Chapter 3

You always know after you are two.

Two is the beginning of the end.

From Peter Pan

Craienoir Farm, Le Foyer, Ancre Valley, France

For a fragment of a second, following the loud bang, which echoes through the nearby wood, the world stands still.

The birds in the trees are silenced. Beneath them, a vixen, which had been watching the child in the garden, cowers to the ground, teeth bared. The bees and other swarming creatures take a beat out of their busy schedule. Only a slight wind, brushing against the leaves, breaks an absolute silence.

Then, almost as quickly as it ends, it begins again with one songbird, then another and then another until the whole valley is once more alive with the sounds of spring in north-eastern France.

In the corner of this foreign field sits an Englishman. James Gray is lolling in a garden chair on the wide terrace outside his home. He is drinking his first coffee of the day and flipping through the pages of an old journal with a battered leather cover.

As James had settled down to read that morning he had been aware of the sound of cow bells some miles off towards the town. Further still, somewhere near the marketplace a dog had been barking at a delivery van. He had grown used to these background noises, although the dog still made a chill run through his spine.

Now, as he turns the pages of the journal, the life in the garden, the wind in the trees and the sounds of the valley are sucked away into a vacuum and James no longer notices the outside world. He is in a place called Etaples watching a young soldier being called away from bayonet practice by a drill sergeant. James follows him as he crosses the parade ground to a small hut where two officers and a man in a suit and a stiff collar are waiting for him. The uniforms are standing. The suit is sitting behind a desk.

The young soldier is about to be shown a very different weapon of war and given his orders.

It was as James read about Private Gray’s special assignment that the gentle breeze swept up through the valley to shimmy the tall poplars which marked the boundary of his land. Then there was the bang and he is back in his world.

James spills a small drop of coffee on his jeans. A farmer after rabbits? No! It is something else; something just as much a part of this landscape.

‘The past is calling to us in its loud voice,’ James says to himself and smiles.

He looks up from the notebook and watches his youngest daughter, Picardy, playing on the lawn. She looks back at her father and grins.

‘Is it working ok, Pic?’ He asks

The child nods and returns to her new toy. It is a big plastic tape recorder; bright red with a yellow, oversized microphone and a green carrying strap. She had spotted it in a toyshop in Albert and fallen in love. James thought she wanted to play her story tapes on it, but she was more interested in collecting her own sounds. She had mastered the device quickly and her little fingers operated the buttons with skill. She had just captured the brief silence that had followed the loud bang. Now, Picardy is interviewing a number of soft toys and dolls - all named after members of her family - neatly arranged in a semi-circle around her on the well-kept grass.

Picardy is small for her age with dark eyes and a mop of black hair. She reminds James of a nervous, cub-like creature when she plays. Mowgli. She is so different to her brother and sister.

James has a memory of tears streaming down his face as he watched Picardy leave the relative safety of her mother’s womb and enter, screaming and messy, into the world. It was one of the few images of a bloodied child James carried in his head which he didn’t want to shake away.

Sometimes he thought people were accusing him of being over protective towards Picardy - but those few who knew the story remained silent.

James had arrived in the Ancre Valley (he called it the Valley of the Somme), with his family in tow, the previous year. Sanctuary: A far cry from the Balkans, Timisoara and the killing rooms of Westminster and Washington and the Hague. As they had arrived the line in the sand was once again beginning to show through on the maps of the desert … But James wasn’t moving. Not then and not now. Now, he was sitting, drinking strong coffee and listening to French cow bells.

He had always known when it was time to move on and when it was stay put – always. He knew, even in the playgrounds of his schooldays. This time it had been Craienoir Farm, at the end of a winding track, beckoning to him.

Almost a century before, the British had marched through its dung-spattered courtyard singing their own version of It’s a long way to Tipperary. At the time James had thought a couple of the lines appropriate. He could even hear the soldiers now, singing through the sounds of the garden.

‘Hooray, pour le Francais. Farewell Angleterre’

James takes another sip of Arabica and remembers the day they had hammered out a deal with the agent and agreed to buy the place: He and Annie are standing together looking out of an upstairs window holding hands. James had been watching his children across the garden in the old orchard. James had waved to them and had felt Annie looking at him.

‘She’s begging us to possess her,’ Annie had said.

‘She needs a lot of work?’ … but James is thinking, Yes. This is right. This is the place.

