Read To Fight For for Free Online Page B

silence, the only sounds coming from the traffic outside, the hum of the boiler, the wind brushing against the outside of the house, far off now that we sat behind a wall of wood.
    I knew something was on Browne’s mind from the way he wasn’t drinking his coffee. Instead, he turned the mug around in his hands and looked down at it as if it would tell him his future. Finally, he looked up at me and said, ‘Don’t you remember the letter, son?’
    â€˜Huh?’
    â€˜The letter. From Barbara. The one she left you. Don’t you remember it? You read it a few days ago, man. Surely you can’t have forgotten it.’
    The letter. Yes, I remembered that. She’d left it for me in that box of creams and stuff I’d bought her. It was about the only thing of hers I had left, apart from my memories, which were breaking up before my eyes. I remembered the letter, of course I fucking did. I could quote the whole thing there and then. ‘I’m using you,’ the letter read, ‘and it tears me up inside. But I do love you.’
    â€˜No,’ I said, ‘I haven’t forgotten it.’
    â€˜â€œDon’t destroy yourself for me” – she wrote that. Remember?’
    â€˜Yes,’ I said. ‘I remember that.’
    â€˜Does it mean anything to you? Do you understand what she was saying?’
    â€˜Yes,’ I said. ‘I understand.’
    He was still turning the mug. I watched it move slowly. I thought that if it stopped moving, the world would stop spinning or I would stop breathing or the past would stop being. The wind rattled the door, the traffic whirred, the mug turned in circles.
    Don’t destroy yourself for me. What else could I do?
    â€˜And?’ he said.
    I hadn’t given that part of the letter any thought. The other parts made such a screaming noise they drowned everything else out.
    â€˜I suppose you’ll know by now that I used you,’ she’d written. ‘You asked me what I wanted, remember? You didn’t believe that I could just want to be with you. Well, you were right. To begin with. I was scared, because of what I was doing and who I was doing it to. I was scared and I needed someone strong. I needed you.’
    I needed you. Yes, I remembered. How could I ever forget? The words were scarred into my brain. Paget had carved them there after he’d carved her face.
    Browne was waiting for me to answer. I let him wait.
    â€˜She wouldn’t want this,’ he said finally. ‘You know that.’
    â€˜I know she was a good person,’ I said. ‘And I know she died because she was a good person.’
    He dropped his head, as if he’d been defeated. But I knew him. I knew he’d come back at me. That’s what he always did; every time it looked like he’d been beaten, he’d get up and go back for more beating. In his way, he was a tough bastard, tougher than any of the fighters he’d once stitched up – tougher than me.
    â€˜So is that all you care about? That she’s dead?’
    I couldn’t answer that. I found myself watching that mug go round and round and round. Maybe, if he kept turning it, I wouldn’t ever have to think what might’ve been.
    He stopped turning the mug, stared at it for a moment, then lifted it to his mouth, drained the contents in three glugs and put it down on the tabletop.
    She’d had that picture, a print of The Fighting Temeraire by Turner. I’d told her about the ship the first time I went to her place, about how, at Trafalgar, she’d fought two French men-of-war to save the Victory .
    â€˜Whenever I think of you,’ she’d written, ‘I think of that old ship, that warhorse … Remember you told me about it? About how, in that picture, it was being tugged in to be broken up? I don’t want to think of you like that. I don’t want you to go seeking revenge for what’s happened to me. Please