Читать книгу The Poppy Factory - Liz Trenow - Страница 8

‘It’s good, this Pinot. Another bottle?’

They were the last customers left in their favourite Sicilian restaurant, just round the corner from Nate’s flat. The chef had joined the waiters for a game of cards at a distant table in the corner. This was supposed to have been a romantic evening to celebrate Valentine’s Day, although the date itself earlier in the week had already been marked with declarations of love on the phone, a card for Nate, a large bunch of roses for Jess.

‘Not for me thanks, work tomorrow. Time we were getting back,’ he said.

‘You’re such a wuss.’ She checked her phone. ‘It’s not yet eleven. I’ve got work tomorrow too. All I want is one more drink, is that okay?’

He held her gaze, trying to make her back down.

‘And don’t say “don’t you think you’ve had enough?”, like you always do,’ she taunted, waving the empty bottle in the direction of the waiters. Nate shook his head with disapproval and she pounced, feeling the familiar hot surge of anger rising up the back of her head.

‘Can we just drop the morality police act? Let me be myself, for once. I’ve spent the past two years leaping to attention the moment anyone says jump, and I’m enjoying being irresponsible and silly. I’m only twenty-six, for God’s sake.’

The waiter brought the bottle and she took it from him, defiantly pouring herself a glass and sloshing some on the tablecloth.

‘Cheers,’ she said, holding it up in front of Nate’s stony face. He sat back in the chair and closed his eyes, clenching and unclenching his fists helplessly beneath the tablecloth. Whatever he said now would prompt a stand up row, and he hated conflict.

The ‘self medication’, as she liked to call it, had started around Christmas when the nightmares began to get out of control, so bad that she’d become afraid of sleeping. Curiously, the poppy field barely figured in her dreams. They were almost always a variation on the same scenario: being confronted with the raw flesh of a dismembered limb. Sometimes the limb was unattached and she found herself carrying it, trying to run on leaden legs as she searched desperately for its owner. Other times it was attached to a body and she might wake to find that she was holding her hands over her ears to block out the terrifying, visceral howls of a man in extreme agony. The worst times were when she knew the victim: it could be her brother, or Nate, or another male friend. Curiously, she never dreamed about James, or the real-life victims she had treated: Gav, Scotty, Dave … there had been so many.

Tourniquets usually featured, stretching and breaking like cooked spaghetti when tightened, the clips or Velcro refusing to stay fixed; also dressings, which might take flight and hover beyond her reach or, absurdly, turn out to be white bread instead.

But each variation had a constant theme: panic, the sort of extreme panic which freezes your brain and threatens to stop your heart. She would wake fighting for breath in a tangle of sheets damp with sweat, and sometimes weeping because she had failed to save the injured man.

She tried over-the-counter sleeping pills but, although they helped her get to sleep, they had little effect in preventing the nightmares. The only thing which seemed to work was booze – whisky or vodka seemed to work best, but almost any alcohol would do. She took to taking a couple of shots before cleaning her teeth each bedtime.

The anger thing started on the last day of their holiday.

They’d had such a joyful, exhilarating week. Both were absolute beginners but had, in their different ways, quickly mastered the art of skiing. Although never elegant, Nate’s muscle-power helped him stay upright even on the toughest terrains. She, with her lower centre of gravity and fine-honed fitness, quickly mastered the art of carving a stylish turn. Her graceful stance regularly earned their otherwise dour instructor’s weather-beaten smile, and his call of ‘Ottimo, Jessica! Bellissimo!’ had become a catch-phrase between them, even away from the slopes.

Elated by their success, the physical exertion, the breathtakingly beautiful mountains and the cold, bright air, they found themselves drinking a bottle of wine at lunchtime, meeting up with fellow chalet guests for several glasses of glühwein at teatime, imbibing more wine with dinner and at least one or two brandies as a nightcap. Jess slept better than she had in months – a whole week without a single nightmare.

Taking a midnight walk on the final evening, arm in arm, the snow crunching beneath their feet and clouds of warm breath mingling in the freezing air, Nate had stopped in his tracks and grabbed both of her hands.

