his hand around the room to demonstrate his point. ‘I can only surmise that when that woman Pearl happened upon Henrietta in the asylum, Henrietta filled her head with her putrid imaginings, which in turn gave Pearl the idea to blackmail me.’

Miriam felt a huge relief. Of course, that made sense. She could easily imagine someone like Pearl jumping at the chance of using it as a means for blackmail.

Miriam felt a surge of hope.

She had been wrong.

Her father was not a monster.

God, she needed a drink. She felt the heavy weight that had been pressing down on her these past eight months slowly lifting from her shoulders. If only she hadn’t run away to Scotland.

‘I so wish I’d been able to tell you all of this before now,’ Mr Havelock said, seeing the relief on his daughter’s face and reading her mind.

‘So, Pearl pretended she’d been a maid here – and that Bel was your offspring?’ Miriam said, wanting to hear her father’s affirmation – to continue to feel the weight lifting.

‘Exactly!’ Mr Havelock said. ‘Do you really think I would do something like that?’ He looked at his daughter with what he hoped were eyes that spoke of both his innocence and his outrage at what he had been accused of.

‘But why,’ Miriam asked, ‘did you cave into their demands if it wasn’t true? Why did you let Jack come back here to live – to humiliate me – if it was a set-up?’

There it was – the inevitable question, for which he’d prepared himself.

‘That’s the point,’ Mr Havelock said, sounding defeated. ‘The woman had me at her mercy. You saw how convincing she was. She should have been on the stage. And her daughter, too.’

Miriam had indeed seen. They had been so convincing. She’d left the house that day believing their lies – believing that her father was a rapist.

‘Well, can you imagine what might have happened if she had carried out her threat and gone to the authorities with her report, with her tales of my purported malevolence, and then taken them to the asylum, where they would have found your mother living under an assumed name. Imagine if they had listened to Henrietta’s diabolical accusations – and believed her?’

Miriam was quiet. She had been taken in by their lies – their act – and she was his daughter. If that was the case, there’d be a good chance that others would be too.

Mr Havelock dropped his shoulders as though age had finally caught up with him.

‘I’m an old man, Miriam. I didn’t want to have to go through any kind of scandal or, worse still, a court case. Mud sticks. The very accusation would tarnish my name – even if it was proved, as it surely would have been, that it was all a fabrication. God only knows, I might have died without having the chance to clear my name.’ He gave Miriam a baleful look. ‘I’m so sorry, my dear, but allowing Jack back home seemed the lesser of two evils.’

Miriam was quiet. She understood now why her father had acquiesced, but it did not make Jack’s return any less painful. Nor any less humiliating.

‘And while we are being so plain-spoken …’ Mr Havelock said, straightening his shoulders. ‘This might be hard for you to hear.’ He tried to give his daughter a look that conveyed care; a sense of having to be cruel to be kind. ‘But you were never going to be able to keep Jack away for ever.’ Another pause. ‘And I honestly don’t think anything you do would keep him away from his other woman and their bastard. I’m in no doubt that if I’d been forced to fight the false accusations of that deplorable woman and her daughter, then it would have flung the door wide open for Jack to come back anyway.’

Miriam thought for a moment. Her father was right. He was always right.

‘I suppose so,’ she said.

They were quiet. Mr Havelock knew when to speak and when not to.

Miriam finished her tea, digesting everything that had been said. She had felt so alone these past months in the sanatorium. Her relationship with her father could often be tumultuous – sometimes she felt as though she hated him as much as she loved him. But when she had thought he had done those terrible things that Pearl and Bel had said he had done, she had felt bereft – as though her father had died. She had felt so alone. But now, thank goodness, it had all been put right. She had her father back. He might be far from perfect, but he was not a sexual deviant.

As Miriam looked out of the window, her thoughts wandered back to the present – to her own life. Her own marriage. Her own problems.

Now that she was relieved of the crisis with her father, she needed to refocus on her own situation.

‘Jack being back is a nightmare – totally humiliating,’ she said. ‘I’m going to be the laughing stock of high society.’

‘Well, my dear, if anyone laughs at you, they’ll be feeling my wrath – and besides, if they dare to laugh at your misfortune, they are not worth knowing.’ The joy he felt at having turned her around – having got her back onside – was great and he tried to keep it from showing.

‘Do you want my advice?’ he asked, surprised at his capacity to sound so totally sincere. So kind and caring. So fatherly.

Miriam nodded. She was now the daughter and he the all-knowing father.

‘I think you should divorce the man and be done with it. Go and see Rupert at Gourley and Sons. He’s good at what he does, and discreet, and he’ll be able to push it through post-haste. I’ve already had a chat with him – all confidential, of course – and he says there’s ways and means of getting it through with the minimum of exposure.’

They were quiet again.

