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doing there. Back home Grace would be preparing for her party. Grandad had said they’d probably be back in time if Rose wanted to go, but she didn’t want to, not really. She didn’t like parties that much any more.
    She used to love them, looked forward to them for days. There’d be long sessions with Grace and Ella round each other’s houses, trying on outfits, doing each other’s make-up (Mum didn’t approve), discussing who’d be there and laughing helplessly for hours and hours about nothing in particular. There was one boy from school she’d liked, Lewis. He was tall and funny and handsome and good at football. Nearly all the girls liked him, but for some unknown reason Rose always got the feeling he liked her best. One time, in year eight, this girl in her class had a party and invited everyone, so Rose had known that Lewis would be there. She’d spent ages planning what to wear, longer than usual, even. Grace had lent her her new top and Ella had spent ages with the hair straighteners, ironing the kinks out of Rose’s hair.
    And then, when they got to the party, Lewis had spent all night talking to his friends and hadn’t looked at Rose once. She’d felt so disappointed she thought the world would end.
    It seemed silly now, to be so upset about something so little. But she was only just thirteen when it happened. A lot had changed since then. Lewis was going out with Daisy McCallister, the prettiest, most confident girl in the year. And Rose’s dad had died.
    She walked on, matching her pace to Grandad’s. They passed an old man fishing from underneath a green nylon tent. Grandad greeted him with a nod and the old man raised a hand in reply. Rose wondered what sort of creatures might live in the dark, greasy waters of the canal, and imagined great eyeless eel-like things like giant leeches, with grey muscular bodies and circular mouths lined with jaggy teeth. She hoped no one would ever expect her to eat them.
    The path was pretty, though, with overhanging trees and a few cheerful yellow flowers like buttercups among the long grass, brave little faces turned up to the pale February sky.
    â€˜Celandines,’ said Grandad. ‘My favourite.’
    He knew about flowers. His dad, Arthur, had been a gardener’s boy before he left to join the army. Maybe he and Uncle George had looked at the celandines when they were here and he’d told George what they were called.
    â€˜Terrible weed, of course,’ Grandad was saying. ‘Devil to get rid of once you’ve got them in your garden. But I’ve always liked them. Cheery little blighters, come out before anything else at the end of winter when there’s no other flowers about.’
    Rose liked them too, with their dark-green heart-shaped leaves. She picked a little bunch. Like Mum’s Valentine roses, they didn’t smell of anything, but they made her feel better. She hoped they’d made George and Arthur feel better too.
    â€˜The canal was the front line at one time,’ Grandad was saying. ‘We were on this side—’
    â€˜We’? Rose thought. How come it was ‘we’ all of a sudden? She didn’t feel like she was on one side or theother. Wasn’t it equally awful for everybody?
    â€˜â€”dug into the banks of the canal. And the Germans were over there.’
    Beyond the water was a flat industrial area dominated by several giant wind turbines, their huge white arms turning lazily against the sky.
    â€˜So it was just the canal that divided them?’ said Rose.
    â€˜No, there would’ve been some space between the two armies. No-man’s-land, they called it. Because it didn’t belong to either side. It would’ve been that area across the canal, I suppose.’ He shook his head. ‘Wonder what the Tommies’d think if they could see it now,’ he went on. ‘Blooming great what-d’ you-call-’em,