Free This Is Not Forgiveness by Celia Rees Page B

to join the Army. No one asked the Army to go to Iraq and Afghanistan. He joined up because he wanted to. He loved it. He actually liked killing people. He told me.’
    ‘You are making out he’s a monster.’ Mum rounds on her. ‘I won’t have it.’
    ‘He didn’t actually say that,’ I point out. ‘He said he liked being a sniper.’
    ‘And what do snipers do? They kill people!’
    ‘Only bad guys.’
    ‘We all know that’s not strictly true.’ Martha glares, defiant, but I can tell that she knows she has gone too far.
    The kitchen goes quiet. You can hear the tap drip, drip, dripping in the silence. When Rob first came back, he’d wake up sobbing and Mum would go in to him. He talked to her about things he’d done that he shouldn’t. One time, Martha overheard them. She’s stored it away to use against him.
    ‘We don’t talk about that, Martha.’ Mum’s voice drops to just above a whisper. ‘Not ever. Do you understand me?’
    Martha nods. Her face is still flushed with anger but she doesn’t say anything. She bites down on her lip and looks away from me quickly to hide the tears starting in her eyes. However hard she tries to be, she doesn’t like to fight with Mum. Mum doesn’t like to fight, either. I dash upstairs to grab a shower. I’m still in T-shirt and boxers. I don’t want to be around for the hugging and crying and girly heart-to-heart.

Chapter 11
     
     
     
     
     
    I go down on my bike. All the curtains are drawn. He’s generally an early riser, but after last night I’m not sure that he’s going to be up. The door’s on the latch, he must have forgotten to lock it last night, so I let myself in. I go into the kitchen to drop off the stuff and he’s there, sitting in his boxers, laptop open on the counter. One eye is closed, the lid red and shiny, the skin underneath stained purple shading to black. His nose is swollen, thickened across the bridge, and his lip is cut and puffy. His knuckles are scabbing over. There are bruises as big as hand-spans down the sides of his torso, blue and green circles with purple centres where the boots connected.
    ‘You’re lucky your ribs aren’t bust.’
    I lay the boxes on the counter. The laptop goes to the screensaver downloaded from The Sun . He was probably on some porn site. The screen he was viewing comes back momentarily. He wasn’t looking at porn; he was looking at guns.
    ‘Will you look at that?’ He keeps his finger on the touch pad. ‘The Barrett M107 50 cal. Most powerful sniper rifle to date. The bullets are five inches long.’ He stretches thumb and forefinger. ‘Big as your dick, little brother. It’s accurate up to one and a half miles, maybe two. It can punch through concrete, armour-plating. If you get hit by that, you don’t get up.’
    He closes the site and the screensaver comes back again.
    ‘How’s your lip?’
    ‘It’s nothing.’ He’s speaking with a lisp out of the left side of his mouth. ‘Must have got hit by a south paw. Don’t hurt. Much.’ He gives a lopsided grin and his laugh turns to a wince. ‘That does.’ He reaches across and opens the bag that I’ve put on the counter. ‘Not more stuff from Mum. Be Good to Yourself ? Jesus Christ! I bet that’s Martha.’ He squints at it through his good eye. ‘Do us a favour and chuck it in the bin.’
    But I don’t do that. I put it in the freezer. There is no food in the fridge. The shelves are stacked with cans and bottles: Guinness, Murphy’s, Stella, Carlsberg, Budweiser, Miller, Magners, all arranged by size and label.
    ‘Stop fussing around.’ He reaches past me to take out a Bud, then readjusts a Carlsberg that has got slightly out of line. ‘You’re as bad as the old dear.’
    He pulls the tab and gulps the contents, the beer spilling down his chin and dripping on to his chest. He wipes it round, like it’s some kind of lotion.
    ‘That’s better!’ He lets out a belch. ‘Beer’s the best thing for a hangover, you know that?