eyes they could look huge.She glanced at her watch. She was going to be late. You couldn’t hurry makeup.The phone rang and her steady hand, applying eyeliner, wobbled. She swore in Polish, reminded herself to Hail Mary, hesitated. And then answered.‘Morning, Agnieszka, it’s Jenny.’If only she hadn’t picked up the phone. If only she hadn’t called Jenny last night. She dealt with her as quickly as she could and then got back to her eyeliner. She was going to be late and Darrel only had thirty minutes.The phone rang again. She glanced anxiously at her watch. She almost didn’t answer.‘Hello?’‘It’s me, Niez.’‘Jamie!’ She was both pleased and apprehensive. She hoped it wasn’t going to be one of those long calls.‘I . . . I’ve been hit again.’‘Hit? Who hit you?’‘Taliban. Fired at me. It bounced off. I’m just bruised.’‘It bounce off!’‘Off my body armour.’‘Oh, God, Jamie.’ She remembered the Hail Mary she had just promised to do. And now, for a bullet bouncing off body armour, she would offer many more.‘It’s OK, Niez. I’m OK. There’s just a few moments after it first happens when it seems like you’re going to die. That’s when I thought about you and Luke. Everything around me got sort of brighter. It was strange. The trees and the earth and people’s blood, whatever you’re looking at gets really intense. So did the smells. Maybe that was because I thought I was leaving it all behind. And I wanted you to be in my mind when I died so I thought about your face and it was so, so beautiful . . .’She had never heard him talk like this before.‘Jamie . . . you a little bit shocked?’‘The medic says I’m fine.’She wanted to ask him about the phone message, demand to know who might have found the cellphone and used it to text her so cruelly. But these satellite calls were monitored. The army actually listened when husbands phoned their wives. She could say nothing.‘It happened before. I got hit before. And it was worse because it was a machine-gun round. It hit my back, just below the neck. I was on top, looking into some woods. After I felt it, I waited to die and the trees were amazing. Beautiful. I can’t explain it. I’m not explaining it very well, am I, Niez?’She felt frantic. This was turning into one of Jamie’s long, thoughtful calls. Sometimes he talked and talked and she stopped trying to understand him and just let his voice wash over her.But there was no time now. Holding the phone with her left hand, she was trying to apply mascara with her right. If she left any later than this there was almost no point in going: Darrel’s break would be over.‘You explain very well, darling. You sure you OK? Everyone there think you OK?’‘Babe, I don’t talk to the other lads this way. Or they’d probably think I’m barking. But you understand – don’t you, Niez?’‘I think so, darling.’‘You always understand me. That’s one reason I love you so much.’She took a deep breath. ‘Darling, I have my hair cut today.’‘Oh, no! Why? Don’t do that!’‘Just a trim. You won’t see any different when you get back.’‘All right. A centimetre, no more.’‘Darling, I have to go now, to hairdresser.’‘Oh.’ Resignation, disappointment, maybe some pain. Because he had been speaking to her from his heart when she had been worrying about her hair appointment. ‘I could tell you were in a bit of a hurry.’She said as many Hail Marys in the car as she could between the camp and the city. But she knew that for what she had just done to Jamie she could never say enough.When they arrived it turned out to be market day. Stalls and people with shopping bags covered the central parking area. She found another car park and then another. Full. And people were queuing for spaces.Finally she phoned Darrel. She was so exasperated with the traffic, the people, the screams from the back seat that she wanted to cry herself, except that it would ruin her makeup.‘We’ll have coffee at the White Lion. You can park there, at the back. See you in ten minutes.’Darrel really could fix anything.But when she got to the White Lion, Luke was still screaming. His face was red and wet, his huge mouth bawled. She rocked the buggy helplessly. You couldn’t take a screaming baby into a quiet hotel. Everything, including Jamie’s call and Luke’s shrieks, the traffic and the market stalls, was conspiring to sabotage her meeting with Darrel.‘All right?’ said Darrel, squeezing between two cars to reach her. He was as casual as if they had last seen each other yesterday, instead of when they had rowed, weeks ago.She smiled at him. She wanted to stare. In her thoughts there had been a handsome, lean-faced man. Here was someone much more ordinary, wearing a shirt she did not particularly like. What was she doing here, by this hotel in this city with this man? She tried to fit the stranger who stood grinning before her into the frame her memory had woven for him.He gave her a light kiss on the cheek.‘I can’t come inside when Luke does screaming.’‘Can I pick him up?’Agnieszka shook her head.‘Sometimes it make him worse.’