‘When you get out of the Army, shall we move in together?’

‘Oh my God, Nate. Do you really mean it?’

‘Of course I bloody mean it. Hurry up and say yes before we freeze to death.’

‘Then of course I will, you idiot.’ She jumped into his arms and knocked them both to the ground, finding herself flooded so powerfully with joy that she almost forgot to breathe. How lucky she was to be alive, so happy, with the man she loved and all their lives in front of her.

But even as they lay there, flat on their backs in the soft snow at the side of the track, looking up at the stars, the memories intruded into her consciousness. She was reminded of the times she and Vorny would lie in the dust of the compound looking up at those same ribbons of brilliance in the blackness of the desert night sky, and how the lads used to tease them for it. Where were they all tonight, those boys, how were they adjusting to life at home? She hoped they were happy, too.

And then, out of the blue, she was hit by a wave of anger about James and the others, for the fact that she would never see them again, that they would never experience the joy of lying in the snow on a starry night with the person they loved. The anger quickly cooled into sorrow, and she began to weep silently, only this time the tears were from profound, irretrievable loss.

Where did these crazy, over-the-top emotions come from? She’d always prided herself on being level-headed, not prone to over-dramatics. These days her reactions seemed to be all over the place. It must just be the ‘adjustment’ they all talked about, she said to herself, it would pass, just as soon as she got back to work. She wiped away her tears, leaned over Nate and kissed him. ‘I love you,’ she whispered. ‘More than you will ever know.’

The following day, for no reason she could fathom other than she had a hangover and their lovely holiday was over, she found herself becoming irritated by tiny, silly things: the way he insisted on tying a red ribbon on the handle of his suitcase so that he could recognise it on the luggage carousel, the way he opened every drawer and cupboard in their room to make sure nothing was left behind, the way he checked the hotel bill carefully, item by item.

Why should such small and perfectly reasonable acts annoy her so much? She simply couldn’t understand it but, each time, she felt the anger prickling the back of her head, the nauseous churning of her stomach. She cursed herself for being so impatient – he was only taking care of her, after all.

‘You okay? You’re a bit quiet this morning,’ he said, on the bus to the airport.

‘Oh I don’t know. I feel a bit rough, but it’s probably more the thought of having to go back to work,’ she said.

‘I know what you mean. Year Nine first thing on Monday,’ he said. ‘At least you’ve only got three months to go, haven’t you? Light duties and all?’

She grimaced. The prospect of ‘light duties’ made her feel even more irritable. She would be stuck in barracks, away from Nate all week staffing a daily clinic for malingering squaddies with sore throats and ingrowing toenails, being on the rota for out-of-hours emergency call-outs, serving time until her early release came up. Now they knew she was on the way out, there’d be no more advanced training courses, no going out on exercise, no requirement to keep fit.

She’d just have to grin and bear it. A job with the London ambulance service was waiting for her after Easter, she would move in with Nate and they could start to plan their future together. It’s all good, she told herself, firmly. Stop being such a misery.

But grinning and bearing it did not come easy.

The clinic sessions at the barracks were as dull and dispiriting as she’d feared. Time dragged more slowly than ever as she examined a succession of soldiers’ smelly feet with their blisters, veruccas, and minor sprains or, for light relief perhaps, a touch of man flu, earache or tonsillitis. The highlight of her first week was being called out late one night to the Military Police cells for a soldier covered in blood and so drunk he could barely speak. He had a six centimetre gash from one ear to the back of his neck, obviously from falling backwards onto something hard.

The last time she’d seen this much blood was after a Taliban RPG had landed in the compound, knocking her out and sending shrapnel flying everywhere. She’d come round to a scene of carnage, lots of head wounds and blood everywhere because the soldiers had been at rest and not wearing helmets or body armour. Ignoring her own dizziness, she’d scrambled to her feet and set to work. When she and Vorny had finished checking everyone over they discovered that, by some miracle, most of the injuries were shallow cuts which needed only simple stitching. Only a couple of lads were more seriously hurt and needed evacuation, and they later heard back that both of them had survived and weren’t likely to suffer any long term after-effects. ‘Saved their bloody lives, those two lassies of yours,’ the surgeon told her CO later.

