“I made it as far as Poperinghe,” she says. She’s not sure where to start, so she just says it, although it feels like admitting a weakness. “I meant to come here. I planned to, I even bought my ticket for the train. I stood on the station platform in Poperinghe and watched the train for Ypres leave. It was something like panic. Can you understand that? I couldn’t quite find the courage to come here on my own and then I bolted for home. That’s terribly cowardly, isn’t it?”

“No. I don’t think that of you at all.” He glances at her and glances away. “I am sorry that you’re here,” he says. “I feel like I’ve let you down. I’m sorry that I couldn’t have done this for you. That I can’t give you more answers.”

“I’m no longer certain what the question is. Or exactly what answer I want.”

“You said on the telephone that there’s somewhere you want to see?”

She isn’t quite ready for the question, but she sees that he needs to ask it. “Yes. I’d like you to take me back to that place.”

“That place?”

“Where he last was. Where you last saw him.”

“Because?”

She considers. “Just because.”

“If that’s what you wish,” he replies.

“It is.”

There are areas of recent demolition on either side of the road, she sees. A strange sort of a scrub seems to be growing over much of it now. There are nettles and thistles. Cats slink between the rubble.

“That photograph of Francis . . .” he begins, and as she looks at him she sees that he isn’t entirely sure where to go next. “Have you seen something in it? Is there something there that has made you come here?”

What can she say to him? “I think it might have been taken here.”

“Here? Ypres?”

“I thought it was Arras at first. I thought I recognized the buildings in the background. He’s standing in a ruined square, you see, but no: all arrows now seem to point to Ypres.”

“And you’ve received nothing else since? No other photographs? No letters?”

“No, and that’s the most frustrating part of the whole thing. Why the anonymity? Why be so cryptic? It could be from anyone, couldn’t it?”

“It could.”

“Is that the Cloth Hall?”

The tower is under scaffolding. She has seen photographs of the Cloth Hall in the newspapers, but that doesn’t prepare her for how emphatically broken-down it all is now. How very little of it there is. A lot of what remains of Ypres is being shored up. So much of it is just façades, and it reminds her of a stage set. Some of it looks as if a strong gust of wind might bring it down.

“It was.”