Page 147 of The Words Beneath the Noise

“My writing?” Tom sounded surprised. He still wasn't used to the idea that anyone cared about the stories he scribbled in the notebook I'd bought him last Christmas. “It's nothing special.”

“It's not nothing.” I twisted in his arms so I could see his face. “You're good at it. Better than you think.”

Tom's ears went pink. Even after two years together, compliments made him uncomfortable in a way that was endearing and slightly maddening. “It's just... memories, mostly. Trying to get them down before I forget.”

“Are you writing about the estate?”

“Some. Not the classified bits, obviously.” Tom's hand came up, fingers threading through my hair in a gesture that had become familiar, comforting. “Been writing about after, mostly. About us figuring out how to be people again.”

My chest went tight. “Can I read it?”

“Not yet. It's rough.” Tom pressed a kiss to my forehead. “Maybe when it's finished.”

“You always say that.”

“Because it's always rough.” He grinned, that crooked smile that still made my heart stutter. “Besides, you've got your own writing to finish. How's the paper coming?”

I grimaced. The paper in question was a mathematics journal submission, my first attempt at returning to academic work after two years of lying about what I'd done during the war. “Colleague at university” was the official line, vague enough to be meaningless, and most people didn't push. They assumed I'd been shuffling files in some dreary government office, not cracking codes that helped end the war.

“Slowly,” I admitted. “Keeps turning into cipher work in my head. I have to consciously stop myself from encoding it.”

“Old habits.”

“The worst kind.” I pulled away, moving to the shelf where my Black Book sat wedged between a dictionary and Tom'sgrowing collection of notebooks. The cover was more frayed than ever, spine cracked, pages threatening to fall out. I'd started a new notebook months ago for actual work, but the Black Book remained. A relic. A reminder.

Beside it sat a small wooden box Tom had made, sanded smooth and stained dark. Inside were our war things: my broken spectacles from the bombing, Tom's dog tags, a crumpled photograph of the estate staff taken just before Christmas '44. Ruth and Noor were in the back row, grinning. Peter stood to the side, young and doomed and not yet a traitor. And there, barely visible, were Tom and I at opposite ends of the frame, carefully not looking at each other.

“Do you ever regret it?” I asked, not turning around. “Giving up the army. The structure.”

“No.” Tom's answer was immediate, certain. “I did my bit. More than my bit. I'm done killing for king and country.”

“And the nightmares?”

“Getting better. Some nights I sleep all the way through now.” His voice softened. “Helps that you're there. Makes it easier to remember I'm home.”

Home. This cramped flat with its creaking pipes and draughty windows and neighbours who played the wireless too loud. It wasn't much, but it was ours. We'd scraped together the deposit with demobilisation pay and my modest university salary, signed the lease as “friends sharing accommodation costs,” and built something small and safe in a world that had tried its damnedest to break us.

A knock at the door interrupted my thoughts. Tom crossed the room in three strides, checked the peephole out of old habit, then opened it to reveal Mrs Chen from downstairs holding a paper-wrapped parcel.

“Postman left this,” she said in her clipped accent. “Too big for your letterbox.”

“Thank you, Mrs Chen.” Tom took the parcel, hefted it. “Heavy. You shouldn't have carried it up.”

“Bah. I'm not so old I can't manage stairs.” But she smiled, pleased at his concern. Mrs Chen had adopted us as her unofficial tenants-to-worry-about, appearing periodically with leftover soup or offers to mend torn clothes. She'd never asked awkward questions about why two men shared a one-bedroom flat, and we'd never offered explanations.

Tom closed the door, turning the parcel in his hands. “Postmark says Birmingham. That's your sister, yeah?”

“Bea.” I felt a smile tug at my mouth. Bea had married an engineer and moved to Birmingham last year, much to our mother's dismay. She wrote regularly, long chatty letters full of gossip and sketches in the margins. “Let's see what she's sent.”

We moved to the sofa, Tom settling beside me as I worked the string loose and peeled back brown paper. Inside was a tin of biscuits, actual sugar biscuits that must have cost a fortune in rations, and a thick envelope addressed in Bea's sprawling hand.

To my favourite brother and his better half, the envelope read, and I could hear the laughter in her words. Bea had taken to Tom immediately, from that first Christmas Eve when I'd introduced him as my partner and waited for the world to end. Instead, she'd hugged him fiercely and whispered in his ear something that made him blush for the rest of the evening.

Inside the envelope were two letters, one for each of us, and a photograph of Bea and her husband standing in front of their new house, both grinning like fools.

“She looks happy,” Tom observed.

“She is.” I scanned my letter, smiling at Bea's updates: