McCormick opened the door to the cellar and descended the steps with a hand on the bannister. His feet were trembling too much for him to trust his balance. When he arrived in the cellar, which doubled as the Underdogs’ armoury, he saw Ewan already prepared. Clothes, weapons, everything. The assembly time was ten o’clock that night, another five minutes away. But knowing Ewan, he must have wanted some time away from the others. For a leader, he needed a lot of moments to himself.

McCormick could not see Ewan’s face as it fixated on the Memorial Wall, now twenty-one names long. The dead Underdogs had outnumbered the living for a while.

‘What was that thing you used to say to Thomas?’ Ewan asked without turning around. ‘You kept saying it to him after Beth died.’

‘I said plenty of things to that boy after he lost his mum. Could you—’

‘It was something about how missing her would be painful but not a bad thing…’

McCormick nodded, and made his way to Ewan’s side. Before he spoke, he took a look around the cellar for Ewan’s sake to make sure they were alone. No doubt the lad had established that nobody was in the farm next door or the generator room, but it was best to double-check. Finding nobody, McCormick repeated the words as he joined his lead soldier in staring at the Memorial Wall.

‘The pain of missing someone is always worth it for the joy of having known them. Always.’

‘Yeah… that was it. Where did you hear that?’

‘I have to admit,’ McCormick said with a smile, ‘I made it up myself. It was a lesson I learned after Barbara died. As much as it hurt to lose her, I’d take that pain all over again. If mourning is the natural cost of love, then it’s a cost worth paying.’

When he looked towards Ewan, he saw his disengaged expression. Maybe the lad couldn’t apply positive thought to the deaths of his family. Or Charlie.

‘Why,’ McCormick asked, ‘what are you thinking?’

‘Right now I’ve reached Ben Christie,’ Ewan answered. ‘I need to remember something about him.’

McCormick gazed at the Memorial Wall, and found Ben towards the bottom of the list. Only Rachael Watts, Daniel Amopoulos and Charlie Coleman had died after him.

‘How come?’ he asked.

‘Because a few weeks ago I watched my best friend become nothing more than a chiselled name in a slab of rock,’ Ewan said, pointing a twitching finger at Charlie’s name. ‘And once I saw it, I realised how easy it’d be to forget who these people really were. So now, every time I look at this, I read down the list and try to remember something about each person.’