Ben’s voice had ascended a semitone and Jess couldn’t stop herself asking the question. “What happened? With your daughter?”

There was a fractional hesitation, Ben glancing at her, then away again quickly, and it was as though Jess could hear the acceleration of his heartbeat.

“I had a son, Zach. He was a great kid. Funny and smart and interested in the world. A kid full of curiosity. I know everyone thinks their kids are special but Zach really was different. He just had this way of making people around him feel good.”

Jess watched in silence as Ben rested his elbows on his thighs, hands clasped together under his chin. She tuned out the white noise of other people’s conversations, held on tight to her own memories and focused on Ben.

“Zach was ten when 9/11 happened. He’d been at school in Brooklyn when the Twin Towers were hit, saw from his classroom window smoke rising out of the buildings. He watched the second plane fly into the south tower, watched both towers tumble to the ground. I still can’t imagine what that must have been like for a child—to see your city under attack, to understand that things you thought were solid and indestructible were weak and defenseless. We lost two of our best friends that day. Zach had known them all his life. It was such a surreal time—I don’t think anyone who wasn’t there can ever really understand. It was like being in a daze for weeks on end, a really bad dream you just couldn’t wake from. There was so much confusion and anger and shock.”

Ben sat stock-still, shoulders hunched high around his neck. Jess remained silent beside him, knowing that sometimes what stories needed more than anything was the space to find their way out into the world.

“Zach changed after that day. Everything changed, obviously, but Zach’s whole personality was different. Everyone we knew had been affected by 9/11 in some way but . . . I don’t know . . . Zach seemed to feel it more deeply than his friends. It was as though the dust from all that debris had got under his skin, filtered into his bloodstream, become a part of who he was. He went from being a gregarious, life-loving kid to someone who was watchful, quiet, wistful. I’d always assumed he’d abhor violence and conflict, hate anything to do with war. I don’t know. Maybe we should have seen the signs, clocked what he was thinking sooner. Maybe then we’d have stood a chance of stopping him.”

Ben paused, ran his fingers through his hair, let his chin rest back on his clasped hands.

“He told us just before his eighteenth birthday that he was deferring his university place, joining the military, going to fight in Afghanistan. I can’t really describe what a shock it was. Of all the kids in his class, Zach was the last person you’d think would do that. Nicole and I did everything we could to try and dissuade him. We pleaded with him, rationalized with him, showed him the videos and the stats and the New York Times articles. We got angry with him, got angry with each other, but he was resolute. He joined up, did his training, left for Kandahar the day after his nineteenth birthday.”