She checked the drunken squaddie over, swabbed him down, shaved an unnecessarily wide strip of hair on either side of the wound, stitched him up and told them to wake him every half hour to check for concussion, with a bucket of cold water if necessary. That’ll teach him, she thought to herself.

One day she diagnosed a case of ‘housemaid’s knee’. The spotty lad gazed at her in confusion: ‘I ain’t been doin’ no housework.’

‘It’s an inflammation of the tissues in front of the kneecap. You just need to take it easy for a couple of weeks and it’ll sort itself out.’

‘Can’t tell me sergeant I’ve got housemaid’s knee,’ he muttered. ‘Never bloody live it down.’

She would normally have found this funny, but for some reason his pathetic embarrassment irritated the hell out of her. She took a deep breath, wrote ‘Prepatellar Bursitis’ on a note and passed it to him. ‘Will that do?’

He tried to pronounce the Latin and gave up.

‘Thank you, ma’am,’ he said, with a brazen smile. ‘Fancy a drink sometime?’

‘Get lost, you cheeky bastard,’ she said, showing him the door.

‘I just can’t cope with the pettiness of it all,’ she shouted to her mother as they struggled along the shingle beach in the face of a bitter cold wind whistling off the North Sea. She’d been given a few mid-week days off and, to be honest, was pleased to have her parents to herself. ‘Their stupid little complaints. I feel like slapping them, telling them to man up.’

Her mother had suggested the walk after she’d come downstairs at three in the morning to find Jess watching the shopping channel with a large glass of her father’s whisky on the table in front of her.

‘What’s up, love?’ she’d asked, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes. Jess noticed for the first time that her mother’s hair, the gingery side of auburn like her own, was turning grey.

‘Can’t sleep. It’s just too quiet here,’ she replied, trying to make light of it. ‘What are you doing up, anyway?’

‘Saw the light on when I went for a pee.’

Jess had been looking forward to a few days by the seaside, where she could take long walks in the sea air and hopefully knock herself out with physical tiredness, but it hadn’t worked like that. For the second night running she had lain awake for hours before giving up and going downstairs to raid her father’s drinks cabinet.

‘You shouldn’t drink so much of that stuff,’ Susan had said, looking pointedly at the glass.

‘Don’t worry,’ Jess said. ‘I’ll buy Dad another bottle. Go back to bed. I’ll be fine.’

Later that morning, out on the beach, she found herself almost enjoying the distraction of physical discomfort as the wind slashed at their faces.

‘Tell me about this drinking,’ her mother had started.

‘Oh, it’s nothing,’ Jess said. Admitting the nightmares to her mother would only make her more anxious – better to gloss over it. ‘Just fed up with work. It’s so boring. I can’t wait to get out.’

‘You haven’t got long to go now, have you?’

‘Four weeks, that’s all. I can deal with it. Thanks for being so understanding, Mum.’

But that evening she lost it again. Her father had insisted on doing a barbecue in spite of the fact that it was still only February, and bitterly cold. The wind had dropped, he said, and besides the barbecue was under cover of the patio awning. He would be perfectly dry, and once everything was cooked they could eat inside. Except that it began to bucket with rain, and while Jess tried to persuade him to abandon the idea, Susan had been placatory.

‘He does it all the time, don’t worry,’ she said. ‘He enjoys it, and the food tastes so much better on the barbecue. You’ll never dissuade him, so you might as well give up trying.’

‘But it’s pouring, Mum. He’ll get soaked, and so will the food.’ She felt her chest tightening, the tell-tale heat tingling at the back of her neck, and tried to take deep breaths, but it came out anyway. ‘He could perfectly well come inside to cook, and we could have a lovely meal but he’s just determined to spoil our evening with his pig-headed insistence. It’s so fucking stupid,’ she shouted.

‘Watch your language, young woman,’ Mike called through the patio door.

She exploded then, shouting, ‘I can’t bear to watch. I’m going out.’

