3rd September 1918

I used to be so nervous about writing things down, being known. As a child I kept a diary and I hid it under my mattress or carried it about with me, living under the constant fear that my mother or siblings would find it and punish or tease me. When I wrote in my diary, I used to adopt this (frankly!) rather annoyingly pious, supercilious voice. Far from my true self, a guarantee against snoopers. I kept my true self buried practically all of the time. Until you uncovered me. I want to be known by you, my love. Let them all read what I send to you. The postmistress, your senior officer, the man you bunk down with every night. I want to sing it from the rooftops. Be safe. Be safe. I’m waiting for you. Come home.

He read all afternoon and into the evening. The tea trolley rattled by; he couldn’t stop to eat. The young, smiley nurse left him a cuppa on the side, but it went undrunk and cold. He learnt many things. He learnt that in the beginning she had listened to the rattle of the letter box, excited; now she just dreaded the knock on the door. No news was good news. She had to believe that. He learnt that they’d been asked to use less sugar in their tea, and to make do with cheap streaky bacon instead of leaner cuts. Stale loaves could be dampened and popped into the oven to make them fresh enough to eat. He learnt that the summer of 1918 didn’t obligingly arrive when everyone hoped. May and June were wet, muddy. That she’d never master more than knit one, purl one. That there was a tree in the south-east corner of the bottom field that was just crying out for a swing to be attached to its bough.

He learnt that she loved him.

He was in hospital, but not dead. No, a long way off it.

Aubrey hadn’t made it.

She loved him. Still.

He couldn’t think it was a decent end, not for any of them. He doubted anything could be decent again, but he could have her. That was enough. That was his everything. Aubrey was dead; he’d tried to save him but couldn’t. He’d almost died himself; wanted to do so but hadn’t.

He would do as she asked. He would go home.

It was at that moment – when the popular young up-through-the-ranks Sergeant Farrell was telling another private to count his lucky stars, when the stout, mature nurse was stooping to fill a basin for a bed bath, when the smiley young one was spooning tea into a slit between bandages, when Howard knew for certain that she loved him – that the Gotha GV plane, the heavy bomber used by the Luftstreitkräfte, dropped its bomb on the military hospital. The ceiling collapsed, falling timber became arrows of fire and walls crumbled to rubble. The letters flew into the air like doves, caught fire and descended as crows.