‘Friday,’ he said, aware Silva was looking at him. ‘Not a good day for a burial, but it was the only slot available. Fully booked, see? Damn good business to be in, funerals. There’s an endless supply of clients and they don’t answer back.’
Silva wasn’t sure if the reference to Friday was religious. She didn’t think so. Her father had never done God and she couldn’t see him starting now.
‘Are you OK?’ she said. He hadn’t asked her the same question. Not once in the past two weeks. ‘I mean, I know you and Mum were—’
‘Estranged is the word,’ her father said. He didn’t turn to face her. Rather he appeared to be studying the back of the chauffeur’s head. As if there was something there that might explain everything. ‘It was her choice, you know. That we separated all those years back. She wanted something more, someone else.’
‘Do you blame her? She’d had enough of the worry, Dad.’
‘That’s a bit rich. I reckon she was always more concerned about you than she ever was about me.’
‘That’s different. Parents are always worried about their children.’
‘She could never understand what drove you to sign up. She hated you being in the military. I think she felt by you choosing the army that somehow I’d won and she’d lost. She wanted something quite different for you, something more noble, as if fighting for what you believe in wasn’t noble enough.’
‘Dad, don’t. This isn’t the time.’
Her father fell silent, but what he’d said about her mother wanting something different for Silva was true. She’d wanted Silva to go to university, but Silva had struggled at school. She was clever but not studious; she excelled at sports, but not in examinations. At the behest of her father she’d taken up shooting at an early age, and at sixteen she’d won a gold medal in a junior class at the world championships. As a child she’d never associated what she did on the range with the military, but looking back she could see there was an inevitability about her future linked to her prowess with her rifle. When, at a careers fair, she’d come across an armed forces stand, she’d tried to hurry on past, but the female recruiting officer had caught her eye. Almost unwillingly she found herself drawn to the displays. The officer explained about the opportunities which were opening up for women now the UK was finally allowing them to serve in combat roles. ‘You could make a difference,’ she’d said, pointing to a picture of British soldiers alongside smiling Afghan children. ‘We’re building schools, providing sanitation, protecting the local population from those who want to impose their barbaric ideologies on them.’
Back home the notion had festered. She knew her mother would be against it. Since her parents had divorced her mother’s world view had changed. She’d emerged from the domineering influence of Silva’s father like a butterfly breaking free of a cocoon. Her politics were increasingly left wing and she’d recently moved from a secure, well-paid job with The Times’s foreign desk to a position with a news agency that specialised in covering the Middle East and Africa. However when, after several weeks of considering the options, Silva told her mother she was thinking of a military career, she’d been surprised by the reaction. Rather than dismissing the idea out of hand, her mother encouraged her to do some research and make up her own mind. If Silva was happy, then she’d be happy, she said. Silva never kidded herself her mother had been wholeheartedly in favour of her career choice, especially after all that had happened to her, but she never realised she’d hated it.
If that was the truth then her mother had hidden it well. Even after Afghanistan, when Silva had been in the military prison, her mother had been nothing but supportive and there’d never been a word of criticism. Perhaps, Silva thought, unconditional love and support was what being a parent was all about. What it was supposed to be about.
She turned to look at her father. He sat rigid, staring forward, unaware how much his words had hurt. It was precisely because she’d wanted to help people in the same way her mother had done that she’d joined up. Sure, she’d been a muddle-headed, idealistic teenager, but the sentiment had been genuine. To know the truth about her mother’s feelings was a bittersweet agony. Bitter on account of the disapproval, sweet because it highlighted the unconditional love. And her mother had been wrong about who’d won: she’d joined up in spite of her father, not because of him.
Until the incident in Kabul, Silva had never regretted her career choice. The army had meant she could continue to shoot and they’d given her time off to compete. In return she became a poster girl for the recruiting officers, highlighting the very things that had attracted her when she herself had signed up. That effect was magnified when she won a bronze medal at the Olympics. Overnight she was transformed into a minor celebrity. Her picture appeared on the news, there were offers for product endorsements and speaking engagements, and she was shortlisted for awards. Of course the fact she’d been successful and in the public eye meant when the time came, the fall