She’d stomped off to the only pub in the village, hoping there would be no-one who recognised her or engaged her in conversation. Fortunately the place was deserted, so she sat by the fire and read a dog-eared red-top newspaper, sickened by the photos of semi-naked women on what seemed like every other page, while downing three double whiskies in quick succession. She paid the pub premium for a bottle to replace her father’s Johnnie Walker and hid it inside her coat as she headed home.

Her parents were watching a nature documentary on television.

‘We left you a plateful – it’s on the side,’ her mother said mildly, without a hint of reproach. How could they be so forgiving? It almost made her angry all over again.

‘Not hungry,’ she muttered. ‘Going to bed.’

‘Sleep well, sweetheart,’ they chorused, to her departing back.

In the morning nothing was mentioned until she was alone in the car with her mother on the way to the train station.

‘Forgive me, darling, but do you think you might need some help?’ her mother said, pulling out onto the main road.

‘What do you mean, help?’

‘Adjusting to life back home. I know it’s hard.’

‘Leave it, Mum. I’m fine.’

‘Except you’re barely sleeping, drinking way more than you ever used to and losing your temper at the drop of a hat. We’re worried about you, love.’

They arrived at the station just in time and she kissed her mother on the cheek. ‘See you soon,’ she said, ‘and don’t you go worrying about me. I’m a big girl; I can take care of myself.’

The following Sunday evening was the Pinot incident.

As she drank her way purposefully through the bottle, Nate said barely a word and she was too angry to engage him in conversation. Next thing she knew, she was shocked awake by her phone. She peeled open her eyes and squinted at the numbers: 06.00. He must have set the alarm for her, knowing that she had to catch the train in time to get back for a nine o’clock clinic.

She slumped back onto the pillow with her head swimming and throbbing, realising that a) she was still fully clothed and b) she was still drunk. For a few minutes she contemplated calling in sick, but ingrained Army discipline got the better of her. She forced herself out of bed and took a cold shower to shock herself into consciousness. Nate was curled up asleep on the sofa and she crept out of the flat without waking him.

By the time she got back to the barracks she was feeling truly awful. ‘Nothing for it,’ she said to herself, opening the drawer where she stashed the whisky bottle. ‘Hair of the dog.’

The clinic was full of the usual Monday morning complaints: sprained ankles and bruised knees from football games, black eyes and cut lips from knuckle fights. For once, she was grateful to have nothing too testing to deal with, feeling proud of herself for holding it together and making some reasonable diagnoses. Her boss didn’t seem to notice a thing, even though she’d felt so nauseous that at times she’d had to rush to the toilet.

It was almost certainly the lad with the ear infection who gave her away, the little bastard. He must have smelled it when she’d leaned close to look down the otoscope. Not long after, the medic in charge had popped his head around the door.

‘A word, Lance Corporal. My office. Now.’ She stood to attention as he bent to bring his face within inches of her own and sniffed loudly, several times. She breathed as lightly as she could without passing out.

‘You stink of booze. Are you drunk, Corporal Merton?’

‘I don’t believe so, sir. Not at eleven o’clock in the morning. Sir.’

‘You certainly smell of alcohol, and I can’t have you on duty if there’s any chance of it. You are dismissed for the day. Report to me here, eighteen hundred hours.’

‘Yes, sir.’

She spent the day sleeping it off, and arrived at her boss’s office fully sober but with her head pulsing with pain that even heavy doses of Co-codamol hadn’t managed to shift.

‘I can’t have my medics drunk on duty, you understand?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘I’ve had it reported to me that you are overdoing the booze in general, is that a fair observation?’

The anger started to swell as she wondered who could have grassed on her. ‘I wouldn’t say so, sir,’ she muttered, through gritted teeth.

‘How are things with you generally? Adjusting to life back home? Preparing for civvy street? Things okay with the boyfriend?’

How dare he bloody snoop into her private life? She could feel her cheeks flushing now, her breath stopping in her chest as she tried to control the fury.

‘Well, Lance Corporal?’

Her jaw ached from clenching her teeth.

‘It can be tricky, I know,’ his voice droned on. ‘If you need to talk to someone, of course we can lay it on.’

The nausea was rising again and she could feel her stomach turning over just as it had on Remembrance Sunday all those weeks back.

