‘You and Anne are the only women I want in my life.’
‘I need to spend part of every day with you to believe it.’
‘Why, when you know I love you?’
‘Because you’re blue-eyed, blond and handsome, and I’m mousy and ugly; and because I saw the way the chorus girls in the Town Hall fought over you before you married me.’ Haydn’s roving eye and numerous affairs had been legendary, and not only in Pontypridd.
‘I promised you on our wedding day that I’d never stray again, and I meant it.’ Taking her weight in his arms, he pushed her gently on to the rug in front of the sink, staring at her while he stripped off his uniform. They would have been more comfortable in the bedroom, but his need was too great, too urgent. His last thought before entering her body was how incredibly, wonderfully kind the fates had been in giving him a loving wife, a beautiful daughter and a home in England at a time when so many other couples had been forcibly separated with no hope of knowing when, if ever, they’d see, let alone live with one another again.
Perhaps Jane was right. Perhaps they should stay together and brave the bombs. After all, who, other than Hitler, knew where they were going to fall next?