Smitten. In love at second sight with the crumbling walls and smells of cooking and dirt from forgotten families; In love with how they had followed the twisting path to its door and seen a future for them both. Hers: the peace it would bring when she left him. His: the sounds of men moving up to the front still echoing down the years and buffeting around the courtyard.

These memories seep across the pages of the journal and for that brief moment James was back from the war; back with his wife and family. Home. And then he is alone again, in the garden, with Picardy.

‘The past is shouting at us’

James tucks a small packet of well-thumbed letters inside the journal and hears his own father’s voice from deep inside the sheets of his hospital bed. ‘Take them Jamie, read them and find the truth. Tell the story, find out what happened and set the record straight…for the family.’ James closes the journal.

Once more he looks up at the child on the lawn. Then his attention is drawn, as it so often is, to the line of neat poplars at the far edge the orchard. His eyes follow it until they settle on the two at the end of the row. They are taller and stronger than the rest; a different species perhaps. They stand out from the others, giving the impression that they are leading their smaller brothers and sisters away into the adjoining woods.

James feels the tears welling behind his sunglasses. He switches his gaze from the landscape back to Picardy. He forces another smile but he knows the darkness is coming; the ‘Stray, Black Dog’ he had read about in the books he’d been leant afterwards.

James feels his head start to throb and his hands shake. His throat tightens. The bright morning sun slips behind a small wisp of cloud. He remembers a line from a newspaper report on the funeral of a murdered child, where it was described as hiding its face in shame.

There are dark clouds bruising the sky beyond the tree line.

The fox slinks away through the undergrowth back to her lair. She is carrying her first litter.

James calls to his youngest daughter.

‘Picardy. Come in and play now, it’s going to rain.’

The child looks up and can see only clear sky. She frowns. Then she looks at her father. Even with the sunglasses covering his eyes she understands. She is used to his sudden changes; the dark, silent moments in her father’s life before the birdsong returns.

He walks back to the house and is caught up on the step by the little girl. She slips her hand into his and he squeezes it gently.

How life changes: Huge changes in such small fragments of time. And now, even Annie has left; fled back to England. James looks out across the valley. For a moment, as always, he thinks he can see them making their way home through the fields for supper. But Freddie and Flora are gone; missing; disappeared. They had set out one bright morning on their bicycles for a picnic and had not been seen since. They had vanished off the face of the earth. That was two months after they has taken possession of the keys to the farm and the farm had possessed them.

He had come to France to investigate one family mystery and now he had two. For the second time members of the Gray family were missing on the Somme. In the next few seconds he was to discover that the answers to both where wrapped around each other; entwined.

As Father and child enter the house through the French windows Picardy’s tape recorder, which she had left on the lawn, clicks into life. James turns towards the sound and stands still, frozen and unable to speak for a moment. This is not one of Picardy’s tapes. He looks down at his child. She is already looking back at him with her large, dark eyes.

Chapter 2

2

Bonjour France

‘Good Bye-ee, Good Bye-ee’

Wipe the tear, baby dear from your Eye-ee

Though it’s hard to Part, I know

I’ll be tickled to death to go.

POPULAR SONG 1914

Extract from the personal diary of Pte Frederick Gray 204637 of the Kings Own Royal Hampshire Regiment (New Forest Pals.)

May 1916. Somme Valley, France

At last the Western Front - well less than a mile from it. The locals call this place Picardie and although we call it the Somme it is the River Ancre which is closest to our camp and the front lines. In truth I have been here for almost a week and in this country for a little over a month but Eat-Apples may as well have been England as we were never allowed off the camp.

It has been very busy here, early mornings and long working days. Harder than the farm in some ways, although Father would never believe it.

I have decided to keep this diary as often as possible. Now I am a fully fledged Tommy (of a kind) I will have something to write about. I do have to keep my official log, of course. They have told me to make a ‘clear and accurate’ record of all the pictures I take. Everything. But this will be my private account. Which I will carry with me at all times as they are queer about what we can or can’t write to anyone else.

I have special badges sown on my arm and my back which says I am an official photographer. They arrived with a letter and my equipment. The letter, which I am to carry at all times, states I am working for the War Office. This confused me somewhat as that chap. Maddock, in Calais, said he was from the British Topical Committee for War Films. Either way it has been made clear to me that I must get on with my duties and not make much of it to anyone else. I am to hand in the log and the exposed film at the end of each day to an official rider. So far no one has told me where to find him, but I am sure it will all pan out.