‘Excuse me, sir,’ was all she managed to say, before rushing into the corridor and puking all over the shiny linoleum.

‘I’m sorry I was such a bitch last night,’ she said to Nate on the phone later that evening.

He didn’t reply, not at first. Then he said, ‘Look, I can’t deal with this right now. I’ve had a rough day at work and I just want to chill out and not have a row with you.’

‘I haven’t rung you to have a row,’ she said, trying not to sound defensive. ‘I’ve rung to apologise and tell you that I’m going to cut out the booze completely, for a while, just to get back on an even keel.’

‘Sounds like a plan, Jess.’

‘Look, can I come and stay with you this week? I could catch a train tonight.’

There was a surprised pause at the other end. Then, ‘It’s Monday night. What about work?’

‘They’ve given me the rest of the week off – they’re calling it sick leave, but I think they just want to keep me out of their hair. I’ve only got five weeks to go now and they don’t want me causing any more trouble.’

‘What trouble?’

She told him about the ticking off, but not about being sick in the corridor.

‘The timing’s not great, to be honest,’ he said in a flat voice. ‘I’ve got a heavy week. There are rumours that Ofsted might come calling, I’ve got two parents’ evenings and a football trip on Thursday. Won’t be back till pretty late most nights.’

‘I’ll shop and clean and cook you delicious meals,’ she pleaded.

He went silent at the end of the phone and for a fleeting, frightening moment it occurred to her that he might be about to tell her it was over. Oh God, please no, she prayed. I love him, can’t do it without him.

Then, at last: ‘Okay. See you later. But Jess …’

‘Yes?’

‘What you said about quitting the booze? You’re serious?’

‘I promise.’

Each evening as she waited for Nate to return from work, she could feel her body shouting at her that it wanted alcohol, any alcohol, that nothing else would satisfy it. Several times, passing the off licence on the corner of his street, she sensed her feet pulling towards the door. Just one little drink. The feeling was almost irresistible but she marshalled her willpower and managed to hold it at bay, knowing that one would surely lead to another, and then several more. She drank cans of cola instead which made her burp unattractively and failed to satisfy the craving.

Without the sedative of alcohol she found it hard to sleep, sensing Nate’s every movement, hearing each little snore, and blasted to open-eyed wakefulness by any police or ambulance siren within half a mile. When she finally slept, the nightmares returned, but subtly altered. These were not of the breath-stopping panic, of torn flesh and limbs, nor the visceral howls of boys in pain, but of the aftermaths of those terrifying moments, of feeling so exhausted that her limbs would not move, of the heat which seemed to suffocate the air out of her lungs, and the dust storms that whipped her face as the rescue helicopter rose into the air taking the injured men to safety. And, always, the gut-wrenching anxiety that perhaps she could have done more to save a limb, or even a life.

One night she woke with her bladder aching and made it to the toilet just in time. She had been dreaming that she was back in the compound where the squats cabin was located twenty yards away. The men just pissed against the outside wall, the girls had to risk a scary dash in the dark across open ground. That, or pee discreetly into a yellow sharps container and hope the sound didn’t wake anyone. Either way it was enough to make you go easy on your intake of liquids after sunset.

She also dreamt of the poppy, just the once: not of the flower with its silky red petals gently fluttering in the breeze, but of the headless green stem, trembling and twitching like a dying man.

After dinner on the second evening, Nate said, ‘Tell me what’s going on, Jess?’

‘Going on?’

‘Those nightmares of yours.’

‘They come and go,’ she said. ‘It’s getting better.’

‘Doesn’t feel like that to me. Last night you started shouting and then you sat up in bed and seemed to be fighting someone off. You nearly clocked me one.’

She laughed. ‘I’m so sorry. I’ll try and keep my arms to myself tonight.’

‘Are you sure you don’t need to get some help?’

‘Quite sure. It’ll be fine once I’m out of the Army. Only a week now.’

