He was only nineteen and he knew that he couldn’t bear it if the girl was dead, that it would snap what was left of his heart from its moorings and he would cease to be Lance Corporal Brodie of the Prince of Wales’s Own Regiment of Yorkshire and become himself a small child alone forever in the dark. But then she stirred in her sleep and for a moment he was so choked he could hardly speak. Then he found his voice and stuck his hand in the air and shouted louder than he’d ever shouted in his life, or would ever shout again, “Over here, I’ve found her, she’s over here!”
