I’m back home – my actual home, that is, down in Devon. I’ve been here for a couple of weeks, but I’ve only just got the use of my arms back, otherwise I would have written sooner. Before I came here I was in a hospital outside London. I was wounded – as you’ve probably guessed by now – just before Christmas, but I’m OK. Actually I’m going out of my mind with boredom, though my family – Mum, sister and grandfather – are doing their best to cheer me along.

It looks as if I’m out of the fighting for good, which I expect you’ll be glad to hear. I won’t tell you how it happened, because it would only bore you. My left arm is a bit of a mess, and my right arm was broken but seems to be fine otherwise. I have some shrapnel in my left leg and a bit more in my head, but not enough to excite any doctors. All the best people are full of shrapnel these days. As soon as I showed that I could count to ten and wiggle my fingers, the doctors lost interest. That must be good, mustn’t it? I admit I was worried until the cast came off my right arm, but although it’s a bit stiff it works a treat. I can hold a brush and a pen, which is the main thing. I still get frightful headaches but apparently they will go away with time and meanwhile, I have some extremely strong pills to help things along. I rather think Pavlo would approve.

I had some bad news while I was in hospital. My father died around the time I was being shipped back to England. Apparently he had a heart attack and died in his sleep. In the end I heard about it from, of all people, Mrs Leeds, who managed to get to me before Mum. She was dressed in black and looked even more terrifying than usual, though she was genuinely upset – at least I think she was. She sat on the edge of my bed and smoked my cigarettes and seemed almost motherly, stroking the cast on my arm. She started to cry, and I did too, though afterwards I wondered if it was all the drugs they’d given me which had done that. But I loved my dad, in a peculiar and complicated way, and I find myself grieving for him, for a man I never really knew because he’d made himself deliberately unknowable. He was only forty-nine. So very young. It turns out that he’d been gassed in the last war and it had damaged his heart. I never knew: he’d never told anyone.