She rose exhausted each morning but found that she could not sit still for more than a few minutes. Trying to use up her restless energy, she went for long walks or jogged round the local park, observing the yummy mummies so distracted by their gossip that the babies crawled into flowerbeds to eat soil. Their pampered pedigree dogs ran out of control and, she hoped, were having unprotected sex with all the wrong species. Planning her life ahead with Nate, she visited a couple of letting agents and viewed four flats in the area; more spacious, two-bedroomed places that cost a fortune in rent.

On Friday evening he returned in high spirits, having been to the pub with his mates to celebrate the end of a tough week, and ate two helpings of her carefully-prepared lamb tagine with appreciative enthusiasm. Sitting beside him on the sofa, watching television with a mug of tea in her hand, she imagined that this was what their lives might be like forever. She felt more at peace than she’d known for months.

‘I’ve invited a few friends from school round tomorrow evening to meet you,’ he said, out of the blue. ‘Hope that’s okay?’

‘So they can approve me?’ she said, feeling wary.

‘No, you idiot, just to meet you. To celebrate.’

‘Celebrate what?’

‘Your safe return, the end of your contract? I dunno. Do we need a reason?’

‘Can I invite a couple of my friends as well, to even the balance?’

She rang Vorny, who accepted eagerly, and her brother Jonny, who at first said he was busy and then, when she pressed him, admitted that he’d promised to spend the evening with his new girlfriend.

‘Bring her too. What’s her name?’

‘Sarah,’ he said. ‘Oh, okay then. She’s dying to meet the Afghanistan heroine, so I s’pose tomorrow’s as good a time as any. Be gentle, won’t you?’

‘You know me.’

‘Only too well.’

On Saturday morning she brought Nate toast, coffee and the newspaper in bed and headed off to the supermarket for party provisions. When she reached the checkout she discovered that, along with the crisps, nibbles and soft drinks, the boxes of wine and beer cans, she’d slipped a bottle of whisky into the trolley. She could barely remember doing it, but was too embarrassed to give it back to the cashier. At the flat, she hid it in the back of a drawer and tried to forget it was there.

I will not drink tonight, she promised herself.

But, getting ready that evening and finding herself unaccountably nervous at the prospect of meeting Nate’s work colleagues, her resolve crumbled and, with trembling hands, she took a couple of slugs to steady her stomach. It worked a treat. Vorny arrived early – they’d planned it that way – and they had a couple more discreet glasses together.

Nate’s friends were two couples, Matt and Louisa, Benjamin and Aleesha, and his head of PE, Mary, a tall, rangy woman of about forty. Jess submitted herself to their scrutiny: ‘Good to meet Nate’s mystery woman, after all this time’, and, ‘so you’re the tough girl who went to the front line in Afghanistan?’ She enlisted Vorny to help with the inevitable interrogation, which ranged from the benign: ‘Did you actually volunteer to go out there? You must be so brave, I’d be terrified,’ to the incredulous: ‘Did you really have to carry guns? Even as medics?’

They were nice enough people, but conversations with civilians always made her feel like a stranger from another planet. It was impossible to explain, or for them to gain any understanding beyond the most superficial level, what being on tour in a country like Afghanistan is really like.

The arrival of Jonny and Sarah was the excuse she needed, and she left Vorny fielding questions while she opened more bottles of wine and took the opportunity to slosh a whisky top up into her innocent glass of coke.

Sarah was a tall, slim girl with a dark-eyed seriousness about her – quite a contrast to her sturdy blond brother, whose open face was always ready with a joker’s smile. Jess could tell immediately that she was different from her brother’s previous girlfriends – less glamorous and self-absorbed, more poised and alert to the world around her. From their secret smiles and his soft looks it was clear that this relationship was the real thing, and she was glad for him.

In the past, to the anxious bewilderment of their parents, he’d dropped out of two university courses in consecutive years, and seemed to be settling for a life of minimum-wage drudgery. Then, with the help of a string-pulling uncle, he’d landed an IT post in a law company. The boss had recognised his potential, sent him on several training courses and promoted him twice. It had been the making of him, as their mother liked to say.

She’d never thought of her brother as much of a looker, but his new sense of self-esteem had magically given his features clearer definition, helped by the fact that he seemed to have lost weight and revamped his wardrobe. He’s quite a catch, Jess found herself thinking.

