Last night I woke up suddenly, my heart thudding in my chest. Then I heard my dad whimpering and I realised he must have had one of his nightmares when he wakes up screaming. Usually I hear my mom’s soothing tones after that, as if she was putting a baby to sleep. Or else I hear her slippers padding along the passage to the kitchen, where she would make him some tea. Tonight, though, I didn’t hear her at all. I just heard his sobbing breath getting slower, and then silence. I wondered if he was still awake. I would have made him tea, but I don’t think he wants me to know about his nightmares. He never mentions them in the day.

This morning he was in a bad mood. “There’s not enough bloody coffee,” I heard him swear in the kitchen.

“Well, the magic fairy must have forgotten to buy it,” my mom snapped. I knew I would have to make my own school lunch with that hostility. And I knew I had to wait for my dad to be out of the kitchen, otherwise he would moan at me about how much cheese costs as I cut it, or start telling my mom that I’m a spoilt brat when I ask if there is any juice. I waited till I heard his office door slam – he runs a security company from our home – before I ventured out of my bedroom.

Other mornings are completely different. He brings me tea and opens my curtains. “What a beautiful day,” he sings, and gives me a hug. Those kinds of days he talks to me, tells me stories. When I come home from school he comes out of his office, grabs a beer, offers me and my friends a frothy sour sip, and tells us about being in the war. Because he was in the war, he was a soldier. He drove tanks, he fired real machine guns. He killed people. He doesn’t boast about it – he doesn’t need to. You can see from the way he talks that he saw a lot more than he tells us. My mother hates it when he tells these stories. For one thing, he swears. But I think my mother doesn’t like us getting all excited about war. We often play war games at my friend’s house. We’re a bit shy to play it at my house. “Bang bang, you’re dead!” might sound a bit silly to a man who did a lot of the real thing. Sometimes he lets me wear one of his army belts. And he has a gun. I’ve held it. He keeps it in his safe.