‘Come here.’ He threw it aside and pulled back the covers.

As soon as she climbed on, he was straight to action with barely a spit on his thumb to prepare her, fast and silent, the abandoned tablet lighting the room with unwatched, flickering action bouncing off the walls as though they were underwater. Rounds of gunshots rang out. Pump, pump, pump. A helicopter took off. He turned her over to get deeper. Carly held her breath to stop herself drowning, arm across her face, torn between animal delight and guilt at enjoying it so much, fingertips on fire.

Shouts on the little screen, calling for backup, another screech of wheels, a rumble of caterpillar tracks and boom of incendiary fire.

She could feel Ash starting to go soft.

Grabbing the iPad, he fumbled turning it off, a music app starting instead; Drake, all grinding, beating hip hop heart. It should have helped, but it didn’t.

Carly did all she could, angling her hips, moaning encouragement, reaching down to coax his ever-flagging cock back to life. Nothing made a difference.

It wasn’t the first time. Sometimes Ash was apologetic, sometimes angry, or sometimes silent as now, rolling away uncommunicatively, cursing under his breath then muttering a terse, ‘Let’s forget it’ as he picked the tablet back up.

Carly knew from experience that he loathed being consoled with platitudes or being told it didn’t matter, that to reassure him was worsening the blow.

Instead, she lay awake, knowing she could no more say anything than she could sleep. Eventually, she opened her book to read, one Bridge had lent her which she hadn’t had time to start until now. An hour later, she was still reading, wondering at how women like Bridge and this author with her white-streaked hair and street cred could be so confident in their own minds, so upbeat and flippant about the things that had shaped them from schooldays to bullies to family to menstruation. All Carly remembered was following friends into womanhood in a rush, like cramming through a door, only to find Ash holding it open on the other side.

Ash’s breathing deepened to sleep. She flicked more pages, feeling both stupidly naïve and a part of wider new friendship, a tribe of Bridges, women who said it like it was and thought differently to her mother and schoolfriends, to the army wives she’d known, to her.

Ash’s nightmares started kicking in early that night, barely an hour after he’d fallen asleep. It wasn’t yet ten.

She laid a hand on his arm, but he was already deep down in his subconscious, mumbling ‘Do not move!’ It wasn’t directed at her. It was his soldiering voice. Then, ‘You are safe. La ta khaf. La ta khaf!’

His nightmares, which often started with a moan then a shout, were quick to escalate, an arm flying out so fast Carly had to duck, his stop-start breath-quickening, then a silent terror that was a precursor to the screaming which always made her blood run cold, frightened the kids and forced her to wonder at what it was he’d seen that he could never unsee.