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you have to go, son, but it doesn’t make it any easier for her.’
    â€˜How about you, Dad?’ he’d found the courage to ask as the train wheezed into the station and everybody seemed to move at once.
    â€˜I’ll be fine. Your brothers can manage.’
    â€˜I didn’t mean that. I meant —’
    â€˜I know what you meant,’ his father interrupted in a gruff voice, fixing him with a stare. In that pause Jamie understood that even this conversation was hard for him and about as close as Jamie might ever get to revealing William Wren’s closely guarded emotions. ‘Take the watch. Keep your head down. I know you’ll make the Wren name count for something over there.’
    Whistles had blown and doors had begun slamming closed. His father hadn’t hugged him, but he’d shaken his hand tightly and hadn’t let go quickly, William’s lips thin and working hard to keep all words contained behind them. Jamie had turned and felt his father squeeze his neck gently in the way he used to when Jamie had been a boy. The affection in that heartbeat had been unmistakable.
    â€˜OP time, mate,’ Spud said, kicking his boot and dragging him fully into the present. ‘When you write next, tell your mum I love her jam.’
    All the men took regular turns at the observation post at the parapet. Their only defence was sandbags at the lip and the Turks had the high ground, so periscopes were their only way of assessing the enemy camp.
    â€˜Come on, let’s head to the shooting step. See if we can’t catch us a couple of Turks.’
    Jamie buttoned the watch away and with it his memories as he fell in step. Swampy and Dickie Jones pushed in front of Spud.
    â€˜Hey!’ Spud said, shoving Swampy.
    â€˜Let them go. Age before beauty, eh?’ Jamie mocked.
    â€˜Beauty was a horse, mate,’ Jones chortled.
    â€˜Oh, so you
can
read, Jones? That’s a surprise,’ Jamie remarked.
    Just then a bullet cracked into the sandbags above Spud. ‘I swear they can see me,’ he growled.
    Impossible though it seemed to Jamie, the smell of decaying corpses was even worse here than further back in the trench they’d just navigated. The zigzag design hadn’t made sense at first but it soon became evident that if the Turks did overwhelm one end of the trench, the enemy couldn’t see past more than a few feet.
    These tiny salients, jutting out into no-man’s-land, cut so close at times to the enemy trench that they could hear the Turks talking. He’d heard rumours that in other places the trenches were close enough to touch a Turk’s head. It made no sense if you could shake hands with your enemy. Was there any point to this war? One fellow from the opposing trench, with some sort of penny whistle, was beginning to play his instrument alongside Jamie’s harmonica most evenings. It made beautiful, haunting music and the pipe’s mellow timbre complemented Jamie’s melodies; its owner was clearly adept, weaving lovely notes and trills around the mouth organ’s slow, sad meanderings.
    â€˜Play us a jolly tune,’ Swampy was always asking but Jamie didn’t seem inclined. It didn’t feel right to him, given how many dead lay all around them. But the Turkish piper and he understood one another, and their combined breath wove songs of regret and sorrow that did feel right on behalf of the fallen.
    Jamie watched Dickie Jones take a trench-fashioned periscope, which comprised a broken piece of shaving mirror attached to a length of timber, and gingerly position it just above the parapet. Swampy meanwhile took position on the fire step with the trench’s single periscope rifle and began sighting through it. Spud was standing right below them, giving Swampy a bit of a baiting.
    Jamie tuned out and began to wonder if his father secretly worried about his middle son’s safety. Maybe his mother had been right all