The men in yellow suits had come to the school during The Culling Year, a month after we closed the gates and instituted quarantine.
They pulled up to the gate in their trucks and got out, sealed inside their protective shells, eyes hidden in shadow beneath Perspex visors, mouths covered by bulbous gas masks. There were four of them, and two had cylinders strapped to their backs. Long tubes snaked out of the cylinders to metal spray guns with tiny pilot lights flickering beneath the nozzles. Flamethrowers.
We'd heard reports of their activities. They were roaming the country in teams, burning any houses that contained dead bodies, carting away anyone they found alive. We'd been waiting for them. Bates was still running the school then, so he and I went down to the gate to talk to them. We took guns.
"We hear you've got kids cooped up in there. Any of them blood type O-Neg?" asked the spokesman, his voice distorted by the mask.
"A couple, why?" I replied.
"They'll need to come with us, Miss. Government orders. All O-Neg citizens are to be taken to special hospitals. They're immune, you see."
"These children are under our protection," said Bates. "They're going nowhere."
"Look, don't make us get rough, mate," said the weary official. "They won't be harmed, they're immune, ain't they? We just need to take some blood samples and then take them to a special camp where all the O-Negs we round up are being looked after. We keep 'em safe, okay? Either of you O-Neg?"
Neither of us replied.
"If you're not, then you're going to die unless you got one of these," he gestured to his suit. "Simple as that. It's airborne. Animals carry it, birds carry it, it's in the water, and it's in the rain. There's no escape. Quarantine won't work. And who'll look after the kids then, eh? Best thing for everyone if you just hand 'em over to us."
"And if we don't?" said Bates, nervously levelling his rifle at the quartet.
"We have the authority to take them by force."
"There are two of us with guns, and there are more back in the main building," I said. "There are only four of you and two flamethrowers, which don't reach as far as bullets. I don't fancy your chances."
We stood there, facing each other.
"You really don't want to pick a fight with us," said the spokesman eventually. His voice was quiet, the threat clear.
"I think we just did," I replied.
"I'm sorry you feel that way, Miss."
I gripped my gun harder, waiting for the inevitable fight. But it never came.
"We'll be back," said the spokesman. "You can count on it."
And they got back in the truck and drove away.
We spent that night and the whole of the next day erecting defences at the main gate, breaking the weapons out of the armoury and rallying the few boys still not sick.
But they never returned. They were the final representatives of bureaucracy and government we ever encountered. When they left, they took the last traces of the old order with them. Or so we thought.
We weren't sure whether they encountered some other group who gunned them down, or they succumbed to the virus.
But as I stood in that bank another possibility occurred to me.
Maybe they just went mad.
The cleaner who stood in the doorway had seen one unarmed woman run into the building. He wasn't prepared for three of us, with guns. We all opened fire at once. The blood flowed slickly down his yellow protective suit as he jerked and shook, then he collapsed in a heap. The grenade rolled forward a few inches then stopped on the threshold.
Without thinking I jumped up, ran forward, and kicked it as hard as I could. I was always more of a netball girl, but Johnny Wilkinson would have been proud of me. The grenade soared away across the street and landed in a bin. It popped and a column of evil poison smoke rose up, only for the wind to take it and blow it away from us.
I ducked back inside the bank, knowing that our victory was temporary.
"We need to get out of here now," I shouted.
"This is a bank," said Rowles, exasperated. "The back door is armoured, we can't kick it down."
"Shit."
"There is the vault," offered Caroline, sounding scared for the first time since I'd met her.
"The what?" I asked.
"There's a vault, a walk-in thing," she explained. "It's not huge, but it's probably airtight."
"And once we're in there how do we get out? Or breathe?" said Rowles.
"Fine," she shouted resentfully. "So what's your plan, genius?"
I didn't have time to waste watching a lover's tiff. "No, that's a good idea Caroline," I said, "and it might work as a last resort but…"
"Look!" screamed the girl.
I turned to see a yellow arm withdrawing from the doorway and a gas grenade rolling towards us, making a nasty squelching noise on the sodden carpet.
"Up!" I shouted. We ran through the door that said 'No Entry' and headed for the stairs. Even as we scrambled up that narrow staircase I knew that all I'd done was buy us a few minutes. We were trapped. Where the hell was Sanders?
This building was one of the few new ones on the main street of town, and it only had two storeys. We came to a landing and a series of non-descript offices so dull that nobody had even bothered to trash them.
