The Very White of Love: the heartbreaking love story that everyone is talking about!

Martin takes off his helmet and goggles, glances in the side mirror of his Norton army motorbike, smooths his cowlick back, then slides off the saddle. With the bunch of wild flowers he picked for her on the side of the road in hand, he walks towards her front door. The Battalion has been ordered back to its base in Aylesbury. He’s supposed to be delivering some documents to the drill hall at High Wycombe but he has managed to slip away for a few hours. It’s a special day. The anniversary of their meeting. A possible announcement by the Prime Minister. Love entangled with war.

Before he can knock, the door flies open and Nancy is in his arms.

‘My love.’ He kisses her hair, her cheeks, her lips.

‘I thought you wouldn’t make it.’ She latches the door behind her. Kisses him hard, then soft, then everything in between.

‘Not exactly what we imagined for our first anniversary, is it?’ He gives her the flowers.

She kisses him again. ‘Just think what might have happened if you hadn’t almost knocked me over . . . ’ They laugh together, then grow quiet. ‘Is there any more news?’ She looks up into his face.

Martin knits his brow, takes her hand, squeezes it. ‘The British Ambassador delivered an ultimatum to the Germans at 8 a.m.’

‘Maybe sanity will prevail at the last second.’ She pouts, angrily. ‘It’s so unfair! On this, of all days!’

Martin kisses her. ‘Chamberlain should have asked our permission.’

They laugh together, Nancy grows serious. ‘Tino, there’s something I wanted to say . . . ’ Martin raises his eyebrows, a little tremor of alarm running through him. ‘About that day when I didn’t make it to the station to see you off.’

‘Oh.’ Martin flips his hair back. ‘That’s ancient history.’

‘No.’ Her eyes water. ‘I was racing to catch the train in Beaconsfield and the pedal broke . . . ’

‘Oh, darling.’

‘So I dumped the bike in the ditch, and tried to run, but the heel came off my shoe!’ She sobs again. ‘It was as though the gods were against us!’

Martin puts his arm around her, all his feelings of abandonment gone. ‘My love. The gods aren’t against us. It was just Sod’s Law.’ He strokes her hair.

‘But I so wanted to be with you!’ Her shoulders heave.

‘I know, darling.’ He kisses her tear-stained face. ‘And now you are.’

‘Coo-ee!’ Nancy’s mother calls from inside the house. ‘It’s about to start!’

In the living room, LJ adjusts the large, brown wireless set but gets up to shake Martin’s hand as they enter. ‘Dear boy . . . ’ He is about to say something more but turns away. ‘Come and sit down.’

Peg pecks him on the cheek. ‘So glad you could get away.’

‘Me, too.’ He glances at Nancy and they settle themselves on the sofa, their legs touching. Nancy takes Martin’s hand and holds it in her lap, the first time she has done it in front of her parents.

‘Whisky?’ LJ gestures towards the drinks cabinet.

‘Better not.’ Martin shakes his head. Then changes his mind. ‘Oh, why not?’

‘Drink, darling?’

Peg glances towards the decanter. ‘I may need something to steady my nerves. But just a finger.’

LJ squirts soda in his wife’s glass. ‘Nancy?’

‘I’m fine, thanks.’

Nancy’s father distributes the three drinks, then goes back to his perch by the wireless. There’s a screeching, then six pips: the BBC call sign. Everyone leans forward. Chamberlain begins.

‘I am speaking to you from the Cabinet room in Downing Street. This morning the British Ambassador in Berlin handed the German Government a final Note stating that, unless we heard from them by eleven o’clock that they were prepared at once to withdraw their troops from Poland, a state of war would exist between us.

‘I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received, and that consequently this country is at war with Germany . . . ’

Nancy gasps involuntarily and buries her face in her hands. Peg rubs her back.

‘You can imagine what a bitter blow it is to me that all my long struggle to win peace has failed. Yet I cannot believe that there is anything more or anything different that I could have done and that would have been more successful . . . ’

‘So why did you sign that bit of paper in Munich!’ Peg explodes.

LJ raises his finger to his lips. ‘Let’s listen to what the man has to say.’

‘Up to the very last it would have been quite possible to have arranged a peaceful and honourable settlement between Germany and Poland, but Hitler would not have it. He had evidently made up his mind to attack Poland whatever happened, and although he now says he put forward reasonable proposals which were rejected by the Poles, that is not a true statement . . . ’