I have heard talk of another chap doing similar duties here. He has been going about saying he has permission to do pretty much as he pleases. But I have not met him yet. I hear he may be up at the front line trenches. Getting in everyone’s way no doubt. I am still awaiting permission to move up the line.

I am proud of my duties. As proud as any other soldier here - infantry or cavalryman. To be honest I have spent most of my time here since I arrived doing the work of the average Tommy, Lugging stuff about and getting shouted at. The equipment only arrived yesterday so I had no excuse not to muck in. It’s been hard sweat but everyone is very cheery. It also gave me a good look at British Army organisation at close quarters. There is a certain poetry about it all. Nobody knows what they are doing but everything seems to be getting done.

I admit I was a little put out when they first took the rifle away and gave me a new job. I thought I would no longer be able to do my bit. But I suppose I had a skill they needed so I could hardly refuse. And I can’t say I wasn’t pleased when the camera finally arrived and got me off unloading any more of those shells.

I have been issued with a Pathe Panoramic, brand spanking new with this fancy French lens. It also has the new rolls of film in neat magazines. It makes me smile to think we load magazines and we shoot people - The language of war. I think this camera is going to be a very important weapon here, perhaps the most important.

When Captain Kenton was instructing me he kept saying how the Pathe cost as much as a new Lewis Gun or a day’s supply of 18 pounders. But the punch it would pack was worth a million rounds and a thousand Lee Enfields. He is a good sort, Kenton. He said he was with Kitchener in Khartoum as a war correspondent or something. He had also been in South Africa but he was less inclined to talk about that. He is a quiet, well educated man and I think he was very happy not to be coming with us to France.

I was about to send a report to him asking for more detailed orders (the front line etc) when I got news the film had arrived - and not before time. It came in wrapped in oiled cloth inside boxes of straw. Imagine that, thousands of feet of it as flammable as some of the ordinance which is pouring into this place by the hour. I was told the boxes had arrived just after breakfast yesterday but it took me until nightfall to find them. Some over efficient QMS had stored them away in an armoury shed, thinking it was more modern ammunition for the new machine guns.

So, I am all set. But they say the rest are still short of supplies. It is hard to believe - I have never seen so much equipment. There is enough here to supply a whole city - which is what we have created here. People are wandering about with looks of amazement or confusion on their faces. I suppose many men here have never seen such activity or such spending or such waste. Even I am wide eyed at the sight and I have been to Southampton and Portsmouth and even the ‘Smoke’. They say that by the end of the month there will be one and half million British fighting men here on the Somme. (Thanks to Kitchener)

And of course with all these soldiers it’s not just the machinery of war that they need. Everything is being built here. There are hundreds of livery stables for all the horses, stacks of hay the size of houses, Bakers, Butchers; to cut up the thousands of sides of beef, which arrive in big ice filled trucks. There are even stores which hand out compasses, watches and whistles to anyone who has a slip of paper for them.

There is everything here from delicate measuring instruments to miles of boot string and acres of putties. The list is endless. I am told there is even a blockade or army prison for deserters and spies and Germans who have been captured, but I have not seen this yet. I have seen some German prisoners though - just this morning. They were the first thing I filmed and to a man they seemed very happy to be marching away from the front line with their hands on their heads. Many of them actually smiled at the camera as they passed.

It felt good to see all those Germans being humbled. But I have to say that my joy was short lived as the next thing we filmed was a convoy of about ten trucks trundle through the camp carrying wounded. It’s the first time I had seen casualties, although they also seemed quite cheery leaning over the tailgate and making gestures at us. I thought how unlucky they all were to have to be sent back home. But the Sergeant told me that they were ‘Walking Wounded’. They were here for a while to rest up then it would be back for a stint up the line so I didn’t feel so bad for them after all.

I am not seeing much of the ‘Hobblers.’ I thought we would have been able to stick together more. Now the equipment is here I will be seeing even less of my New Forest Pals. They have been ribbing me about my camera but I tell them that all they are good for is sinking ale at the Hobbler, shovelling horse manure and milking cows. It is all said good spirit and we know what ever our duties we will be facing the enemy side by side. The way I see it there will be some big effort to drive the Hun back from where they came then we will all go home and back to our lives. I know some people will get killed and some poor fellow is sent to meet his maker every day. But it still seems so far away as I sit here writing this journal. And I know that the film I send them will be playing in picture houses back home long before I set foot in Blighty again.

Talking of home we had a wonderful reminder just after I arrived. We were sheltering under our tarpaulin trying to keep the brazier going when three London buses hove into view. They are to be used to carry us about. It caused a few laughs and jokes.

