‘Please,’ she said, again. And that were what sealed it. The way she looked at me and made me feel like I was the only one in the world who could fix the gaps in her. I’ve seen her do it to other people plenty times since but it’s never changed how good it felt when she did it to me.

‘I’ll fetch them,’ I said, and went to the coal bunker in the passage. The papers were in a biscuit tin by the door. I should have opened the back door and given them to the breeze. Should have tossed them on the fire. Instead I returned to the kitchen and handed the tin to Cordelia. They were typed out neatly. No mistakes. He’d done it a few dozen times. There weren’t many pages but from the way he had laid it all out, you could tell he was proud of the job he had done. This was the story he had always been searching for – the one his son would have written if he could have done. When I saw the second name that had been inscribed beneath the title, I felt something reach into me and squeeze my lungs flat.

Cordelia took the words and pulled herself out of the seat. She crossed to where John sat and plonked herself down next to him. Then she patted the empty cushion beside her and I sat down too.

She removed the papers from the tin and took them in her pale hands.

We read, and everything changed.

SECRET HERO

By Fairfax Duke and Christopher Duke

They told me their story because they couldn’t keep it to themselves any longer. And I’m telling you because somebody, some time, deserves to know. It won’t be in my lifetime, I know that. It won’t be in theirs. These words will go somewhere safe. Under the flagstones, beneath God’s gaze. I think of them as a time capsule: something to be opened for future generations at a time when we are all just names and the wars we fought in are memories.