It was just after three when Barbara woke to find herself alone. She waited a few minutes thinking he might be in the bathroom but when he did not reappear she went searching for him. Lynley had dressed in jeans and a shirt and was sitting by the fire when she found him. "Are you okay?" she asked.
"I couldn't sleep so I came out here."
She sat beside him and watched the flames dancing in the hearth letting him know she was there if he wanted to talk. Tommy put his arm around her shoulder and they sat silently for over an hour before he spoke. "I haven't been able to sleep properly since I came back to work. I either have nightmares or I wake up and can't get back to sleep. The first few months I would just drink more and pass out but after I went back to work I couldn't do that so I would just sit up most of the night staring into space."
"You should have told me."
Tommy shrugged then stood and walked to the window and watched the lights. He was restless and irritable. "Thanks for sitting up with me Barbara but would you mind if I spent some time alone?"
"Of course not but if you want me you know where I am eh?" She was hesitant to leave him alone but there were plenty of times she needed to be by herself to think.
He paced around and considered pouring a drink. He got out a glass and found the whiskey. He opened the bottle and sniffed it. It was well aged and mellow. He was about to pour it when he thought about all those nights he had spent drinking alone. It had solved nothing then and would solve nothing now. If he started drinking now it would be hard to pull up and that would only complicate everything. He could not trust himself so did up the bottle and returned it to the shelf. He sat down and closed his eyes trying to stay calm and in control. He was not overly angry but he was beginning to feel a little off kilter. Random thoughts darted across his mind and disappeared. He tried to catch them to analyse them but every time he tried they changed and moved. It was almost like having a nightmare but he was awake and could not escape. They crowded in on him and he just wanted them to end.
The light was breaking over Hastings and the morning sky was alive with fresh lines of blue and gold. Lynley saw no real beauty in it but a walk in the sea air could not hurt. He left Barbara a note beside her pillow and kissed her so lightly she did not stir. The sunrise was almost complete but the air still held its night chill. He pulled up the collar of his coat and strode purposefully along the cliff path focussing on all the small things around him and trying to ignore the rising anxiety that was gripping his mind. He walked for an hour then turned and came back up the path to the house. His ribs hurt and his breathing was laboured. Walking had probably not been a good idea physically but it had helped him. His heart pounded in his chest and his breathing was shallow. He needed to get into better shape when all this was over.
By the time he got back he had long since removed his coat but he was still sweating despite the cool breeze that swept past the house. Barbara was up and dressed and he could tell she had been worried. "Sorry, I just kept walking," he told her, "it seemed to help."
Tommy showered and changed but he was still sweating and his heart and breathing had not changed. He tried hard to conceal it but Barbara could see it in his eyes. "It's okay. You don't have to bluff it out. We expected this might happen. We just run with it."
He tried to smile but it was more of a grimace. Her offer of food or coffee made him feel ill but he declined politely. "I think I might just lie down for a while."
Barbara heard the shower running again. She could see he was beginning to suffer and hoped he might get some sleep. When she went in to check on him half an hour later he was not in the room. She found him in the second bedroom curled up in the bed in a foetal position with all the blankets wrapped tightly around him. Sweat was running from him but he was shivering and his teeth were chattering. He had his hands clenched and the fists pressed hard against his temples. She turned the air conditioning up as high as it would go and fetched another blanket from the robe. He did not feel hotter or colder to the touch than normal so she sponged his face with a warm face cloth and sat with him wondering what else she could do. It was agonising to watch him suffer.
Tommy did not really respond to anything she said. He seemed locked in a prison in his own mind and she would just have to wait until he came back to her. Within half an hour he became hot and tossed off the blankets and the sweat poured from him as he thrashed about on the bed. She managed to get him to drink some water and he had acknowledged her with a weak 'thanks'. This time she mopped his sweaty face and neck with a cool cloth. He seemed to like the feel of it on his skin so she wet another one and placed it over his forehead and eyes which helped calm him.
She had no idea how long the cycles of hot and cold lasted but well after the sun had set she realised that for the last hour he had been sleeping peacefully. She wanted to find a way to change the bed linen so that he was not lying in damp pool of his own sweat but with her injuries he had been too heavy to move. She was grateful to Judith for organising the soup because she had been able to grab a quick bowl for her lunch and her dinner. She had even managed to get him to swallow a few mouthfuls mid-afternoon. Now all she could do was to sit guard over him waiting.
