We lay among tumbled stones, in a hollow beneath the ruined wall.

The late summer sun was dipping, shadows lengthening. Five miles off, the barrage continued: a distant rumble, a thudding through the earth. Gently I unbuttoned him, pushing fabric aside; unresisting and exposed to the early evening chill, I helped myself to his warmth. When we were finished I lay my head on his chest. Gazing across acres of pale skin, I listened to his unconscious heart beating, and wondered at how the body lived and died and never knew – only the mind.

The guns stopped; sudden silence was a ragged hole the world could not fill.

“We’re damned,” he said.

“But still alive. Why?”

“So we can suffer.”

I leant up and kissed him, hard – not caring.

“Two days, then back to the front. The world won’t end.”

“It already ended.”

“Then what is this?”

“The bitter hereafter.”

I glanced up to see a hare in the grass, watching me with eyes of fractured amber. A moment later it flitted away, and the sky darkened with noise once more.