The entire battalion huddles in the Newmarket station for over an hour, waiting for the train to take them north. Fitz recalls a similar situation months ago that somehow feels like years. Then they'd been preparing to move in the opposite direction, off into the unknown. He had been a bundle of nervous energy, jabbering to anyone who would listen about all the different ways they could be killed before they even arrived in France. This time it's their commander who is on edge. News that the Luftwaffe were targeting railyards to hinder troop movements causes him to do nothing but pace and fret. Fitz can hear him hissing to the other company commanders about the idiocy of having six-hundred infantrymen congested on the platform. Fitz knows it wasn't supposed to be like this. His company had arrived here two hours ago, their captain constantly glancing at his watch and insisting they would be the first company to depart. But as minutes ticked by, no trains came, and more companies had arrived. The carefully arranged staggered arrival turns into a disorganized mass of soldiers. It seems somehow fitting.

The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry. He writes to Jemma, musing about how fitting it is that a Scot should have coined the phrase.

He wants to be excited about being back in Scotland, but mostly he's frustrated. It's not just being further from Jemma. It's that going north somehow feels a bit like retreating and retreating is, so far, all that his battalion has done. There's talk about a force headed to North Africa and a possible naval attack on the Italians, even a joint operation with the Greeks. The RAF does battle every day with the Luftwaffe, but the soldiers of the Highland Light Infantry are heading back home to Scotland.

When he first learns they're headed to Perthshire, he's embarrassed his first thought is that it's the one place in Scotland Jemma said she has visited and not that he'll be 130 km from home. The battalion is spread out around the small village of Comrie and the entire Highland Light Infantry is supposedly stretched from Edinburgh to Aberdeen.

It feels a bit like their time in Bedford, only without the private billets. Each company has their own private canteen run by the ladies of the town though and Fitz eats the best he has since he joined. There's talk about Christmas dinner and intercompany football matches. Aside from an initial brief by the Commander about manning the defenses of something called the Scottish Command Line that they haven't even seen there's not much discussion about what their job or training will involve. They're not going anywhere, that much he knows. Their attempt at a ground campaign on the continent had failed miserably. Their job now is to prevent an invasion.

He writes Jemma as soon as he gets an address just like he promised. He tells her about how good it is to be back in Scotland. His company is the only one in the battalion stationed across the River Earn in the little town of Dalginross and he describes to her how the High Street reminds him a bit of Bedford. He tells her about the steel bridge that links his company with others, hoping it will be a fond reminder of the many bridges they'd walked across that perfect day in Cambridge. It seems an age ago. He tries to describe it all, the iron railings that serve as parapets and the four stylish ramps that rise above the sandstone piers. He crosses the bridge daily and can't help but think about her each time he does.

He receives her letters at a regular rate, at least three each week, and writes to her with the same frequency. The threat of an invasion seems to have subsided with winter storms making conditions on the Channel too rough for a crossing. Still the air raids don't subside. In fact, they begin to hit Scotland on a more frequent basis. They are small towns with no strategic importance and seem to do nothing but instill fear in everyone, which he assumes is the point.

He worries more about his mum than he does himself. Upon his insistence, she writes and tells him the location of every air raid shelter within 2 km of their home. He writes her careful instructions about what to do if she is caught out in the open, how to keep her mouth open and lie down like they've been trained to avoid the blast overpressure that could cause her lungs to burst. His mum's letters give a stark picture of life back home. She tells him about the strict regulations, the curfews, blackouts and rationing.

Jemma's letters, on the other hand, seem remarkably insulated from the war. She still says nothing about the work she does. He wonders if she realizes how obvious her silence is. Instead she talks about how the girls she works with had a music recital and how they had smuggled a barrel of cider into the house where they're billeted. It sounds a bit like university and he tells her so. She, in turn, tells him about her University days in London. So he tells her about his experiences at Edinburgh.

The conversation is harmless and distracting. Each letter feels like that night he met her outside of the Royal Institution. They share favorite lectures and theorems and classmates who had never quite understood them. When he sits down to read her letter he doesn't worry about the bombs that fall on Scotland daily and the threat to his mum. They're 46 miles from the coast and the talk every day in the canteen is about the possibility of Hitler invading from Norway. Still the pace of their training doesn't quicken. Road marches and trips to the rifle range don't command nearly as much intensity as the talk of a boxing competition in the battalion or who will win the division football championship.

