“I don’t know,” Joseph said. “They’re open tickets. Whenever we feel like it, I suppose.” Joseph smiled with pleasure but, as he did, his attention drifted away from Edward and over his shoulder. His mouth dropped open again. Edward turned to follow his gaze. The door to the main restaurant had swung open and the staff had emerged with the starters. He knew immediately who he was looking at.

“I don’t believe it,” he said. Joseph was staring at one of the waitresses.

“What? You know her?”

“You could say that,” he said, grinning. “Her name’s Eve. I was seeing her before I went away for the war. We were both kids then––I was seventeen, she was fifteen. Her dad’s Old Bill. Nasty, too, a real hard man. Detective inspector Frank Murphy. He didn’t approve of me stepping out with her. Told her we had to split up. Next thing I know, she’s come around to see me with a suitcase and tells me that he’s hit her and she’s moving out and we have to run away together. I couldn’t do that––I had too much going on and I’d just decided to sign up. Anyway, her old man came around, threw me out of bed and almost broke my arm trying to get me to tell him where she was. She hadn’t been home.”

“She ran away?”

“That’s what it looked like. I haven’t seen her since. Well––not until now, anyway. And look at how she’s grown up.”

Joseph watched as the girl served the next table, his face breaking into a grin as she turned and caught his gaze. She paused, confusion passing across her lovely face, before the wide grin was returned.

“She’s lovely,” Joseph said.

She certainly was attractive. She had porcelain white skin and the darkest black hair, cut fashionably short into a bob that just reached the base of her neck. Her eyes sparkled, carefully applied purple eye shadow drawing attention to them. Despite her sophisticated appearance, she had still managed to retain that edge of childish innocence that could be so appealing. She attended to the guests with a charming bashfulness that was regularly illuminated by the brightest, most beaming smile imaginable. As she brought around the main courses Edward noticed that Joseph was staring intently at her. She must have noticed it too for she blushed furiously. She did not look up until she was at the doors to the restaurant. Joseph, still grinning at her, gave her a cheeky little wave. Her expression broke into a charming, guileless smile.

The meal was delicious. As the plates were being cleared away Sophia leant across the table and laid both hands atop Edward’s. “You never did tell us what you did to win your medal,” she said.

Edward feigned reluctance. “Do I have to?” he pleaded.

“Only if you want to shut us up.”

“Very well,” he said, with mock reluctance. The table quietened as he made a show of considering where he should begin. It was a pretence. He had rehearsed the story so many times that he had memorised it, word for word. He had relayed it several times to men he had met on the troopship bringing him back from India. He had told it to the officer who had demobbed him in Portsmouth and to a pair of wide-eyed squaddies he had met on the train. He had spoken it into the mirror before leaving the flat this evening and had repeated it so often that he had even perfected the expressions––the surprise, fearfulness and relief––that were appropriate for the various beats of the tale.

“Come on, Doc,” Joseph said with a expectant look on his face.

Edward looked around the table. They were all waiting for him. “This was in Burma,” he began, “I was on patrol with the rest of my platoon. We had the Japs on the run. I can remember it like it was yesterday––it was in the middle of the monsoon, unbelievable amounts of rain, you don’t know rain until you’ve been stuck in one of those”––Joseph nodded his agreement––“and visibility was awful. We were on the approach to a bridge over the Irrawaddy River. The road cut through the jungle and there was dense vegetation on both sides. We wandered right into the middle of an ambush––they had machine guns set up in the trees. They strafed us, most of the boys got hit before we knew what was happening. I took one in the foot of all places, but I managed to get into cover. The firefight must have lasted twenty minutes. I managed to crawl through the shrub to around twenty feet away, maybe a little less, close enough to toss a grenade right into the middle of them. When it was finished, all of my platoon and all of the Japs were dead. I was the last one standing.”

“You killed all of them?” Billy asked. He accompanied the question with a tilt of his head that suggested that he found the story dubious.

“Of course not, but I was the only one alive at the end of it. I managed to find my way back to the battalion and they sent scouts to confirm what had happened.”

“How incredible,” Sophia said.

“Isn’t it,” Billy said. “Incredible.” He barely disguised the sarcasm but gasped in pain just as he was about to continue and, from the steady glare on Sophia’s face, Edward guessed that she had kicked him in the shins.

Edward ignored him. “I didn’t do it for the medal,” he said. “You find yourself in a situation like that, you just react. There isn’t really even time to think. I did what any soldier would have done.”

“He’s too modest,” Joseph said. “You know how rare the Victoria Cross is? They only give them out once in a blue moon.” He raised his glass and proposed a toast: “To Edward,” he said. “Happy birthday.”

Edward was fit to burst with happiness. He smiled around the table at all of them. Sophia and Evie giggled at some shared comment. Chiara looked at him with a hopeful look in her eyes. He imagined the speculations of the sisters: Is he single? He can’t be single, surely. He’s so reserved and private, so mysterious.

The waitress, Eve, returned with clean champagne flutes. She reddened again as she distributed them, Joseph beaming at her the whole time she was at the table. When she finally departed it was with what looked like a mixture of relief and reluctance.

Edward touched glasses with the others and sipped the champagne. His anxiety about the evening looked silly now. Joseph was a natural when it came to directing the mood of a gathering. When he was in this kind of garrulous, easy-going form, it was possible to watch others as they became infected with his good temper. He had an easy charisma and could be completely beguiling when he wanted to be.

Bottles of spirits appeared and the drinking picked up pace. Joseph excused himself from the table and went across to the bar. He poured Eve a drink and they started to talk. It was quickly obvious that they knew each other. There was an easy familiarity to their body language, Joseph resting his fingers on her forearm and Eve touching the back of his hand. She was too shy and he was too garrulous for their conversation to be anything other than one-sided, but it was obvious that he was putting everything into an attempt to impress her and, inevitably, he was meeting with success. It wasn’t long before she was laughing freely at his jokes.

Edward was still smiling at it as Chiara Costello came to his side.

“Have you had fun?” she asked him.

“Oh, yes. It was a wonderful evening. And you?”

“I’ve had a lovely time.” Her eyelids lowered elaborately and then rose again languorously, her electric eyes sparkling.

“It was nice of you to come.”

“You came to my birthday, didn’t you? I had to reciprocate. Only polite.” Edward felt himself relaxing into her company. “What have you been getting up to?”

He looked at her sharply, wondering what she knew, but her expression was open and guileless. “This and that,” he said.

“Have you thought what you’re going to do now you’ve settled back into things?”

She must have known that he was busy with her brother. It was obvious: the clothes, the fact that they were living together, none of that could possibly be funded by the job with Ruby Ward, no matter how good he might be at it. Of course, he had stopped going to the garage. He had handed in his cards. There didn’t seem to be any point now that they were doing so well. Surely she would have been made aware of that? And, yet, despite it all, he did not feel comfortable acknowledging any of that to her. He didn’t want her to disapprove and he knew that she would. “I don’t really know,” he said.