Harry turned his back. He couldn’t blink away the face he’d seen last night. Was he still out there in the cold and the mist?

“Are you feeling any better?” Francis persisted. He was cutting kindling on the firing step. “Will said you threw up. You looked like shit when you got back last night.”

“I feel like shit. I haven’t slept.”

“You’ll get over it.”

“How would you know?”

“Because you always get over it and I’m here to look out for you.” Francis took the cigarette from his lips. “Do you remember when you went under at the reservoir?”

The shock of the icy black water came back to Harry and made him gasp. Even here. Even now. Even after last night. He rewound nine years and was a boy again, following Francis out onto the ice. The reservoir was epic when it was frozen and it drew them; there might well have been woolly mammoths in its black unfathomable depths. To step out onto the water, to take that dare, to test their courage and their weight, was just too tempting. And they had pushed each other. They had catcalled after him, Will and Francis, daring him to follow, and so his feet had trailed theirs. He remembered their three sets of footprints on the frozen reservoir, the creak of the ice beneath his boots, the shift of the bubbles below the surface, and then the sudden certainty that it would go.

“You looked like a waxwork when we got you out,” said Francis. He blew smoke at the memory. “Even worse than you look this morning. Your lips were blue.”

“I remember going under. I remember the shock of it and panicking, but have absolutely no memory of getting out.” He had woken up in their mother’s bed, aching and trembling all over. “How did you get me home?”

“We dragged you. Will and I lugged you like a sack of spuds. An almighty sack of spuds. You weighed a bloody ton. We did think you were a goner.”

Harry struggled to make a struck match connect with his cigarette. His hands were shaking again. He dropped the match and swore.

Francis retrieved it for him. “It’s all right, we’re all in this together,” he said. “We’re all scared. Don’t think it’s just you. But you’ll be okay. I will always be there to pull you out of your grave.”

Chapter Eleven: Edie

Chapter Eleven

Edie

Arras, August 1921