Fifth Victim

– some of it, anyways.’

I shook my head. ‘But not all of it. We were … involved, back then. Shouldn’t have been, of course. Sean was one of my training instructors. They posted him just before my … assault. By the time he came back, I’d been through court martial and I was well and truly out in the cold.’

‘Wait a moment, now,’ Nancy said, her own voice low with angry disbelief. ‘They attacked you, and you were the one who was court-martialled? Where’s the justice there?’

I shrugged. I’d long since run out of indignant rage at the way things had turned out. The scars still lingered, but they were deep beneath the surface, a blunt ache where once they’d been excruciating. The last thing I wanted to do was open them up to scrutiny again. ‘I tried to get in touch with him, while I was still in hospital, but the messages somehow never got through.’

And when he did finally hear about what had happened to me, he was given a very different version of events.

‘They told Sean I’d failed the course and when they tried to have me RTU’d – that’s “returned to unit” …’ I said quickly, seeing Nancy’s frown. I took a breath. ‘… well, that’s when they said I’d started shouting about him taking advantage of his position. I believe the current term for it is “command rape”.’

I heard Parker suck in a quiet breath. ‘That’s—’

‘An ugly situation,’ I agreed. ‘I thought he’d abandoned me by refusing to answer my calls, appear in my defence at the trial. He thought I’d dropped him in it to try and save my own skin.’

‘How long?’ Nancy asked eventually. ‘How long did it take before you both realised what had really happened?’

‘About four years,’ I said bleakly. ‘At the time, the press got hold of it and had a field day. Certain misogynist elements of the powers that be used it as the perfect PR exercise to keep women out of combat roles.’ They hadn’t been able to get rid of Sean so easily, so while I did my best to hide, they’d given him all the one-way missions, only to discover he was too bloody stubborn to die on the job.

‘So that’s when you changed your name,’ Parker said slowly, ‘From Foxcroft to Fox.’

‘Yeah, and it’s pretty clear that Charlie Foxcroft is who Sean remembers now.’ I gave them both a twisted smile. ‘The girl who betrayed his love, his trust, and then ruined his career along with her own.’

Nancy put her hand on my arm, fingers smoothing my sleeve. I stared down at them, noted the worn wedding ring.

‘He’ll remember the rest of it, Charlie,’ she said, but I heard the layer of doubt beneath the reassuring words. ‘Just give him a little time. He’ll remember.’ When I looked up I caught the frown, quickly masked.

On the other side of the room, Parker’s face was drawn, skin stretched tight across his bones. He loved me, I realised, but maybe it was the kind of love that only flourishes because it’s unrequited, and the worst thing that could happen was for it to be given free rein. In the stress of the past few weeks, it had never crossed either of our minds that Sean might wake and simply not want me anymore.

I killed for a man who doesn’t remember me except with hate. What does that make me?

Suddenly the years peeled back, leaving me stripped and alone and vulnerable. I looked up at the pair of them, utter despair in my voice.

‘What if he doesn’t remember?’

copyright © 2011 by Zoe Sharp