Listen to the Moon. Michael Morpurgo

The hardest thing I had to do before I left was to break the news to Pippa that I was leaving, that I had to go to England to see Papa in hospital, and so I wouldn’t be coming back for a while, not till the war was over. She hardly left my side after I told her. She never spoke about my leaving. She was the only one who never tried to persuade me I shouldn’t be going, who just seemed to understand that I had to, and left it at that.

      On the last day she never even said goodbye. When the time came, she couldn’t bring herself to speak and neither could I. We stood there by the school gates, two best friends so used to telling one another our deepest secrets, revealing our highest hopes, confiding in each other our most terrible fears, and now we couldn’t even find the words to say goodbye. We stood in awkward silence for some moments. In the end she handed me an envelope, then turned from me quickly, and ran off.