She opened her eyes and cursed. She had fallen asleep and he had disappeared. The clock told her it was almost dawn. She tore from the room and out to the lounge and found him sitting by the fire. He had not seen her and was bent over with his head in his hands. She approached slowly so that she did not startle him and as she drew closer she could hear him crying. She paused and observed him for a while. Her natural instinct was to go to him and hold him but something told her this was something he needed to do alone. There was an odd dichotomy with Tommy. He was quite an emotional man and yet it was rare for him to open up emotionally to others. It had happened a few times but he seemed to hold everything in, stiff upper lip and all that conservative upper class nonsense.
He sensed her and lifted his head. "How long have you been standing there watching?" It was not an accusation and there was no bitterness in his voice.
"A minute or so. I thought you needed space."
"Sit with me."
Barbara went over and put her hand on his shoulder then sat next to him. He had stopped crying but his eyes were bloodshot and raw. He had been sitting here longer than she had thought. She was not sure what to say so waited. If he wanted to talk he would. "Thank you for looking after me. I could feel you sponging me."
"My pleasure." She frowned at herself. Is that the best you can manage to say?
"I feel a bit better. My heart has stopped pounding and my headache is better but I've got all these weird sensations in my head. It's like I've got a lot of little men in there all whizzing around on zip lines yelling 'yee haa!' or like having a shooting star go across your brain."
Barbara could not help but smile. "I know it's not funny but that description is. It'll be all right, we'll get you through it."
"I hope I'm not going mad. I went to see the psychiatrist because I thought I was going to go mad. When I couldn't sleep I'd think about what happened or the numerous other disasters in my life but most of the time it was just random disconnected thoughts about Helen, the baby, you, my mother and often about nothing I even recognised as belonging to my life. They made no sense but I couldn't shake them. Then I started to get them at work too. They wouldn't leave me alone and I couldn't concentrate, I started to lose the ability to function. I just wanted to run Barbara but I didn't know what I was running from; I just wanted some peace. That's why I went to the doctor, to try to get some peace.
"I wish you had told me."
'Why? So you could worry that I might crack up at some point and let you down? So that you would know how weak I am?"
Barbara turned to face him. "You are not weak. Did you think I was weak when I broke down that time in Suffolk?"
"No, of course not!"
"Then why would you expect me to think you were?"
"It's not the same. You were shot, I wasn't. I watched you being shot and Helen being shot and I couldn't do anything except feel sorry for myself. I tried hard not to drag you or anyone else into it and then made a complete hash of everything again. Helen used to tell me the way I reacted to trauma was like a tortured adolescent and she was right. I am over forty years old and all I do is run and hide from everything that goes wrong. I can't even face myself." He stood and walked to the window and looked across at the distant lights. Tommy ran his hand through his hair in exasperation. His mind was a jumble of contradictory thoughts. He could not explain to Barbara something that he could not understand himself.
Barbara came and stood beside him. "Every night after I was shot I used to wake up in a cold sweat. Sometimes I would wake just in time to hear myself screaming. I used to have terrible nightmares and flashbacks. Sometimes the gun would not go off; other times it was you or my mother or my brother who shot me. Or worse still it was you that was shot and me that was powerless to stop it. Like you I had no peace. I should never have gone back then to work but I was driving myself crazy and I wanted to be with you. I needed your stability. When Garrett wanted to shoot me though I didn't really care. At that point it would have ended the anguish and given me the silence I craved. But I got angry; I wanted to punish him for all of the things that had happened. When I was hitting him it wasn't because of the way he had made me feel but because the pain and terror of being shot; because of Terry's death and how that made me feel; because of how I treated my parents; what I had become as a person. So don't tell me I don't understand anger or pain because I do. When you dragged me away and everything just flooded out it made me feel better, much, much better. If you hadn't been there then I would have collected myself and covered it over again and I'd probably still be suffering but I knew you'd understand. It was safe for me to just surrender to it and let it go. You were there to protect me and I didn't care what anyone thought. I wish you had come to me when you were suffering so that I could've sheltered you."
Tommy sank to the floor in despair. "I'm so sorry Barbara. I never asked; I never let you talk about it all. I just assumed you were stronger than me."
Barbara sat down beside him, her hand on his face forcing him to look at her. "No, I was strong because of you."
His arms came around her and held her so tightly that it hurt. She held his head and let him cry unaware that she was crying just as hard.
Author's note: Thanks for your patience. This story got longer than I thought. Only one more chapter I think.