It turned out that Sarah was a teacher too, so it became a party of two halves: the school gang having a heated conversation about education, while Jess joined Jonny and Vorny sneaking a clandestine smoke in the tiny patio garden. Away from Nate’s sharp eyes she drank steadily and happily, sharing old jokes, enjoying the way her brother and her best friend sparred with each other. Everything was going perfectly.

The rest of the evening passed in a flash, until everyone had made their excuses and left, except for Vorny, who was staying the night, and Matt, a short and slightly balding man with an incipient beer-belly whose girlfriend had fallen asleep in the bedroom. Jess and Vorny sat in a happily intoxicated blur on the sofa, half listening to the boys having a rambling, slightly drunken discussion about politics.

Without warning, Matt turned his unsteady gaze towards them. ‘What do you Army girls think we should do about Syria then? Are we just going to let them go on killing each other till there’s no-one left except crazy radicalised religious zealots?’

You Army girls. How could Nate be friends with such a plonker? Neither seemed willing to reply until Vorny piped up in a quiet, reasonable voice: ‘There’s no right answer of course. It’s a tragic situation but it’s really complex, and I don’t think there’s much we can do to resolve it without creating even more trouble for the future.’

That should shut him up, Jess thought gratefully.

It didn’t. ‘What, shouldn’t we be riding in on white chargers this time, ready to implant the blessed gift of peaceful democracy? Like we’ve done in Iraq and Afghanistan?’

It was a deliberate challenge; Jess felt sure he’d been waiting all evening for the opportunity. She dug her fingernails painfully into her palm and tried to take a deep breath but her chest felt as though a large pair of hands was crushing her lungs. The anger flowed like a dangerous fire through her body, making her head ache, blurring her eyesight, cramping her stomach.

‘Let’s not go there, Matt,’ she could hear Nate cautioning, but it was too late.

A voice in her head warned her to stop, but it was easily ignored. Her tongue loosened itself and the words spilled out, without consent from her brain. ‘I suppose you’ve travelled widely in these countries, talked to many experts?’

‘Jess, don’t you think …?’ she could hear Nate trying to intervene, but she talked over him. ‘So, have you? Have you? And if not, then I’m just wondering what gives you the moral authority to prognosticate about the impact of military intervention in these countries?’

His piggy eyes stared back, widening with alarm. ‘I was just asking your opinion. From two people who have been there.’

Nate was now sitting upright, on high alert. ‘Enough, Jess. Lay off the dogs. This has been a nice evening. Don’t ruin it.’

‘I don’t think for one minute you were asking for our opinion,’ she heard her own voice, low and dangerous. ‘You were giving yours. And you think you have the right to have an opinion, in your safe little job a million miles away from any conflict, having probably never even had a single conversation with an Afghan or an Iraqi, and certainly without an iota of understanding about what we have been trying to achieve for them out there. Or of the fact that good people, much better people than you will ever be, have given their lives to help free the people of those countries from oppression. And you have the nerve to take the piss.’

Matt rose unsteadily to his feet.

‘I’m sorry to have offended. It’s time we were going home.’

Jess stood too. Discovering that she was, in her heels, slightly taller than him made her feel invincible. She could have floored him with a single blow.

‘Is that it? You run away, the moment anyone challenges you?’ she snarled. ‘What a great example you must be for your students. A pathetic, clever-dick, know-it-all little …’

‘ENOUGH, Jess,’ Nate bellowed, grabbing her by the arm and pulling her away, down the corridor into the bedroom, and throwing her roughly onto the bed. Shocked by his strength, she offered no resistance and she fell like a rag doll, arms and legs akimbo. The bed was still warm from Matt’s girlfriend, who had disappeared. There were groaning noises coming from the bathroom. Nate slammed the door behind him but a moment later it reopened and Vorny was by her side.

‘Christ, Jess, whatever happened there? You certainly know how to blow it, don’t you?’

‘He deserved it. The idiot.’ Her anger was cooling now.

‘You’re not wrong, but you shouldn’t call your boyfriend’s boss a “pathetic, clever-dick know-it-all”, however much he deserves it.’

