Fletcher spied his mum from the corners of his eyes as they sat on the sitting room sofa, watching the television, then he let his gaze drift to check the clock: late afternoon. He couldn’t tell if he felt guilty about wasting away the day, doing nothing, or if he welcomed the silence from the storm that seemed to encompass every aspect of who he was now—Julia, his dad, Simon, Marion, Dobbs, Carter, and even the pub. Being near his mum seemed to calm the tempest inside his head.
He heard his dad rustling around in the other room and wondered how two adults who had so much in common, besides being father and son and including surviving wars, could coexist inside the same dwelling without so much as nodding to each other in passing. A fleeting thought of approaching his father again, at lea
