Snowflakes were falling steadily. Above the cathedral blew great billows of them, whipping around the corners of the dark building as if to emphasize the structure’s harsh lines.

From out of the building trooped a handful of very old men in uniform, supported by their relatives and children. The Norfolks who’d fought in the Great War had a yearly reunion in the city, though their numbers grew smaller every time. This might well be the last one.

By the door of the cathedral, at some distance from the marching men, another old man sat in a wheelchair, surrounded by his family.

‘I don’t know why you come here every year, Grandad,’ said Richard Dean, leaning on the wheelchair’s handles. ‘What’s there to see?’

‘Old friends…’ the pensioner whispered. ‘Not from the war. From before.’

‘So why do you never talk to them?’ Richard’s wife Jane tucked in the blanket that had come loose about his legs once more. She ignored a glare from her husband. ‘It might help if you didn’t insist on wearing that.’ She tapped the white poppy that Timothy wore on his coat. ‘It’s not as if it’s even Remembrance Day.’

‘I wear it because it stands for what I am. I can’t ignore that for their friendship. Besides, I always hoped that I’d meet…’ His gaze wandered from his words again, lost in time.

‘Great-grandad! Don’t go to sleep now!’ A girl of eleven stood beside the wheelchair. ‘Listen to this. I read that they once found a cow in an army cell. A cow! Where they’d had a prisoner! And when they took it off to be slaughtered with the other cows, it kicked and kicked and they had to force it to go in. Isn’t that amazing?’

‘What have you been reading now?’ her father sighed. The girl had become a vegetarian last summer, just in time for Christmas, and seemed to see old Timothy as some kind of role model.

‘You let her read what she likes.’ The old man came to life again, and put his hand on the girl’s arm. ‘She’s going to be a great scientist. Or an astronaut, or… or all sorts of things.’

‘I’m going to be just like you,’ the girl told him.

‘Then you’ll never kill anybody, even when everyone else is?’

‘Never.’ The girl was looking up at him, hushed, as if she was receiving a benediction.

‘And you will never be cruel or cowardly?’

‘Never.’