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The man blinked hard, the tears running down his cheeks. He was too weak to raise his hands to check them. “Thank you for not lying to me,” he said quietly. “If you had said British soldiers don’t do such things, I would not have believed you.”

“Most of us don’t,” Joseph told him.

“I know. Most of us don’t, either.” There was defiance in his voice, and his eyes were hot with anger.

“We’ve all changed,” Joseph said sadly. “Not much is as it used to be.”

The German closed his eyes and retreated into some grief or pain too deep within himself for anyone else to guess at.

Joseph waited a moment longer, in case there was anything further the man wanted to say, then turned and walked away. It was raining harder; the canvas rumbled with it. He kept in the shelter of the walkway between the tents. The ground was wet, the light shining on pools of water.

His thoughts turned to Lizzie again. He could not think of going home without her filling his mind. He remembered how she had been his driver all the time he was there two years ago, too badly injured to handle a car himself. Despite her husband’s murder, she had found the strength and the courage to help him look for the man who had so fearfully betrayed them all, and to confront him when at last they could no longer avoid the truth.

Joseph had begun by liking her, finding her company easy because she understood loss and never evaded it with trite words. She knew when to talk, and when to stay silent and allow the pain to take hold, then slowly absorb it and carry on.

And she could be fun. Her humor was quick and dry. She had an easy laugh; the light of it reached her eyes, which were very blue despite her dark hair. If ever she felt sorry for herself she fought it alone, without blaming others. And yet she was imperfect enough to be vulnerable, to make mistakes. She needed help now and then.

Why had she not written?

Did she sense the growing affection in him and know that she could not love again—at least not love a man who had seen four years in the trenches and was so immersed in the horror of it, he was changed forever? Weren’t all men changed? Could any of them be whole enough again to make a woman happy? No woman wanted to grieve forever. Women created life, affirmed it, loved no matter what else happened. They needed to nurture, to begin again.

Perhaps only women like his sister Judith, who was here at the front, could understand and speak to soldiers as equals, could endure the nightmares and the ridiculous jokes, the miseries that seared the heart and would not be let go. To forget the dead would be to betray them, and was unforgivable. It would be to deny honor, to deny friendship, to make all the injury and the loss not real anymore.

Judith understood. She had been here since the beginning of the war, driving her ambulance with the wounded and the dead, fighting the hunger and cold, the disease, the horrific injuries, the despair and the hope, like the rest of them. It was ironic that he could talk to Judith…yet at the same time he didn’t need to, because she knew it all just as he did.

The rain was soft and cold in his face as he crossed the mud back to the Admissions tent to see if there was anyone newly arrived who needed help.

Would he be able to offer anything of tenderness or honesty to any woman who had no experience of war? Or would the gulf between them be made uncrossable by the ghosts of too many friends lying dead in his arms, too many journeys across no-man’s-land with terror and grief tearing him apart, too many long nights being deafened by the guns?

Lizzie, why don’t you write? Don’t you know what to say anymore? What horror could there be in the future as terrible as that we have already endured?

He stopped, his feet covered in mud. He was not ready to go into the tent yet. He needed a short break before finding the next man to talk to, to try to comfort, or if not that, then at least to help him to a drink of water or turn him onto his other side for a little ease.

He had