In Flanders Fields they made love, embracing the trenches which lurk between adoration and bereavement, between possibilities and impossibilities, between passion and prohibition. “This is the end, my love,” he whispered through her tears, as the soft wind shared their caresses.

“Then let this be a new dawn as well,” she murmured, as his warm seed flowed into her, “our secret – forever.”

A trimester later he was gone, mown down in the trenches between Ypres and Passchendaele. But as she felt a faint kick in her belly, she knew what no one else would ever know. And she smiled.