“I say, do you stop at the Savoy?” “No mate, can’t afford to, Hold tight please, Ding Ding.” That sort of thing.

By the time I saw them again they were all painted in the same green as everything else around here. Maybe one of them was the one we all took when we were up in the smoke on leave. It seems funny now. My first trip to London to see all the bright lights and when I get there everything is khaki. Still you get used to that after a while.

I have noticed in the short time I have been here that the sense of urgency is growing day by day. The officers make little scrums by the lorries. They smoke their pipes, look at pieces of paper with serious faces and then point at things in the distance. Some say it is their way of shirking from the hard graft.

I don’t know if that’s fair but it is clear that things have become more business-like in the past few days. When we first arrived there were men in makeshift uniforms – jackets and trousers clearly brought from home. Now, things are taking on a neater more (if you will excuse the pun) uniform shape. At times the whole place resembles a disorganised Arabian bazaar – but without the colours. At other times there is a feeling of determination and ruthless efficiency that fills me with awe. All this is carried out under the watchful eyes and orders of the sergeants. Actually most of them - and the officers - are no older than me and at 24 I am quite an old chap here. It is the sergeants who seem to rule the roost. Many of them are career soldiers, who have seen and survived earlier battles in this war. I get the feeling that without them we would all be a lot of headless chickens running about the farmyard. I try to keep out of their way.

I must not be too critical. Somehow, things really are pulling together and best of all the weather has turned. It was raining the day I arrived, it was raining when I found my billet and it was raining when I was unpacking the camera. Now everything is drying out and I have spent my time writing this sheltered from the evening sun under a poplar. It is still muddy on the lower ground but it is nothing compared to what some of the older boys here say they had to put up with in Flanders. They say it was like living in treacle. Today they have smiles on their faces but I think summer is going to be late this year.

It is evening and I must finish for now. Some officer type has just asked me where my weapon is. I told him I was here to take newsreel but it didn’t seem to impress him. He told me not to be so b-----y stupid, get my rifle and learn how to b-----y salute. Blimey, I better start behaving like a soldier or they will never let me get to the front line. Actually, I think I have just been saved from a serious dressing down by some commotion over by the field hospital. The officer swore again and swaggered off to investigate. I think I better do the same.

Shellshocked - Chapter 1

1

Roses are shining in Picardy

In the hush of the silver dew

Roses are flowering in Picardy

But there is never a rose like you

And the roses will die with the summer time

And our roads may be far apart

But there's one rose that dies not in Picardy

'Tis the rose that I keep in my heart

And the years fly on forever

‘Til the shadows veil their sighs

But he loves to hold her little hand

And look in her sea blue eyes.

And he sees the rose by the poplars

Where they met in the bygone years

For the first little song of the roses

Is the last little song she hears

From the Roses of Picardy 1916

This is how I sometimes remember it:

I am singing: ‘My mother said, I never should, play with the gypsies in the wood…’

And Freddie is saying: ‘Well, when did we ever listen to her, or him, for that matter.’ And then he started to climb.

‘I’m going to get to that nest at the top.’ he said, and we both knew he would.

This was typical of Freddie, back then, when we were still young and the century was just beginning. If something was there to be climbed, Freddie couldn’t resist and no silly nursery rhyme from me was going to stop him.

We had been in the orchard, exploring amongst some deserted bee hives when Freddie suggested we take a look at the woods.

‘You can see where some of the old trenches used to be in there,’ he said. Freddie loved the idea of trenches. He wanted to be an archaeologist. I wanted to be an historian.

We had been let loose in the garden while our parents looked over the house one last time before buying it. They were trying to agree a price with the agent in the kitchen. I think they realised that if Freddie and I were allowed to explore, then we would fall in love with the place the way they had. But there was already one rule:

‘Stay away from the fenced off woodland,’ said Father.

‘why?’

‘Because, Freddie, it is an area littered with very old and very unexploded shells.’

‘But they will almost certainly be dud,’ said Freddie.

‘It’s out of bounds,’ said Father. ‘Life is much tougher without two arms, two legs and a head. Please try to stay in one piece. ’

We nodded our obedience and trotted off down the garden knowing we would disobey him. Father strode off across the lawn and back to the negotiating table.

Sure enough, after nosing around the crumbling remains of an old wall and the debris in the orchard, we took our first steps into the forbidden territory surrounding our new home.

