Red Notice

18

‘Well, now you’ve met my parents, do you want to call the whole thing off?’ Tom had joked, as they shared a pot of coffee in Delphine’s flat the morning after they’d got back. It was almost the first chance they’d had to talk. A motorbike ride is never a good time to have a conversation, and by the time they’d reached Hereford it was two in the morning.

‘They weren’t so bad,’ she said. ‘Like all parents, I’m sure they just want the best for you.’

‘Perhaps, but aren’t I the best judge of what that is?’

‘They do have a bit of a point. If you could have your pick of careers or live the life of a country gent, why be a soldier — even an SAS one?’

‘How many times do I have to say this? I like it.’

She nodded over her mug and held out a hand. ‘And if it costs you your life one day?’

‘It’ll still have been worth it. You know the old saying, “Better to live a day on your feet than a lifetime on your knees”?’

She inclined her head, realizing that she had a mistress to compete with. ‘I’ve never heard you speak with such intensity about anything before.’

He gave a rueful smile. ‘Maybe it’s because you’ve never asked before.’

‘Oh, I’ve asked,’ she said. ‘It’s just that you’ve never heard me.’

‘Don’t get me wrong,’ he said. ‘I’m not planning to be Lawrence of Arabia for ever. I’ve seen too many grizzled old sweats droning on about how things were different — and better — back in the day, and how the youth of today doesn’t know what soldiering is. The moment I stop enjoying it and start enduring it, I’ll quit. There are plenty of other things I want to do with my life, but for now there’s no place I’d rather be, and no job I’d rather be doing.’

‘And if the price of that is that you wind up in a wheelchair, like some of your friends?’

He shrugged. ‘I don’t treat that risk lightly. But I know it can’t be eliminated altogether. Shit happens, and I know that there’s a chance it may happen to me. It’s the price of admission, if you like, to what we do. But it’s not going to stop me. I volunteered. No one forced me to do this job.’

‘And what about the normal, everyday things in life — buying a home, raising a family, cooking the dinner, cutting the grass — where do they fit in?’

‘At the moment they don’t. But that will change one day,’ he added hastily, as he saw her lips tighten and a bleak look in her eye. ‘I want children, one day, lots of them — but I want to be around for them. I’ve seen too many mates get married, have kids, then find themselves divorced a few years later because their wives got sick of trying to run a family on their own. I’ve even heard a few women say they prefer it when their men are away on ops because they’re just a nuisance when they’re at home, disrupting everyone’s routine. Well, that’s not going to happen to me.’ He paused. ‘Or my wife.’

‘OK,’ she said. ‘I can accept that you’re a soldier and you love your work, and that your mates are as close to you as your family, or maybe even closer, but does everything have to be quite so macho? This is the twenty-first century, not the Stone Age. Does any display of affection or tenderness, any interest in life outside the SAS really have to be taken as a sign of weakness? And would the world end if just once you said, “Sorry, I can’t make it,” when your friends or your precious Regiment asked you to do something?’

‘You and the Regiment are the two most important things in my life, Delphine,’ Tom said. ‘You know I love you, really I do, and I hope that we’ll have a life together long after I’ve left Hereford, but please don’t ask me right now to choose between you and the work I do.’

‘Because I wouldn’t like the choice you’d make?’

‘I didn’t say that.’

‘No,’ Delphine said. ‘You didn’t have to.’

They sat in silence for a while. ‘Anyway,’ he said brightly, putting down his mug on the nearest pile of hotel trade mags, ‘the trial by ordeal with my parents is over, and we don’t have to go back there any time soon.’

‘I wouldn’t mind,’ she said. ‘I’d go if you wanted to.’

‘Well,’ he gave a sly smile, ‘perhaps we will in a few months, if we’re still together by then.’

‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘I could probably be doing a lot better for myself.’

He gave her a quizzical look, then broke into a broad grin.

At the end of her six-month posting at the Green Dragon, Delphine had applied for an extension, and done so again six months later, even though it was against the wishes and advice of her boss. He couldn’t understand why she didn’t want to move on, after all her hard work.

In the end he’d extracted a promise that this would be her last six months, which was now almost up. But tonight, when Tom arrived, there was a more pressing situation she was desperate to discuss. Her future with Tom or, rather, the lack of it. The mistress had won. So much so that, for the last few weeks, every time she had tried to do so, something had cropped up at the Lines: Tom had been called in for a briefing, for training, a deployment, an operation, but often, she suspected, just to go out yet again with the lads.

But that was all history. She’d seen the news on TV. The speculation that the SAS had been involved in the mysterious explosions in Hampstead earlier in the day was probably right. Tom was heading back to Hereford and should be with her soon — maybe. She’d booked a table for dinner at the pub in Fownhope. She’d asked for the same table as they’d had on the night of their first date, even asked for a bottle of the same wine to be on the table waiting for him.