Nora was familiar with the squeaky wheel of the postman’s black bicycle, and the particular crunch that it made as he swerved to a stop on the gravel of their drive. He in turn was becoming familiar with her hopeful face at the door, and the strange twist of his stomach that he felt every day, knowing he was going to disappoint her. He suspected that she held him partly responsible for the fact that she continued not to receive the letter she was hoping for.

The postie himself was not an unattractive young man, although beneath the notice of the young ladies at a house such as this. He was quite unusually tall, and the blue of his eyes reflected the morning fresh sky when he smiled. It was well-known in the village that he suffered from a weakness of the chest, and this was the reason he was left to compete for attention with the constant stream of fit young men from the nearby RAF base, and the army camp down the road. Since the arrival of the americans, it had proved very hard to get a date.

He caught his breath for a moment and gave Nora a sympathetic smile. “Nothing today, Miss. Just a stack of bills for the old man.”

The chill in her smile conveyed the exact degree to which she disapproved of his impertinence, but failed to disguise the painful rush of her disappointment. Turning away from the postman, she dropped her father’s letters on the hallstand, and slipped despondently deeper into the house.

Beyond the baize door, the passageway had cold slate floors, and Nora shivered in the cool silence. She was glad that no-one was about; every day it felt more difficult to cover up her feelings, and she was afraid that if she had to speak to anyone at that moment, she might cry. She had no idea how long it took for letters to reach England from America, but he had gone for more than a month now, and she hadn’t heard one word.

His promise to write was only one of the many he had made, on the night he left. Her memory of it was so intense, that she could almost feel the heavy mist that had surrounded them, almost like raindrops suspended around their faces as they walked slowly along the muddy lane in the dark. She had had to hide her boots until the mud dried enough to clean them, or someone would have been certain to ask questions.

He had held her hand as they walked, and told her excitedly about his impending trip home, how snowy it would be, and his plans to go fishing with his father. She could not imagine the icy world that he came from, and he promised to write and describe it to her. And he said he couldn’t wait to tell his mother all about her, and then they stopped beneath the meagre shelter of the copper beech, and he placed his hands so gently on her cheeks, and lowered his face towards hers, and kissed her.

His lips and his breath felt warm against her innocent, bare face; and as she was cold, she liked the feeling of him pressing his body against hers. Tentatively, she reached up and put her arms around his neck, and he liked that. He told her so.

They weren’t out in the dark for long, but Ruth had noticed them slip out of the caf� and return all bedraggled and flushed. She gave Nora a complicit wink, and Nora blushed furiously, not wanting anyone even to guess at the secret promises Bill had made her, beneath the tree in the dark.

Now she sat in the deserted scullery, kicking at the clods of mud that she had cleaned from her nearly-ruined boots, and wished she had so much as a lock of his hair, or alternatively an ounce of sense about promises made to her by handsome young officers. She realised more clearly every day that she would have heard from him by now, if his feelings had really been as deep and as ardent as the intentions he had expressed to her. The knowledge was freezing an icy pathway into her heart.

It’s a journey that’s fresh in my mind, and the same but different every day. The first time I went, when I first moved there, was with my flatmate. Then it was almost exciting (as exciting as a journey to work can be), to be starting a new job and going off together with an attractive stranger. (Four months later, he was still an attractive stranger, but that’s another story.)

The flatmate made the journey easy, but when I went on my own the next day, I got lost. I seem to lose my way on even the simplest journeys, often doubting my instinct and turning off on impulse, until I either get angry and stop to look at the map, or magically find myself right again after my temporary route-madness.

These days I make that morning run half in my sleep. As I pull the car out on to the quiet street, I let go of the wheel so I can put on my gloves, because it is so cold these mornings; the car doesn’t like it either, and doesn’t warm up until we’re nearly there. The engine usually cuts out while I’m waiting for a gap in the traffic on the main road, and then it rattles and complains all the way to the next village – it hates sitting in queues as much as I do.

I have to wake myself up to drive through the village, because of all the schoolchildren. They hang around the bus stop, or run across the road just when the lights are changing. Those girls with short skirts must be aching with cold; they stroll in twos and threes and don’t think of me driving to work, or that they’ll be doing the same thing, one day.

Then I cross the pedestrian crossing, and get to the place where I hit the cat. It was only a couple of weeks ago, and I still think of it every time I pass the Post Office. It was a Sunday morning, and there was no-one about except me, my car, and that stupid poor cat that threw itself unseeing in front of my wheels. I couldn’t stop, and I felt it thump somewhere underneath. I pulled over and looked for it, but it had leapt a wall and disappeared.

Every morning I have the same feeling as I accelerate away from the village on the small windy road, past the queue of traffic waiting to move in the opposite direction: I look at the faces of the people in those cars, one in each, staring forward, hands on their wheels; and I wonder if they’re wondering about me, or about each other, or about anything. I wonder if there is any way in which each tinned human can connect with all the other tinned humans who have one thing in common: they are all sitting in a cold car on a cold morning, and travelling very slowly towards the town I have just left.

This journey is bleak and grey, because I’ve only ever made it during the winter. The trees along this road have always been winter-coloured, and the roadside has always been muddy. I used to get up a fair old speed along here, but now that it’s icy, it’s not worth the risk. (Sometimes it is, on the way home, when he has been bugging me all day).

There’s a good sweeping long stretch, then a hill and an easy wide bend; but then a tight bend and you’re nearly there, nearly at the hospital where the speed bumps slow you down and bottle you up. Four bumps that jolt my spirits towards my sensible shoes – thick soles that won’t slip on the kitchen floor, and that’s all that matters.

