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a farm a little way out of town. I don’t really remember much else about him.
    Ma went along. She did everything expected of her. For the homecoming shindig she baked a batch of scones and took out one of the jars of apple and blackberry jam she’d been saving. It was Dad’s favourite, so I didn’t see it as an especially good sign when she tools it out of the pantry and slipped it into the basket beside the scones, which were still warm from the oven. ‘All right, Billy, round up Hattie and Meg,’ she said, glancing up at the mantel clock. ‘The parade starts in less than an hour, and you’ll want to find a good spot.’
    â€˜Don’t you want a good spot too, Ma?’
    â€˜Of course I do,’ she replied. ‘Really, Billy!’
    I found the twins playing in the back garden. They had mud all over their best dresses. I knew there’d be an explosion if Ma saw them in that state, so I grabbed a rag from the laundry and started trying to scrub the mud off. Of course that didn’t work, and the twins just giggled at me as I got more and more worked up about the smear of mud I was rubbing deeper into the fabric of their pinafores.
    Ma came through the back door shouting, ‘Billy! Where are you? I told you to get the twins …’ Her voice trailed off as she saw me bent down, scrubbing away at Hattie’s dress, mud all over the place. ‘Billy! What do you think you’re doing?’
    â€˜They got all muddy, Ma,’ I explained. ‘It wasn’t my fault, honest.’
    â€˜Stop. You’re just making it worse,’ she said, slapping my hands away. ‘Oh Lord, why today, girls? Why today of all days? I’ll have to put them into something different now. Billy, you go on ahead.’
    I explained that I was happy to stay and help her with the girls, but she shook her head. ‘Go on, Billy, or you’ll miss the parade.’
    â€˜So will you,’ I said.
    â€˜Well, there’s nothing we can do about that, is there?’ she said. ‘Go on now.’
    I got to the front of the Evansbridge town hall just in time to hear the sound of the school band tuning up behind St Michael’s Church, half a dozen bugles, a euphonium and a drum sorting themselves out into some kind of logical order. The crowd was standing three or four deep along the main street by then. It seemed that the families from all the farms in the district had driven into town to see the Suffolk boys come home. It was very exciting, everyone wearing red, white and blue, flags flying, bunting and streamers hanging from every street-sign, lamp-post and window-sill. Some of the women had made a huge V for victory out of white flowers and hung it from the clock tower on the town hall.
    I looked for Doug Suffolk in the crowd, which was budding up to a couple of hundred at least. Then I remembered that he and his parents had a special place reserved up on the main dais with the mayor. I was glad, I suppose. It meant that I wouldn’t have to see him leaping up and down when his brothers were driven slowly by. I bet that if he thought about it he’d have been glad as well. I’m sure he wouldn’t have wanted to see my face, knowing that my father was still missing. I planned to be brave and happy for him.
    We hadn’t heard any news of Dad since 1942. A year before that he’d gone back to Scotland to join up with one of the Scots regiments, the Seaforth Highlanders. I was too young to remember him going, except for one brief, shadowy memory of him lifting me up to sit on his suitcase while he clipped it shut. He sent several letters during basic, then one saying that he and the boys were shipping out to Burma. We got one more letter once he got there, and I remember that he complained about the heat and the humidity — and that was the last news we heard. After that, no thing. Not a word.
    Ma had tried to get some news, good or bad, but no