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am now on full salary, and I must admit that it makes me feel very modern and very liberated.
    It is strange, is it not? At school you were always the career conscious, emancipated one and I was content to anticipate a life as a wife and mother somewhere along the track. How we would have laughed had someone told us those roles would be reversed. But we both lead happy, full, rich lives with husbands we love who hold us dear. We are to be envied, Emily.
    I was halfway through the third and final bundle of Margaret’s letters and I found myself starting to worry. I was running out of correspondence and I was only up to 1934. Emily had died in 1975 – what had happened to them in the years between? They hadn’t had a falling out, surely. Not Emily and Margaret.
    I read on, compulsively, praying that nothing untoward had happened. War was declared. Both women breathed sighs of relief that their men were now too old to be a part of it (Geoffrey had also served in the Great War) and they commiserated with those who were destined to lose their loved ones.
    Yes, my darling, I know the cause is an ‘essential’ one and you are right when you correct me. ‘Worthwhile’ is too weak a word to apply – it is indeed the essence of good which must overcome the essence of evil but, oh Emily, what a price to pay! Like you, from the safety of my nest, my heart aches for those women, the daughters and sisters and mothers and wives who must go through what we went through all those years ago. And the men who must brave it! It is so cruel. There is certainly some comfort in being forty years of age, midway through the possible loss of our husbands and sons, but that does not help the others, does it?
    It was seven o’clock in the evening and, once again, the air was chill and, once again, I put on Harry’s dressing gown. There was a sick feeling in my stomach. Only a half a dozen or so letters were left …
    My Darling,
    Please do not worry about me. There is no danger in London. The war rages across the Channel and, although the air raids sound regularly, they are false alarms and people do not take them too seriously. Rationing is taking its toll, of course, and many are suffering deprivation, but spirits are high and everyone believes it is only a matter of time .
    In the next several letters Margaret tried to make light of any personal hardship in order not to worry Emily. And then I came to the very last letter. My heart was in my mouth. I was loath to open the envelope. Despite the warmth of Harry’s gown, the night air had chilled my bones. I switched on the little two-bar radiator and walked around to release the cramp in my leg. I stepped out onto the balcony and looked down at the streets of Surry Hills. So many of these terraces were just the same as they would have been in Emily’s day.
    I breathed the air and prepared myself, the night was not cold at all. Then I went inside and opened the envelope.
    There was something enclosed in the final letter. It fell to the floor at my feet. A photograph, two teenage girls. Happy, healthy, smiling faces. I picked it up and stared and stared – I’d seen that face before. Those eyes, that smile, belonged to her. The old woman I’d met in my dream. The girl on the right of the photograph was Emily Roper-Tonkin.
    I turned it over and read on the back ‘Halstead School for Girls’. And the date, also written in Margaret’s hand, ‘Nineteen Hundred and Twelve’.
    Dearest Emily,
    Remember this? I’ve long since lost the copy of the school magazine in which it was published. But I found this photograph as I was doing one of my rare spring cleans. How proud we were, heading the debating teams with such vigour. And, of course, in summation, you annihilated me. Such innocence seems a lifetime ago. Little did we know then that the Great War was just around the corner, and now here we are in the midst of this new horror.
    I can no longer lie to you. Of course you read it in your