Maybe it would have all been different if, at the moment we climbed over the barbed wire fence, Freddie had not looked up. Maybe we would have just wandered about a bit, looked at the indentations in the mossy floor at the foot of the trees and then gone back to the house and got on with our lives. But I doubt it.

Freddie wasn’t really interested in birds’ nests in trees, but it was all there and so it needed to be climbed, captured and claimed; another strange relic for the locked and battered trunk which held his collection.

As we moved away from the bee hives I remember us both gazing back at the house. I could see my father looking out of one of the upstairs windows. We didn’t know if he was watching us but I think we waved and gave a good impression of being totally absorbed by the orchard. Then he turned for a second to say something to our mother and we were gone. This was what we did as children. Slipping out of the sight of adults and staying hidden in our own world for as long as possible until they dragged us back to theirs.

Freddie dashed ahead of me and by the time I reached the foot of the first tree he already had both feet off the ground and was pulling himself up onto the first thick branch.

‘Help me up too, Freddie,’ I said.

‘No Flo, you stay there and catch me when I fall.’ This is Freddie’s sense of humour; mocking, taunting, sometimes cruel. ‘Anyway, I may need you to guide me to the nest. I may get lost in these tangles.’

And up he went. As I watched him I thought how familiar this was: Freddie struggling through an impossible obstacle to get to some forbidden treasure while I stood beneath him holding the ladder.

It is quiet when you are surrounded by trees. Life beyond the little wood seemed muffled. Not far away I could hear the hollow tock tock tock of a woodpecker doing what woodpeckers do to a tree and in the undergrowth the rustle of a small animal as it heaved its way through the fallen leaves. I wondered if we were the first children to play here.

I looked at the soft ground. At first it just appeared to undulate like a deep, sludge green sea, frozen in time. Then, as the brotherly grunts and groans above me moved higher, I noticed the patterns. They were neat furrows which suggested that they had once been a part of a bigger design, the way you see the ruts of medieval farm plots scored into the sides of hills in England. These were Freddie’s trenches. Between them were perfect circular dips in the ground. They looked as if they had been sucked into shape from beneath the surface by a giant with an immense straw.

‘Shell holes’, said Freddie.

I looked up. He was half way to the nest, wedged between two branches and looking down at me. ‘You can see a lot more from up here,’

‘What does it look like? Describe it too me,’ I asked. But in my mind I could already imagine what he was seeing.

‘Zigzags, he called back. ‘So that if a shell landed it didn’t kill anyone around the corner. Well, that was the theory… I better get on.’ Freddie started up the tree again.

‘I’m nearly there. I can almost reach it,’ he said.

I begged him to be careful. He was now high in the branches where the tree narrowed. It was beginning to sway and I could hear its twisted trunk creaking lower down. It began to get windy which rocked the tree even more. Just as Freddie made his last lunge towards the nest our Father called from the house. I could hear Freddie cursing, but I knew he would go on to the end of his mission and then attempt to get down and back into the garden before he got caught.

‘I’m there Flora.’

I was looking out for the enemy when he gave a cry. It was more of a yelp, like a puppy who’s had its paw trodden on.

‘Freddie, What is it?

There is a crashing and a cracking above me as my brother came down the tree feet first. He is no longer in control. His legs hanging free and his arms are desperately trying to break his fall. This is not like being caught stealing apples from a neighbour. This is panic.

Father is calling again. He is walking towards the orchard. Mother is on the terrace with our little sister, Picardy, in her arms. She wants to get back to the agent. They have made their mind up. The deal is done.

Freddie crashes to the ground. Panting and sweating. His face streaked with the grime from the bark of the tree.

‘Freddie. What?’ I can feel his panic too.

Freddie is breathing hard. He waves me away with his hand. He is still unable to speak - excited and scared.

‘What is it?’ I look up at the tree. The Nest is still there. It has been moved slightly. It doesn’t look so much like a nest now; it is too rounded. I look back at Freddie. I think he is going to be sick. He is coughing and spluttering and trying to regain some composure.

Father is about to enter the orchard and is looking for us.

Freddie is on his feet and he has caught hold of my hand. We are heading for the fence and the garden. I look at Freddie and I see he is almost laughing but maybe crying and there is a string of snot stuck across his face. He is very excited, elated; the way you get after you have been made to jump at a scary movie. We crouch down in the bushes. Father stands still and looks around and then heads back to the house. I see him shrug his shoulders to mother and then call to us again.

