Inside he found Maggie, bent over a piece of paper in the hallway. He wanted to tell her what he’d done. He wanted shock to bloom on her face, shock that would swim into joy. He wanted her to loose praise in his direction. But as he moved into the house he noticed how fiercely she studied the paper in her hands.

‘What’s that?’

Maggie looked up. When she saw that it was him her eyes returned to the paper. ‘Letter.’

‘Who from?’

‘None of your business.’ Her voice was quick. She folded the letter. ‘A friend. He’s in the north. As far north as you can get. He’s stationed on a ship, keeping the passage to Russia clear. It’s so cold that every night ice freezes to the sides of the boat. Huge sheets of it. You don’t really think of ice as heavy, do you, but all this ice slows the ship down. And it’s a hazard, and makes the structure top-heavy, apparently. So each morning, as soon as he wakes up, he’s hoisted up the side of this great metal ship with a sledgehammer to bash apart these enormous sheets of ice. It’s so cold he can’t feel his face, but up he goes, walloping away, and down comes the ice, sharp as glass, smashing to pieces on the deck. He says that afterwards he can’t tell if his fingers are numb from the cold or from the hammer reverberating in his hands. Every morning. They dock in Murmansk. Imagine that. Murmansk.’

She was looking towards him again, but Ned felt that her eyes were trained not on his face but somewhere else. He didn’t know what to say. He thought he should ask for this friend’s name, how they met, but at the same time those questions felt intrusive and inappropriate. He turned the word Murmansk over in his mind.

Maggie pointed to the small table near the doorway. ‘You’ve got one too.’

‘What?’

‘A letter.’

He looked at the table. On it, amid keys and knives and dust, he saw an envelope. He picked it up, and saw in its design the indicators of military correspondence. The air in the hall became uncomfortable. He ripped the envelope open. Forgot about his sister, about the mare, the morning. Unfolded the letter within, took it out into the near-noon light.

Ned,

You can stop drenching the orchard with your tears. I am alive and well. We are still yet to deploy. I haven’t even fired my rifle, other than at birds. I’m the best shot in the Pacific, although there are no girls around to see it, so it’s a waste of bullets.