He crossed the farmyard, walked into the kitchen. The old man sat at the table with the copy of the Evening Post open before him. He was staring at the photograph and the request attached. If anyone knows this person, or knows anything about her, would they please contact PO Box 39, St Helier. He looked up when Joe entered, adjusted his hearing aids. ‘Well?’

‘Someone answering to her name may have been found,’ Joe said. ‘But it’s a long shot.’

The old man nodded, eyes fixed again on the photograph. He needed a shave and a haircut. The collar on his shirt was frayed and the stitching on his elbow patches had come undone. Joe’d fix him up tomorrow, make sure he had a bath, change his clothes. When had he started calling him the old man?

It had been six months after the war, and not long after his daidí’s funeral in Cloghane and the incident with Pat, when Joe had drifted back to Jersey and into the farmyard at Anse la Coupe. He couldn’t think where else to go. Geoffrey had limped out of the barn on that day, a shell of a man with his clothes too loose. His hair had turned white, although his eyebrows were still black. Joe thought he’d died in the war. Seeing him there in the farmyard caught Joe on the hop and he’d stood, mouth open, staring.

It had taken Geoffrey a while to recognise Joe, too. They eyed each other before they shook hands, palms locked while they searched for clues in each other’s faces.

‘Father O’Cleary,’ Geoffrey said, and smiled, open and friendly. If Geoffrey knew anything about that day in 1943, he didn’t show it.

‘Not Father,’ Joe said, ‘an ordinary mister, now.’ Joe tried to sound casual, as if nothing had happened. That’s what they all did these days. Forget the war. Look to the future.

Geoffrey had scythed the grass round the house, cut the roses back to their roots. Joe couldn’t say he’d tried to keep the place in order while Geoffrey was away, though it was hard without fuel or light, and he couldn’t leave traces in case some busybody told the Germans he was living there. He’d had to leave the plants unpruned, the grass uncut, the yard in rack and ruin. But Pierre had been right. The Germans wouldn’t suspect so long as Joe kept his head down.

‘Oh?’

Joe nodded.

‘How come?’

What could he say to Geoffrey? He’d violated his vows? He’d witnessed too much to believe in a munificent God?

‘The church now,’ Joe said. ‘A pack of lies.’

Joe was a pack of lies too. He should be a man, own up, but he couldn’t bring himself to say it was his fault.