‘Get yourself a girl in the end, Art?’ Jack said, helping himself to tea from the newly ordered pot. Arthur didn’t bother replying. He would let Jack think what he liked. There was no need to tell him he’d gone to the library. It had been a waste of time anyway. He’d been trying to read up old newspapers, to see if he could find any clues, buried beneath a wave of copy, about the use of the Holkham airbase. But it was hopeless. He’d found nothing. A girl had sidled up to him on Lower Goat Lane, a red-haired one, surprisingly pretty. He’d imagined his hand under skirts, emptying himself into her. Like he had in Yorkshire, on service, that one time. He remembered the way she stood to take off her stockings, putting them carefully over a chair. He couldn’t not look. The girl’s hipbones stuck out sharply. He looked down at the dark between her legs and felt bilious and excited, in shock at the reality, the dreamt-of foreignness of it. But he couldn’t leave, couldn’t stop looking at the darkness. The girl had turned a bedside lamp on afterwards and it lit up the lines on her face, the creases round her eyes. He realised she was far older than him, almost as old as his mother. He was sick with himself, with the way he had cried out inside her, with the joy of the release. In the light there was nothing of Verity in her, nothing. He hadn’t done it again. It was Verity he wanted. He made himself turn away from the red-haired girl, hovering on the corner he knew led to the library.

Into his head came an image of Jack, watching Verity, and he had to grip the table for support.

‘You’re a dark horse. I didn’t think you were interested in that sort of thing.’

Arthur drank his tea and feigned disinterest. ‘Why did you think that?’

‘I had an idea you were courting Pete’s little sister,’ indicating the ravaged figure of Peter, who was slurping tea as if it was an elixir of health.

‘You asked me that before,’ said Arthur.

Peter, his mouth half full of tea cake, spat it out. ‘For God’s sake! Don’t be vile.’

Arthur reddened. ‘We’re friends,’ he said, ‘that’s all.’ The lie hurt him, as if in the telling he had made it true.

‘I should hope so,’ said Peter, ‘he’s like our brother,’ and smacked Arthur on the back. Then he groaned, bent forwards and vomited all over the table.

On the train, Peter slept again, or pretended to, his face squashed against the window. As they travelled north, the fog cleared and the flat landscape reappeared. Their carriage smelled of stale sick.

‘What exactly happened to him? What did he do?’ Arthur asked Jack.