He grunted. “I’d prefer a strong, sweet tea, but coffee will do.”

She smiled to herself, surprised at how different her mood was all of a sudden at having a light conversation with someone who wasn’t her sister. “I’ve heard English people drink tea by the gallon.”

“You wouldn’t be wrong.”

She had no sugar to offer him, and the coffee was a strange yellow color and didn’t taste like it had pre-war, but she passed him the steaming mug anyway and was pleased when he followed her to the kitchen table. Jack was snoring lightly from the floor nearby, the last dying flames of the fire dancing light across his body, and she found comfort in the regular inhale and exhale of his breath.

Elise tucked her fingers around the mug, warming them even though she wasn’t cold.

“Do you keep thinking about it? What happened that day?” she asked, feeling tentative even though she’d just come out and asked him what she’d been wondering herself.

“Every time I close my eyes, I can see them, all around me,” he said. “You know, we did it for the greater good, all of us full of the belief that we could actually hold the bastards off, give other men a real chance at evacuating.”

She took a sip of her drink, wincing when it burnt the inside of her mouth. Harry had his hands wrapped around his mug too, only his overlapped, making the china appear small and insignificant in his palms.

She knew most of what had happened, from what she’d seen and what he’d already told her, but she sensed he wanted to talk, and she found herself wanting to know more.

“What happened in there, Harry?” she eventually asked.

“When we started to run out of ammunition, everything changed. Suddenly those men, brave men who I’d fought beside for so long, started to crumble. Some were crying, others were swearing, and some were deadly silent. It was a nightmare.”

Elise waited, seeing how far away he was, his eyes fixed straight past her, as if he could see something she couldn’t, and she almost turned to look for herself. But of course he was lost in his own memories; nothing was there.

“And then we thought that the worst had happened, when we had to surrender,” he said, clearing his throat and taking a slug of coffee. She should have glanced away, pretended she couldn’t see his tears and hear the catch of his emotion, but she couldn’t, because it was too raw and there was no way she could ignore it. “We thought the worst that could happen was being marched away as prisoners of war. Not one of us could have guessed what they were going to do, that they’d just gun us down, unarmed and with a damn white flag held high.”