"There has to be a fire escape," I said. "Check all the rooms."
None of the windows had been shattered, so cracking open these doors was like walking into a time capsule, breathing pre-Cull air, still with the faint tang of PVC chairs, air conditioning and carpet fumes. One of the desks had a framed picture of two blonde toddlers on it, next to a desk tidy full of neatly arranged pens. I didn't know which was creepier – booby trapped Woolies or this strange museum.
"Here," shouted Rowles. Caroline and I ran to the office he was in, which had a fire exit with a push-bar in the wall facing away from the street. Caroline and I stepped back and raised our weapons then I nodded to Rowles, who crouched down and shoved the door open.
The exit led on to a metal staircase in a dim courtyard. So dim, that the figure standing outside was just a silhouette. I held my fire, unsure, but Caroline panicked and squeezed off two rounds. I yelled at her to hold her fire but it was too late.
The figure grunted, staggered back against the metal railing and toppled backwards into space. We heard him hit the concrete below with an awful thud.
"Dammit Caroline," I yelled. "We have no idea who that was."
"But…"
I ushered her and Rowles out of the door and they clattered down the fire escape. As I turned to pull the door closed behind me I caught a flash of yellow on the landing and fired through the plasterboard walls at where I thought the cleaner was standing. I didn't wait to see if I'd hit him.
I pelted down the loud metal steps and found Rowles and Caroline standing, appalled, over the body of Patel, the squaddie Sanders had taken with him. Caroline had got him clean in the chest. He was stone dead.
In the dank concrete-floored courtyard, with the interior walls of buildings rising all around us, their small staircase windows looking out on this joyless scene, I could see her face was ashen white. Rowles was holding her hand tightly.
"He must have been coming to help us," she said softly.
"No time," I barked as I reached down and grabbed Patel's machine gun.
Then there was a loud clang. And another, and another, as something metal bounced down the fire escape behind us.
At the same time we heard the distant echo of gunfire from the main street. That had to be Sanders.
I threw my arms wide and herded the children towards a small brick alley that led beneath one of the buildings and out of the courtyard. As they ran I turned, slipped the safety off the machine gun, and sprayed the fire escape with bullets, hoping to discourage pursuit. Then I ran after the kids as I heard the loud hiss of escaping gas behind me.
We emerged into a car park littered with wrecked vehicles and shopping trolleys. But no cleaners, thank God. I strained to hear the gunfire and tried to identify where it was coming from. As soon as I was sure that it was coming from our left I turned and ran right, urging the children ahead of me as we ran behind the row of buildings.
"I think we're parallel to the main street," I explained as we ran. "If we can get to the opposite end of the street to Sanders we might be able to trap the cleaners in a crossfire."
The buildings ended at the car park entrance road, which turned right to rejoin the main street. I flattened my back against the wall and indicated for the kids to do the same, then I risked a quick glimpse around the corner. Nothing but a burned-out bus.
I turned to the children.
"Rowles, you stay here and make sure we aren't followed. Caroline, with me."
Why did I do that? I've asked myself a hundred times since then. Why didn't I take Rowles? But at that instant I was sure that it was safer to come with me, to approach the cleaners from behind with the element of surprise. I was certain that Rowles would be in more danger than she would be, and I knew he could cope with that.
So I ran around the corner, waving the traumatised girl along behind me. Guns raised, we moved slowly along the side of what had once been a small branch of Boots. There were sporadic bursts of gunfire ahead and to our right, so it sounded as if Sanders was still in the fight at the far end of the street.
I reached the next corner and again flattened my back against the wall and glanced around. The trucks were about thirty metres away. The gas had cleared and the bodies of the dead soldiers lay on the pavement and in the road.
Beyond the trucks were three cleaners, crouched behind available cover – a car, a brick flower bed, a phone booth. All were now armed with machine guns taken from the squaddies. They leaned out, took their shots, and then ducked back under cover, obviously involved in a firefight. But none of them spared a glance behind them.
I turned to Caroline.
"Okay," I said. "We go quickly and quietly. Move from car to car, stay in cover as much as possible. When we're close I'll give the signal and you take out the one on the right. I've got the machine gun, so I'll take the other two. OK?"
She nodded but I could tell she was having to work very hard to keep herself under control.
"It wasn't your fault, Caroline," I said gently. "But we can talk about it later. Right now I need you to focus on what we have to do. Can you do that?"