‘Come out, come out, wherever you are. Time to go.’

In our hiding place I turn to Freddie. I realise that he doesn’t want to be discovered yet. He wants to stay in our world of trees and nests and impossible, dangerous quests. He has to tell me something and it has nothing to do with adults.

‘Freddie - what happened? Where’s the nest? You absolutely did scare me this time.’ I say.

Freddie rolled onto his back - now he really is laughing.

‘Oh Flo, we have to live here. We have to be here.’ he says. He points backwards and up to the tree. ‘That. It’s not a nest,’ he says.

But he leaves his secret out of my reach for a moment longer. We go back to the house brushing our guilt from our clothes and smearing innocence over our faces. I know Freddie won’t be able to last long. He will have to blurt it out sooner rather than later.

I had to wait as we all gathered in the kitchen of our new home and made it official with some cider the agent happened to bring with her. The adults are all rabbiting on in French. Now Freddie and I will have to learn it too. They are celebrating but there is no elation or excitement. Mother and father are looking at each other. Their eyes say. Thank god that is sorted.

As we all stood around I could see my brother squirming. He wanted to get back outside. He wanted to let me in on the secret. He was about to burst.

‘So?’

We are by the car waiting for the adults to say their goodbyes. We are all heading back to England that evening but we will return to our new home in just over a month. Would we be going to school here, too? Neither of us dared to ask.

‘ So?’

Freddie holds my shoulders and puts on his serious look. ‘It’s not a nest Flora,’ he says. His eyes widen. ‘It’s a face.’

I look blank but in my mind I can see a face too. ‘What do you mean; a face?’

‘Just that - the remains of a face. it’s a body. There is a body in the tree. Well the head anyway. It was a human skull.’

‘How did it get up there?’ I ask, still not sure what Freddie is saying. Is he teasing again? We are keeping our voices downwind from the adults.

‘I have no idea - not yet - but it’s a sign Flora - it’s a sign that this place is… special.

We didn’t say much on the way back to Calais in the car. Freddie waited until we were on the ferry and at sea to tell me more. I think he needed to work it out in his head. He liked signs - he believed in them and always wanted to decipher their meaning.

On board we left our parents in the café and headed for somewhere to talk. We ended up in the children‘s play area. We took Picardy with us. She ran off to the little bouncy castle. I sat and watched her while Freddie went off to buy drinks from the Coke machine. I remember thinking how small and unprotected she looked. Like the girl from Peter Pan, sitting alone in the garden, before she had to care about anything. As I watched her she lifted her head and returned my gaze. All around her children were falling about in their self induced hysteria of play; and there was Picardy, in the eye of the storm; calm, almost serene, with that knowing smile.

Freddie handed me a can of fizzy something. He was ready.

‘I felt strange for a while, Flo. In the tree as I pulled myself up… I was expecting a nest and I thought that’s what it was and my eyes were just playing tricks. But there they were. Two eye sockets and a gaping jaw. It even had teeth.’

Freddie was trying to get everything in the right order as he told his story. He kept wincing as the memory went round and round in this head like a tape on a loop.

‘Freddie, what else? What aren’t you telling me?‘

He looks out of the window at the cold English Channel.

‘For a flash, when I looked into the skull, I could see hundreds of them. And some still had faces. The skin was still attached and they were… screaming. I felt…’

There is another silence. The cries and squeals of excited toddlers surrounding us is starting to distract him - calling him back to their carefree universe.

‘Go on, Freddie,’

‘I felt I knew some of them’ he said. ’And the skull... It was as if I recognised his face.’

And that is how it began for us. We were two children growing into their alien, teenage skins and learning to fit into a new environment. They say it is a difficult time; the moment you let go of your childhood and prepare to leave childish things behind. But for Freddie and me it was different. As we started a new life in that valley in France our childhood was travelling in the opposite direction. It was catching up with us.

This is the story I have to tell. I have gathered up the fragments and put the pieces back together: All those things that were so tightly wrapped up and kept hidden. Well, they were all bound to unravel eventually. And the first little piece of thread burst loose when Freddie reached the top of that tree.

There are still some bits missing, but at least I can tell our story: The story of my brother, of me and of our little sister; the story of all those wasted and forgotten lives; and those who were half remembered between the faded pages of a battered notebook that must have fallen from the sky to guide us on our way. And of course, our Father, who stared it all and then buried it beneath his good nature.

We went down to the woods, my brother and I. And after the woods it was the crater. And after the crater…

 

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