Free Hiding the Past by Nathan Dylan Goodwin Page B

emotions he had always felt coming back: nostalgia, disappointment
and hopelessness.  It was the same on each and every occasion that he
returned home, the feelings only swelling and deepening with time.  His
hopes of a last-minute cancellation were quashed by the din spilling out from
the open windows.
    Juliette sensed
his apprehension and grasped his hand in hers as they neared the front door,
giving it a tender, reassuring squeeze.
    Morton pressed
the doorbell and waited.  He had his own key in his pocket but the last
time he’d used it – more than two years ago now - his father had reacted with
such shock that he had just tottered in off the streets without prior warning
that Morton had never dared to use it ever since.
    A figure moved
behind the obscure glass.
    Morton returned
Juliette’s squeeze as the door opened, revealing Jeremy with a large grin on
his face.  In full military uniform.  He looked like Action Man’s
child, Action Boy; all dressed up and ready to play.  Morton wondered if
Jeremy really knew the difference between a weekend in the New Forest
paint-balling with his mates and live warfare.  Probably not.  But
then again, did half the teenagers serving out there really understand or care
about anything beyond the fact that they’d been given a real gun with real
bullets and carte blanche to kill real people?
    ‘Hi, Jeremy,’
Juliette said, leaning in to kiss him on the cheek.
    ‘Hi, guys, so
glad you could make it,’ Jeremy said cheerfully, irking Morton.  How
could anyone be so happy about going to Afghanistan?   Morton extended
his hand to his brother but Jeremy pulled him into a bear hug, squashing
Morton’s right hand between them.  As far as Morton could recall, it was
the first time he had ever embraced his brother.  He wondered if that was
normal for two thirty-something-year-old brothers.  Finally Jeremy pulled
away and stepped back to allow them into the busy house.
    ‘All set then,
Jeremy?’ Morton asked.
    ‘Think so,
yeah,’ Jeremy answered, leading them through the crowded hallway.  Morton
hardly recognised the place.  The house was teeming with macho men
throwing Stellas down their thick tattooed necks and laughing raucously. 
Morton couldn’t imagine for a single second what his dad thought about his
house being turned into an army barracks’ outpost.  He’d probably gone
next door to David and Sandra’s for wine, cheese and a few games of Scrabble.  
    Apparently not.
    His father
appeared from the crowd clutching a cup of tea in his favourite mug emblazoned
with a watercolour kingfisher.  ‘Morton, Juliette,’ he said, as if he was
taking a register and simply confirming their presence, rather than welcoming
them into his home.  He looked so much older to Morton than the last time
he’d seen him.  He noticed that the last flecks of his naturally
coal-black hair had been completely drowned by a solid sea of dove-grey. 
He greeted Juliette with a smile when she leant in to peck him on the
cheek.  Morton shook his hand.  None of that namby-pamby hugging
business with Mr Farrier, thank you very much.
    ‘So, how’s work
these days?’ his father asked him.  Morton felt that he had to physically
prevent his eyes from rolling and his lungs from exhaling dramatically. 
His father always opened conversation with questions about his work, seeming to
never believe Morton could actually make money from researching people’s family
trees.
    Juliette
stepped in.  ‘Oh my goodness, the work’s been flooding in for him,’ she
said.  ‘It took a lot to drag him away from it tonight, I can tell
you.’  She laughed.  She was a good liar.  It must have been the
rigorous police training.  If Morton hadn’t known the truth, he might have
believed it himself.  ‘Just this week he landed a really good deal, didn’t
you, babe?’
    Babe ?  When had he suddenly become a babe ? 
It wasn’t a name he particularly felt comfortable with.  Morton