She nodded. "Yes, Miss."
I put my arm around her shoulder squeezed. "Good girl. Now come on."
We moved out of cover and ran into the road. It took us only a minute or so to get close to the cleaners. They were so preoccupied, and the noise of gunfire was so loud, that they had no idea they were being stalked. Both Caroline and I, on opposite sides of the road, took up firing positions behind cars.
I was just about to give the signal when it all went wrong.
There was a burst of gunfire from behind us and to our right. I ducked instinctively before I realised it was echoing across from the car park. A cleaner must have bumped into Rowles. One of the men in front of us heard the exchange of fire and turned to look back. He saw Caroline. I turned to the girl and yelled at her to get down and as I did so I saw, over her shoulder, another cleaner emerging from the bank.
And then there were bullets everywhere. The one in the bank doorway raised his shotgun as the man in front of us turned and raised his machine gun. Caroline, unaware of the cleaner to her right, opened fire as I dived sideways and shot around Caroline at the man in the bank.
Caroline hit her man. He missed her and fell backwards, shot in the arm. I hit the man with the shotgun and his arms flew up as his gun went off. This saved Caroline's life; only the edge of the shotgun's pellet spray hit her, and those pellets were slowed by the glass in the car behind which she was standing.
But it was enough. She fell, screaming.
I continued firing and the cleaner in the bank disappeared back into the gloom, full of bullets.
The two remaining cleaners turned to see what was going on. One of them foolishly allowed his head to pop ever so slightly out of cover. A single shot from Sanders, still out of sight down the street, took the top of his skull off. I rolled on to my back, brought the gun up to my tummy and turned the middle cleaner's chest into mincemeat before he could get a shot off.
That left the wounded one. I stood to see where he was, but he was out of it – the bullet had hit an artery and he was lying in a widening pool of blood, not long to live, no threat to anyone.
I ran to Caroline. She was lying in the road, breathing hard, teeth gritted, whimpering.
Before I could bend down I heard pounding boots approaching and I spun, gun at the ready. A yellow suit passed in front of my eyes but the helmet was hanging down. It was Sanders. He casually put a bullet in the wounded cleaner's head as he ran past, without even slowing down.
"Easy, Kate, easy."
I lowered my weapon.
"First aid kit?" I asked.
"Truck," he replied, and ran to get it while I knelt down to tend to Caroline.
She was barely conscious.
She had been lucky. When I rolled her over I could see that pellets had hit her from the waist up, including five that were embedded in her right cheek, one that looked like it had damaged her right eye socket, and a couple above the hairline. If I could treat her quickly, and if I could prevent any of the wounds from becoming infected, she should survive.
"Hold on sweetheart," I said, grasping her hand tightly. "Hold on."
We set up camp in a house near the centre of town. It had been lived in until very recently so it was clean and had everything we needed. I set up a workspace in the living room and did my best to patch Caroline up. Once I'd finished, I went into the kitchen and gratefully accepted the mug of hot tea that Sanders offered me. The kitchen had been installed some time in the seventies and had escaped renovation. The table had a chipped Formica top, like a greasy spoon cafe, and the chair was cheap moulded plastic.
"Well?" he asked.
"I got all the pellets out, sterilised the wounds, stitched the ones that needed it, dressed them, put her to bed. She should really have some antibiotics, but there's nothing I can do about that. The vodka you found helped, thanks."
"Any left?"
"No, sorry. I wish."
"You lush," he smiled.
"I couldn't save her eye," I said quietly, "and her face will be horribly scarred. Rowles refuses to leave her side. He's just sitting there, holding her hand and stroking her hair. I never really thought he had a tender side. Funny how people can surprise you."
"He's not people," said Sanders. "He's an eleven-year-old boy. Who you took into combat."
I laughed bitterly. "Like I could have stopped him! Trust me, Sanders, the boy's a law unto himself. I'm just trying to keep him contained and alive."
"And Caroline?"
"Goes where he goes. Always."
"And which of them shot Patel?"
Shit, that took me by surprise.
"Sorry?"
"I found his body where you told me," he said. "He wasn't killed with a shotgun, he was shot with a sidearm, and you three had the only ones in play."
"There was a fight upstairs at the bank," I lied. "One of the cleaners got my gun off me. Patel burst in and got shot. Then Rowles hit the cleaner over the head with a chair and in the confusion I snatched back my gun and ran."
