David Mitchell - The Bone Clocks

“Some do, yes,” I concede, rubbing my eye and thinking of Big Mac. “But I’m not in any danger of that. The symptoms are pretty obvious.” I ask a passing teenage waitress for one more Glenfiddich. She says she’ll bring it right over.

“What are the symptoms?” Sharon’s four years younger than Holly and rounder in the face. “Just out of curiosity.”

I’m feeling cornered, but Holly’s hand finds mine on the bench and squeezes it. “The symptoms of war-zone addiction. Well. The same as the clichés of the foreign correspondent, I guess. Rocky marriages; estrangement from family life; a dissatisfaction with civilian life. Alcohol abuse.”

“Not Glenfiddich, I trust?” Dave Sykes, Holly’s mild-mannered dad, lightens the mood a little.

“Let’s hope not, Dave.” Let’s hope the subject goes away.

“You must see some pretty hard-core, full-on stuff, Ed,” says Pete Webber, accountant, keen cyclist, and tomorrow’s groom. Pete’s bat-eared and his hairline’s beating a hasty retreat, but Sharon’s marrying him for love, not hair follicles. “Sharon was saying you’ve covered Bosnia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Baghdad. Places most people try to get away from.”

“Some journos carve a career in the business pages, others out of the plastic surgery of the stars. I’ve made mine out of war.”

Pete hesitates. “And you’ve never wondered, ‘Why war?’ ”

“Guess I’m immune to the charms of silicone.”

The waitress brings me my Glenfiddich. I look at Pete, Sharon, Brendan and his wife Ruth, Dave, and Kath, Holly’s ever-vigorous Irish mum. They’re still waiting for me to say something profound about my journalistic motives. The Sykeses aren’t without their scars — Holly’s youngest brother, Jacko, went missing in 1984 and his body was never found — but the loss I see, work with, has been on an industrial scale. This makes me different. I doubt this difference is explicable. I doubt even I understand it.

“Do you write to bring the world’s attention to the vulnerable?” asks Pete.

“God no.” I think of Paul White, on my first assignment in Sarajevo, lying dead in a puddle because he wanted to Make a Difference. “The world’s default mode is basic indifference. It’d like to care, but it’s just got too much on at the moment.”

“Then to play the devil’s avocado,” says Brendan, “why risk your neck to write articles that won’t change anything?”

I fabricate a smile for Brendan. “First, I don’t really risk my neck; I’m rigorous about taking precautions. Second, I—”

“What precautions can you take,” Brendan interrupts, “to stop a massive car bomb going off outside your hotel?”

I look at Brendan and blink three times to make him vanish. Damn. Maybe next time. “I’ll be moving into the Green Zone when I go back to Baghdad. Second, if an atrocity isn’t written about, it stops existing when the last witnesses die. That’s what I can’t stand. If a mass shooting, a bomb, a whatever, is written about, then at least it’s made a tiny dent in the world’s memory. Someone, somewhere, some time, has a chance of learning what happened. And, just maybe, acting on it. Or not. But at least it’s there.”

“So you’re a sort of archivist for the future,” says Ruth.

“Sounds pretty good, Ruth. I’ll take that.” I rub my eye.

“Are you going to miss it all,” asks Brendan, “after July?”

“After June,” says Holly, cheerfully.

No one sees me squirm. I hope. “When it happens,” I tell Brendan, “I’ll let you know how I feel.”

“So have you got anything lined up, workwise?” asks Dave.

“Ed’s got a lot of strings to his bow, Dad,” says Holly. “Maybe with the print media, or the BBC, and the Internet’s really shaking up the news world. One of Ed’s ex-editors at the FT is lecturing at UCL, now.”

“Well, I think it’s great you’ll be settling in London for good, Ed,” says Kath. “We do worry, when you’re away. I’ve seen pictures of this Fallujah place — those bodies they strung up on the bridge! Shock ing. And baffling. I thought the Americans won, months ago. I thought the Iraqis hated Saddam. I thought he was a monster.”

“Iraq’s a lot more complicated than the Masters of War realized, Kath. Or wanted to realize.”