It's a week after the fact when he hears about Sheffield.

The first letter, written in the immediate aftermath, assures him her family is okay. The Germans seem to have focused on the steelworks, far from the neighborhood she calls home. The letter that follows the second raid three days later makes him feel as helpless as he had leaving France. Her father's shop, her family's livelihood, has been completely destroyed by incendiary bombs.

He doesn't know how to respond. For the first time in a year and a half in uniform, he is hit with the urge to go AWOL. Her note is short, formal and detached, relaying what details she knows and that's all. For a week she writes him about nothing but the damage done to her home. The two raids hadn't just targeted the steelworks. It hadn't been as bad as Coventry, but it certainly wasn't a strategic raid. 154 schools are hit, 3 hotels full of people, hospitals, churches, even the Brammal Lane football ground. Her letters take on a decidedly different tone. They lose their levity for nearly a month. Gone is the talk about going to the dance hall and ice skating with her coworkers. Even his letter telling her about Christmas with his mum and Hogmany with his squaddies doesn't draw much of a response from her.

Instead she starts talking about the possibility of joining him in service in the Women's Royal Navy Service. Then in the next she wants to quit her job and go back home to help her family. All her wages start pouring back to Sheffield. The shop had major structural damage and her father lost almost all his inventory. Fitz asks lamely if there's anything he can do, knowing there isn't.

Despite the horror, there is a steely resolve and firmness to her letters that he admires. Her letters convey more anger than sadness. There's a will to fight that somehow makes his heart swell with pride. Talk about joining the WRENS doesn't dissipate, but she maintains that the work she is doing is important.

He echoes that wirelesses are important to the war effort, despite his continued certainty that she doesn't work at a factory that produces them. He even goes so far as to recount her with a story from his time in France about the wireless, the first he's ever shared about his time over there.

He paints a vivid picture for her, surprised at how easily the memories he'd tried to forget return. He explains how it came after their first night on the line. They already felt isolated in their hasty defenses, positioned on the far-left flank, with B Company on one side and, supposedly a French unit on the other. Nobody had heard from or seen any evidence of the French unit. For all they knew, the Germans had already gotten them. Enemy sniper fire, though fortunately inaccurate, ensured nobody slept. Morning arrived with few soldiers having slept and everyone on edge. Rumors passed down the line, first about a German attack on the main road and then about a complete withdrawal back to the port of Cherbourg 200 km away. Many of the men were ready for the former, eager to have their first proper battle, while many like Fitz had been more than happy to retreat in the face of the, seemingly unstoppable, German war machine. All they'd heard in their week in country had been about units retreating and towns falling to the Germans. All they'd seen were signs of defeat.

That's when their wireless had stopped working and the inexperienced subaltern had panicked. Paralyzed how to proceed with the withdrawal, or even if they should without official confirmation, he had ordered the entire platoon to remain in their defensive positions until they received word from higher. So while the rest of the Company had retreated from their thinly-held 150km front, A Company 4 Platoon stayed in place, with the Germans drawing ever closer. It was his sergeant who, knowing Fitz's background as an engineer, had ordered Fitz in to try to get the wireless working. He tells Jemma with utmost certainty that getting the communications working had most definitely saved them from capture.

The intent behind his story is to affirm that, if she is indeed working in a wireless factory, she is an essential part of the war effort. However, all Jemma sees in the letter is that he had saved his platoon. She heaps praise on him, asking how he'd kept his nerve, what the problem had been, how he'd diagnosed it, and what exactly he'd done to get it working.

He tells her all about the short-wave wireless set, the bulky pack receiver in its pressed steel case with its hand-cranked generator. She asks about the RF output and frequency range, asking if he's ever opened it up to look at the vibratory unit and accumulator.

The technical inquiries make him smile. He's never met anyone whose brain works so much like his before. Despite having a background in medical sciences, she clearly seems to clearly understand how a wireless works. He wonders if perhaps she does truly work at a factory that makes them.