Sanders shook his head slowly. "Nice try. If I thought you shot him trying to escape custody…" He left the threat unspoken. "But no, I think one of you shot him by accident. Caroline, at a guess."
I stared intently at the swirling patterns on the surface of my tea.
"He was a good lad," continued Sanders. "Would have made a good officer."
"Look, she just panicked, that's all."
"And that's why you don't take children into combat."
I looked up at him angrily. "What, like we seek it out? Are you joking? I just want to keep them alive and teach them to read. But people keep pointing guns at us. People like the cleaners and you." I jabbed him in the chest with my index finger. "We have no fucking choice. Do you think I like seeing what it does to them? You know, Rowles used to be the sweetest kid in the world. I mean Disney sweet, saccharine, cutesy. Now look at him! He's terrifying. But he's alive, and one day, maybe, if I can keep him alive long enough, he can stop fighting and grow into a man. That's all I want, to see him grow up safe, to see all my kids grow up safe. But as long as there are nutters with guns strolling around telling everyone what to do, that's not going to be possible. And now Caroline. I was supposed to keep her safe."
I stood up and threw my mug across the room, full of fury that had nowhere to go. It smashed against the wall and then, before I knew what I was doing, I was crying my eyes out and Sanders was holding me tightly as I pounded my fists against his chest and wept for the girl lying shattered in the bed upstairs.
Then there was kissing.
Then there was sex.
Then there was sleep.
When morning came I woke refreshed, warm and mortified.
Not because I'd slept with a guy who was about as far from my type as it's possible to get, but because as I lay there feeling him breathe, I replayed the night's events in my mind and realized something awful.
I felt guilty.
Which was, of course, ridiculous. I wasn't seeing anyone.
(Do people still 'see' each other after an apocalypse? 'Seeing' someone makes me think of flirty text messages, bottles of wine, dinner in fancy restaurants, making your date suffer through a romcom as a test of their forbearance. None of those things were possible any more. I found myself drowsily wondering what Sex and the City would say about the rules of dating in a post-viral warzone. Of course, with society entirely gone away, every woman who wanted Jimmy Choos could have them, as long as they were prepared to fight their way to a lootable store. And then I had a vision of Sarah Jessica Parker in a sequined dress, with an AK47, mowing down hoards of Blood Hunters, screaming "if you want the strappy sandals you'll have to go through me, motherfuckers!" That was Kate thinking. Jane told her to shut up and focus.)
I had no ties. Since that thing with Mac and the sixth formers last year I'd not been within arm's length of a man I felt like getting to know better. Still, there was nothing to prevent me bedding the entire male population of the UK if the mood struck me.
But as I replayed the night's exertions I realized that at a very particular moment I was thinking of a very particular person. It wasn't as if I was thinking of Sanders at any point. It was a comfort fuck at the end of an awful day; it wasn't about Sanders at all. Neither was I fantasizing about anyone else. It was all about me, about being alive while people were dying around me, about wanting to feel something other than pain for a moment.
Yet at one moment, as I arched my back and dug in my fingernails, I had a crystal clear picture of Lee in my mind, just for a second. And I lay there in the morning with a sinking feeling. I knew what it meant, but I refused to accept it. I banished it from my mind. As Lee was so fond of saying: "no time, things to do".
But, really, damn.
When he woke, Sanders was brisk, businesslike, unsentimental. He didn't want to cuddle or talk or any of that, which suited me fine.
Kate had never had a one night stand, but Jane had had plenty. Of course, Jane had never bedded a guy who knew Kate and that collision did strange things to my head. He was detached come daylight, the kind of behaviour that would have thrown Kate into despair and angst but which was a blessed relief to Jane.
He wasn't cold, though. He smiled and cracked a few lame jokes. Don't worry, his behavior said, I don't expect or require anything else. Ironically, that made me like him a whole lot more than I had the day before.
I checked on Caroline and Rowles. They were curled up on the double bed in the main room, spooning, fast asleep. They looked so peaceful and innocent lying there that I decided to let them sleep. Sanders found some tinned spaghetti and a calor stove, and we sat down to breakfast. We ate our food out of china bowls with old, dull forks and listened to the harsh wind battering the open doors and windows of this deserted little suburban cul-de-sac.
"You said you swept this town," I asked as I wiped tomato sauce off my chin with my sleeve. "What does that mean? What is exactly is Operation Motherland?"