‘His boss? That was the other woman, the tall one, Mary.’

‘No, Matt’s his boss. Mary’s the maths teacher.’

Icy fear replaced the vestiges of her fury. ‘That little fat man’s the head of sports? You’re quite sure?’

‘’Fraid so.’ Vorny shook her head. ‘I was talking to him earlier. About how he rates Nate, what a great asset he is. How well the football team’s been doing under his training.’

‘Bloody hell. I’ve blown it, haven’t I?’

‘You’ve got some serious apologising to do, that’s for sure.’

It would take a lot more than that, Jess knew.

She tried to apologise but Nate refused to discuss anything that evening, and when she offered to clear up he told her sharply that he didn’t need any help, thank you, and she should go to bed before she caused any more damage. He’d sleep on the sofa. End of story.

In the morning she reached across the bed for him before remembering, with a wave of self-disgust, what had happened. She found him already at work on the dining table, marking school books.

‘Nate, I am so, so sorry about last night.’ She moved behind him and stroked the back of his neck – his weak spot.

He swatted her hand away and swivelled round, his face fiercer than she’d ever seen before. No wonder he makes a good teacher, she found herself thinking, he must be utterly terrifying to the kids.

‘I think you’d better sit down,’ he said.

‘I’m going to make a coffee.’ Her mouth was dry, her stomach turning somersaults. ‘Do you want one?’

He shook his head and turned back to his marking. She boiled the kettle and made a mug of strong black instant, then went to sit at the table, facing him.

‘Okay. Let me say my piece first, please?’

He looked up and nodded, his face impassive, his eyes coal black.

‘What I said last night was completely out of order,’ she started. ‘I don’t know what got into me. It felt as though he was attacking everything I stand for, the reason why James and all those others have died. I just lost it, and the words came out without thinking. I am really, really sorry.’ She looked back at his stony expression and felt tears burning the back of her eyes. ‘Please forgive me, Nate. I can work through this and get better. I love you.’

He sighed wearily. ‘I’ve been doing a lot of thinking. All night, as it happens. This is the conclusion I’ve come to: I can’t deal with it any more, Jess. The drinking, the anger, all that. You’ve turned into someone I don’t recognise.’

‘I know. I’m sorry.’

‘You keep saying you’re sorry, but what have you done about it?’

‘I didn’t drink all last week.’

‘And when you did, look what happened. What I’m sorry about, Jess, is that I’ve stopped believing that you want to change. When you’ve sorted yourself out, rediscovered the old Jess, then get in touch.’

She managed an aghast, ‘Are you telling me it’s over?’

He nodded, but could not meet her eyes. ‘Till you get yourself sorted, yes.’

She just had time to say, ‘You don’t mean it? Just like that?’ and hear his retort, ‘I do, Jess. I really mean it, just like that,’ before the nausea hit her. When she finally emerged from the bathroom, Nate didn’t even raise his head. ‘When you feel better, please pack and leave,’ he said. ‘I’ve got work to do today.’

‘But …’

He held up a hand, like a policeman stopping traffic. ‘Please, I don’t want to talk about it. I’ve told you what I think and I’m not going to have another row. Don’t make it more painful than it is already. Just go.’

Once she’d packed she tried again: pleading and trying to reason. But he was immovable. ‘I’ve made up my mind,’ was all he would say.

In the face of this resistance and his complete unwillingness to talk or compromise, Jess’s anger returned in full flood; the red behind the eyes, the heat at the back of the neck. She wanted to hit him but, as if sensing it, he stood and faced her at full height.

There was nothing else she could do.

‘You bastard,’ she shouted, before slamming the door.

Only when she got back to the safety and privacy of the barracks did she allow herself to weep, with burning, desperate rasps that seemed as though they would never stop. She texted Nate with abject apologies, but there was no response. She cursed herself over and over again: she had never loved anyone the way she loved this man, never trusted anyone so much, never fancied anyone in the way she fancied him, never met anyone else that she’d consider spending her life with. And now, for the sake of a few drinks, she had thrown it all away.

Without Nate, life felt bereft of all meaning, all anticipation, all joy.