blinding spasms of another migraine. But he kept such episodes to himself for fear of being diagnosed as paranoid.
*
Because he interpreted Willis’s comments on withdrawal as a warning, he forced himself to socialize and phone his parents on a regular basis. He gained little from doing it except nods of approval from the psychiatrist, because his interest in other people’s affairs was zero. It was a test of his endurance to sit through vacuous conversations about wives and children who meant nothing to him, or fake a response to a joke by lifting a thumb or making a grunt of acknowledgement in the back of his throat. It helped that no one expected him to smile. He even found it curious that a lively expression could fade abruptly when the person he was speaking to remembered his disability. Once or twice, in the privacy of his room, he tested the elasticity of his reconstructed flesh in an attempt at a smile, but the ugly, lopsided grimace in the mirror looked more like an arrogant sneer than an expression of warmth. His surgeons expressed pleasure at the progress he was making, but Acland wasn’t impressed. After four months, the same number of operations and two lengthy recuperation periods outside hospital – which he chose to spend in a Birmingham hotel rather than return to his parents – his dead eye socket and tapered scar looked as livid and inelastic as they had ever done.
He found it easier to show no emotion at all, which was a truer reflection of how he felt, for without the means to demonstrate joy or empathy, the sensations themselves seemed to have withered and died.
Four
DESPITE WHAT HE’D TOLD Robert Willis, Acland hadn’t forgotten Jen. In the same way that an orderly’s smile reminded him of one of his dead soldiers, the turn of a woman’s head sometimes reminded him of her. Such recognitions left him with none of the grief that memories of his crew evoked, but he hated the brief sensations of shock they gave him. It was one of the reasons why he preferred male nurses.
When the tap came at his open door on a Friday afternoon in April, he assumed it was a cleaner. He was standing at his window, watching a woman push a double amputee in a wheelchair along a tarmac path. They were of an age, so Acland guessed they were partners, but as neither could see the other’s face their expressions said exactly what they were feeling. Both looked unhappy and frustrated, and it seemed to Acland that whatever relationship they’d had was over.
‘Charlie?’
He recognized her voice immediately, and his reaction was so extreme that he had to put a hand against the window to steady himself. He thought he was experiencing shock again until adrenalin kicked in and he knew the emotion he felt was fear. He continued to stare out of the window. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I came to see you.’
‘Why?’
She put a husk into her voice. ‘Do I need a reason, Charlie? I’d have come straight away if the hospital hadn’t kept telling me you didn’t want visitors.’
He ran his tongue round his mouth to produce some saliva. ‘Whose idea was this? Dr Willis’s?’
She avoided the question. ‘I hoped you’d be pleased to see me.’
‘Well, I’m not. The block on visitors hasn’t changed. They shouldn’t have told you where I was. Are you going to leave of your own accord or do you want me to call someone to throw you out?’
‘At least let me say sorry before I go.’
‘What for?’
‘The way it ended.’
‘I’m not interested. If I had been, I’d have read your letters.’
‘Did you get them?’ she asked with a catch in her voice. ‘When you didn’t answer, I thought perhaps the hospital was keeping them from you until your memory came back.’
‘Well, now you know.’
‘
‘Don’t do this, Jen.’
She sighed. ‘It wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t kept going away.’
Acland told himself grimly not to be drawn into one of her blame games. ‘Not interested,’ he repeated.
There was a short silence and when she spoke again her tone had an edge to it. ‘I could have reported you. Maybe I should have done. You wouldn’t have been sent to Iraq if I had. I did think about it, you know.’
He watched the amputee put the brakes on his wheelchair to prevent his partner pushing him any further. ‘I knew you weren’t that stupid. Even a brain-dead zombie knows what mutually assured destruction is.’
She gave a small laugh. ‘But I didn’t have a regiment to be drummed out of. You might at least thank me for that.’
He didn’t say anything.
She reverted to cajoling. ‘I know you felt bad about it, darling,’ she said in her soft voice, ‘but if I’m willing to let bygones be bygones, can’t we just forget all about it?’
‘You know that’s not true.’