"Our orders are pretty simple," he replied. "We're emptying every armed forces base in the country, gathering all the weapons and ordnance in a series of huge depots on Salisbury plain. The idea is to disarm the population, take guns out of the equation. Then, when we've got all the hardware, we can start to re-impose law and order, raise a new army, take back London, put the king on the throne, get back to some sort of normality."
I gaped. "You're just collecting weapons? That's it? That's your masterplan?"
He nodded. "Yeah, for now. We've got more kit than we know what to do with, to be honest. Take this town for instance. There was a TA base nearby and a gang of kids had broken in, got themselves all tooled up, and they were running this place. It was ugly, what they were doing. So we rolled in, executed the worst of them, took all their guns away so it couldn't happen again. Job well done."
"And where is everyone now?"
He shrugged. Not his problem.
"Jesus, Sanders," I said. "Didn't it occur to you that it would have been better to arm the people here? The sane ones, the adults?"
"Our orders are to disarm everyone, Kate."
"It's Jane, and those are stupid orders. Obviously these cleaners came to town, found the people here defenceless and either drove them out of their homes or massacred them. And that's your fault. If they'd been armed, they'd have been able to defend themselves."
Sanders put down his bowl and stood up suddenly. "Time to ship out," he said brusquely, and he left the room.
Kate was always a good girl at school. She studied hard, got good grades, excelled at science, biology especially, and made her parents proud.
She only got in trouble once, and that wasn't her fault. Her friend April had started a fight – she never really understood what about – and Kate had tried to break it up. But in the struggle to keep the peace she ended up getting thumped, hard, by a nasty little bitch called Mandy Jennings. So Kate thumped her back – the first and only time she ever threw a punch. Well, until Moss Side. Unfortunately, her aim was true and Mandy wore glasses. So when the screaming and hair pulling finally ended, Kate was marched off to see the headmaster, who gave her all that guff about letting herself down. And Kate bought it, 'cause she was a good girl, and she felt ashamed and she cried and said "sorry, Sir".
As Sanders drove the truck through the gates of Salisbury HQ I felt an echo of what Kate had felt when she was about to be brought up before a figure of authority – a sick, hollow, butterfly ache in the stomach. The only difference was that Jane would have told the headmaster to go stuff himself. And the headmaster was unlikely to have Kate lined up in front of a firing squad.
Salisbury had been the centre of British Army maneouvres for decades, and all the facilities had recently been given a 21st century facelift, so the main base at Tidworth was modern and sprawling, with barracks aplenty and facilities for the maintenance of all sorts of vehicles. But there was so much stuff gathered here that it had spilled out of the base perimeter and on to the plain itself. Row upon row of trucks, tanks, armoured vehicles, jeeps, fire engines, both Green Goddesses and the conventional red ones, ambulances and police vans. Not to mention the hundreds of oil tankers, lined up in rows stretching off to the horizon.
Sanders had undersold the operation's ambitions. They weren't just hoarding weapons, they were collecting all the resources they could lay their hands on. After all, resources meant power. If they had all the service vehicles and all the fuel, married to a well drilled force in possession of weaponry vastly superior to anything else out there, they would be unstoppable.
As I looked out of the truck window and saw all that hardware I felt both excited and scared. All that power, just waiting for someone to give the order to move from preparation to implementation. Operation Motherland was a sleeping giant. When it awoke nothing and nobody would be able to stand in its way.
We drove past a parade ground where at least 400 men were doing drills, and groups of soldiers in full kit marched past us at regular intervals, heading for trucks or armoured vehicles, off to round up more guns, fuel, Pot Noodles or whatever. The place was buzzing, full of organized, purposeful activity.
So as we drove into that awe inspiring place I felt insignificant and afraid, and I wondered what the headmaster would be like. Because with all this at his command, he could do pretty much anything he wanted with me.
Sanders pulled up outside the medical centre and carried Caroline inside. We'd made her a little bed in the back and Rowles had sat with her during the journey. He'd not said a word to me since she'd been shot. I think he blamed me for letting it happen, and an angry Rowles was not someone I wanted to confront, so I left him alone to brood. Caroline herself was conscious and cogent, but complaining of sharp pains in her head, which worried me. There was a possibility that she was bleeding into her skull, and I wanted her x-rayed as quickly as possible. I let Sanders sort out the formalities and I sat in the truck feeling guilty, useless and scared.
