After the fire, a still small voice - By Evie Wyld Page 0,16

if you’re lucky enough to come back.’

His father put down his knife and his fork. From somewhere, a place Leon had never known to exist in his father, a deep rumbling: ‘Be quiet, woman.’

Hot potato stuffed up the back of Leon’s throat and his feel for his food changed, like it had been turned to bin scrapings.

‘I expect support from my wife, Maureen.’ After a moment’s thought he said, ‘These are not Germans.’

His mother flushed pink and stood up, collecting the plates, still full of steaming food. She said, ‘And what happens when you get killed?’

Leon went upstairs when they began raising their voices and their movements made the glasses in the cabinet clink, and immediately regretted it – he should have gone out of the back door, but now he was trapped. His heart beat a new beat. They both seemed to think the other one was stupid and selfish and awful. There was a shout, a slap, a loud one and then another, and they echoed through the house. He lay on his bed, thinking about who had got hit and who had done the hitting. He wondered if he should get up, say something, but he didn’t know what. He decided it was none of his business. After the slaps the house was quiet and he thought about sneaking out, but he felt drained and pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes to try to get them to close. He woke itchy, still wearing his clothes, just as a breath of light was coming into the sky. There was a noise like a dog snuffling in the street and he looked out of his window, but there was nothing to see. When he lay back down there was a whine, a scritch-scratch at the front door and something about it made him climb under his sheets and pull them up to his nose. The noise carried on until he heard someone downstairs open the front door. His father must have slept on the sofa. After the door had opened and closed there was just silence, and Leon slept.

In the morning, things were soft. His mother’s eyes were swollen and there was a red mark on the side of her face. She smiled at Leon and her top lip was puffy. He thought he might be sick. ‘It’s okay, chicken. We were angry. I hit him right back.’

And when his father came down there was a mark on his face too, but he put an arm round her waist, and smelt her hair and kissed her neck. Leon went to school, a feeling in his guts that something had changed in the night.

The day Leon’s father left, his army greens taut over his chest and his hat folded on one side like a listening ear, his mother became stiff. There was something wooden in the way she moved, her hair was coiled in a tight bun.

Tea was still at six, and there was still meat and there were still pressure-cooked potatoes. The same dances carried on through from the shop to the house, recipes were still performed to the letter. The same questions were asked of school, of homework, but they were shrunken, boiled down to the bare bones. He could see the oddness of that empty chair, like a ghost at the head of the table. In the kitchen the smell of burnt sugar was paler, like the way his mother burnt sugar was a less rich version. The angel-hair crowns she made sat gummily on top of tarts and he watched her frown, shaking her head and picking the mess off and dropping it in the bin. A missing ingredient. When his father telephoned Leon tried not to listen to the taut noises she made. She called for him to come and talk but he pretended not to be in and slipped out the back. When the first letter arrived, his mother read it aloud with her hand over her mouth like something might try to jump out of there.

Darlings,

There are exciting things that I would like to tell you, but I will keep it quick, as I want to be sure this reaches you in the next post. Training has been hard but I am confident that we will flatten these buggers just as soon as we get to them. I am well, I have some new friends, a man, North, and a younger boy called Mayhew. He is a keen lad, reminds