All of the drawers had been pulled out of the dressing table, as if someone had been searching. Francis was photographing the scent bottles and hairbrushes that had been left by the mirror, things of quiet femininity, and the room’s angry reflection. Harry stood in the doorway and watched his brother trying to find the right angle.

“You’re in my shot,” he said.

He took a step back onto the landing and lit a cigarette. Had the soldiers laughed as they tore this house apart? he wondered. Or had they felt anger and hatred for these people and their possessions? Had they looked the downstairs portraits in the eye? He heard the click of the camera shutter.

“Done?”

Francis was sitting at the dressing table. There was a vase of violets doubled in the mirror, the freshness in the petals indicating that they hadn’t been picked many hours earlier. Harry had seen violets growing under the hedge and was struck with how fast time moves; was it really only hours since the man with the earnest mouth had picked these stems and presented them to the woman with the pale eyelashes? The intactness of so fragile a thing seemed surprising among the wreckage. There was something suddenly terribly poignant and important about this small vase of flowers.

“Most of this stuff is rubbish,” said Francis.

Harry refocused. He could see his brother’s fingers in the mirror going through a box of buttons and trinkets. He pulled out a brooch and held it to his own chest.

“It’s only paste,” Francis said, his mirror eyes meeting Harry’s. “Only a cheap thing, but still . . .”

“We shouldn’t be in here.”

“‘I will make you brooches and toys for your delight. Of birdsong at morning and star-shine at night.’”

There was something disturbing about Francis’s singsong voice and his eyes in the mirror. Did he mean to provoke? Did he want to start a fight? Harry watched as Francis slipped the brooch into his pocket.

“You shouldn’t be touching that stuff.”

“Don’t look like that. It’s for Edie,” he said. “I’m going to give it to Edie when I go home on leave.”

“You can’t.”

“It’ll look pretty on her, won’t it?” Francis’s eyes in the mirror challenged Harry.

“You can’t take it.”

“Who has seen? Who will know? It’s only you and me. And you wouldn’t tell on me, would you? Edie will wear it and think about me.”

“You can’t just take things.”