But it was no better outside. In fact, it was worse. The steam of the trains mixed with the fog and was rising up the steps of the station and oozing over the whole of the city. It swirled and sucked around them, obscuring road signs and buildings and people. Only the eerie yellow headlights of the buses shone through the fog, eye holes in an empty face. Peter led them across the road, towards where he thought they could catch a bus to the city centre, but they couldn’t find the bus stop. Each step felt as though they were heading into a labyrinth, each corner leading only to another and no sign of where they were. As they stumbled on, he could hear his companions’ footsteps, muffled, and their breathing, rasping and hard. Eventually, a bus stop appeared like a lighthouse in a storm.

He turned to grab Jack and said, ‘At last!’ but his hand fell through the fog. There was nothing there.

‘Pete?’ It was Arthur’s voice nearby. For a panicked moment he thought that Jack had disappeared.

‘Hey guys.’ Jack’s face loomed up close and Peter’s heart leapt.

Finally, when a bus came they sailed through the fog-shrouded city to where Jack said he had heard there were ‘pubs and girls’. A sickness rose in Peter’s throat. So that was the purpose of the day. He had hoped, foolishly, that it was just for them to be together, that it was Jack’s way of creating a bond between them. A platonic bond, maybe more. He tried to think that this was just the sort of thing men did. Men talked of girls even if they didn’t truly want them, didn’t they? Hadn’t Jack been his companion for all these months?

‘Yes, let’s,’ he said, as if another man was speaking through his mouth.

In the little streets, Jack took photographs of people appearing through the misty air, but they were soon ensconced in a dingy pub on Lower Goat Lane drinking pints and eating pork scratchings. To Peter, each mouthful of the beer tasted sour. When they emerged, the cobbled street was still shrouded in fog. Arthur would be all right. He’d done National Service and Peter suspected he had done this before. Peter was exempt because of the farm but he sometimes wondered if it might have done him some good – helped him work out what kind of chap he really was. It might even have brought him an opportunity to meet someone like him. He’d sensed the tang of experience in Arthur when he came back to Norfolk, but Arthur hadn’t said anything.

‘Peter,’ Arthur said, at his elbow, ‘I don’t really want to do this.’

Nor me, thought Peter, but Jack had stopped and was looking at both of them.

‘What’s up? You not keen on this plan, Art? You got a better idea?’