The tiny gray church on the headland seemed to rise out of the very ground it was forged from. Ancient and granite, it crouched there on the hillside, the exact same color as the rabbits that hopped away the moment I approached, their white tails flashing. I went through the little iron gate and around the side to where the hillside slipped dramatically away to the sea. The gravestones, over the years, had leaned right back to accommodate the incline, some almost touching the grass behind them. This one would go that way too, one day, I realized as I crouched down beside it. For the moment, though, it was straight and strong and steady, as he had been. I gently stroked its rounded top with my fingertip. Then I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. No need to read it, imprinted as it was on my DNA, but I did anyway.

WILLIAM HENRY PENHALLOW

1944 – 1995

KILLED IN ACTION

BELOVED HUSBAND OF MAGGIE

AND FATHER OF FLORA

WE MISS HIM DREADFULLY

The funeral director had glanced up at us in surprise as he wrote this down on his pad. "Not — sadly missed?"

"No," said Mum. "We miss him dreadfully. So that's what I want to say. Sadly missed sounds like . . . I don't know. Kind regards. Pat. Trite." She stiffened, as did our man behind the desk, not used to having his expressions of sympathy dismissed so. But Mum and I felt it bound the three of us together forever. Made it quite clear who, exactly, missed him dreadfully. Others might miss him in a more general sense; in the officers’ mess, sitting on the parish council, taking Year Eleven on their annual trip to the rifle range at Bodmin, but not like we did. Not as deeply, painfully, and yes, dreadfully.

After a while, my knees began to stiffen. Hard to know how long I'd been crouched there. I straightened up, with difficulty.

"Iris sends her love," I told him.

I'd told him a lot more, too, silently, when I'd been low and close. About how I thought he might be more pleased with me, these days, for moving on. About how sorry I was that the last time I'd been here, I hadn't come to see him. How I'd been too ashamed. It had been at the height of my madness. I told him about how, maybe, just maybe, I could be here more. Talk to him more. Do a bit of both. A bit of Cornwall, a bit of London. Who knows? I could only tell my father things like this. Nonsense, you might call it, but what was in my head. Let's face it, it was going nowhere.