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27 JANUARY 1919

Henry Blakeney, who’d found it easier to hide his family connections by becoming simple Harry Blake during the war years, was dressed in civvies again and sipping on a cup of tea at Kings Cross Station, awaiting a train north. He hadn’t been in this terminus for many years – not since his teens had he travelled on the Great Northern Railway to Yorkshire and into Scotland. It felt instantly nostalgic to be back in the familiar grand London hub of the lines that tracked north to south across the country and included romantic trains like the Flying Scotsman.

He read on a plaque that the first stone was laid in the early 1850s, and what a glorious-looking station it was with its pair of enormous arched openings, half of their height glazed to let in maximum light to the platforms. It thus came as no surprise to learn that the designer was William Cubitt, responsible as chief engineer to the Crystal Palace.

He’d bought his ticket, for some odd reason known as an ‘Edmonson’, and while the question was at his lips, he lost the desire to ask it because the ticket seller had already looked over Harry’s shoulder to the person behind him. He’d swallowed his curiosity and moved away from the window, tucking the cardboard ticket carefully into his top pocket, and with time on his side he looked for the refreshment rooms.

Harry had thought about travelling in uniform to meet Rose and thus making his visit seem more formal for her. However, this was not formal; there was nothing even vaguely official about what he was doing. The army would likely be disturbed to hear that one of its captains was gallivanting off to see a grieving mother who would face a stranger in civvies delivering the news that her precious son’s remains had been discovered and here were his possessions found on him.

Was he potentially being cruel by persisting with this mission? The army had procedures in place to deal with this very matter. Even so, Harry didn’t think the army could offer the personal touch he was aiming to provide, although he would be pressed to fully explain the tenderness he felt towards Tom Fletcher. The true reason behind taking on this job hadn’t yet fully coalesced in his mind. A mocking internal voice told him he was running away again . . . from his life, from his responsibilities, from those who loved him.

Harry realised he was staring at the same sentence over and again in the editorial on page three of the newspaper, that Germany would likely elect Friedrich Ebert from the SDP as its new president. And, just to cheer him, opposite on page two was detail on the brewing battles between the Poles and Russians. He couldn’t bear to think of war erupting again. Harry looked up from the pages, returning his thoughts to just how many rules he was breaking as a former officer in the British Army.

‘Nevertheless, I am connected. I am the right one to do this for Rose,’ he murmured.

‘Sorry, darlin’, missed that,’ a passing waitress said, turning back. She was holding a tray filled with used crockery and the remains of biscuit crumbs and cakes.

He shrugged. ‘Er . . . just rehearsing a conversation,’ he said, surprised by the easy fib that slipped out.

‘Ooh.’ She giggled. ‘Proposing to your sweetheart, are you? No need to practise, darlin’. Looking like you do, she’s going to say yes if you asked her in bleedin’ Latin. I’d say yes to anything you want,’ she added with a cheeky wink, laughing at her own jest because she was potentially old enough to be his mother.

He grinned to please, looked back down at his newspaper and read the same sentence yet again.

Harry had noted in those few moments of distraction that so many men in the station were still wearing their uniforms and perhaps it would be easier to speak with Rose if he was dressed with his rank on show. For a so-called leader of men, he was certainly indecisive today.

There was one inescapable fact. He was privately glad he was now discharged from the unit he’d volunteered for in 1915. At the outbreak of war its London headquarters had been besieged by volunteers and against his family’s desires he’d managed to persuade one of their well-connected friends to sponsor him. To his family’s dismay it was one of the first territorial units to be sent to France, so he’d seen more than his fair share of major battles and action, surprising himself at how he’d managed to dodge not just death but serious injury.

He could see men with the sleeves of their jackets pinned neatly flat against their sides, others moving on crutches or in wheelchairs, some with feet lost or a leg amputated to the knee. One poor sod he passed this morning had neither leg. The majority hid a haunted quality in their gazes and sometimes in their unguarded expressions. Harry was sure he possessed that same mask, beneath which lay the darkness of war and what he’d seen, experienced. He knew he would be able to taste gunpowder and blood in a blink rather than the untouched oat biscuit in front of him if he let his senses go there, but he avoided giving his mind that kind of free rein. He’d trained himself instead to remain occupied. If he wasn’t out walking around one of the great London parks, he was reading, or attending to the business he’d run away from when he’d volunteered. Back in 1915 he could get away with fleeing his responsibility under the guise of doing his bit for England; there were no more excuses now and yet he felt more unsettled. His desire to run from the life opening up before him had intensified and, unlike most men, home was frankly the last place he wanted to be. Harry thus spent as much time as he could at his private club, where there was always someone to distract him with conversation or a game of chess.

The business could not run itself for very much longer, though, especially not now that the Treaty of Versailles was in place and the world was looking forward to recommencing trade, rations being slackened, and life trying to reassert itself as normal.

Nevertheless, after commanding troops in the field of battle for the past three years, the price of tea and inventories for shipments coming in felt faintly ridiculous and certainly dull. During many a single nightcap with someone from the club he’d come to the quiet realisation that he needed to draw some sort of line under the war to make it his past so that he could face the future. Harry Blake had convinced himself that confronting Rose Fletcher and speaking of Tom, sharing her grief, being able to look her in the eye and give her something of her son back was, for no reason he could fully pinpoint, his way back to this life.

Was this journey his way of drawing a line under Edward’s name too? Of finally accepting his decision that he must shoulder his responsibility now as head of the family and relocate from London back to Sussex?

Tom had become both his burden but also his steed, as though he might ride the loss of his brother away from the darkness of war and into the light of peace and the life that he must create after four years of fighting.

An older man loomed into view and asked if he might share the table. ‘It’s rather busy, you see,’ he said, gesturing.

‘Yes, of course, do go ahead.’

‘John Fanshaw,’ the man introduced, taking off his hat and extending a hand.

He hadn’t wanted company but how could he be surly? ‘Harry Blake,’ he replied easily, because he was so used to that name now. He shook the man’s hand.

‘Penny for your thoughts, Harry Blake,’ John wondered.

Harry thought John looked like a kindly character from a fairytale – the old man who offers wisdom at just the right moment in the story. He even had a thin sweep of white hair doing battle with baldness down the centre of his scalp. Harry sighed. ‘It’s not something that’s easy to talk about,’ he admitted.

The man nodded, understanding. ‘Which regiment?’ he asked, moving swiftly away from the threat of polite talk between strangers.

Harry told him.

‘Just demobbed?’

‘Disembodied, they call it in the territory units. Awful word but I have to say, disembodied is precisely how I feel right now. I’m from the 20th London.’