She presses her lips together, ruefully smiling because she had figured that might draw questions, but she's hardly going to hide her past in the shadows the way she might have before. "Yes, his name was Fred," she agrees, "and we were engaged in '39, when the war effort had only just begun," she says. "I was working at Bletchley and he was a training officer. I had buried all those things about me that I hold so important now and my brother sought to get me into the field."

"I turned it down, at first, for Fred," she admits. "I didn't love him the way I should have. Sometimes, I wonder if I had ever loved him at all," she goes on. "When Michael was killed, I knew I couldn't sit around and be the perfect housewife. Not even a mediocre one," Peggy remarks.

"I broke off the engagement with a letter and joined with the SSR. That led me, well, to here, I suppose," she notes, glancing around them and down to the peaches.