I caught myself wishing Lee were here, but I banished that thought as quickly as it appeared.
Sanders emerged five minutes later and opened the cab door for me, indicating that I should get out.
"They think she'll be fine, but they're going to give her a full work up. Rowles is staying with her," he said as I clambered down. There was an awkward moment as he put his hands around my waist to lift me down. I stared at him, not unkindly, and he removed his hands and apologized with a smile.
He led the way to the regimental HQ.
"The doctors here have lots of practice treating injuries like hers," he explained. "The one I saw said to tell you that you'd done an excellent job on her."
I nodded, trying to take pride in the compliment, but I felt nothing but shame.
We came to the steps of the main building and Sanders put one of his huge hands on my shoulder. I stopped.
"Let me do the talking, okay?" he said.
I looked at him curiously.
"I think I can sort this out," he explained. "But you'll have to trust me."
"Sure," I said, allowing myself a flicker of hope.
We walked up the steps and through the double doors. There was a notice board on our left as we entered, plastered with timetables, orders, a poster for a karaoke night. It was so normal, it reminded me of school. Down the long corridor which stretched ahead of us men and women in uniform were bustling from room to room carrying clipboards and folders. A drink machine, actually powered up and working, was frothing a coffee for a bored looking army clerk. That corridor was the closest thing I'd seen to pre-Cull England in two years. Nobody was scared, nobody was hungry. There was an air of ordered, peaceful activity, like any office, really. I wondered if this was the way forward for us survivors, or whether the military machine was just hiding itself away inside a secure compound where they could pretend nothing had happened, that routine military life was just the same as it had always been, running like clockwork, all hierarchy and structure.
We walked down the corridor and Sanders knocked on the door at the far end. The nameplate read Maj. Gen. J. G. Kennett. This was the big man. I braced myself, but when a stern voice barked "Enter!" Sanders turned and pointed to a chair in the corner.
"Stay there," he said. "I'll only be a minute."
I nodded, aware that my life, and the lives of my kids, rested entirely upon what this man, who I hardly knew, was going to say next.
As Sanders opened the door, I sat down to wait. I'd only been there for a minute, twiddling my thumbs and staring at the patterns on the carpet, when a young woman brought me a cup of tea in a saucer, with biscuits.
"There you go, Miss," she said with a smile.
Cup and saucer, tea and biscuits. I shook my head in wonder.
About ten minutes later, long after I'd exhausted all the entertainment possibilities of sitting on a chair in a corridor, the door to Kennett's office opened and Sanders popped his head out.
"Jane," was all he said by way of summons.
I felt a pang of butterflies in my tummy as I rose and entered the office of probably the most powerful man in the country. The room was plush but not opulent. Regimental photos lined the walls, and there were even a few paintings – Waterloo, the trenches of the Somme. The floor was polished wood with a huge, deep rug laid across most of it. There were old wooden filing cabinets, upholstered wooden armchairs, a sideboard with decanter and glasses. The room was old school privilege and power; comfort, security and authority embodied in the trappings of tradition and duty.
Major General Kennett was standing in front of his desk, leaning back against it, his arms folded across his chest. He was about forty, plump, red cheeked and bald, with a strong square jaw, and was dressed plainly in green trousers and jumper. He regarded me with calculating green eyes. I was unsure whether his air of easy authority was innate or whether it was bestowed upon him by the room itself and all the cultural and social respect it represented.
Sanders stood to one side, hands clasped behind his back. He wasn't at attention, but he was formal. I think they call it 'standing easy'.
"Miss Crowther, welcome to Operation Motherland," said Kennett, leaning forward and offering me his hand. His voice was high and nasal, with a strong southern accent, kind of like Ken Livingstone. It didn't suit him at all.
I took his hand and he shook it once, firmly.
He didn't offer me a seat, so I stood there, unsure what was required of me.
"The lieutenant has been telling me what happened at your school and on the journey here. There'll have to be an investigation, of course." He folded his arms and pursed his lips, assessing me.
I couldn't think of anything to say, so I just said "right."
There was a long pause.
"I'm not entirely sure I believe everything he told me," added Kennett.
"Sir…" began Sanders, but Kennett silenced him with a look.
"But I've known him a long time, Miss Crowther. He's one of my most trusted officers. So I choose to believe him. And I feel sure that everything the investigation discovers will corroborate his story. Won't it, Sanders?"
