DUNKIRK | HARRY STYLES

[Scene One]

3 years ago

My bedside clock said it was 3:12am. 'Witching hour' my Mum used to say, when she wasn't locked up in her bedroom, sobbing so loudly I could hear her through the walls.

The wind was howling outside my window, almost as if it was crying out to shout, to scream. It was still dark out, but I willed, hoped, begged for there to be one ounce of light. All I wanted was to see those two streams of light, the headlamps of a car, driving down our driveway and back to where we had been before.

He was usually back by now.

That meant it was a bad one. One which might not be fixed for hours, days, weeks. The taut silence would stretch out until he returned home, smiling and willing to make up, to kiss my mother on the cheek and say, "let's forget all this now".

Tonight though, there had been something different in the air. I usually lingered by the top of the stairs, listening to what problem they were arguing over now. It was normally something silly, like why Dad was home late or whether Mum was nagging. But tonight it was something more important - I could tell because they had whispered, words blurring into something huge that settled on my chest like a weight. It was almost like a tangible smell in the air; the rotting scent of something that had been dead for a long time.

I couldn't sleep. The sheets felt like a heavy blanket, curling around my body until I couldn't breathe. Tossing and turning, I watched as the sun slowly peaked over the horizon. It felt like a joke, to see a new day dawning. How could we carry on, when Mum and Dad weren't in their bed? There were people rising from their beds to go to work, kissing their kids good morning, telling their partners that they loved them. And yet, our family were not gathered around breakfast like every other morning. We were waiting like soldiers in our separate rooms for the dust to settle. Anticipating until it was safe to venture out.

These thoughts coalesced into dreams that occasionally flitted across my mind, on the rare occasion I managed to fall asleep. Dreams of how it used to be. How there was always the ever-present promise that our parents would be asleep in their bed, ready to wake us from nightmare, waiting to kiss us on our foreheads and promise everything would be okay.

Within this state of between sleep and awake, I felt bodies settle in my bed, curling around me on instinct. I woke slowly with the realisation that I was crying, shoulders shaking and tears slowly rolling down my face.

"It's going to be okay," the voice of Olly, my older brother, whispered in my ear. An arm wrapped around me to bring me into his chest. I breathed in him - the scent of home, of safety, of happiness.

Around me laid the remnants of our family, seeking out refuge in my bed. My brothers, all of us, huddled together, protecting what remained.

I tried to keep in my emotions, to be the strong one. Mum would be locked away in her room at this point. But the tears continued to leak out. And so, with multiple pairs of arms tangled around my body and our tears mixing together, our little broken family tried to knit itself back together, avoiding the tearing hole Dad had left behind.

________

3 years later

Marriages end in divorce. That seemed like a fact to me, not a threat. My parents were once one body, one united force, and yet their marriage seemed like an inevitable ending, not a sudden shock. The shouting, the tears, the tension stretched across the breakfast table all appeared to carry with it the understanding that it would all come to an end one day. It all culminated in that one night - but it had been building for a long, long time.

That's not to say it was easy. There was no simple goodbye as we watched my father roll his car out of the gates, departing into the mist as if it remained a question as to whether he'd ever come back.