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husband’s meal. No one, watching her, could imagine anything different.
Pour boiling water into a large saucepan, place prepared pudding basin on the trivet, cover, leaving the lid askew. Steam for two and a half hours, adding more boiling water at intervals
.
    By then he would be home. It would be Philip sitting opposite her, no one else. He would praise the pudding, no matter how it tasted, because she had made it.
    The door to the bedroom was ajar. What a ridiculous arrangement it was, to have the kitchen off the bedroom. It was the way the house had been divided; she supposed that once it had all made sense, when it was whole. It annoyed her, the way things got broken up so that they couldn’t fit together properly any more.
    If you lay on the bed and the door was open, you could watch someone who was standing at the stove. She refused to turn. He was there again, she was sure of it. He had come back without her hearing him. He was still lying on the bed, but he was awake now, and refreshed. Some colour had returned to his face. His arms were folded behind his head and he was watching her.
    His name was Alec. She knew it now. It had come into her mind as she slept beside him, as if he had whispered it into her ear.
    ‘Alec,’ she said, turning. As she’d thought, he was there. His eyes were narrowed, to watch her more closely. They were dark blue; navy, almost.
    ‘What?’ he said.
    Suddenly a low vibration turned into sound. He moved his head sharply. It was the same heavy sound she had heard before, coming closer. The deep thrumming of four Merlin engines as the aircraft came low, ready for landing. She and Charlie used to identify them when they were miles away, before the adults could hear them. A Lanc.
    Alec was sitting bolt upright. His expression had changed completely: he was preoccupied, anxious, charged for action. He swung himself off the bed and came to her. He stood very close – too close – and again she was afraid.
    ‘Alec,’ she said, ‘what is it?’
    ‘I’ve got to go.’
    ‘But you haven’t said—’
    ‘Said what?’
    ‘You haven’t told me your surname.’
    His face held nothing for a second but blank astonishment. ‘What are you talking about, Is? What’s the matter with you?’
    ‘Your surname,’ she insisted.
    ‘What is this, some kind of a game? You’ve been a bit queer all day.’ He cupped her cheek with his hand, and at that moment she discovered that she knew it, of course she did, how could she have asked Alec such a stupid question?
    ‘Sorry. It’s probably the gin,’ she said. His touch was so intimate that it gave her gooseflesh.
    ‘I’ve got to go,’ he repeated.
    ‘I know.’
    His boots were on, and his greatcoat wrapped around him. He set his cap on his head, and he was gone. She heard the door bang, and ran out into the hall after him, pulled open the front door and looked right and left up the street. There was no one. The fog pushed towards her, and she shivered. You couldn’t even see the minster clearly. How would the Lanc ever land safely? As she thought this, she realised that the noise of its engines was fading. Fading, and then gone.

Chapter Six
    HE’LL COME BACK , she thought. It wasn’t speculation: she was sure of it. How could he not? The flat still breathed his presence, even though it was Philip who sat opposite her, eating the steak-and-kidney pudding. He praised it, as if she were a clever child, and told her that it was as good as his mother used to make.
    ‘I should think so,’ said Isabel, having endured his mother’s meals.
    ‘Did you have a nice time with Janet Ingoldby?’
    ‘What?’
    ‘You went for coffee with Janet Ingoldby.’ Again that note of patience in his voice. She was shrinking in his eyes, she thought, while the rest of his life expanded.
    ‘Oh … No, I’d got the day wrong. It’s next week, I think. Just as well, really, because I had a lot of shopping to do and it took hours to make the pudding. I’m