Goodnight Me

Miles Ferris had not been the same since he came home. There were kinder ways of saying it. Julia had used most of them at one time or another, especially during the first year, when every conversation about him seemed to require careful handling. He was struggling. He was adjusting. He needed time. He had been through something difficult. All of those things were true, which made them no more useful than saying the house was cold when the boiler had packed up. The actual difference was easier to see in small things. Miles knew which neighbour left for work first. He knew the silver hatchback opposite belonged to the nurse who finished nights at seven and that the white van three doors down had a loose heat shield which rattled before it came into view. He knew the parcel courier sometimes left his engine running and that the boy at number twenty-two came home on a motorbike just after ten on Fridays. Before his last deployment he had known the names of perhaps four people on the street. Now he knew their routines without having made any decision to learn them. On Tuesday evening he was standing at the kitchen counter cutting chicken into strips when a van door slammed outside. The knife stopped against the board. His left hand tightened on the edge of the worktop while his attention moved through the house ahead of him: kitchen doorway, hall, front door, frosted panel beside it. Nothing else happened. Julia was at the sink, washing coriander under the tap. She did not turn around. She had learned, without either of them discussing it, that looking at him too quickly could make the moment worse. A van door. Somebody delivering something. Six twenty-three in the evening on an estate outside Chelmsford, not a roadblock, not a compound, not anything that required him to know where the exits were. “Can you pass me the colander?” Julia asked. His gaze dropped to the counter. He let go of the worktop, wiped his palm on his jeans and opened the cupboard. “Green one?” Julia pointed out that they only owned one. Miles insisted they owned two; she reminded him the other one was a sieve. “That sounds like propaganda from Big Colander.” Julia glanced over despite herself. “You were the one who bought it.” Miles admitted he had made mistakes. “Yes, you have,” she said. He gave her the green plastic bowl and went back to the chicken. It would have been easier if he had become miserable. People understood miserable. You could apologise for it, accommodate it, tell someone to see a doctor. Miles could still be funny. He could still stand in the kitchen with Julia and make her snort into a bunch of coriander. He could go for two or three days where she almost stopped watching him. Then somebody slammed a door. Julia set the washed herbs on a tea towel. “You all right?” “Fine.” “I didn't ask if you were fine.” “That's fortunate, because you'd have got the same answer.” She dried her hands and put the towel over the oven handle, exactly straight. Julia had become tidier since he came back. Not obsessively so, just enough that keys went in the bowl, shoes were not left where somebody might trip over them and cupboard doors were closed after use. She said it was because they were getting older. Miles had never challenged that. The doorbell rang and his body reacted before he had time to be annoyed with it. The knife came off the board—not raised, exactly, but no longer cutting—and his weight shifted towards the kitchen doorway. Julia froze beside the sink. When the bell rang again she said, “Delivery. You ordered coffee.” “I know.” Neither of them moved for another second. Miles put the knife flat on the board and went into the hall. The courier was visible through the frosted glass, a blurred orange shape in a high-vis jacket, but Miles looked through the peephole anyway. Young bloke, beard, scanner in one hand, cardboard box tucked against his hip. Already turning away. He opened the door. “Mr Ferris?” “Yeah.” “Need a photo, mate.” Miles took the box and waited while the courier photographed it in his hands. The man thanked him, walked down the path and climbed back into the van. There was no threat, no second vehicle, no reason to keep watching. Miles watched until the van disappeared around the corner anyway. When he returned to the kitchen, Julia was seasoning the chicken. “Coffee?” “Apparently.” “Good. You were getting unpleasant.” “I've always been unpleasant.” “You used to be unpleasant after coffee.” He smiled despite himself and put the box on the table. There were evenings when they could get away with this. They could behave as though humour was evidence of recovery, as though the right sequence of jokes might eventually lead them back to wherever they had been before. Miles knew Julia knew better. Julia knew he knew she knew better. Their marriage had developed whole branches of communication that required neither of them to acknowledge what was being communicated. They ate at the small table by the patio doors while a property programme played quietly in the other room. Julia told him about a woman at work who had sent an email intended for one person to the whole department. Miles laughed at the right place because it was genuinely funny, then told her about a driver at the depot who had spent twenty minutes arguing that a pallet of bathroom tiles was meant for Norwich when the paperwork clearly said Newport. “Maybe he just really believes in Norwich,” Julia said. “He was prepared to die for Norwich.” “People have died for worse.” His fork touched the plate and stopped. His attention snapped away from dinner. Julia reached for her water. She did not apologise; apologies made it bigger. Miles picked up his fork again. “Newport won in the end.” “Justice.” “Barely.” They moved on. After dinner, Miles washed up because cooking had been Julia's turn and because doing something with his hands was preferable to standing at the patio doors checking the dark garden. Their reflections floated in the glass: Julia curled at one end of the sofa with her phone, Miles in the kitchen behind her, broad shoulders filling an old grey T-shirt, dish towel over one shoulder like somebody's dad. He looked normal. Some days that was comforting. Other days it made the distance between what he knew and what his body did feel almost insulting. At nine forty, three cracks sounded in the street in quick succession. Miles was on the floor before the fourth. The plate in his hand struck the cabinet door and shattered. One piece skittered under the table. Julia did not scream or say his name. She stayed where she was on the sofa until a soft rushing hiss rose outside and a firework burst above the rooftops. Someone laughed in the street. Miles was crouched beside the dishwasher with one knee on the tile. His hands had gone numb. He knew the date, the street, the