Old Mate
There it is!” He leaned on Tom’s arm, pointing with excitement at an empty shop, boarded up.
Tom shook his head.
“There? There? That’s not a café, you’re better off buying a franchise, that my friend is a money pit of epic proportions, I used to break into there when I was a kid, nice ceiling, few rats, floor holey it should be made a saint.”
He looked at his friend, nothing he’d said dimmed the light of fervour in Harry’s eyes.
“We’ll be demobbed soon, I want a place. It has all the chairs tables, a bedsit above, nice attic become a nice flat with a little work, it’s a steal, demob money will cover the rest.”
Tom understood Harry’s desire for normality after all they’d seen and been through together he too craved normality, to him normality was an illusion that time had forced them to leave behind.
“I get where you’re coming from, but Em? Will she agree? It’s not a fit place for her and the bundle on it’s way.”
Harry Gave Tom a look of disagreement and then a solemnity So Familiar that he knew wisdom was making it’s way into audible form.
“She suggested it. I don’t hide anything from Emily, I know you hide things from your girl, you know we shake at night and relive what we cannot change. There is no going back, but we try, we cling to it. I see you trying tending to your graves with that friend of yours, your old life. Mine is gone, obliterated, our tree gone. Only Em is left and if she wants us to work together for something, a future, a new dream.Then I’m getting it for her, for us and the little bundle and you aren’t going to rain on it.”
Tom clapped the other man’s back.
“No worries I just wanted to make sure it wasn’t a madcap scheme, you are a known loose cannon, I know you mean it. I have some demob money coming too if you an investor."
The two of them looked up at the building, it no longer seemed like a bad idea. Tom was glad his old mate would have something to keep the terror at bay.