‘Hello, Spooky Joe,’ I said.

His eyes twinkled. ‘That’s Grandpa Joe to you, young lady. How are you feeling?’

‘All right, thank you. Less bruised than yesterday.’

‘Your legs?’

I shook my head. ‘Still nothing.’

He nodded, swallowed hard, and looked towards the window, which was pink with geraniums.

‘Joe,’ I said, ‘tell me about the tunnel. You said you dug it. You said you’d explain . . .’

‘I did, didn’t I?’ He took a long breath. ‘Well, I didn’t exactly dig the tunnel, if I’m honest – I re-dug it,’ he admitted. ‘The main shaft was dug out by smugglers hundreds of years ago, but most of the top section had collapsed. My brother Charlie and I dug it out again.’ He paused. ‘When we was about your age, I reckon. Feels like lifetimes ago.’

‘Your brother?’

I thought his eyes became glassy then. He leant forward, pressed my hand between his, and took another deep breath. ‘We went off to the war together, Charlie and me. The Great War, I mean, of course – not this one. Poor Charlie got killed. I haven’t . . . I’ve never talked about it. I can’t bear to think about the things that happened. The things I saw.’

I felt that I could almost see the shadows of memories in his eyes.

‘But I need to tell you this, I think, Pet.’ He waited for a moment, and then he said, ‘It was in the war – in the trenches. My brother went out into no man’s land to help a lad who’d got hit by shrapnel the day before. We could hear him out there, crying with the pain. He was frightened, calling for his mum.’ Joe shook his head, as if to shake the sound from his mind. ‘We’d listened to him all through that night and Charlie couldn’t take it any longer. He got up at dawn and just said, “I’m going to get him. I’m going to bring him back here to the trench, and if I can’t, I’ll just have to put a bullet in the poor boy’s brain.” We couldn’t stop him.’

He paused as if trying to decide if he could continue. He swallowed. ‘The boy was very badly hurt and all caught up in barbed wire too. Charlie tried to untangle him and then . . .’ Joe breathed heavily. Once, twice. ‘Then the machine guns started. Charlie held up his hands to show he was unarmed – he was just collecting a casualty. But they blew him to bits. Charlie and the other injured boy – just blew them to bits on the barbed wire.’

Oh, God. ‘Poor Charlie,’ I breathed.

‘Yes.’

I squeezed Joe’s old hand.

‘I’m sorry, Pet,’ Joe said. ‘It’s horrible to hear, I know.’

I had never heard anyone speak about the last war like this. It had always seemed sealed up, closed over, like a scarred wound.