I stared at the stream that gurgled in the gutter. Watched a clump of leaves spin and twirl on the current. My brain felt like that – as if all I could do was give myself up to the direction of the wind.

‘Did he ever mention a Frenchman?’ I asked, and the words were away into the air before I could suck them back. ‘Ever ask questions that made no sense …?’

Pat changed her face. Hardened it a little. ‘What you asking for?’ she snapped.

‘I’m not,’ I said. ‘Not asking. Just wondering. Some of his papers mentioned a little place in France. Seemed important to him but who’s to say? And Fairfax never interviewed me, y’see. Just wondered why not.’

‘Oh,’ said Pat, and the tension went out of her. ‘Well, you’re as best being in the group of lucky ones. There’ll be no shortage of folk worrying about what Fairfax did with their words.’

‘It was just a local history book,’ I said, shivering as the rain finally found a route from the tip of my spine to the bottom of my left leg.

‘Aye, but there’s some history you probably shouldn’t speak on. Nobody wants other people reading what they did in the war or what they thought about the prisoners working their land or those who stayed and married the locals. They’re personal thoughts. And Fairfax did push, God rest him.’

As she spoke, I felt, rather than heard, the approach of somebody behind me. There was no sun to cast a shadow but I suddenly felt somebody at my back. Then I smelled him too. Dogs and dark places – like a bleeding Alsatian at the back of a cave.

‘Hello Felicity,’ said Pike, as I turned.

He wasn’t smiling. Pike never smiled. He was saving up for new teeth, so he said, and in the meantime he preferred to hide the black stumps that were stuck in his gums like bits of charcoal pushed into rotten fruit. His nose was halfway across his face, like he were trying to sniff his ear, and his eyes were sunk deep in his head beneath the sort of brow that made me think of a shark. He was wearing his camouflage coat and his ginger hair had gone black in the rain.

‘All right Pike,’ said Pat. ‘How’s Mam?’

‘Still alive,’ said Pike, still staring at me. ‘Still bane of me bloody life.’

‘She’s tough as old boots,’ said Pat, and God bless her, she moved to stand beside me. Everybody knew that Pike was not to be left alone with a woman or a kiddie. ‘You’re a good lad to look after her as you do.’