4

It was just gone two in the morning and I was sitting bolt upright in bed, the bed sheet balled in my fists. My heart was pumping like I’d just done a cross-country sprint – I could hear the blood drumming in my ears. I took a while to focus on my surroundings, letting my eyes adjust to the darkness. My heart rate slowed as I recognised where I was and the adrenaline began to leach away. I swung my legs over the side of the bed and sat there for a few moments, staring into the fuzzy dark.

Vivid dreams were something I was used to. After my mum died I’d had the same nightmare for months, of her running panicked through our house, her dress hosed down with red. In those dreams, I was always the one chasing her, watching her ricochet off furniture and stumble blindly before tripping on the bottom stair. Then she’d look back at me over her shoulder and start screaming and screaming in my face until her screams woke me up.

But tonight I’d gone one better. The usual nightmare was back, this time in high definition. I could smell her blood. It was like rust and late cherries. I could see the wooden whorls in the grain of the banister spinning like tops. As per the norm, the dream played out with my mum tripping on the stair, looking back over her shoulder and screaming at me. But instead of waking up as I always did, my viewpoint switched so I wasn’t in front of her anymore, I was above her, watching her die from a distance. But then I’d seen myself, in school uniform, with ripped tights and a pale, wide-eyed face, holding the same knife I’d nearly taken the mugger’s eye out with. The blood was trickling down its serrated edge and I felt it dripping warm and sticky over my hand. Then I woke up.

I ran my fingers through my hair, pulling out the hairband that had come loose. I had to get some water. Had to shake the image in my head and, while I was at it, stop obsessing over what I had or hadn’t almost done to that boy back in London.

I tiptoed into the hallway. Jack’s light was out. I didn’t want to wake him, I knew he had to get up early for work tomorrow, so I crept down the stairs as silently as I could, which wasn’t all that silently as the stairs creaked badly. I paused halfway down to listen – no noise from his room. It clearly didn’t take too much to outwit a Special Forces operative.

My bare feet squeaked on the lino in the kitchen, I wandered to the fridge and stood there for about five minutes staring at the photo of my mum laughing, trying to burn the image over the top of the dream one. Maybe that was why Jack had it there too, in an effort to erase the other, much worse pictures that the imagination could produce. Eventually, I pulled open the fridge door and let the cool condensed air wash over me, luxuriating in the goose-bumps pricking my skin.

‘You’re not hungry, are you?’

I let out a yelp then covered my mouth with my hand to suppress a scream.

‘What the heck? You scared the hell out me,’ I whispered, hanging on to the fridge door for support as my heart restarted. It couldn’t take much more of these adrenaline spikes.

Alex was standing an inch behind me. He’d snuck up on me from God knows where. I revised my estimation of Marine recon training. I turned slowly, giving him a look, and staggered to the table.

‘Sorry,’ he said, looking at me with concern as he flicked on the overhead light.

‘S’OK,’ I muttered, blinking in the sudden glare. ‘I just wasn’t expecting to see you, is all. Thought you’d gone back to your place.’

‘Yeah, we, um . . .’ He hesitated and I looked up. ‘We had a little situation at work, Jack had to go and take care of it, so I came over to sleep on the sofa, in case you woke up and didn’t know where he’d gone.’

I smiled and shook my head at him. ‘Usually a note works just fine.’

He was wearing the same blue jeans that he’d had on earlier, but had taken off his shirt and was now wearing only a white T-shirt. It was physically painful to tear my eyes away from his shoulders and arms, like ripping a Band-Aid from my eyelids. The same black inked tattoo that I’d seen on Jack covered the curve of his upper arm and I wanted to press my fingers against it and indent it into my hand.

When I managed to force my mind back onto a less X-rated track, I realised he was glancing downwards and his face wore a questioning expression. With a start, I remembered I was wearing only a T-shirt that came halfway down my thighs, just covering the bruise that I’d gotten from the bike and knife incident. But it wasn’t my bare legs he was looking at, or the bruise.

‘Hey, I recognise that T-shirt!’

Oh God. Inside my head I doubled over, cringing. I could feel the heat rising in my cheeks as, casually, with as much insouciance as I was capable of, I pulled the front of the T-shirt away from my body as though I too was wondering what on earth I was wearing. As if I didn’t know. As if I hadn’t undressed myself just a few hours ago and pulled that very T-shirt on as I did almost every night. Unthinkingly, or at least not thinking that the person who used to own that T-shirt would come across me wearing it in the middle of the night.

I tried for wide-eyed innocence: ‘What, this thing?’

He was frowning at the almost faded Washington State logo across my chest. I wished it had faded off completely. ‘Yeah, that was mine, I’m sure of it,’ he said.

‘Oh, really?’ My voice had picked up an octave. I lowered it. ‘I thought it was one of Jack’s old ones. I found it lying around one day and kind of adopted it.’

I risked a glance at him.

Alex looked puzzled.

‘It’s good for sleeping in,’ I continued.

‘Yeah, I can see that.’ He was smiling now.

I jumped up. The subject needed changing before I died. ‘So, you fancy some tea?’

‘Yeah, OK, thanks.’

I filled the kettle, feeling his eyes burning into my back.

‘Has it really been so bad?’

I turned around, frowning. ‘What do you mean?’

‘London. Living there with your dad. I can see you’re not happy. I can hear it in your emails too. Tell me what’s been going on.’

The kettle almost fell from my grip. ‘Nothing much. It’s just not home, you know?’

Alex didn’t say anything but he didn’t take his eyes off me either.

How to explain? Telling him the reason I was so unhappy was because I was away from him wasn’t an option unless I never wanted to see him again. Urgh. This was so difficult. Especially with him focusing on me so hard it was like he was trying to see all the way through me. It made it difficult to keep a train of thought going. I looked down at the floor.

