“I’ve got a whole box of them. He brought some of them home when he came back on leave, and Captain Rose sent on another parcel at the end. I’ve always meant to look through them, to sort them all out, but have never quite had the heart.”

“Why now, then?”

“Because another one turned up a couple of weeks ago. Or, rather, a photograph of Francis. It came in the post.”

“In the post?”

“Just that in an envelope. Just a photograph of him and nothing else. I suppose that somebody must have found it, and thought to send it on to me, but it’s odd not to put a letter in, isn’t it?”

“It is,” he’d replied. “And the postmark?”

“French. It was sent from France. Do you think it strange too? I’m glad that it’s not just me.”

“As you say, someone probably found it.”

“Perhaps.” Edie had shrugged. “What happened to Captain Rose?”

“He died at Cambrai. I saw it in the newspaper.”

She’d nodded. “It was peculiar to see Francis’s face fall out of an envelope. It shocked me. I wasn’t ready for it. I’ll not lie—I had to pour myself a brandy. It was almost like seeing a ghost.”

The eau-de-vie hits the back of Harry’s throat now and he coughs. He has seen so many ghosts today. For three months he has put off this task, he too hasn’t had the heart, but he has begun working his way through the old photographs today, ordering them chronologically, replaying the memories as he tries to put it all back to the way that it was. They are lined up on the café table in front of him now, in rows and sets, like some peculiar game of Patience.

The first image in the top row is taken in Morecambe, in the January of 1915. They make cakewalk poses outside their billet, aligning themselves by size—Francis, himself, and Will—like a set of end-of-pier minstrels. A newspaperman had taken their photograph, in a more sober stance, just minutes earlier. His mother had posted the cutting from the Manchester Courier to them and they had laughed at the caption: “Brothers in Arms.” They are waxed and buffed new soldiers here. Harry recalls the stiffness, the itch, of that uniform. The smell of it. He can almost taste the Brasso and the boot polish. He is struck now by how very young Will looks.