Talk about short range communications and Wireless Set #18 seems to comfort her, or at the very least distract the from the destruction of her home. He's standing outside the postal office, leaning against the wall and reading one of her letters, unable to stop a grin from forming on his face. She is telling him about a film she'd seen in the cinema, describing in detail the ridiculous plot about three drunken sailors who accidentally climbed aboard a German ship. It's rare she spends money on herself since the raid on Sheffield and, despite how silly she seems to have found the film, he's pleased to read about the indulgence.

"Private Fitz?"

"That's me," he mutters absentmindedly without looking up, reluctant to put down the letter. She's talking now about how the film's portrayal of the philandering sailors had ushered in a conversation later that night about the passions and libidos of men in uniform and his interest piques.

"You need to come with me." The brusque order causes Fitz to finally look up and he snaps to attention and renders a salute upon realizing the men addressing him is the company executive officer. He's had minimal interaction with any of the company officers in the nearly two years he's been in the service and feels his palms immediately start to sweat, despite the lieutenant's command to stand at ease.

He leads Fitz down the High Street to Company Headquarters while Fitz's brain races at what could possibly cause him to be summoned by the officer. He knows this wouldn't be the protocol if something had happened to his mum and wonders if perhaps there has been news of his father. Instead, as soon as they're behind closed doors the man asks him about Jemma, whose letter is still clutched in Fitz's left hand.

"Jemma?" The name is the last he expected to hear from an officer.

"Yes. Jemma Simmons. The woman you write to every day."

"She's a…friend," Fitz stumbles, trying to ignore the incredulous look on the lieutenant's face.

"Yeah? Why are you telling her all about our wireless sets, Private?"

"Our wireless? I just...she - she works at – a er – it's a wireless factory - where she works." He stammers incomprehensibly, still so caught off-guard by the mention of Jemma here of all places.

"And what does she do at this factory?"

"She's a clerk."

"A clerk who you inform how to float charge the accumulator on our receivers..."

Fitz feels his cheeks redden. He should have known better than to put that kind of information in a letter. He'd been so thrilled to talk

"She - erm – she just likes the sciences and – well - knowing how things work, like - like me," he admits, attempting to speak with a bit more composure, but knowing he's failing miserably. He's never had a conversation this long with an officer. And while the lieutenant doesn't seem antagonistic, he certainly doesn't seem pleased with Fitz.

"So I've heard." The young officer purses his lips and stares at Fitz. "You're an Edinburgh man, no?" He doesn't wait for Fitz to reply. It looks like he already has his service record pulled out on the desk, along with what looks like one of his letters to Jemma. "So do you have an arrangement?" he asks then. "You and Miss Simmons?"

"How do you mean?"

"Are you engaged? Do you have some kind of romantic agreement?"

"What? No, I – I told you we're friends."

"She writes you every day, private." The incredulous look reappears on the lieutenant's face. Fitz says nothing in reply, just stares at the clock on the wooden desk, watching the seconds tick by, knowing his silence is likely only incriminating himself further, but unsure why his relationship with Jemma is being called into question by the company executive officer. "Your squad leader said you were quiet." The lieutenant smiles and leans back in his chair then. "Well, as long as you're not trying to insist Rangers are superior to Celtic." Fitz can't tell if the attempt at levity is proof of an investigation into his background or simply an attempt to get to know him in that clunky way officers sometimes do. "Look, I don't have to tell you we're vulnerable right now." He gets serious again. "Bombing raids every night. U-boats spotted off the coast. Most of or equipment left in France. There's a tremendous emphasis right now on identifying any…subversive elements."

"She was upset because there was an air raid on her home and it destroyed her family's shop and she said she felt helpless and wanted to do more and I was trying to - I don't know - help somehow," Fitz blurts out without taking a breath. He knows what the officer's words about subversive elements had been hinting at and he's eager to dispel the notion that he or Jemme are disloyal in any way. "So I thought I'd tell her how important the wireless was to my platoon in France. I told her how we couldn't retreat until it started working again and she was curious what was wrong with it and how I fixed it and we just got to talking about how it worked. And, sir, she's not – I'm not – "

The officer motions with his hand for Fitz to halt his rambling explanation, actually chuckling at how quickly the words now tumble out of him.