‘In Washington, I always felt a part of everything. In the middle of a family. I had you and Jack.’ I risked a glance back up at him. He smiled at me briefly and then lapsed back into a half-scowl.

‘In London I didn’t know anyone apart from Dad and he wasn’t around much. And I couldn’t talk for a long time, I felt so numb.’ My voice cracked. ‘By the time that passed, I just – I just felt so separate, so different to everyone else, like I didn’t fit in.’ I paused. There was so much I couldn’t tell him. Like how when I said I was different to everyone else, I wasn’t talking about having an American accent and a dead mother. I was talking about suddenly and inexplicably being able to move things just by looking at them. I think that qualified me for the ‘different’ category. Hell, it put me right to the front of it.

There was an awkward silence. I turned away and switched on the kettle and reached up for the tea bags from the cupboard overhead.

‘There’s so much I don’t know about you,’ he said.

I bit my lip. He had no idea just how much.

‘What the hell?’

I spun my head to see what Alex was swearing about. He was staring at my right leg and wincing. I tried with my free hand to yank the T-shirt down to cover the ugly black bruise that spread like an oil slick along my thigh.

Alex crouched down, his fingertips grazing mine as he brushed my hand away. He began to trace the line of the bruise towards my knee, like a doctor checking for a break. He was quick and methodical about it and I wondered for a second whether this was some in-built response Marines were trained for whenever they saw injuries. If so I’d have to injure myself more often. I drew in a sharp breath, not because it hurt, but because his fingers were causing little shocks to dance up my legs.

He pulled his hand back. ‘Sorry.’

Actually, I was the sorry one. I could have stood there all night and a little bit longer. I yanked the T-shirt down and twisted around so Alex couldn’t see the bruise anymore, embarrassed now to look him in the face in case he saw in my eyes the lies I was about to tell him.

But Alex only moved silently to the fridge, opened it and pulled something out of the freezer tray. Then he turned back, reaching for a towel hanging on the side. He wrapped the ice pack up tight and then, with his hand on my shoulder, edged me backwards into a chair. He knelt down and pressed the towel against my leg. I yelped at the sudden cold but he ignored me, taking my hand and placing it on top of the pack so I could hold it in place.

He looked up at me now. ‘What happened to you?’

‘It’s no big deal,’ I answered.

He stood up slowly. ‘So, why won’t you tell me?’ A small frown line appeared between his eyes. ‘What happened? Is this anything to do with why you’re here?’

I realised then that I couldn’t laugh it off. He knew me too well to know when I was lying. And maybe a little part of me, the part weakened by the touch of his fingers on my leg, wanted to tell him.

‘OK, I’ll tell you – but you have to promise not to say a word to Jack or I’m not spilling a thing.’

‘I don’t like keeping secrets from Jack.’

‘What are you guys – married or something? Promise, or I’m not telling.’ He didn’t say anything so I made to get up out of the chair.

He took a half-step forward as if to stop me. ‘OK, OK, I won’t tell him.’

‘Good.’ I paused. ‘I was mugged. Two kids on bikes. They slammed into me. It’s not important.’

He stared at me, his eyes narrowing. ‘So why didn’t you just tell us?’ he asked quietly.

I swallowed. ‘Because I know exactly how Jack would have reacted. You know if he finds out he’ll want to get on the next plane over and go find them. You know what he’s like.’ I took a breath. ‘Look, you two can’t go around protecting me my whole life. I can take care of myself. You have special Marine stuff to do – you know, important Mission-Impossible-saving-the-world type stuff. I don’t think babysitting little sisters qualifies in that category and, besides, if you were babysitting me you wouldn’t get to blow stuff up.’

I looked at Alex and noticed his jaw was set and his lips pressed together in a hard line. Not necessarily a good sign.

I tried again, as he still hadn’t said anything. ‘You don’t need to worry about me. Like I said, I can take care of myself. I dealt with it. They didn’t even get my iPod.’

His eyes widened. ‘What? HOW did you deal with it?’

My cheeks filled up like a pufferfish and I let the air out in a rush. ‘Um, I guess I’m just pretty damn ninja.’

I waited for the next question. Alex seemed to be absorbing this last bit of information. Perhaps he was imagining me doing some crazy roundhouse moves. I braced myself for another round of quick-fire questions, wondering why I’d opened my mouth in the first place.

Eventually, he broke the silence. ‘We don’t blow stuff up.’

‘You don’t?’

‘No.’

I was grateful for the change of subject.

‘What do you do, then? I thought you were some special unit – don’t special units have a remit to blow things up?’

I didn’t want him to answer. I didn’t really want to know what Jack and Alex did as a day job. My only reference for the shady world of special operations was gleaned from 24 and Bond movies. The thought of either of them getting hurt caused me actual physical pain, a stabbing feeling between my ribs that stopped me breathing, to be exact – so long ago I’d created a Disney version of what a special operations unit was. It involved animals that talked and burst into tune at any given moment and old ladies needing help to cross the road.

‘You’d be surprised by our remit,’ Alex said. A sardonic smile twitched at the corner of his mouth then vanished, to be replaced again by a frown. ‘You should get back to bed,’ he suddenly said. ‘You must be exhausted.’

I sighed. He was right. I could feel the leaden weight of exhaustion starting to pull me down. I wanted to kiss him goodnight but he stayed where he was, leaning against the counter, arms folded against his chest, and I didn’t have the guts to walk over to him.

‘Yeah, I should.’ I paused, then added, ‘Night, Alex.’

‘I’ll be here on the couch if you need anything. Sleep well.’

I turned towards the hallway and my bed, wondering how he’d take it if I told him the only thing I needed was him – and whether, if he knew that, he’d take back the offer.