Twenty-four hours coming up, tick-tock.

Twenty-four hours meaning Clare dead.

I hung up, glanced at my father’s watch and wondered how long I’d have to stay amongst his kith and kin.

Give it an hour.

I walked back down the hall, the Byline Boy at last, bringing more death to the house of the dead.

“So this Southern bloke, his car breaks down up on Moors. He walks back to farm down road and knocks on door. Old farmer opens door and Southerner says, do you know where nearest garage is? Old farmer says no. So Southerner asks him if he knows way to town. Farmer says he don’t know. How about nearest telephone? Farmer says he don’t know. So South erner says, you don’t know bloody much do you. Old farmer says that’s as may be, but am not one that’s lost.”

Uncle Eric holding court, proud the only time he ever left Yorkshire was to kill Germans. Uncle Eric, who I’d seen kill a fox with a spade when I was ten.

I sat down on the arm of my father’s empty chair, thinking of seaview flats in Brighton, of Southern girls called Anna or Sophie, and of a misplaced sense of filial duty now half redundant.

“Bet you’re glad you came back, aren’t you lad?” winked Aunty Margaret, pushing another cup of tea into my palms.

I sat there in the middle of the crowded back room, my tongue on the roof of my mouth, trying to move the stuck white bread, glad of something to clear out the taste of warm and salty ham, wishing for a whisky and thinking of my father yet again; a man who’d signed the Pledge on his eighteenth birthday for no other reason than they asked.

“Well now, would you look at this.”

I was miles and years away and then suddenly aware my hour was at hand, feeling all their eyes on me.

My Aunty Madge was waving a paper around like she was after some bluebottle.

Me sat on the arm of that chair, feeling like the fly.

Some of my younger cousins had been out for sweets and had brought back the paper, my paper.