The village of Wanborough was not more than ten minutes’ drive from the Finis Hotel. I parked up outside the GSD temple—once a C of E church—and turned off the engine, the silence of the country a welcome break. In the distance I could hear some farm machinery but it was barely a rhythmical hum; I had never appreciated the peace of the country until I had moved to the city. I opened the gate and entered the well-kept graveyard. I paused for a moment, then ambled at a slow, respectful pace past the rows of well-tended graves. I hadn’t visited Anton’s memorial since the day I left for London, but I knew that he wouldn’t have minded. Much that we had appreciated about one another had been left unsaid. In humour, in life and in love, we had understood. When I arrived in Sebastapol to join the 3rd Wessex Tank Light Armoured Brigade, Landen and Anton were already good friends. Anton was attached to the brigade as signals captain; Landen was a lieutenant. Anton had introduced us; against strict orders we had fallen in love. I had felt like a schoolgirl, sneaking around the camp for forbidden trysts. In the beginning the Crimea just seemed like a whole barrel of fun. None of the bodies came home. It was a policy decision. But many had private memorials. Anton’s was near the end of the row, underneath the protective bough of an old yew and sandwiched between two other Crimean memorials. It was well kept up, obviously weeded regularly, and fresh flowers had recently been placed there. I stood by the unsophisticated grey limestone tablet and read the inscription. Simple and neat. His name, rank and the date of the charge. There was another stone not unlike this one sixteen hundred miles away marking his grave on the peninsula. Others hadn’t fared so well. Fourteen of my colleagues on the charge that day were still ‘unaccounted for’. It was military jargon for ‘not enough bits to identify’.

Quite suddenly I felt someone slap me on the back of my head. It wasn’t hard but enough to make me jump. I turned to find the GSD priest looking at me with a silly grin on his face.

‘Wotcha, Doofus!’ he bellowed.

‘Hello, Joffy,’ I replied, only slightly bemused. ‘Want me to break your nose again?’

‘I’m cloth now, sis!’ he exclaimed. ‘You can’t go around bashing the clergy!’

I stared at him for a moment.

‘Well, if I can’t bash you,’ I told him, ‘what can I do?’

‘We at the GSD are very big on hugs, sis.’

So we hugged, there in front of Anton’s memorial, me and my loopy brother Joffy, whom I had never hugged in my life.

‘Any news on Brainbox and the Fatarse?’ he asked.

‘If you mean Mycroft and Polly, no.’

‘Loosen up, sis. Mycroft is a Brainbox and Polly, well, she does have a fat arse.’

‘The answer’s still no. Mind you, she and Mum have put on a bit of weight, haven’t they?’

‘A bit? I should say. Tesco’s should open a superstore just for the pair of them.’

‘Does the GSD encourage such blatant personal attacks?’ I asked.

Joffy shrugged. ‘Sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn’t,’ he answered. ‘That’s the beauty of the Global Standard Deity—it’s whatever you want it to be. And besides, you’re family so it doesn’t count.’

I looked around at the well-kept building and graveyard.

‘How’s it all going?’

‘Pretty well, thanks. Good cross-section of religions and even a few neanderthals, which is quite a coup. Mind you, attendances have almost trebled since I converted the vestry into a casino and introduced naked greasy-pole dancing on Tuesdays.’

‘You’re joking!’

‘Yes, of course I am, Doofus.’

‘You little shit!’ I laughed. ‘I am going to break your nose again!’

‘Before you do, do you want a cup of tea?’

I thanked him and we walked towards the vicarage.

‘How’s your arm?’ he asked.

‘It’s okay,’ I replied. Then, since I was eager to try to keep up with his irreverence, I added: ‘I played this joke on the doctor in London. I said to him when he rebuilt the muscles in my arm, “Do you think I’ll be able to play the violin?” and he said: “Of course!” and then I said: “That’s good, I couldn’t before!”‘

Joffy stared at me blank-faced. ‘SpecOps Christmas parties must be a riot, sis. You should get out more. That’s probably the worst joke I’ve ever heard.’

Joffy could be infuriating at times, but he probably had a point—although I wasn’t going to let him know it. So I said instead: ‘Bollocks to you, then.’

That did make him laugh.

‘You were always so serious, sis. Ever since you were a little girl. I remember you sitting in the living room staring at the News at Ten, soaking in every fact and asking Dad and the Brainbox a million questions—Hello, Mrs Higgins!’

We had just met an old lady coming through the lichgate carrying a bunch of flowers.

‘Hello, Irreverend!’ she replied jovially, then looked at me and said in a hoarse whisper: ‘Is this your girlfriend?’

‘No, Gladys—this is my sister, Thursday. She’s SpecOps and consequently doesn’t have a sense of humour, a boyfriend, or a life.’

‘That’s nice, dear,’ said Mrs Higgins, who was clearly quite deaf, despite her large ears.

‘Hello, Gladys,’ I said, shaking her by the hand. ‘Joffy here used to bash the bishop so much when he was a boy we all thought he would go blind.’

‘Good, good,’ she muttered.

Joffy, not to be outdone, added: ‘And little Thursday here made so much noise during sex that we had to put her in the garden shed whenever her boyfriends stayed the night.’

I elbowed him in the ribs but Mrs Higgins didn’t notice; she smiled benignly, wished us both a pleasant day, and teetered off into the churchyard. We watched her go.

‘A hundred and four next March,’ murmured Joffy. ‘Amazing, isn’t she? When she goes I’m thinking of having her stuffed and placed in the porch as a hatstand.’

‘Now I know you’re joking.’

He smiled.

‘I don’t have a serious bone in my body, sis. Come on, I’ll make you that tea.’

The vicarage was huge. Legend had it that the church’s spire would have been ten feet taller had the incumbent vicar not taken a liking to the stone and diverted it to his own residence. An unholy row broke out with the bishop and the vicar was relieved of his duties. The larger-than-usual vicarage, however, remained.

Joffy poured some strong tea out of a Clarice Cliff teapot into a matching cup and saucer. He wasn’t trying to impress; the GSD had almost no money and he couldn’t afford to use anything other than what came with the vicarage.

‘So,’ said Joffy, placing a teacup in front of me and sitting down on the sofa, ‘do you think Dad’s boffing Emma Hamilton?’

‘He never mentioned it. Mind you, if you were having an affair with someone who died over a hundred years ago, would you tell your wife?’

‘How about me?’

‘How about you what?’

‘Does he ever mention me?’

I shook my head and Joffy was silent in thought for a moment, which is unusual for him.

‘I think he wanted me to be in that charge in Ant’s place, sis. Ant was always the favoured son.’

‘That’s stupid, Joffy. And even if it were true—‘which it isn’t—there’s nothing anyone can do about it. Ant is gone, finished, dead. Even if you had stayed out there, let’s face it, army chaplains don’t exactly dictate military policy.’

‘Then why doesn’t Dad ever come and see me?’

I shrugged.

‘I don’t know. Perhaps it’s a ChronoGuard thing. He rarely visits me unless on business—and never for more than a couple of minutes.’

Joffy nodded then asked: ‘Have you been attending church in London, sis?’

‘I don’t really have the time, Joff.’

‘We make time, sis.’

I sighed. He was right.

‘After the charge I kind of lost my faith. SpecOps have chaplains of their own but I just never felt the same about anything.’