Even in the heart of battle, Geoff Fulton would always carry with him the memory of the night he was on leave, when his timely intervention rescued fourteen-year-old Lizzie Gillespie from the oldest of perils for a young girl. The year was 1937 and the place a rural enclave of County Durham. But, in 1943, when Geoff returned wounded from the desert war, it was to find a Lizzie he hardly recognised - mature and highly attractive.