‘Can I try?’She shrugged.Darrel reached into the buggy and with expert fingers undid the safety harness. Because he had three children of his own, she thought.He lifted Luke out and the child arched his back and bellowed, his face a violent beetroot colour. It was impossible to talk with that noise, impossible to think. Darrel walked around the car park, Luke over his shoulder howling with rage.Quite quickly there was a change. Agnieszka could see how the child’s body lost its rigidity and he began to curl into Darrel’s shoulder. He continued to scream but she heard that the fight had gone out of him.Now Darrel was nestling Luke into the crook of his arm, the child’s back pressed against the dislikeable shirt, his feet dangling. From this safe, high place, Luke stopped crying instantly and stared at the world.‘How you do it? How you do that?’ demanded Agnieszka. Luke was looking around with wide eyes.‘It’ll give us some peace for a while. Let’s go in and grab a coffee while we can.’‘But he not asleep!’ Agnieszka never went anywhere if Luke was awake.‘Well, he might enjoy a cup of coffee,’ said Darrel. ‘Come on.’They sat in big armchairs by a sunny window where they could watch the passers-by, Luke still in the crook of Darrel’s arm. When he showed signs of restlessness, Darrel fished in his pocket for his keys and Luke touched them quietly as though they were something rare and interesting.‘There’s something I could get him which should keep him amused for a while. I’ll drop it in tonight on my way home,’ he said. She smiled at him. So now he was going to fix Luke as well.‘He don’t do like this with me,’ she said sadly.‘What? Relax?’‘No, he always shouting. Until he shout himself to sleep.’‘Are you relaxed now, Aggie?’‘Yes.’ She smiled.‘There you are then. So’s Luke.’He reached carefully for his coffee.‘So your husband’s alive and well. Did you find out who sent the text?’She frowned. ‘I don’t know. Maybe I never know. Darrel, you not back with your wife?’‘No.’‘You see her?’‘Well, we sort of got back together. For about a week. It was a stupid mistake so I’m at my mum’s again.’She found herself blushing. She did not know why.‘Agnieszka, I knew you were married when I met you.’She remembered telling him that at the garage. He had said: where’s your car? And she had misunderstood and said: Afghanistan. And they had laughed.‘I like being with you anyway. You’re married but your husband’s away. And your family’s in Poland. And you need help sometimes. And I like helping you. Is that OK?’She nodded. She looked at Luke, who had fallen asleep on Darrel’s lap, still clutching his keys. ‘Yes. It’s OK.’‘Is it OK to go out sometimes? Even though you’re married?’She swallowed.‘Yes. It’s OK.’She knew Jamie wouldn’t like it. But Jamie wasn’t in Wiltshire trying to cope with Luke and broken things and hospital appointments and awful text messages. Jamie was in Afghanistan. And Darrel was here.
DAVE STROLLED AROUND THE PERIMETER OF SIN CITY. DARK HAD already fallen. In fifteen minutes he was due to go to the OC’s tent to be interviewed about an insurgent who had died in a ditch months ago. The event seemed distant now, like something in his childhood.He breathed deeply, tilted his head and stared above him. He was in the habit of looking at the dazzling Afghan skies whenever he could. The same stars must be hanging over Wiltshire but here the air was so clear that there was real depth of vision and you could see thousands, millions more stars.He thought about the Taliban fighters, sitting in their compounds, smoking and talking and looking up at the same night sky. They had been staring at this incredible overhead display all their lives. It was, for them, a part of being at home, like the intense summer heat, the poppies, the mountains and the dust storms.He passed the boss with the woman from Intelligence. The woman was smoking, Gordon Weeks was talking. Dave could understand how, after such a day, the boss would want to spend some time with this woman if he liked her. Weeks was so intent on what he was saying that he didn’t even see Dave.‘Want one, Sarge?’ asked some lads from 2 Section who were also walking the perimeter in a small group, unusually silent. Their faces shone out of the dark when they lit their cigarettes.‘All right,’ said Dave.‘But, Sarge,’ came McKinley’s voice. ‘You don’t smoke.’‘I do tonight,’ Dave told him, inhaling deeply.‘Any news on Ben or Ryan, Sarge?’‘Ben’s doing better than Ryan. Although Ben took more shrapnel than we realized.’‘What about Ryan’s arm, Sarge?’‘Unfortunately they’ve had to take it off below the elbow.’The lads looked as though he had punched them.‘Is he going to make it?’ asked McKinley quietly. ‘He lost a lot of blood.’‘I don’t know. He might not.’‘How about the others?’‘They took a lump of shrapnel out of Angus McCall’s arm. Kev Swift from 3 Section had shrapnel too. But they’ll be back in a couple of days.’Dave strolled on. He was aware that his hand was shaking slightly as he smoked. He moved the cigarette into the other hand. That shook, too. He hated this involuntary movement and tried to still it but the tremor would not go away. He yawned. He wished he could just go to sleep. The stress of the day had left his body wrung out.
Sol, going back from the cookhouse after dinner with the lads, saw Dave smoking. He had never seen that before. Should he go and speak to him, or would Dave rather be alone before his difficult interview? He decided the sergeant looked as though he wanted to be alone.Sol followed the boys back to the tent. They were hovering in the
