He remembers the feel of the ribbon around his neck, the sensation of that moment as she put it over his head. Seconds earlier it had been against her skin and it had held her warmth, he recalls. Could it be the same? He had felt himself blush on the station in Poperinghe, under his brother’s appraising gaze, a hot rush rising up from the red ribbon. As he had walked away from the railway tracks, he had taken it off and buttoned it into his pack.

“It can’t be yours,” he says again.

“How can you be so sure?”

He’s not certain that he is.

She shields her eyes with her hand, cuts out the glare. He follows the direction of her gaze. A fairground has been set up in the square over the course of the day. There are tourist buses in from Ostend and a determined show of gaiety and animation. Children are riding on a merry-go-round. Green horses with flaming red nostrils are gently ebbing and rising to a plucked-metal rendition of an old song about love and roses and Colinette with the sea-blue eyes. Men are taking their chances on the shooting gallery. The crack of the rifles makes Harry jump.

“Steady,” Edie says and smiles at him across the table. She stretches, points her toes, and extends fingertips to receive a sky that is uncomplicatedly blue, as pure and unblemished as a robin’s egg. “Have you got a cigarette? I’ll permit you to appease me with a cigarette.”

“Do you never buy your own packet?”

“No.”

“Did you see his fingernails? He reminded me of a rat. I bet he goes out picking over the ground. I can just see his busy fingers—scrit, scrat—scratching in the ground.”

“You didn’t like him much, did you?”

“All of that stuff belongs to other people. I could almost feel him digging in my own grave.”

“Only you’re not in your grave, are you?”

A Neapolitan tune is jangling out from the merry-go-round. He remembers Caruso’s gramophone voice crackling over the lake. Edie’s fingers tap the beat on her glass.

“Don’t worry, I wouldn’t dream of making you dance,” says Edie.

She turns her glass and the prisms spin. A stall is selling waffles and its smell of burnt fat and sugar makes him feel slightly sick.

“It’s a bit like a carnival in a graveyard, isn’t it?”

“Just be grateful that there isn’t a chorus line and clowns.”

He hears American accents above the jangling music. White grins cluster together in front of a camera lens. He can’t imagine wanting to take Edie’s photograph in this place. A wasp is drowning noisily in the bottom of his glass. He tips it out, rinses the glass with water, and refills it with wine.

“You’re drinking a lot now,” she says.