She perches on the wooden toilet seat, her eyes fixed on the strip of card that lies on the edge of the bath. The moisture creeps along the strip, and one line slowly fades into existence. She has a feeling it hasn’t finished, and remains watching; and she is proved correct when a second line appears.

This is a heavy thrill that she is feeling, like the excitement one might feel in a lift, if the cable snapped. This is a moment of dry mouth, paused heartbeat, inarticulate surprise. She continues to stare at the strip, knowing that it is confirming a truth that her body has already told her, but still wondering if it might be wrong.

Eventually she starts to feel the cold; it is 4am, after all. She leaves the strip on the side of the bath, snaps off the light, and creeps back to bed, hugging this strange information. After a few minutes, she puts the light back on, and makes a short note in her diary. Moments like this should be recorded. As she waits to fall asleep, a name occurs to her, and she smiles.

Early in the morning, she calls him to tell him the news. His immediate reaction is pleased shock, just like hers. He has always accepted her belief that she was unable to conceive, so before they start to worry about what steps to take next, they allow themselves to indulge in these strange, unexpected sensations. They feel clever, as if no other humans have ever managed to do anything as astounding as this. He feels all manly and strong; she feels soft and maternal and protective. They glow at each other across the miles.

She knows what she has to do, and she does it. She feels disapproval in the doctor’s face, and is daunted by the weeks she will have to wait, as everything is held up by Christmas. It can’t be dealt with on the spot, as she had hoped. She strokes her fingertips across the skin of her belly, and moves from thinking of it as an abstract miracle, to a strange, small being, that will be inhabiting her body for a few weeks. She tries to get it to agree that they will be nice to each other, while they share a shell, but she knows that she’s not really offering a fair deal.

The thing inside her knows that too, and makes her feel nauseous and tired. She can’t seem to exert any control over her body’s responses, like she can control her mind and her emotions; moments of weakness, when she allows herself to feel regret, are rare. She thinks of it as the spirit of the child they will one day have, here too early; and makes silent promises for the future.

He feels the same way, or follows her lead. They open champagne and have a sad little celebration of the news they can’t share with anyone else. He strokes her belly as well, and presses his face against it, and tells her he is talking to his son. When she feels sick, he makes sure she has something to eat. When she cries, he puts his arms around her and tells her not to be scared.

There would be snow at home, huge flakes of it flooding past her windows and piling up like pillows in the roads and the parks. Here there was just drizzle, and never any daylight; and no trams or convenient shops and cinemas. She had to walk everywhere, and it was cold and wet.

Her boots were slowly being ruined by the muddy park that gave her a shortcut into work, except on the days when the ground was frozen, or the evenings when it was too dark to go that way. The long, uphill walk home gave her too much time to think, as well, but still she trudged slowly, because there was nothing to look forward to at her destination.

Her house key was heavy and old, sometimes didn’t turn in the rusted lock; and let her straight into the unused sitting room, which smelt of cobwebby damp. In the kitchen there was a thin scum on everything she touched, however often she ran a sink full of hot soapy water, and scrubbed things. The hob would never go clean, and the oven did not work at all. The boys who shared the house with her really didn’t care; like her, they treated it as a roof over their head and little more. But they both had other places they could go to, for company and cleanliness.

Her room was small and cluttered, now that she had moved her few belongings in and covered the walls with pictures that reminded her of home. She had an untuneable TV with no remote, an old stereo that chewed her cassettes, and a view of the face of a quarry and the sky above, which she gazed at for hours on lonely Sunday afternoons, lying on her bed wishing she could at least listen to music. Crows swirled against the clouds, high above the hillside, and she watched them and dozed, and the time passed.

She fell asleep in the deep quiet, and dreamed of a bed three times the size, not realising that it was in her future, not in her past.

One evening she walked down the hill to go to the cinema. It was the first time she had ever watched a film on her own, and she enjoyed her solitude more than usual, surrounded by strangers. She forgot about herself for a while, like when she managed to get a signal on the TV at the same time that there was something worth watching, or when she lost herself in a book. But there were times when she could not forget, and could not make the pain and the fear go away. It felt like she had already stepped off the precipice, and the only way was down.

I think he’s the ideal man. He’s got a good, safe job; owns his house; and takes care of himself: he spends a lot of time in the gym, so he’s fit and healthy. He’s just the kind of man I’m sure my parents want me to marry, so when he proposed (in a french restaurant), of course I accepted him. And you should see my beautiful engagement ring!

Of course, I’m probably the kind of girl his parents want him to marry, too. My dad’s a bank manager, and my mother has never worked. I suppose I will keep working after we get married (I’m a nursery school teacher); until we start to have children of our own. Everyone will expect us to have a family, but we won’t rush into anything.

I don’t want us to live together until we’re married. Call me old fashioned if you want, but I just don’t think it’s right. I think a marriage should be built on mutual respect, and this is the way to start.

Just once, we stayed in a hotel together, on the night of his office christmas party. I asked for twin beds, but the hotel made a mistake, and we ended up with a double. I wanted to complain, but Chris said I shouldn’t make a fuss, and promised he would behave like a gentleman. I think we agreed that he would sleep on the sofa, but we were quite tiddly by the time the party was finished.

Maybe it’s because I was tipsy, but it didn’t feel quite right to me. I know it’s supposed to hurt at first, and it did, but more than anything else, the whole thing just felt uncomfortable, all the way through. I was expecting it to be somehow soft and magical, but the thing I was most aware of was his weight pressing me down, and how his breath was noisy and hot, and afterwards I had bruises on my arm. I had to go for a shower, once he’d gone to sleep.

For me, everything felt different in the morning. It was like, well he’ll have to marry me now. He was different with me, too. He was touching me more, and he kissed me in a different way. More wetly. He wanted to do it again, but I didn’t. It’s important that we wait until we’re married. More than ever.