Double Vision by Pat Barker

window. ‘I can’t stop watching it.’
    ‘No, nor me. Ridiculous, isn’t it? When it’s out there.’ He sat down. ‘Are you going back out?’
    ‘Yes, in a few minutes. I just had to get the dust off.’
    Stephen offered the whisky. Ben fetched glasses from the bathroom and held them as Stephen poured. They clinked silently, then turned again to face the screen.
    Ben said, ‘Do you think the world just changed?’
    ‘I think America will.’
    ‘I think things have changed. I mean real change. That was designed to be a photo-opportunity, and what have I done? I’ve spent the whole bloody day photographing it. Along with everybody else. Because we can’t escape from the need for a visual record. The appetite for spectacle. And they’ve used that against us, just as they’ve used our own technology against us.’
    ‘So what are you saying? We shouldn’t cover it?’
    ‘I don’t know what I’m saying. But I know something happened here – and it isn’t just that the Americans found out that they’re vulnerable too.’
    Stephen took a gulp of whisky. ‘I just rang Nerys.’
    ‘Oh, good. I haven’t managed to get Kate.’
    ‘She was in bed with another man.’
    A pause. At last he looked away from the screen. ‘Oh, my God, Stephen, I am sorry.’
    ‘It’s nothing. You compare it with what’s happened to a lot of people today… Going to work this morning…’
    ‘Have another drink.’
    He didn’t want another drink. What he wanted was to be outside his own skin, but there was no way of arranging that. He pressed his fingers deep into his flesh, round the jaw, under the cheekbones, into the sockets of his eyes, reminding himself of how it all fitted together. ‘No, I won’t, thanks. I’m going to take a couple of sleeping pills and blot it all out.’
    Getting up to go, he saw the cameras on the table. ‘Did you get any good shots?’
    Couldn’t remember what the answer had been, butknew it now anyway. Yes, he got some very good shots. He always did, right to the end, right up to the last shot that killed him. He missed Ben. More than he missed Nerys. Now that was a shock, though perhaps it shouldn’t have been. He’d shared more with Ben.
    It snowed hard all day. By evening the ground was completely covered. After a bad start, Stephen worked till four o’clock and only then allowed himself to think about Justine. He felt she would come, though he almost managed to hope that she wouldn’t, but when, unnaturally alert, he heard the crunch of her feet, he had got to the door and opened it before she knocked.
    ‘Adam couldn’t come,’ she said, stamping her boots on the mat. ‘He’s got a temperature.’
    Perhaps it was true. ‘Wouldn’t you rather wait till he’s better?’
    She stared at him. ‘No, if he’s going to be off school, I need something to keep him busy.’
    ‘Then we might as well go straight away. There’s no point in getting warm just to get cold again.’ He put on his coat. ‘How’s the car?’
    ‘Fixed. Beth got the AA out. Well, it’s almost as big a disaster for her as it is for me. If I can’t get to work, she can’t go to work.’
    He opened the back door. There, improbably large and veined, was the full moon, a cratered desolation hanging in space. The snow was unmarked except for the imprint of birds’ feet around the bird table. It levelled everything: even the garden pond was level with thelawn, its fringe of dead reeds casting blue shadows on the snow.
    ‘I’ll go first, shall I?’
    Cautiously, he felt his way down the path, each step scuffing up a fringe of snow. Once he turned and looked back. Snow-light was reflected palely up into her face. She was looking down, choosing where to put her feet. The hawthorn hedge that divided the garden from the path was thick with snow. Brushing against it in his struggle to open the gate, he dislodged dollops of snow that landed on his head and shoulders. His breath was everywhere.
    Side by side now, they