‘You have to go back. Tomorrow.’

‘It probably won’t be so bad. In fact, I’m sure it won’t. This last thing shook my confidence, but I’m all right again now.’

She said, ‘When you first went out there, I thought every day there would be – bad news. As time went by it was different. I began to think that because you had been all right for so long you would go on being all right.’

He smiled. ‘That’s rather the way I looked at things, too.’

Her lip trembled. ‘Lately it’s been bad again. I’ve had some awful dreams. Dreams in which people quite casually speak to me as a widow and –’ she shook her head – ‘and I don’t argue with them, or tell them they’re mistaken. Because I’m sure it’s true.’

He said, ‘We pick up each other’s thoughts, perhaps – each other’s anxieties, anyway. Don’t they call it telepathy? I promise you from now on you will only pick up optimistic thoughts from me.’

She said, ‘You can’t promise that. I wish you could.’

‘I’ll survive this war,’ he said. ‘Without any doubt. This is a moment of certainty. The next time you meet those people in your dreams, tell them that. The war’s not going to last long enough to put you into weeds. Tell them that.’