Page 65 of The Two of Us at the End of the World

You think she’s better? she said.

I decided I better think before I spoke, because she said it as if the opposite was true and she was surprised and disappointed I couldn’t see it. There was a glint of the old, spikier Storm in her eyes.

I hope she is? I said.

Except I said it with a hesitant question-mark in my tone, so I sounded unconvincing, even to my own ears.

You don’t even know what’s wrong with her, Mouse, she said. So how can you know she’s got better from it.

So tell me, I said. You think I’m wrong because of something I don’t know, tell me. Don’t leave me in the dark. Tell me and then I’ll be a little less stupid, right?

I don’t think you’re stupid, she said. I mean I know you’re not a bit stupid. And I don’t think you’re soft, like Freya says.

She was just lashing out, I said. I understand that.

No, she said, and her smile changed, something almost like mischief washing the glint of the old Storm’s scorn out of it. No, she definitely thinks you’re soft, Mouse. But I know you’re not. But you’re not us, either. So you don’t know. You don’t know what happened, not like we do because it happened to her and not you, and now? Now it’s worse because she’s in the grasp of something terrifying and dark, darker than the fucking Russian and what he did.

She took a deep breath, as if she needed to gather extra strength for what she needed to say, because it was so heavy.

She’s not better, Mouse, she said. Not a bit. Those babies are just lovely to us, to you and me and Cat, but to her they feel like she’s always running, running to keep up, running to get ahead, but she never gets anywhere except for somewhere she doesn’t want to be, because it’s a place that should be familiar but isn’t any more. Because the only thing she’s actually getting away from is herself. She feels she’s actually losing herself. And I, and you, and Cat can all help look after the babies and they’ll be fine and themselves, but even I don’t know how to stop her losing herself. Do you understand that?

Yes, I said. I see that, I see it’s tiring but—

Storm cut in, slicing the end of my sentence clean as a knife.

But? she said. But? OK. Here’s the but, Mouse: But pain wears away at sleep until there’s not enough of it to get you through the next day’s waking hours, so then you don’t even have time for nightmares, which means you have daymares instead. She thinks she’s dropped, or hit, or shaken the babies, but she hasn’t. She’s just thought of it, because everything is too much, and even thinking it is terrible enough for her to be scared of herself. So there’s nowhere to rest easy, even inside her head with her eyes shut. She goes for those walks, even though she’s tired, even though the stitches your sister did are still really sore, in order to get away from those bad dreams, those dark thoughts that drip away at her, making her less and less of herself, just like the pain erodes the sleep in the first place. You can’t understand that, and I can’t—

She abruptly ran out of words for an instant, then took a great breath, as if gulping them back in.

And I can’t help her, she said.

She had such a lost sound in her voice as she said this that I wonder, if we hadn’t been on horses, if I would have reached out and hugged her, just hugged her the way I did with Cat, being a tree, grounding her, being the thing rooted to the earth. I certainly remember the impulse, and thinking how it would be a clumsy, awkward thing to try and do when we were both in the saddle as we were, and so I never did, and that is probably a good thing because she might have not liked it or understood it. I expect she wouldn’t. At best she’d have agreed with her sister that I was being soft. At worst, well, she might have thought me touching her was something other than kind.

You’re right, I said. Maybe you’re right. Maybe I’m seeing something that isn’t there because I want her to be better, and maybe that makes me imagine good things that aren’t there, but I do know one thing.

That it’s lunch time? she said.

She tried to smile normally, to signal that the intensity was too much and we should go back to talking about nothing. I smiled back.

That you’re a good sister, I said. And you’re kind too, under all those spikes,

Spikes? she said. Are you saying I’m spiky?

Not as much as your sister, more than mine. I grinned. Just.

Cat is quite spiky, she said, and nudged her horse back into a slow walk.

She’s just in a hurry, I said. She’s always in a hurry.

What for? she said.

Don’t know, I said. I asked her once.

She stopped the horse and looked back at me. Her smile was real now, not too much, not too little, just an easy smile which said we’d weathered that last word-storm and were now back to normal.

What did she say? she said.

She said she wasn’t sure, I said. But—