"Relax, private, I believe you. This is just a warning." Fitz blows out a breath he didn't know he was holding and promises not to do it again.

"Yes, let's ease back on the letter writing, shall we?"

"I'm not allowed to write her?" He makes no attempt to hide the sudden panic in his voice.

"You can continue to write her." The amusement in the officer's face is evident.

"But…" Fitz knows there is some kind of caveat.

"Maybe ask about the weather instead of divulging information about sensitive equipment." He hands the letter in his hand back to Fitz. Fitz can see entire sections he had written are blacked out.

"Right." He quickly folds it up and shoves it in his pocket.

"And Private?"

"Yes, sir."

"Be careful."

"She's not a Fifth Columnist," Fitz can't keep himself from laughing at the mere thought that Jemma is secretly sympathizing with the Germans.

"I didn't mean about that." The knowing look in the young officer's eyes somehow makes Fitz feel the most uncomfortable he has this entire conversation. He dismisses Fitz before he can stammer out a protest of any kind.

Fitz waits until he's far from the Company Headquarters before he finishes Jemma's letter. She'd been talking about that silly film with the sailors and the conversation about the desires of men in uniform. He turns the pages only to read about how she'd proudly declared to her friends that she'd spent six hours in the company of a soldier headed for the front who had been, and continues to be a perfect gentleman interested in nothing more than friendship. She means it as a compliment, he knows, but the words have as deflating an effect as the ones she signs each letters with. Perhaps the lieutenant is right to be wary.

He writes more perfunctory notes. Part of it is the knowledge that his private letters are being combed over by the censors, but part of it he supposes is a bit of self-preservation. He still writes her on a regular basis, but they're remarkably impersonal. She seems to notice it and asks repeatedly if everything is okay. He simply relays that he is busy and tired, but all is well. Despite his shortened notes, she continues to unload everything on him.

Somehow, without divulging anything that she actually does, her letters are mostly about her work. He can't help but think, despite how little he knows, that her days seem strangely similar to his. There's the obvious boredom laced with fear, but it's also what she says about the people she works with. She tells him she's surrounded by debutantes who, while certainly refined, don't provide much in the way of stimulating conversation, a sentiment he understands all too well. He can talk football with his squaddies just fine, but even the other university graduates lack the intellectual curiosity and sophistication that Jemma possesses.

He is the only person, she tells him, who she truly confides in. He finds it funny. They've spent barely sixteen hours together over the course of three days, and yet the people who are strangers are the ones they live, work and sleep alongside.

I want to see you. His ink pen hovers over the page, but he can't make himself write the words.

Sometimes he is astonished that a soldier can lack so much courage.

Instead he tells her how he thinks training exercises will likely ramp up in the spring when the threat of invasion rears its head again. The days of sports and games will be replaced with division-wide exercises and a more intense training regimen will begin. His privilege leave will probably not be approved in a few months and he ought to use it now. Whenever she does, he knows she goes back to Sheffield to see her mum and dad. Out of necessity, her father has taken a job in the steelworks, which seems to break her heart. She worries about him working in such a physically demanding position at his age. Fitz doesn't know how to propose she spend her valuable time and money to come and visit him.

So they write about the war in the Western Desert and muse about whether Fitz will depart for the Balkans or the shores of Africa. Then in March Glasgow is bombed. Despite the fact that they are ordered to stand down, the whole battalion nearly deserts. Fitz is one of the few who listens and remains in Comrie. He spends three horrific days waiting to hear news from his mum. He writes to Jemma only to keep his mind occupied, but he's unable to keep up his defenses. He tells her everything she probably never wanted to know about his mum, how she's his entire family, how she'd essentially raised him alone, and every job she'd ever worked. He even writes about the turbulent relationship with his dad, who is neither a husband nor a father, while he waits to hear news they can finally go to Glasgow.

The destruction is shocking. The naval, shipbuilding and munitions plants may have been the targets, but the collapsed shells of buildings he sees all look like tenements. Dunbarton Road has been reduced to rubble. It looks worse than towns he'd seen in France. The roads are still blocked with debris, made perilous by falling masonry and likely unexploded ordnance.