room. He knew the smell was washing-up liquid and chicken fat rather than dust and hot metal. The blue light moving across the ceiling came from the television. His body had not requested his opinion on any of it. Julia put her phone down. “Miles?” “Yeah.” “Can I come over?” The question sent shame up the back of his neck. “Course you can.” She stood slowly anyway. Miles got up before she reached him because staying on the floor felt worse. His shin had landed on something sharp enough to sting, and a thin line of blood was running towards his sock. “Brilliant,” he said. Julia looked at the broken plate. “That one was from Tesco.” “Still. Sentimental.” “I'm devastated.” She crouched to gather the larger pieces. “Leave it.” “It's a plate.” “I said leave it.” The words came out too fast and too hard. Julia's hand stopped over a shard, and Miles closed his eyes for a second. There it was again: the second thing, the reaction to the reaction, shame arriving so quickly after fear that sometimes it felt like part of the same reflex. “Sorry.” “You're bleeding.” “I'm fine.” Julia stood and folded her arms. “There it is.” “What?” “Fine.” Miles looked at her. She was wearing the navy jumper he liked, sleeves pushed up to her forearms. There had been a time when he could read every expression on her face without effort. Now he spent so much attention looking for danger that ordinary things sometimes had to announce themselves. “I'm not doing this tonight,” he said. “I haven't done anything.” “Your face has.” “My face is tired.” “So's mine.” “Yes, Miles.” Another firework cracked outside. His shoulders jumped before he could control them. Julia saw it, and whatever argument had been forming went out of the room. She fetched the first-aid tin from under the stairs. Miles sat at the dining table while she cleaned the cut. It was nothing, barely more than a scratch, but she put a plaster over it anyway. “Kids,” he said. “Probably.” “October.” “They don't consult the calendar. I'll put it to the council.” He watched her smooth the edge of the plaster with her thumb. “Sorry about the plate. And the snapping.” “No argument about the plate. You were rude.” “Fair.” Julia packed the antiseptic wipe back into its torn foil wrapper, the sort of pointless little task she found when she needed another few seconds before saying something difficult. “You slept last night?” When Miles said some, she asked how much. He claimed not to know. “You know exactly.” Miles looked towards the television. “Two hours? Maybe three.” Julia reminded him that he had come downstairs at one, then again at four. He remembered the microwave clock: 4:07, and himself standing in the kitchen drinking water while the refrigerator compressor cycled. “Two and a bit, then.” Julia closed the first-aid box. “You can't keep doing this.” Miles said he knew, which made her accuse him of answering as though she were nagging. He denied it. “You do,” she said. He ran his thumb along the edge of the chair. “What do you want me to say?” “I don't know.” “That makes two of us.” Julia looked down at the box in her lap. Miles wished immediately that he could pull the line back. It was not especially cruel. It simply sounded like something people said when they had run out of useful things to give each other. He took the tin from her. “I'll clean up.” “I can help.” “I've got it.” This time she let him. By ten thirty the street was quiet again. Julia went upstairs first while Miles checked the front door, then the back, then the downstairs windows. He knew they were locked. He had locked them himself before dinner. Knowing did not stop the circuit completing. Upstairs, Julia was brushing her teeth when he came into the bedroom. Her phone lay charging on the bedside table and she had left his lamp on. “You coming to bed?” she asked through toothpaste. Miles said in a bit. Her eyes met his in the mirror. “Miles.” “I'll come up.” When she pointed out that he was already upstairs, he told her she knew what he meant. She spat, rinsed the sink and wiped her mouth. “Tomorrow you've got that early shift.” Miles said he knew. Julia reminded him that he could not do it on two hours; he had done worse, he said. “That isn't reassuring.” Miles sat on the edge of the bed and unlaced his trainers. Julia watched him for a moment, then got under the duvet. He changed into an old T-shirt and shorts, turned off the main light and lay down beside her. The room was dark except for the orange strip of streetlight around the curtains. Julia rolled onto her side. Miles stayed on his back, listening to the house settle: pipes ticking, a car door farther down the road, the soft change in Julia's breathing as she began to drift. He tried the method the therapist had taught him. Five things he could feel. Mattress. Pillow. Cotton against his shoulder. Duvet over his feet. Julia's hand resting near his hip. Four things he could hear. He made it to three before his attention went somewhere else. Sleep was necessary; he understood that perfectly well. A human body could not bargain with the requirement forever. He also understood what waited when his guard dropped. The word guard annoyed him. Too dramatic. Too military. His therapist had told him to notice when he framed ordinary life in threat language. Miles noticed. Nothing changed. After forty minutes Julia's hand shifted against the mattress and his heart kicked so violently that he sat upright. She woke. “What happened?” “Nothing. Go back to sleep.” Julia pushed herself onto an elbow. “You sure?” “Yeah. I'm going downstairs for a bit.” She did not ask him to stay. That hurt more than if she had. In the living room he left the lights off and sat at the end of the sofa where he could see the hall and the reflection of the garden in the black television screen. At some point after two, his eyes closed. He was not in the living room anymore. There was heat. Somebody shouting. A wall that had not been a wall a second earlier. Dust in his mouth. A hand on his webbing. The impossible certainty that he had forgotten something essential. He came awake standing. The coffee table had shifted two feet. His fist hurt. For several seconds he did not know what room he was in; then the television, radiator and Julia's blue blanket assembled themselves into home. 03:17. His knuckles were red where he had hit something, though he could not remember hitting it. From the top of the stairs Julia said quietly, “I'm here.” Miles turned. She had learned to stand out of reach. That was the moment, more than the fireworks, the broken plate or the two hours of sleep, when he understood that whatever they were doing was no longer enough. He looked at his wife halfway down the stairs, barefoot and frightened of approaching him. “Call Fenner,” he said. Julia did not ask whether he meant in the morning. She simply nodded.