“Am I irritating you?” He sounds genuinely taken aback. “Awfully sorry. I can be irritating, I know.”

“Please don’t think twice about it—”

He doesn’t, and neither do I, because at that moment the thunder starts right above us. Unable to look away, I see the ceiling bulge, the gap widen. Here they come: roof tiles, first singly, then in hammering cloudbursts, clanging and crashing down on the bed frame a foot above our heads. I’ve got my hands over my head but Frobisher has spread his arms to grip hold of the desk and the table. I force myself to do likewise. The action makes me nauseated. Our wooden walls shake with each crash.

I can’t imagine the main beam falling on us. How we’d ever survive it.

Then the downpour stops. The only sound now is our paroxysms of coughing. Each spasm pushes a white-hot lance into my side. Frobisher’s great shoulders are heaving, his glasses covered in red dust. This doesn’t stop him from crawling out of the shelter and removing debris from our roof. “Quite a lot of brick,” he manages to gasp as he works, “as well as the roof tiles. I imagine the bricks to come from your inner bedroom walls. Perhaps the one with the fireplace.” He shoves his way back under the bed frame, looking more squashed than ever.

For the first time I think of Yvette. “My wife’s ashes.”

Those of my daughter are safe, of course, with her brother.

“Where are they?”

“On my bedroom mantelpiece, above the grate.”

“I’m sorry. You will have to hope.”

That is simple for Frobisher. He’s full of hope. Not me. I think I will walk off the track and into the snow, make my last landfall. The snow is so warm. Why didn’t anyone tell me how warm snow is? Yvette will cry, but she will marry someone else in the end and have other children. I shut my eyes, cradled in this firm yet yielding softness.

“Acton.” He’s slapping his heavy fingers against my cheek. “Wake up.”

“That hurts, you know.”

“Fall asleep and I’ll do it again.”

“You have a remarkable range of skills,” I tell him, on a painful breath.

“I worked in a mine once.”

He lowers his head, removes his glasses, and cleans them on the front hem of his shirt. That is what we’ve come to. Frobisher’s shirt is untucked. His eyes are pouches, red-rimmed. He appears to be absorbed in his task. I have to ask. If he doesn’t want to tell me, he can always say, It’s not germane.

“Where was the mine, Archdeacon?”

He looks up from his polishing, but just for an instant.

“Sosnitza,” he says after a moment. “Poland.” He replaces his glasses. “I was captured in ’42.”