I did the atlas and string trick: I’m one thousand, six hundred miles away from you now. Do you know the game called Snakes and Ladders? A game for children, based on the Hindu law of karma (what child-hater dreamt that one up?). You struggle towards your goal, up the ladders, only to take a wrong step and be whooshed back down on the back of a snake to where you started. I don’t know what the hell to do now, Zoë. They won’t let me back into combat, which was my only chance of getting to Greece – not much of a chance, but something. Da tells me not to worry. He was having sword fights with naked mountain tribesmen long before I was born, so I suppose he knows what he’s talking about. But it’s dreadfully, dreadfully hard to sit here, doped up and missing you so very badly, knowing I can’t climb the ladders any more. I won’t lose heart, though. You’re in there, and that is all I have left.

All my love,

Tom

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

London, May 1944

Dearest Zoë,

I’m writing this in a flat I’ve rented in London, near the British Museum. I came up because I was at a bit of a loose end: still in the army, but jobless. I would put on my uniform and go and talk to people in various government offices, each of whom simply passed me on to someone else. I was going a bit mad, probably. I’m still taking pills for my headaches, which are becoming much, much rarer but really lay me low when they come on. My bad arm, though pretty well healed, can’t do all that much. I can hold a packet of cigarettes, or a book, or my paintbox in my left hand, and I’ve taught myself how to get dressed without help. I’m not crippled, thank God, just maimed … I’m joking, Zoë, but there’s a streak of self-pity in me now which I absolutely despise. It’s far worse, and far more disfiguring, than my various wounds. That, of course, was what was sending me slowly round the bend.