“I don’t want you to have a graveside. I’ve got a list of thirteen names in my pocket. I have to send photographs of their graves back to their families. Only I hate doing that, really. When my envelope arrives it will end their hope, won’t it? It will snuff it out—and what then? I wouldn’t wish a graveside on anyone.” He moves cheese rinds around his plate and considers whether this is absolutely true.

“But this limbo! What use is hope to me? I can’t move backwards and I can’t move forwards.”

“I know. I do understand that.”

“I shall end in bitterness and secreted sweet sherry.” She turns tragic eyes to him and laughs. The amusement in her face glimmers only momentarily.

“I sincerely hope not.”

She stares at him. “Why are you helping me?”

He takes a mouthful of wine and considers. “In part because, if I were David, if I were out there alive and lost, I would want you to find me; in part because you remind me of my sister-in-law; and in part because I’m living in limbo too.”

“You’re a kind man, Mr. Blythe. I do, however, suspect that you are perhaps a ghost.”

“Perhaps I am.”

“I also think that you should forgive yourself and move forward too.”

He smiles at her and shakes his head, not quite sure how to otherwise reply.

“So when you’ve crossed off your thirteen names, will you go home again?”

“I don’t know. If I’m honest, I’m not sure where home is any longer.” He had said the same to Edie eighteen months ago.

“Do you just mean to keep on moving, then?” she had asked. They had stood side by side in silence in the doorway of the house in which he had always lived.

“I’m not sure. There are just too many memories here.”

“Can you force yourself to forget?”

He had replied that he meant to try.

“And do you mean to forget me too?”

He remembers, four years ago, a letter that he had written to Edie and not sent. He had asked her to forget him then. And to forgive him. Eighteen months ago he had asked it again.

“Why was it so complicated?” asks Rachel.

“I felt guilty. Why should I have survived? Why, when others didn’t, did I have the right to come back? How did the odds work out in my favor? My brother William had an apprenticeship to come back to. Francis had a wife.” He looks from his wineglass to Rachel’s face. “It didn’t seem fair that I was the one who came through and I don’t know what I’m meant to do next.”

“Is Francis’s wife the woman who you write to?”

“Edie.” He nodded.

“Am I wrong in supposing that she’s part of the complication?”

“She always has been,” he replies.