This is not Francis’s final resting place and, looking at all the yellow grass and crumbled concrete around, Harry is glad that is the case. Ralph has told him that the grave will be moved now; having been identified, Francis will be disinterred and relocated to Tyne Cot. But it could take months, Ralph says. With all the scattered crosses that they have seen from the car, Harry thinks that it may take years. But they have had to fill in paperwork in preparation for the grave being moved. They have had to give all Francis’s details, define their relationship to the deceased, and are invited to choose a personal inscription of up to sixty-six characters to be incised at the base of his new gravestone. It is such a difficult thing to condense it into sixty-six stone-cut letters, to pare all life and loss down to that, but they have talked it over between them, and through those conversations, they have both voiced and shared and agreed what Francis means to them.

They have bought dog violets in Ypres today, the first of the wild spring violets from the market, because she had said she wanted to plant them here for him. The scent of the disturbed petals takes Harry to a looted room, but he shuts that down; he doesn’t mean to let his memory go back there any longer; that is not the version of his brother that he chooses to remember. The scent of violets is also her smell and, because of that, this gesture seems right. He recalls Francis’s face turning and smiling, his eyes closed, as he curled into Edie’s neck. Harry holds her now as she cries, and wants to take her away from here and to make it right, but he knows that she has to have this moment, that he has to let her have this time, to plant violets around his grave, and to say all the words that she needs to say to Francis.

How odd it is to be digging around his brother’s grave. He wants to dig the soil out before she does, because he dreads what the trowel may turn over.

“Do you really want to do it? Are you sure?”

He sees Edie’s hand shake as he gives her the trowel.

SHE TAKES THE trowel from him and she can feel his hand tremble in that contact. She looks at Harry. What must it be like for him to be back in this place? What must it be like to stand at his brother’s grave? She is so sorry to have brought him back here, and yet she is also so grateful to have him at her side.