Dale Barracks, Chester, December 1999
As bad as the yelling had got just before Dad was deployed to the Falklands, John thinks this deafening silence might actually be worse. Night after night they sit at the table like bandits at a standoff, each eyeing the others as though to anticipate which will be first to disrupt the tenuous tea-time peace.
John doesn't hate Harry. But he does resent her and the way she's taken their family and smashed it to pieces with her need to be different. To stand out.
He gets it. That this is what she wants; or, at least, what she thinks she wants. And John wants her to be happy, but how serious can it be? It's not like it's real. She's just experimenting, John thinks, but even after she's figured out it's a bloke she's been after all along, all this unbearable silence will still be here, filling the gaps between them.
He sighs and moves a bit of the food on his plate around. A clink and clatter of metal on ceramic. A soft gulp of water traveling down his mother's throat. The soft stab of a fork into pork chops and carrots. A huff of irritation from Harry.
John just keeps his head down.
There's a knock on the door and Harry's eyes light up - in pleasure or perversity, John can't say. Mum looks to the door with a pained expression, then back at Harry with pleading eyes, but Harry - oblivious to everything but herself, as always - jumps to her feet and answers it.
The girl on the other side is tall - not like Harry, who's got the short Watson genes. Her hair is cut short and spiky, and she wears a plain white t-shirt under her denim jacket. A heavily eye-shadowed gaze skirts disinterestedly over Mum and John, then Harry tugs on her jacket to pull her into the bedroom, slamming the door behind them.
Mum sighs, cradling her forehead in her hand, and in that moment, John understands with a rare clarity that nothing is worth this. Not happiness, not 'finding yourself' or whatever it is his sister is doing. Harry would say he's a mummy's boy, and maybe he is. But he hates to see Mum's suffering - that weary look of forfeited dreams that he should be too young to recognise. Were it him, he'd do anything to avoid being the cause of it.
John just wishes Harry were the same.
Mum looks up and her eyes catch John's. He fights the urge to look away.
After a moment, he gives her a tight smile and shrugs. Mum shakes her head and they set to eating again, each pointedly ignoring the muffled squeals of laughter coming from behind Harry's closed door.