When he’d come in, we’d be lying tucked up in bed just after the sun had begun to slip  between the slits of the blinds. Lights and shadow fell like prison bars across the carpet.  Despite wearing his chunky boots that stomped across the floor, he’d float to each of our beds  and press a soft kiss against our foreheads. I don’t know if the others did the same, but I’d  pretend to be asleep so he wouldn’t feel guilty for waking us so early before school.  

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“Bye dad,” I’d whisper as the door gently clicked shut and the camouflaged uniform  disappeared out of sight. Then, I’d try and catch the kiss and hold onto it until he came back.  

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All of us would go to the station. As far as I can remember, mum would drive because we  would never let go of his hand.  

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Lost in a sea of people, busy bodies rushing in and out of the carriages, baggage blending.  Only seconds would pass before we couldn’t see his backpack or his beret, but that didn’t  matter. As the engine yawned and the carriages clambered to life, we were ignited.  

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The soles of our shoes slapped against the tarmac as we chased after the train. We were  convinced that if we kept going and reached out just a little further, we’d be able to clasp it in  our fingertips and drag it back. Or cling on and maybe he’d take us with him on his  adventures around the globe where we never saw the dangers, just the suntan he came back  with and the presents he would bring. Like that pretty, pink cashmere scarf. 

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As all children should be, we were protected from knowing reality. 

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Our breath was ripping from our chests in ragged exertion and we keeled onto our knees once  we reached the end of the platform. Together, we’d watch as the machine vanished from  sight. The sky swallowing it. Smaller and smaller. Then, nothing. The ones he left behind.  

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We called them blueys. Letters on the floor waiting for us to get home from school, the only  mail my siblings and I ever received. Mum would slice them open with a knife; the paper  stuck in on itself. We’d retreat to our rooms, alone, to study them. He’d scribble drawings of  deserts and helicopters, ask us questions about days long past, and tell us he couldn’t wait to  be home. 

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Written on thin blue paper, cheaply made, my fingers always finding the gutter of the grain.  Compact and flimsy. I picture the sack holding thousands of identical blue letters shoulder to  shoulder, an army in itself. So much hope, so much despair.  

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We were given one each to send back, scrawling as small as we could, almost illegible, so we  could spend as long as possible with him. Counting down the days until he was home. The  closest we could be to him till then.  

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Stay safe, I promise I will. All my love, Dad, he’d write. I’ve memorised the words, etched  them on my skin, a family prayer we clung to.  

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Flailing sky-coloured paper acting as a paternal substitute. It wasn’t enough, how could it  ever be enough? 

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I find myself reading over them in adulthood more than I admit. As I reread the words and  trace the crawling impressions, I’m bothered by his lack of punctuation. I keep them stashed  in a non-fiction book that compiles the farewell letters of soldiers who never returned.  

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Dad did return. Safely, but not unchanged. He could be sat on the sofa directly below my  bedroom with the sound of his movie vibrating up the walls, but the fear still catches in my  throat. Everything we could’ve lost. The possibility of a farewell letter. If you’re reading this,  it might have begun. Torturing myself by imagining the words.  

It was the height of summer, denim shorts and vest tops, early mornings and late nights, only  popping home when we were called in for dinner. No strict regimes, no officers to report to,  no boots to polish.  

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Chloe, Archie and I spent lingering afternoons in the deserted car park behind our house,  playing games that took place in imagined lands far beyond our childhood ceiling. The  absence of the eldest Peters sibling silently gaping. He had traded in his youth for a uniform.  Running in the smoke of our father’s footprints. Trying to fill the imprints. Still trying. 

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Our calves burned from pedalling and sunburn prickled our shoulders.  

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One day, we looked up into a bottomless blue sky and saw the trails left behind from a plane.  Crisscrossing. Three of them. Like kisses. The same way dad signed off his letters.  

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Our bikes slowed to still, all three of us in a line, chins pointing upwards. 

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“It’s a message from him,” Archie uttered hardly louder than the breeze. It’s unlikely, but we  believed it. 

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At the time he was either in the deserts of Afghanistan or the jungles of Belize. I sometimes  forget exactly how his timeline draped itself over the endless world like a red, fraying string.  The rope of a kite that we could never hold on tight enough to reel back in. But there he was,  watching. We thought of him thinking of us, because no matter where he was, we all shared  the same sky.  

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There are seven years between my brother and I; my earliest memories of him are fighting  through the grey fog between boy and man. People say that he is the one I look most alike.  Same dark hair and dark eyes.  

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Him just being in the same room as our dad seemed to provoke an argument: two manly  voices too stubborn to let the other be heard. A pride can only have one leader. They’d circle  each other, bulls seeing red and all the observers faded into shadowy edges.  

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Our father laid out his own successes like hurdles for his son to jump over. But no matter  how high he jumped, how quick he ran, or how much his legs ached, there was always  another race to run. Muscles aching with bitterness.  

It was no surprise when I found out that Tommy had enlisted for the army. Since he found  one that fit, he’d always dressed up in camouflaged army jacket. 

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I cried the night my brother left. My friend had hosted a sleepover for her birthday and mum  had convinced me that it would be okay to go. 

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“You won’t miss anything,” she had said.  

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But as we settled into bed, reality filled my bones like a jug left under the tap too long.  Retreating under the quilt, I tried to release the pressure.