‘The horse has bolted and there’s no dragging it back in the stable,’ he said. ‘Much as you might want to. My advice would be to simply cut your losses, divorce Jack as quickly and quietly as possible and move on. It’s not as if you are reliant on him for anything. You certainly don’t need him for any kind of financial help. Divorcing Jack would give you a fresh start. And you couldn’t do it at a better time, while the whole nation’s focus is on the war.’ He couldn’t bring himself to say, ‘And on our impending victory.’

‘I won’t give him what he wants,’ Miriam said, her mouth set in a firm line. ‘I want him to suffer.’

Mr Havelock smiled. ‘You’re a chip off the old block, Miriam. Too much like your dear papa.’ He smiled indulgently at her. ‘But don’t make the mistake of cutting off your nose to spite your face. Think about it.’

‘I will, but I won’t change my mind,’ Miriam said.

‘Well, whatever you decide to do, Miriam,’ Mr Havelock manufactured a look of deep sincerity, ‘I’ll support you. Just ask and I’ll be there to help in any way I can.’

Miriam looked at her father. How could she have believed those things he’d been accused of? He wasn’t a monster. Why had she believed people she didn’t even know over her own family? Her own flesh and blood?

‘Thanks, Father,’ she smiled.

‘Well, off you go.’ Mr Havelock shooed her away. ‘I think you’ve kept your friend waiting long enough.’

Mr Havelock smiled to himself as Miriam left the room. That could not have gone better. Even to his own ears, his lies about Henrietta and her delusions inspired by Gothic novels had sounded totally convincing. He had known that Miriam would not want to see her own father in such an abhorrent light; he’d just needed to give her a believable alternative.

Hearing Eddy’s monotonous voice offering Miriam a lift into town, he reached for his brandy glass and took a long drink. He heard the front door bang shut and a few moments later the engine of the Jaguar turn over.

He relaxed back into the leather upholstery of his chair.

Now Miriam was back and on board, he could put into play his plan of action.

He smiled and took out one of his most expensive cigars, held it to his nose and inhaled its aroma.

A knock on the door interrupted his reverie. He looked up to see Agatha walking into the room with a tray under her arm, ready to clear away Miriam’s cup and saucer and a half-eaten sandwich.

‘I take it Miriam’s homecoming was a success, sir?’

Agatha and Eddy had speculated about the reason why the master’s daughter had been summoned back to the house as soon as she’d stepped off the train after returning to ‘civilisation’, but they were still none the wiser.

Mr Havelock clipped the end of his cigar.

‘Yes, yes, Agatha. A successful homecoming!’ He clicked open his engraved silver lighter. ‘Couldn’t be better.’

Holding the flickering flame to the end of his cigar, he puffed a few times, creating a swirling grey cloud around him.

‘Now that Miriam’s back, there’s lots to be done. Lots,’ he said, with a triumphant smile.

*

As Eddy drove down Ryhope Road, Miriam’s mind skittered about – dodging between her need for a drink and the conversation she’d just had with her father.

Looking out the window as they started to make their way down Burdon Road, Miriam saw that Mowbray Park was in full bloom, although the crater caused by one of the town’s many air raids was still very much in evidence. She squinted as the sun’s reflection off the huge glass panelling of the Winter Gardens dazzled her. Closing her eyes for a moment, she saw a flash of her father’s face when Pearl was threatening to expose him.

He had not denied the accusations. She would have thought he would. But then again, that was her father. He rarely did what was expected. He was his own man. An anomaly. That was for sure. Anyway, what did it matter how he’d reacted? He was innocent. She’d got it all wrong. And if that wasn’t a reason to celebrate, she didn’t know what was. She was going to have a drink come hell or high water, and no matter what she had promised Margaret.

As the car pulled up outside the Grand, she felt a slight twinge of guilt, having promised her sister that she would not drink a drop when she got back. Margaret really did care. She really wanted her younger sister to stop drinking, but they were different – they always had been, even as children. They’d often joked that it was strange they looked so similar yet were polar opposites in nature. Margaret had always been the level-headed one, perhaps because she was the firstborn. Who knew? Anyway, it was all right for Margaret. She had Angus and their big house on a big country estate. They were happy, settled, solid. She, on the other hand, had a husband who was now shacked up with his new family. A husband who could not be sent back to the Clyde – that ship had well and truly sailed. If Margaret was in her shoes, she’d be doing exactly what she was doing at this very moment in time – getting out of the car and walking straight up the steps to the Grand.

The doorman tipped his cap as she walked through the main entrance and into the foyer. Breathing in the familiar smell of the place that had become her second home, Miriam felt herself relax. The thought of having a drink made her feel happy and excited for the first time in seven months.

‘Amelia!’ she called out on seeing her friend perched on a bar stool, chatting to one of the Admiralty.

Her friend turned around and her face lit up.

‘Miriam!’ She stood up, a little unsteady on her feet. ‘At last, you’re back!’

The pair embraced.

‘I thought I was never going to get you back.’ She turned and smiled at the bartender.

‘A gin and tonic for my friend here. And make it a big one.’