If there is a chance that she might see him again, that it might be true, which version of himself is he now? Could that strong young man with the carefree grin and the whispered poems ever really come back? But she has seen the cemeteries and the smashed villages now, what the war has done to this country, and finally realizes that Francis was like that because of all of this. And how can that ever be reversed? How could they ever go back to what they were?

When she had first opened that envelope and seen the photograph, she had dropped it. The image sent a shock through her fingers and she had slid to the floor. She has had four years of getting used to his death, was quite certain that was what it was. It was silent. It was settled. She hadn’t doubted it. What did it mean now, though? He had pushed his way back in through the mail slot. What did he want to happen next?

A guard steps out onto the platform and touches his cap to her. The church bells have stopped ringing.

Six weeks prior to the day that Francis had boarded his leave train at this station, she had danced on the lawn of the hospital with Harry. She remembers Harry’s breath on her cheek, the creases at the corners of his mouth when he smiled, the shadows of his eyelashes, the nape of his neck, and how she hadn’t wanted him to have to come back here. She had felt so fiercely protective of Harry at that instant. So close to him. She had watched him walk back up the drive and wished that she didn’t have to walk away. Would she be feeling different now if she had Harry’s hand to hold?

She hears the tracks begin to vibrate with the approach of the eastbound train. The lines hum and rattle and she feels it through the soles of her feet and in her chest. The Ypres train comes into sight and she sees Francis’s face there waiting at the other end.

It is her duty to stand in that square, to hold the photograph to the skyline, and to know that she has matched it up. It would be the right thing to do, the proper thing to do, and surely what Francis meant when he put that photograph in an envelope. But how can the right thing feel so wrong?

She puts herself back in a room where he is curled in a tangle of damp bedsheets. The animal sound of his breath and the smell of his sweat fill the room. She can taste it. She is standing on the platform of Poperinghe station, but she can hear the awful liquid rattle of Francis’s breathing and feel the hot dampness of those sheets on her own clothes. The guard blows his whistle and panic surges through her body.