I had taken extra care with my dress that morning, choosing the cobalt-blue one with an embroidered yoke, fabric-covered buttons down the front and a tie belt. It looked demure enough for a Sunday, but the blue brought out the colour in my eyes, and I had left my hair in curlers until just before Roy was due to arrive, so it fell in soft curls to my shoulders. I hadn’t gone out on Saturday night, instead staying in, lying in bed with a mask of cold cream and a head full of the hard metal curlers. I’d polished my tan leather kitten heels and chosen a bag to carry as though it actually mattered. It was as if I was meeting someone else’s parents, not my own. I suppose I wanted Mum and Dad to see me as Roy did, as someone special, someone full of possibility. Someone with a life of her own, outside of theirs.

On the drive over to Forest Lodge I told Roy about Fred being sent home, about the injury to his knee, about how I imagined he would be upset, as being a soldier had meant so much to him.

‘It’s different, war, when you’re in it. Different to how you imagine it being.’

‘How?’

‘Well…there’s so much time spent waiting. Just sitting in the mud, not knowing—so many boys think it will be exciting, like it is in the movies. But they only show action. If you were to watch a movie about how war really was, it would be ten days long with ten minutes of fighting. It’s the waiting that gets you. The mindless, deadening wait. And then the fighting, when it comes, is over in the blink of an eye. Like a bad dream.’

He stared out the window then and I watched his jaw work. I wanted to ask what he was thinking about but I also didn’t want to know. I didn’t want to know if he’d killed anyone, or what a gun felt like when it went off in his hands. I didn’t want him to tell me that he’d lost friends…I didn’t want it to mar what we had. But you can’t know a person without knowing the darkness in them too, so I blame myself for holding my tongue. I wasn’t going to ask Roy to delve beneath that surface with me. I wasn’t going to dive into the wrecked ship of his past, swimming through the dark, eerie cabins, light falling through cracks in sea-rotted planks. I wanted us to float sleepily in salt water beneath the sun. Eyes shut, the light making patterns inside our lids. I wanted to think I was all he needed.