Lizzie closed the lid on another box and put it to one end of the sorting table.

“Halfway there,” she said.

“Amico.” I pointed to myself. “Amico.” I pointed to Angus.

“What makes you think I’m his friend?” said Angus.

“I’ve seen you talking to him, using the Esperanto words. That’s friendship, I think.”

I bundled the last slips and gave them to Lizzie to tie. The pigeon-holes were completely empty. It felt as though my life to that moment was gone.

“This must be what it feels like to be excised from a proof,” I said.

“And that means?” said Lizzie.

“Removed, cut out, erased.”

“This is an important one, Angus,” I said, holding my list of Esperanto words, “but I have no idea how to define it for him.”

“What is it?”

“Sekura.”

“What does it mean?”

“Safe.”

We sat in silence for a while, Angus holding his chin in mock thought, me staring at the word and coming up blank, Bertie between us both, unresponsive.

“Hug him, missus,” said Angus.

“Hug him?”

“Yeah. I reckon the only time any of us feel really safe is when our mum’s hugging us.”

The sorting table was covered in shoeboxes, each labelled and full of slips.

“Mrs. Murray is organising for the pigeon-holes to be taken to the Old Ashmolean soon,” I said to Lizzie.

“We’ll give them a good clean then and our job will be done.”

“Sekura,” I said as I hugged Bertie.

I’d been hugging him when I arrived and when I left, and once or twice in between. But he remained rigid. This time, I felt his body yield.

“Bertie?” I said, when I finally pulled back and could look into his eyes. But there was nothing. I hugged him again. “Sekura.”

Again, he yielded, his head coming down towards my chest.

September 1915