Edie feels embarrassed and confused now, feels a strange urge to run. Does she have any right to cross-examine this man? Is it fair to oblige this stranger to pick over memories that evidently trouble him? Looking at the woman’s frowning face, sensing her obvious suspicions and doubt, Edie feels like coming here has been a mistake.

“I’m sorry. He’s not here any longer.”

“He’s not?” It’s almost a relief then. Can she now just turn her back and walk away? “Please excuse me. Do forgive me. I must have been given the wrong address.”

“You’re not wrong,” the woman says. She looks at Edie, but then looks away. “You were given the right address. My name is Louisa Davies. I’m Michael Rose’s sister. But I’m afraid that my brother is dead.”

“IT WAS FIVE months ago,” Louisa Davies explains. “I had a phone call from the gendarmerie. It’s very difficult to be told in a foreign language that your brother has killed himself. As you stumble through the translation, there’s no softening it off with euphemism. He hanged himself.”

“How awful for you.”

Louisa Davies shakes her head. “Awful for poor Michael, but I can’t honestly say it was a shock. My brother wasn’t a well man, you see. When I look back, I can see that it was coming for a long time. Sometimes you wonder how you can have missed the signs, don’t you?”

Edie insists on helping Louisa with the tea things, and as she looks around this stranger’s kitchen, at the coffee spoons enameled with the coat of arms of Arras and the sugar bowl painted with an image of Ypres, she is aware of just how much connects them. But how many other links will never now be clear enough? There have been so many missed signs and missed opportunities. She had wanted to look Captain Rose in the eye, and to hear the story from his mouth, and then to know if Harry had lied and whether there is really a chance that Francis might yet be alive. She is now not sure that she will ever know.

“We thought we’d lost him once before, long ago. My brother was badly wounded at Cambrai,” Louisa says as they walk back through with the tea tray.

“At Cambrai? Yes, I think I’d heard that.”