"Sir."
"Yes," mused Kennett. "Thorough. I like that in a soldier. So I shall continue to believe him, and by extension to trust you, unless you give me reason to do otherwise. Do you think you're likely to do that, Miss Crowther?"
"No, Sir," I said, surprised by my instinctive deference.
"Good. In which case you are welcome to remain here while the girl in your care recuperates. After that you will escorted safely back to your school. We will, I'm afraid, have to disarm your merry band, but I'm sure you understand that's for the best."
"Actually, Sir…" I began. But the warning in his eyes was clear and unambiguous. I fell silent again and nodded. Jesus, this really was like talking to my old headmaster.
"Excellent." Kennet clapped his hands and smiled. Business concluded. "Sanders will find you a billet, and maybe we'll see you at our karaoke night tonight. Sanders does a very good Lemmy, I'm told." With that he turned his back on us, picked up a file and began to read.
A second later, almost as an afterthought, he said "dismissed."
Sanders saluted, said "Sir" and ushered me out of the door.
"What the hell did you tell him?" I asked incredulously as we walked out of the building into the crisp air of a spring evening.
"What I needed to. I'll brief you properly later, so we can get our stories straight for the investigators. Essentially, the child traffickers killed our guys, and you killed the traffickers."
At the bottom of the steps I stopped, took his hand, leant up and kissed him on the cheek.
"Thank you," I said.
He squeezed my hand and smiled. "You're welcome. Now let's get you billeted, then you can start thinking about what you're going to sing tonight!"
"You wish! I've got a voice like a strangled cat."
The billet was a room on the first floor of a simple barrack building. It had a single bed, wardrobe, wash basin with clean running water, a TV with DVD player and plug sockets that had power. Plus, central heating! I leant my bum against the radiator enjoying that slightly too hot feeling that I'd almost forgotten. Log fires are nice, but give me a boiling hot radiator any day of the week.
After Sanders left me alone I went to the communal bathroom at the end of the landing, drew myself a hot bath and soaked all the aches away. Sanders had scraped together some toiletries from somewhere, so I washed my hair, soaped myself clean, shaved my legs, plucked my eyebrows, waxed my top lip, and did all those things I used to take so completely for granted. When I was all done, I lay back in the water and watched the steam rise and curl as the stitches in my cheek throbbed in the heat.
I closed my eyes and imagined I was at home, that Gran was downstairs making tea, and that after I'd dried my hair I'd go downstairs and eat her corned beef pie with mash and we'd watch trashy telly.
It was a nice, warm daydream.
I felt safe for the first time in two years.
When I woke, the water was tepid and night had fallen. The light was off so the bathroom was dark. I suppose that's why Sanders hadn't found me and dragged me off to karaoke. I looped the plug chain around my big toe and pulled it out, then I rose, pulled my towel off the hot radiator and wrapped it around me. Back in my billet I found that Sanders had left me some clean clothes, bless him, and although the short black dress he'd chosen for me was perhaps not quite what I'd have opted for, I decided to indulge him, and myself. There was fancy underwear as well – nothing crass, just good quality – and the shoes were nice. He'd almost guessed my size right in all respects.
When I was all dolled up, I put on some slap and looked at myself in a mirror. Bathed, well dressed, made-up. Nothing out of the ordinary a few years ago, but the woman staring back at me seemed like an old stranger, someone I'd known very well once upon a time but had lost touch with. I was glad to see her again, but I knew she was only visiting briefly
I looked like Kate.
Well, no matter. I was about to walk into a room full of soldiers, looking pretty damn good, if I said so myself. It had been a long time since I'd turned any heads, and I was looking forward to it.
Pulling a coat around my shoulders, I left the room, turned off the light and walked downstairs, listening to my heels clicking on the lino. Again, a sound from the past – high heels on a staircase. One small detail of a forgotten life, once commonplace now extraordinary to me.
I opened the door and stepped outside. The camp was dark, but the roads were lit with orange sodium lights. I stopped and listened. From somewhere off in the distance I could hear a chorus of drunken voices singing Delilah. I followed the sound, enjoying the sensation of once again being able to walk alone at night without fear.
Which is why it was such a surprise when the man dropped out of the sky on a parachute and landed on the path in front of me, and hands grabbed me from behind, muffling my shouts, dragging me into the shadows.