Death narrates and Fiona had notes.

Fiona's objection, delivered within about ninety seconds of us sitting down: "you can't have Death be a nice man, it's a cheat." Bridget said it isn't a cheat, it's a frame, and if she'd wanted the war narrated by a German bureaucrat she'd have gone and read one of those instead. Fiona said that is exactly what she'd have preferred. Round and round for twenty minutes.

Deborah, who reads everything twice, pointed out that the narrator tells you who dies long before they die, and reckoned that made the last third bearable. Bridget reckoned it made it worse. Both true, I thought, which is a coward's answer, and I said it out loud anyway.

The woman who has been coming two years and whose name I have somehow never learned said her grandfather was in Dresden, and then said nothing else for the rest of the evening, and none of us knew what to do with that, so Gail asked about the crisps.

For me: the girl, the accordion, the basement, all of it, yes. Eight. I'd have gone nine before Fiona started on the narrator and got in my head about it.