‘Then war.’

Time passes too quickly. Nicolas and Anya age. Their faces lose the high contrast of youth, their colours fade. Year succeeds year. When war breaks out in 1914, Nicolas loses his best tailors, seamstresses and milliners to the national drive to make military and naval uniforms. Worse is to come: his son Alexander announces he’s signed up to fight. At twenty-seven and unmarried, he still yearns to make his own mark in the world. In spring 1915, he is one of more than 100,000 French soldiers killed in the Second Battle of Artois.

Nicolas receives the telegram at work. Before returning home to tell Anya, he goes to speak with Father David for guidance. Neither man brings up their differences over the Pali gospel.

Father David has lost a great deal of weight over the past ten years. He looks wraithlike and close to death himself. His deep voice sounds like it’s coming out of a vault. ‘It is the primal bereavement,’ says the priest. ‘Numberless parents have suffered it. It was the test of Abraham. It was Our Lady’s loss. It was the sacrifice God undertook Himself.’

‘What use is theology to me?’ says Nicolas, reproaching the priest with his red-rimmed eyes. ‘I want my boy back.’

Father David knows that sometimes the wisest speech is silence.

‘It’s my fault,’ says Nicolas. ‘He was looking for a shortcut to become a man.’

‘Not at all. He made a choice. It’s sad for us, but now your son is free.’

‘No, no.’ Nicolas weeps openly. It’s the thought of the boy in pain. He has seen enough of war to understand the hideous butchery, the things shells do to human bodies. ‘There were so many things ahead of him.’

Nicolas leaves the church contemplating something drastic: he has an urge to harm himself – not just to commemorate the loss, but to give it physical expression, to put it in something less cheap than words.

Outside, a man is sticking propaganda on a Morris column; a roll of posters under one arm, glue pot and brush in the other. The posters call on loyal citizens to support the war effort by buying government bonds.

At a zinc table in front of a cafe across the street, a British soldier, a private, in a peaked khaki cap and hobnailed ammunition boots, tastes a café au lait with obvious distaste and adds sugar.

Nicolas, though now fifty-six and almost half a lifetime away from his years in journalism, still hasn’t lost the professional knack of striking up casual acquaintances. He does it now as a form of displacement, to avoid thinking of his loss and the terrible task awaiting him at home: breaking the news to Anya. He thanks the soldier warmly for his sacrifice and insists on buying him a brandy.