Pop Goes the Weasel

57

There is a fantasy that sustains you when you’re on active service. It’s the dream that sustains every soldier when he's stuck in some godforsaken dustbowl being shot at and shouted at. It’s the fantasy that there’s something better waiting for you at home. In this fantasy, your girl is keeping the home fires burning, hankering for your return. She will welcome you back with open arms, fill you with good food, take you to bed and be the doting, angelic wife. This is the very least you deserve for the months of fear, loneliness and anger. But it seldom works out that way.

Simon Booker was an ordinary citizen now. His best mate had been blown up two days before they were due to ship out. On the plane home, Simon had told his superior officer he was quitting. He used to love the army, but he wanted out now. It had brought him nothing but disillusionment and despair.

He was convinced that Ellie had been seeing other men whilst he was away. He didn’t have any evidence, it was just a feeling. Still, it gnawed away at him and he wondered which of his so-called mates were laughing behind their hands now, exchanging stories of what his Mrs was like in the sack. He avoided them, just like he now avoided Ellie. He couldn’t talk to her about what life had been like over there, about what it felt like to see Andy split in fifty pieces, and he certainly didn’t want to talk about what she got up to whilst he was away. So he went to the Doncaster and the White Hart. And when he came home, struggling to fit the key into the lock as his hand shook and his brain swam in cheap lager, he would trudge up to the box room where the computer was, walking past the open bedroom door.

He always locked the door. Despite his anger towards Ellie, he still didn’t want her to catch him at it. Was that out of shame or from some buried desire not to hurt her? He wasn’t sure, but he locked the door nevertheless.

The porn had been good to start with but recently he’d grown tired of it. Now his site of choice was Bitchfest. It was a whole new world for him. This was the new frontier of sex and he found in the forum a camaraderie he thought he’d lost for ever. Here men could talk frankly about what they wanted. And advise each other on how to go about getting it.

For a long time he’d held off acting on his impulses, but HappyGoLucky had given ‘Angel’ such rave reviews that he’d decided he couldn’t resist. A lot of men had cried off prostitutes in the wake of stuff in the newspapers and in other forums. Stories of blokes getting killed whilst on the job. And he wasn’t stupid, he knew you had to watch your back. The world was full of killers, liars and thieves. So he was taking precautions. He’d told Ellie he was seeing old army pals, but the contents of his holdall suggested otherwise. Inside was a pack of condoms and a change of clothes. And nestling underneath, unseen, was an iron bar.