“You’re right.” Edie recalls photographs of the pump house machinery, of cotton grass, and the grooved stones of the old packhorse track. Francis was a man who liked history and technology and to understand the landscape around him. He needed to know the names of plants, the geology of the hills, and the reason why stones were worn thus. He wasn’t a careless or a clumsy man. Not a man to idly or accidentally let go. There was so much more that he wanted to learn and to try.

“I was in the same battalion. I was sorry when I heard about him.”

“Heard about him?” She looks at the man. He is so much older than Francis. Much older even than that photograph. “What did you hear exactly? Would you tell me? Were you there in October 1917?”

“And a bloody awful balls-up it was.” He wrinkles his nose when he looks back at her. “Forgive me, love. Excuse my language.”

“Did you see his body?” She watches the man turn his eyes away and take a step back. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t ask, should I? But there are so many questions in my head. You didn’t see Francis, did you? Did you see him dead? Did you hear that he was definitely dead?”

The ferryman shakes his head and looks like he doesn’t know what to reply. He looks like he doesn’t want to reply. “I saw a lot of things that day that I’d rather forget. I only heard that he was on the casualty list.”

“The casualty list?”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Blythe. That’s all I can tell you. But you know that already, don’t you?”

There are shadows around the man’s eyes. His eyes now don’t want to meet hers. There is a tremble in his hands as he puts a match to his cigarette. She remembers that Harry’s hands do that. He blows smoke away and apologizes.

A lapwing cries as she watches the ferryman walk away, and she considers: How does Francis being on a casualty list equate with him being missing, believed killed? How does that add up? Surely, being a casualty requires a body, be it one injured or dead? A missing man can’t be a casualty, or can he? Could the ferryman be mistaken? Could he have misremembered the events? Confused Francis for someone else?