A Sombre Reading
Description
Vocal Characteristics
Language
EnglishVoice Age
Young Adult (18-35)Accents
British (General)Transcript
Note: Transcripts are generated using speech recognition software and may contain errors.
we sat on the sofa, me at one end, him at the other. It was as close as I wanted us to bay. We've been talking for minutes. Hours I couldn't tell. I didn't want him to speak to say it again. But he did. Adam is dead. I felt myself clench. Titus. A mosque. His words sharp as razor wire. I thought of the fly on the wind screen On the way home from my grandmother's house. He spoke again. Christine, Love. I'm so sorry. I feel angry, angry with him past it. I thought even though I knew it wasn't his fault, I forced myself to speak. He saw it. Adam was in the army. I went numb. Everything receded until I was left with pain and nothing else. Pain reduced to a single point. A son. I did not even know that I had. And he had become a soldier. I thought run through me absurd. But my mother think Ben spoke again. He was a moral marine. Hey was stationed in Afghanistan. He was killed. I lost you. I swallowed my throat dry. Why, I said. And then how? Christine, I want to know. I said I need to know. He reached across to take my hands and I let him. Though I was relieved when he moved no closer on the sofa. You don't want to know everything. Surely my anger surged. I couldn't help it. Anger and panic. He was my son. He looked away towards the window. He was travelling in an armoured vehicle, he said. He spoke slowly, almost whispering. They were school ting troops. There was a bomb on the roadside. One soldier survived. Adam and one other. Didn't I close my eyes and my voice dropped to a whisper, too. Did he die straight away? Did he suffer Ben side? No, he said after a quick moment. He didn't suffer. They think it would have been very quick. I looked across to where he sat. He didn't look at me. You're lying. I thought I saw Adam bleeding to death by a roadside and pushed the thoughts out, focusing instead on nothing on blankness. My mind began to spin questions, questions that I dared not asking. Casey answers killed me. What was he like? As a boy? A teenager? A man will be close. Did we argue? Was he happy? was I a good mother? And how How did the little boy, who had written a plastic tricycle, end up being killed on the other side of the world? What was he doing in Afghanistan? I said, Why there? Ben told me where it war a war against terror, he said, though I don't know what that means. He said there was an attack, an awful attack in America. Thousands were killed. And now my boy ends up dead in Afghanistan. I said, I don't understand. It's complicated. He said he always wanted to join the army. He thought he was doing his duty. His duty. Did you think that was what he was doing? His duty? Did I? Why didn't you persuade him to do something else? Anything, Christine. It was what he wanted. For an awful moment. I almost laughed to get himself killed. Is that what he wanted? Why I never even knew him. Ben was silent. He squeezed my hand in a single tear, roll down my face. Hot is acid And then another And then more. I wiped them away, frightened that to start to cry would be never to stop. I felt my mind begin to close down. Two empty itself to retreat into nothingness. I never even knew him