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away from any fighting. And Anne and Ethel are taking their maids, so they’ll look after us. It’s only a short sail and a train ride away.’
    Uncle Thomas was shaking his head.
    She said desperately, ‘Uncle Thomas, they need help over there.’
    He held up his hand. ‘I know they do. I…I had a letter from Michael yesterday.’
    He picked up a piece of paper from his desk. Midge recognised Cousin Michael’s writing, the round letters of the schoolboy he had been till six months ago. She’d only met him once, but he still wrote to her, just like she was one of his sisters. Uncle Thomas looked down at the letter in silence for a moment, then he said abruptly, ‘Very well.’
    ‘You mean I can go?’
    ‘You may go. I will see if one of the housemaids will go with you. Gladys, perhaps. She’s steady. If the other girls have maids then you must too.’
    ‘And an allowance—’ began Midge.
    He shook his head. ‘I won’t let you touch your capital. I owe it to your father to keep that intact till you’re twenty-one or married. But the interest—you’ll find that quite enough for your needs, I think. You’re a wealthy young lady, you know. Or will be. Perhaps if I called on Mr Carryman…Yes, I think that’s what I need to do.’ He hesitated again. ‘Will you be giving them fruit cake?’
    Midge stared. ‘I don’t know. Cocoa and bread and canned meat, we thought.’
    ‘Perhaps that is best.’ Her uncle looked vaguely down at his son’s letter, as though surprised to find it still in his hand.
    ‘Uncle, may I read Michael’s letter? Please?’
    He hesitated again, then said, ‘Of course, my dear. Excuse me, will you? I must go and break this to your aunt.’ He smiled faintly. ‘You will probably hear her protests from down here.’
    ‘But you’ll convince her, Uncle?’
    ‘Yes,’ said Uncle Thomas. ‘I think I can convince her.’
    The heavy door closed behind him. Midge picked up the letter.
    27 July 1915
    Dear Pater,
    I am writing this on the edge of a bunk in the dugout I’m sharing with an officer of the [removed by censor]. Our trench is only 70 yards away from the Germans. Two bullets have just skimmed along the roof but as it’s well protected bysandbags there is no danger. Outside our guns are shelling a farmhouse behind the German lines. You hear the boom as the shell leaves the gun, then a scream as it passes overhead, then the crash as it bursts. Of course you cannot look over the edge of the trench or a sniper would pot you, but the men have rigged up periscopes. But the worst danger is being hit with fragments blown back from our own shells.
    Sorry, this letter is being written in pieces. Every three hours I need to go around the men and make sure they are in their right places, even at night. It takes me an hour or more if one of the boys has caught it, so I don’t get much sleep. We can’t take our clothes off here, so I just scrape as much mud off my boots as I can with my bayonet, tie a bag over them and get into my sleeping bag boots and all. Don’t tell the Mater but washing is not something we give much mind to here!
    You get used to the tiredness though, just like you get used to the noise and the…
    Later
    One of the boys started screaming just as I was finishing your letter. Some silly ass put his hand up over the trench and the Jerries blew it off. That wasn’t what the screaming was though. After they took him away, some other blighter found his hand buried in the mud, still moving.
    Just at the end of our trench are thirty graves, all men of the last regiment who served here, and three German graves with no names, just a piece of board with RIP on it in German. But thankfully only four of us have caught it so far.
    The wind has changed. We can hear the Germans now. Their voices sound very young, like the boys at school.
    Give my love to Mater and the girls and tell them not to worry about me and that I am very well off for socks! I could do with some chocolate