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ranny invites the bees to her funeral. She stands behind our cottage, facing the velvet hills, the blueberry sky. Bees, bees, she says and the bees make a whirlwind around her and she explains she's going to die. You have to invite them, Ollie, she says. Or they might take offense. The bees don't come to the church. But after everyone has gone, my phone beeping with condolences, the kitchen table groaning under SPAG BOL and BEEF STEW and SHEPHERD'S PIE - OLIVER: BEST TO WARM IN OVEN, I hang Granny's patched woolen coat on the hook by the back door. The bees stream out of their hive, one long humming scarf, and cover the coat. Every inch.

Now I wake myself up in the mornings. Now I eat warmed beef stew for breakfast. Take myself off to sixth form. Today when I get home the cottage rings with the hollowness of not-Granny, and I go out back to sit on the ground, dotted with the purple jam of heather. Bees, bees I say, and curious bees make cats cradles in the air in front of me as I talk.

I tell them there was an assembly just for the boys. That a Major General came, dripping in gold braid, his hat so sharp it cut the air into pieces. That he stood behind the lectern and said We are facing the possibility of War. Not today, but perhaps soon. Boys, you may be called upon to Fight For Our Country, the capital letters ringing out into the main hall, hitting the high ceiling and exploding. I tell the bees that the word was may but his stinging nettle eyes said will. One of the bees lands on my cheek and walks across my mouth, tiny claws tickling. I go quiet.

And even though someone, somewhere, signs an important peace treaty while the world's leaders look on and sternly nod, all that autumn Jack Haigh and the other boys on the rugby team say to anyone who will listen that they can't wait to fight. During lunch they show photos of their musty great-grandfathers in Korea. They wear Alpha B15 flying jackets to school over their uniform blazers. They convince Mr. Clegg to drill us on push-ups and rank the ones who can do the most. I'm in the middle and just relieved I'm not last. It's safer to agree when Jack Haigh is towering over you explaining that you, too, cannot wait to Fight For Our Country, but at home I tell the bees that I'm scared the peace treaty won't be enough and the bees swoop and dive and thrum in the air while the wind rules the grass.

On Christmas Day I go to Auntie Gill's and I'm the oldest at the children's table by ten years. So sorry, love, she says, draining the sprouts in the sink. I know you're almost a proper grown-up now. Next year I promise. No more kiddy table. It's sort of nice, though. My little cousins don't want to talk about who didn't honour the peace treaty or who died in the ensuing battle or the National Service being reinstated. They want to know if I'll play Horsie with them after pudding, and if I will measure to see who's taller, Poppy or Alfie.

The day my name appears on the Conscription List I go outside and lie on my back. Linen clouds scamper and in the corner of my eye Granny's woolen coat dances in the wind. Bees, bees, I croak, and curious bees prance in my hair, humming to themselves. You're invited to my funeral. Bees swoop in the air around me. One lands on my arm and I can feel her silky fur dragging as she walks toward my hand. It's not like it used to be, I say to her. Boys don't come back from war these days. Not even broken boys. Not even boys like Jack Haigh who have already filled their bellies with Pluck and Valour and the idea that killing people is all right as long as a man with enough gold braid attached to his uniform shouts loudly enough at you to do it.

I invite the bees to Jack Haigh's funeral, to Callum's, to Mohammed's, to Adam's. The Milner twins'. Luke and George and Hamza, Ren and Ali and Matty. The wind balloons Granny's coat, the bees croon, and I'm still listing boys and boys and boys, all of us Dying For Our Country.

I sit up. I forgot. You won't have anyone to take care of you. And the thought of the cossetted bees suddenly forced to fend for themselves, not knowing why they are cold or why their babies are dying of opportunistic mites, while the funerals roll through and through and through our village until there are no boys left makes me weep. The bee on my hand flies away. The arms of Granny's coat drum a beat in the air and I hug my knees.

And then a bee leaves the hive. Another bee follows. And another, until they are a long ribbon against the mulberry sky, so many bees it seems impossible the hive could have held them all. They flutter and tumble and thrum and I watch until their buzzing is a far-away murmur. Until the last tiny dot is gone. Before going inside, I stand up and take Granny’s coat off the hook.