‘No, it’s fine. You need to grieve for your friend, it’s important.’
The food arrived and by unspoken agreement they both plastered on a smile for the barman. Will raised a hand.
‘Thanks, Theo.’
Grace dealt herself a plate with a bit of everything and put some squid in her mouth.
‘Mmmm, delicious. You should try some.’
Will looked at her with some of the old scepticism. She had said it like she was taking part in an advert.
‘Are you suggesting I eat before I fall over?’
‘Something like that.’
Will tore off a piece of bread and put it in his mouth.
‘Happy?’
‘I think you’ll need something a bit more substantial than that.’
Why was she giving in to the urge to mother him? He was a grown man, and how much he ate was his concern. The need to constantly feed people was very Greek, so maybe she was going native.
Will tore off another piece of bread but left it on his plate.
‘I just wish there was more help available for guys like Barney. Guys who put their lives on the line day after day, and who are suddenly left out in the cold. One day you’re a hero, the next, no one wants to know.’
They were venturing deep into personal territory. This was a very different side to the Will she’d known so far.
‘But aren’t there organisations or charities who can help ex-service personnel?’
She was sure she’d given money to people collecting for the services in the past. Grace thought about her own position. She’d always seen the armed forces as something the country needed, but at the same time she abhorred the idea of violence or actual killing. Perhaps naively she hadn’t thought much about what happened when you were no longer part of a team who’d been through such intense experiences.
‘There is some help available, and it’s a damn sight better now than it was years ago, but it’s not enough. People try, but they don’t always understand what we’ve been through.’
Grace noted the change from ‘they’ to ‘we’. This was more than a simple mourning of a friend.
‘Mental health is a major issue. What we have to do messes with your head. And the longer it goes on, and the more tours you do, the worse it gets.’
Will turned to face her.
‘I knew I had to get out when I started being sick every morning before going out on patrol. I’d look at myself in the mirror and it was pure fear that looked back. What use is that to the men you’re leading? You could put someone’s life in danger. Keeping your men safe is more important than anything.’
Grace stayed still and silent. Whatever this was, Will needed to push through it. She knew from bitter experience that you couldn’t keep repressing feelings, because they’d come back to bite you. Immediately after Phil’s death, when people had asked her if she was feeling OK, she’d nearly always said yes, because that’s what they wanted to hear. It made them feel better. What she really wanted to do was stand up, scream and say, ‘Are you out of your mind? Of course, I’m not OK. How could I possibly be OK when I’ve just lost the person I’ve loved for the whole of my adult life and all our plans for the future are destroyed?’
Of course, she’d never done it– someone would have probably tried to have her committed– but it had only been with Sofia that she could tell the truth about how bad things really were. Three years on, the raw grief had almost gone, but there was still a dark corner of her bruised heart that made itself known every now and then. At least she had Sofia to talk to. She didn’t like to assume, but Will, being a man, was probably less likely to talk to someone about his experiences, especially as he lived alone.
Grace tuned back into what Will was saying.
‘And becoming a parent while you’re serving in the forces affects you even more. I saw an extra level of fear in the eyes of the men who were fathers. It makes you a whole lot more vulnerable too, which is dangerous in itself. I used to think about my son every time I left the camp, wondering if he was going to be left fatherless.’
Will missed the table completely when he tried to put the bottle down, and Grace bent to pick it up from the stone floor, where it was spilling its contents, miraculously still intact. She stopped worrying about being seen as motherly and put some calamari and salad on a plate.
‘Here, eat this, before you smash something.’
His salute held a bit of the Will she knew.
Grace waited until he’d eaten everything on the plate before speaking.
