There’s always suicide, I suppose. That seems to be a popular course of action, at least in books and films that touch on the subject. Stephen talks about it often enough. He steers clear of me when Wright is around, but in my solitary spells he seeks me out. He still looks ill. He’s badly underweight – he’s lost about two stone since we arrived – his arms and legs are so thin they look as if they could snap. He’s frequently on sick parade, in and out of the wards with one chest infection after another. Nobody visits him, and I suppose he likes it that way.

He cornered me in the library the other day. We call it ‘the library’ but in fact it’s just a small, unused room above the NAAFI with a couple of bookcases containing medical texts and detective stories. There’s a record player and a few dusty old records – a partial recording of Madam Butterfly, a few 78s of sentimental Irish tenors. Downstairs, they listen to Elvis Presley on the jukebox, and read the Dandy and the Beano. You can be pretty sure of being alone in the library. It’s warm, and there’s a good view across the fields to the estuary. I sit up here and sketch, or read, or just smoke and think.

‘Thought I might find you here.’ Stephen stuck his beak-like nose around the door. ‘What’s the matter? Lovers’ tiff?’

‘Hello Stephen. How are you?’

‘Nothing a bullet wouldn’t cure, thanks.’

‘Oh come on. It’s not that bad.’

‘Easy for you to say, dear.’ He came in, draped himself over an armchair, a Beardsley drawing in air-force blue. ‘You’ve got friends.’ He said the word with undue emphasis, which I ignored.

‘If you just knuckle down and get on with it …’

‘Oh yes. Jolly hockey sticks and all that. Play the game. I was never any good at all that, I’m afraid. Terrible at sports. Too sensitive, that’s what they used to say at school. Every year on my report: “Stephen is sensitive.”’

‘I was “artistic”.’

‘Hmm …’ He narrowed his eyes and looked at me, wondering, I suppose, if I had just told him something. I wondered too.

Silence fell for a while, broken only by distant shouts from the playing fields, and the occasional caw of a rook.

‘It would be ever so easy to get out, you know.’

‘Would it?’

‘Yes. Friend of mine turned up on parade one day wearing eye make-up, lipstick and scent. Whisked off to the CO’s office faster than you could say Gina Lollobrigida. They asked him what he thought he was doing and he said, “You ain’t seen nothing yet”, dropped his trousers and he was wearing women’s knickers. He was out before sunset.’

‘Yes – carted off to the loony bin, then a dishonourable discharge. Not a very good start in life, is it?’

‘Bugger that. Who cares? We’d be out of here. That’s all that matters.’

‘And what are you going to do on civvy street, with that on your records? What kind of a job are you going to get?’