He had watched them, the man called Frank and the woman who was not Edie. Frank had handed her a bunch of pink roses in blue tissue paper and kissed her on the mouth. For a moment it had been her face and then they had turned, both of them, and stared Harry right in the eye. She had a kind, gentle face, a face full of laughter, but she was not Edie. They had looked back at him again as they walked away. He had stepped onto the train, leaned his head back against the seat, and, as the platform pulled away, wondered what this sensation was.

A crude arch of bound applewood has been made at the entrance to the area of military graves, and Harry must pass underneath it. The branches have been roughly severed and no effort seems to have been made to soften that; as if the primitive raggedness of this arch is meant to be unsettling. The first rows of crosses have rectangles of brick around them, seemingly salvaged from the fallen buildings behind. These are all French burials, mostly from August 1914, he sees. He walks the path between the French dead looking for a Lancashire fusilier. Camomile and cornflowers grow in between the crosses. He hates the fact that the graves have to be numbered; he is also grateful for it. All that he has received from Mrs. Cora Evans are the coordinates of her son’s grave and a request for flowers.

George Evans is to the right-hand side. His is one of just three English graves—and the only named one of the three. The crosses on either side of George’s are marked UNKNOWN BRITISH SOLDIER. Who do these men belong to? Who has known and who misses them? Who at home is wishing that they could have a photograph of this man’s grave? Are there women nearby searching through buttons and belt buckles for these soldiers?

Harry looks down at the bunch of roses in his hands. Unable to find anywhere that would sell him cut flowers, he had had to beg them from a garden in the village and pay over the odds. Perhaps Mrs. Evans would wish for something grander, but the roses smell of summer borders and their redness glows in the drab of the cemetery. He places them carefully on George’s grave, feeling awkward in knowing so little about the man whose grave he is arranging roses upon. Did George Evans care for roses? Was he a man who would stop and comment on their scent? He wishes that he knew how this Lancashire man came to be in this French cemetery, that he had had the chance to meet Mrs. Evans to find out more about her son.