Dave claps his hands. “Now we’ve got the chitchat out of the way, let’s get down to the serious stuff: Ed, are you joining us on Pete’s stag do tonight? Kath’ll babysit for Aoife, so you’ve got no excuse.”

Pete tells me, “A few mates from work are meeting me at the Cricketers — a lovely pub, just round the corner. Then—”

“I’d rather stay blissfully ignorant about ‘then,’ ” says Sharon.

“Oh, right,” says Brendan, “as if the hens are going to play Scrabble all evening.” In a stage whisper he tells me, “Male strippers at the Brighton Pavilion followed by a crack den at the end of the pier.”

Ruth play-cuffs him: “You slanderer, Brendan Sykes!”

“Too right,” says Holly. “You wouldn’t catch respectable ladies like us going anywhere near a Scrabble board.”

“Remind me what you’re really up to again,” says Dave.

“A sedate wine tasting,” replies Sharon, “with tapas, at a bar owned by one of Pete’s oldest friends.”

“Wine-tasting session,” scoffs Brendan. “Back in Gravesend they call a piss-up a piss-up. So how about it, Ed?”

Holly’s giving me a go-ahead face, but I’d better start proving what a great father I am while Holly’s still talking to me. “No offense, Pete, but I’m going to wuss out. The jet lag’s catching up with me, and it’ll be nice to spend time with Aoife. Even if she will be fast asleep. That way Kath can join the wine-tasting session, too.”

“Oh, I don’t mind babysitting, pet,” says Kath. “I’ve got to watch my blood pressure, anyway.”

“No, really, Kath.” I finish my Scotch, enjoying the blast-off. “You spend as much time as you can with your relatives from Cork — and I’ll grab an early night, otherwise I’ll be one giant yawn-in-a-suit at the church today. I mean tomorrow. God, see what I mean?”

“All right, then,” says Kath. “If you’re really sure …”

“Absolutely sure,” I tell her, rubbing my itchy eye.

“Don’t rub it, Ed,” Holly tells me. “You’ll make it worse.”

ELEVEN O’CLOCK AT night, and all’s well, kind of, for now. Olive Sun wants me flying out again by Thursday at the latest, so I’ll have to tell Holly soon. Tonight, really, so she doesn’t make plans for the three of us next week. Fallujah is the biggest deployment of marines since the battle for Hue City in Vietnam, and I’m stuck here on the Sussex coast. Holly’ll hit the frigging roof, but I’d better get it over and done with, and she’ll have to calm down for Sharon’s wedding tomorrow. Aoife’s asleep in the single bed in the corner of our hotel room. I only got here after her bedtime, so I still haven’t said hi to my daughter, but the First Rule of Parenting states that you never wake a peacefully sleeping child. I wonder how Nasser’s girls are sleeping tonight, with dogs barking and gunfire crackling and marines kicking down doors. CNN’s on the flat-screen TV with the sound down, showing footage of marines under fire on rooftops in Fallujah. I’ve seen it five times or more and even the pundits can’t think of anything fresh to say until the news cycle starts up again in a few hours, when Iraq begins a new day. Holly texted a quarter of an hour ago to say she and the other hens’ll be heading back to the hotel soon. “Soon” could mean anything in the context of a wine bar, though. I switch off the TV, to prove I’m no war junkie, and go to the window. Brighton Pier’s all lit up like Fairyland on Friday night, and pop music booms from the fairground at the far end. By English standards it’s a warm spring evening, and the restaurants and bars on the promenade are at the end of a busy evening. Couples walk hand in hand. Night buses trundle. Traffic obeys the traffic laws, by and large. I don’t knock a peaceful and well-functioning society. I enjoy it, for a few days, weeks, even. But I know that, after a couple of months, a well-ordered life tastes like a flat, nonalcoholic lager. Which isn’t the same as saying I’m addicted to war zones, as Brendan helpfully implied earlier. That’s as ridiculous as accusing David Beckham of being addicted to playing soccer. Just as soccer is Beckham’s art and his craft, reporting from hot spots is my art and my craft. I wish I’d said that to the clan earlier.