Hettie of Hope Street. Annie Groves

the Lake District just over half an hour ago to tell them that he had been to see Alfred, and it had now been agreed that he would take over his new duties as the chief flying instructor at the club in just over a month’s time.

      ‘Yes,’ John confirmed tersely before adding, ‘I know you don’t want to sell the land we bought, Gideon.’

      ‘There’s no need for you to worry about that, John. I dare say we can lease it to a farmer for the time being.’

      ‘I’d like to have some kind of memorial plaque put on it once all the mess has been cleared away. It’s the least I can do for Jim. He didn’t deserve to die like that, and it’s my fault that he did.’

      Ellie made a small sound of distress and put her hand on his arm. ‘John, you must not say that. There was nothing you could have done. The other students all confirmed that Alan Simms was a very headstrong and reckless young man who had made it plain that nothing was going to stop him from taking up a flying machine and making good his boast that he already knew everything there was to know about flying and didn’t need to listen to either you or Jim. Didn’t they? You said so yourself.’

      ‘But don’t you see? If I’d been there, Alan wouldn’t have been able to take the machine in the first place because I would have been using it for a lesson,’ John protested in an anguished voice.

      ‘On that occasion maybe,’ Gideon intervened firmly. ‘But by all accounts he was the kind of young fool who would have kept on until he got what he wanted. The pity of it is that he managed to persuade three other young idiots to go with him and, even worse, that the machine crashed onto the hangar and killed poor Jim. But none of that is your fault, John, and if you take my advice you must accept that.’

      ‘Hettie was very distressed that you weren’t there at her debut as she had hoped,’ Ellie told him.

      ‘You didn’t tell her…what happened, or about Jim?’ John immediately asked anxiously. ‘I know how much this singing business means to her and I didn’t want to spoil it for her with bad news.’

      ‘No. We did as you had begged us to, John, and said nothing,’ Gideon assured him.

      ‘There is a letter here for you from Hettie,’ Ellie told him quietly.

      Reluctantly John took the envelope she was holding out to him, and then opened it. Although the notepaper wasn’t scented it seemed to John that somehow it carried a soft sweet fragrance that was in some way the essence of Hettie herself.

      ‘Dear John,’ she had written. ‘I was very sorry that you could not come to hear me sing at the Adelphi. Mam and Da and Connie had all said that you would be there but then you didn’t come. I hope that you are not still cross with me because of my frock and because I want to sing. Most sincerely, Hettie.’

      ‘She was very disappointed that you weren’t there,’ Ellie repeated as John folded up the letter and tucked it back in its envelope.

      ‘She is so very young,’ John answered her seriously. ‘A child still in many ways, Ellie.’ His own problems and feeling of guilt were weighing very heavily on his shoulders, and the laughter he had once shared with Hettie now seemed to belong to another life and another person.

      ‘How are you feeling?’ he asked Ellie meaningfully. He didn’t want to cause his sister anxiety when she was in a delicate condition. That would be even more guilt than he could bear.

      She gave him an affectionate smile and assured him, ‘I am fine. Gideon fusses over me so much you’d think this was to be our first child and not our third. I am hoping that Iris will be able to attend me during the confinement. She has promised that she will, but I know how busy the clinic is keeping her. But tell us some more about your friend Alfred and his flying club, John. I feel I hardly know anything about it,’ Ellie pressed him.

      ‘The flying club does not belong to Alfred as such, but he has given the club the land. It is very well organised,’ he explained ‘and they are soon to take delivery of two new machines. I am to live in an apartment, as they call it, in a building adjoining the flying club. I have half of the whole of the upper floor, and down below me is an office and the clubroom, over the flying club. The chap who does most of the bookwork has the other half, whilst the engineers and maintenance crew work in shifts and do not live on site so that there is always a maintenance crew there. It has all been very well thought out and organised,’ John reiterated.

      ‘This is a new start for you, John,’ Ellie told him lovingly. ‘I pray that you will be happy.’

      He smiled weakly at her but inside he felt despair. He had no right to look for happiness. Not when five men were dead because of him. He had no right to want happiness, and no right either to yearn for the sound of Hettie’s laughter.