From Fitzroy's Private Diary (Extract 86)

I am being troubled by nightmares. This isn’t the first time. However, in the normal way of things, they pass in under a week. I have now regularly awoken covered in sweat, with a rapidly beating heart and ready to punch someone in the face. The latter being my usual, and quite natural, reaction to being threatened. Poor Jack, who nearly always manages to escape from his quarters in the kitchen to come and sleep at the foot of my bed, has been most alarmed.

It transpires that his reaction to my waking with a start is to leap off the bed, barking madly and running rapidly around the room, seeking an enemy, only to finally collapse in exhaustion and confusion. Where upon he gives me, what is for a dog, a very speaking look, and it is not his normal worshipful demeanour.

The real problem is that I have yet to remember a single thing from the nightmare. It’s as if it is so horrible, my waking brain simply won’t let me. This is quite a surprise as I have, over time, had some perfectly hideous nightmares inspired by my various activities in the shady world of espionage. The first time I killed a man, the nightmares came every night for a week, and were quite distasteful. But they passed, as have the ones brought on by being under fire, defending myself, and also, more rarely, losing a colleague or friend. I always recall those, and accept they are my internal self trying to make sense of events.

During the incident itself, whether my blood is up (as it might be under fire) or not, I am able to retain a cool, clarity of thought, and to make calculated decisions in a fraction of a moment. I have always thought that my nightmares are somehow, in the scale of things, payment for my ability to keep calm in a crisis. It’s a bargain I have been only too happy to make. But these invisible, hateful dreams are something else.

They have appeared on the back of a recent mission, but I was never in abnormal danger, and I sustained no injury. Things didn’t go so well for Alice, and I might have expected a series of nightmares in which I berated myself for not - what? If I am honest, for not protected her better. I know she is more than able to look after herself, but when anything happens to her, I always feel horribly responsible. I have got adapt at hiding this as it annoys her immensely.

But why cannot I not remember the dream? What do I dream of that is so mind numbingly terrible to me that I cannot remember it when I awaken?