His mum is, of course, as fearless as ever, assuring him she'd been fine. They'd targeted Clydebank and the docks mostly she says, but he can see a giant crater in the Great Western Rd and evidence all around that hell has come to Glasgow. He's relieved to see she's not lying about their home. It remains untouched. She's taped the windows from corner to corner to prevent shards of glass from flying in and, while Fitz is impressed, he insists they can do better.

He applies a combination of cheese-cloth and washing-soda he assures will work better than sellotape. She asks after Jemma while she boils water on the cooker for the treatments before she asks about anything else up in Comrie with his unit

"She's fine," he admits. His mum had kept her queries about Jemma to a minimum at Christmas, mostly because the twelve-hour visit had been so brief. She'd inquired after the woman who had begun making appearances in her son's letters though and was as incredulous then as she is now that they're merely friend.

"You still courting her?"

"I'm not courting her, mum," he grumbles much like he had in December.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, I'm sure."

"Is she sure?" she continues to badger.

"Mum!" he complains like a child. She just laughs at his adamant refusal, but Fitz bristles at the sound. It reminds him too much of the young lieutenant's series of questions and words of warning.

"You know Buckinghamshire is an easy train ride from here. You could be there by morning," she maintains, ignoring his grumbling yet again. She'd always been this way. Doggedly persistent and always trying to make his life better, even if it was at her own expense. He supposes that's where he gets it from, this stubborn refusal to stop whatever this is with Jemma. His squaddies know he spends his time writing to a woman. They know only a quarter of the letters he gets at mail call come from his mum. They all either accuse him of lying about the nature of his relationship with Jemma or call him a stupid sod for wasting his time. But he feels at this point like he couldn't stop himself from writing her if he tried. She makes his life better. It's evident even to his mum.

He speaks freely then, in a rare moment of candor, telling his mum how he'd gotten in trouble for writing Jemma about the wireless. She scolds him for doing something so foolish, especially when he recounts the details of his subsequent conversation with the company executive officer. Fitz tells her what he's long suspected then. That she's not a spy or a Fifth Columnist, but he's sure she does something beyond work in a wireless factory. His mum inquires what makes him think something like that.

"Because she's brilliant, mum. She's absolutely brilliant and there's no way she's just a clerk."

"There's lots of people doing jobs a bit beneath them to serve the war," she says pointedly and he knows she's talking about him. He still remembers how desperately she'd pleaded with him not to join, how even his argument that it was only the Territorials hadn't helped. He'd hated disappointing his mum, but thinks deep down she'd known that joining the Highlanders was something he'd had to do, as much for himself as anything. His father's disapproval had somehow only made it easier.

He leaves for a few hours while she gathers up her ration cards to prepare supper, walking around his city, studying all the damage his mum hadn't told him about. He visits his old primary school now being used as an ARP station and auxiliary fire service and goes to the West End to see the university where he used to work, whose windows have been blown out.

Back in Comrie, his brief time in France had begun to feel like a distant memory. Despite the news about nightly raids elsewhere in Scotland, they hadn't seen so much as a reconnaissance plane. He can't tell if it's a good thing that he had been starting to forget the terrifying scream and siren of the Stuka bombers. Being in Glasgow and seeing the huge craters and destruction is a stark reminder how quickly terror can reign down from above.

Having surveyed the damage of the city, and seeing firsthand that Germans had targeted much more than the shipyards, he refuses to return to Perthshire until he's sure his mum is adequately prepared for the next raid. He spends the next day building a shelter in the small garden for her and the neighbors with corrugated steel panels. Despite her protestations that she will be fine using the communal shelter down the street, Fitz stays until he is satisfied with his finished product, going so far as to include a drainage sump to prevent the buildup of rainwater. His skill designing the shelter doesn't surprise her, but she is impressed at how quickly he digs th rectangle. When he quips that digging is, so far, the one thing at which the army has made him proficient, she just wipes a smudge of dirt off his face and tells him how proud she is of him.

She does the same the next morning on the train platform, hugging him tightly and muttering that she doesn't know what she'd do without him. He echoes the same. Neither speak of his father.

It's difficult saying goodbye, having seen firsthand the damage the Luftwaffe has caused. If his mum is frightened she certainly doesn't show it. Still he assures her he'll come visit again soon. She just orders him to save his leave days to go and see Jemma.