Valentine Joe Read Free

‘Surey-sure?’
    â€˜Surey-sure, Grandad.’
    This was a game they’d played since she was little but Rose felt she was getting a bit old for it now.
    â€˜Surey-surey sure-sure?’
    â€˜Grandad!’
    Out of the corner of her eye, Rose saw that the woman had stopped working on her laptop and was listening with a smile.
    Grandad grimaced. ‘Sorry, love. I just wouldn’t want—’
    â€˜I’m fine, Grandad. Really.’
    Grandad opened his mouth to speak again, but Rose got there first. ‘And, no – I’m also sure I don’t want a biscuit!’
    He grinned. ‘I’m glad you came with me, Cabbage. It wouldn’t be the same on me own.’
    â€˜I’m doing it in history at school, you know – World War One.’
    â€˜History? Tuh!’ Grandad made a dismissive sound with his false teeth. ‘It’s not proper history. Not if there’s people you know in it.’
    Rose thought that was silly. ‘You didn’t know your uncle George.’
    â€˜Not the point. History should be about strangers – kings, prime ministers, people no one cares about. This is too close!’
    Grandad was having one of his rants. Getting up on his high hobby horse, Dad always used to say. Rose glanced over at the woman with the laptop but she looked engrossed in her work.
    â€˜World War One’s not history!’ Grandad went on. ‘It’s life!’
    Rose wasn’t sure. It didn’t feel much like life to her. It felt like it had happened a very long time ago to people with funny haircuts and old-fashioned names like Albert and Walter and Sidney.
    â€˜If you ask me,’ Grandad was saying, ‘you should be doing more long-ago history. The Wars of the Roses’ – he made them sound all silly and pompous – ‘that sort of stuff. Proper history.’
    Rose wasn’t listening. They’d just passed another of those perfectly round ponds. She shivered. It was as if this neat, pretty landscape was hiding something horrible, like a bright new carpet covering a filthy old floor.
    â€˜Heads up!’ Grandad was checking his watch. ‘It’s getting on for lunchtime. We’ll be coming into Brussels soon.’
    Rose pulled her eyes away from the window. ‘What happens at Brussels, Grandad?’
    â€˜We have a sandwich!’ he replied, triumphantly.
    â€˜And then?’
    â€˜We get on another train. To Wipers.’
    â€˜Wipers?’
    â€˜That’s what the soldiers called it, the Tommies,’ he said. ‘Easier to say than Ypres, y’see. Unless you’re French, obviously.’
    Ypres. Eepra. That name again. It sounded like a little scream.
    Fields were giving way to streets and houses now. As the train entered the city and began to slow down, the people in the carriage fell silent. The woman closed her laptop and stared into space, her fingers twiddling her wedding ring. The over-inflated businessman put his phone away and sighed. For a moment he looked so sad Rose thought he was going to cry. The backpackers had stopped whispering to each other and were looking out of the windows on opposite sides of the carriage, each lost in thoughts of their own. The only sounds were the rhythm of the wheels and the hum of the air conditioning.
    â€˜Angel passing over.’
    It was what Grandad always said at these strange moments when everyone fell silent at the same time. Rose looked around at the faces of their fellow passengers, frozen in that one brief moment in time, and she thought, Is it an angel? Or is it something else?
    As the train pulled into the station, the silence hung in the air like dust.

I eper.
    That’s what it said on the station platform sign. Not Ypres. Ieper.
    â€˜Grandad?’ Rose pointed to the sign as they got off the train. ‘Are you sure this is the right stop?’
    â€˜Yup,’ said Grandad. He landed his suitcase with a bump and