CHAPTER ONE

 

 

THOUGH THERE WERE three of them, they moved as one.

They’d been trained to do so by the very best. To think alike, to act alike. To carry on the mission, even if one of their number was in trouble. The mission was all; that had been drummed into them time and again. There was no room for sentimentality, especially not on this occasion. No place for emotions. They’d had to become hard, cold.

Focussed on the task in hand.

The trio even looked the same, in their dark, skin-tight outfits and masks which left only their eyes visible: darting this way and that. Like clones. And like clones, they were expendable. Whatever happened tonight, whether they succeeded or failed, they would not be simply walking away from this place. How could they? It would prove impossible.

Gaining entry to the city hadn’t been difficult... for them. Many had tried before, of course, and failed. Security was notoriously—and necessarily—tight here. Lessons had been learned from the past, obvious weak spots scrutinised and fixed. But if you wanted in badly enough, you could always, always find a way. It was their job to find those kinds of ways and they were extremely good at it.

Guard shift changes had been monitored for some time now, patterns noted—even ones that changed. It was all a matter of routines, which these sorts of people loved. Then adapting to them, slipping in through the cracks. Even now they were approaching their target location, where yet more guards stood between them and their marks.

Taking these out wouldn’t be difficult, but it would only leave them a limited window of opportunity before it was noticed. Time was of the essence. The first figure nodded to their comrades, indicating Phase Two of the operation had begun, and simultaneously they struck—raising their pistols, silencers ensuring that only the faintest of sounds could be heard. The guards by the main gate dropped sideways, hardly having any time to register what had happened. Moving forward, the trio took out the figures on the turrets as well, leaving the way clear for them to clamber up and over into the grounds.

The building loomed in front of them, large and imposing—to anyone else. Nottingham Castle. The three figures fanned out, dropping guards whenever and wherever they saw them, leaving a silent trail of bodies in their wake—only stopping to reload every now and again. All too soon they were at the building itself, disabling the alarm system. Breaking in through a downstairs window and slipping inside like burglars. But these men were here to steal something far more precious than paintings or jewellery, not that either had any value in the time after the Cull.

After dispatching a couple of internal guards, they made their way through corridors lit only by candles and up the stairs, not pausing once, determined to finish what they had started. Exhibitions and displays of local art had given way to bedrooms, after less thoughtful tenants had trashed them. The building had become functional again, but also strangely homely over recent years. If their intel was correct—and it was—they’d find the first of their targets on this level, the next in a bedroom above.

The trio split up, the first figures branching off to open two doors at once. The third was already moving up the stairs to do the same on the next level. The first of the men in black moved into the room, sharp eyes discerning outlines in the bed: on the left, a man. One of the Hooded Man’s most trusted soldiers, known as Dale. To his credit, the Ranger woke as soon as he sensed a presence in the room, but it was already too late. The assassin’s pistol was up and firing. Dale fell back onto the bed, where he sprawled out, unmoving. Then a couple of rounds were pumped into the waking female figure beside Dale. The assassin glided forward, checking pulses and nodding to himself.

In the other bedroom, the second assassin found another young couple, fast asleep. This was one of the major prizes they were after: Hood’s adopted son, Mark, and his partner Sophie. Mark, too, sensed something was wrong at the last minute, looking up and over at the stranger in the open doorway. As the gun was raised, Hood’s son was up and launching himself at the assassin. The man didn’t even flinch; he just fired at the lad, catching him in shoulder and forehead. Mark dropped sideways onto the floor with a thump. His wife, Sophie, was now sitting up, still dazed and confused. She opened her mouth to scream, but a shot silenced her before she could get any sound out. Sophie dropped forward, doubling over, like a puppet with its strings cut.

Above them, on the next floor, the third intruder had located the next objective: the room where Hood and his own wife would be. He opened the door silently, stepping inside at the same time. On the near side of the bed, he made out a woman sprawled out, long hair splayed over the pillow. She murmured something and he thought she might wake at that point, but it was obvious she was just having a dream. The assassin raised his pistol, finger on the trigger.

He hesitated, his own senses tingling. Realising that even as he was watching the sleeping figure in the bed, about to take her life, he himself was being scrutinised. Someone was behind him, and it was only now—as his eyes adjusted—that he saw the other side of the bed was empty. Before he could react, he felt pressure around both his wrist and at his throat simultaneously. His first thought was: how could his attacker have gotten behind him? Had he been up already when they struck? The one thing they hadn’t considered: Mother Nature and a full bladder nonchalantly tossing a spanner into the works?

It didn’t matter, he needed to focus on the fact that his pistol was falling from his grasp; that he was blacking out because of the forearm jammed up against his windpipe, the arm crooked around his neck. The assassin jabbed backwards with his elbow, ramming it into his opponent’s ribs hard enough to elicit a grunt. The pressure at his larynx eased slightly. Another jab removed it entirely.

The assassin shoved back with all his weight, sending the man crashing into the wall opposite. At the same time, the assassin spun and kicked, knocking his attacker backwards into the wall a second time. It would have been enough to fell most people, but the shadowy figure just shook himself and came at the third assassin once more.

The first blow to the face was blocked, but a second one—almost immediately after the initial one—thudded into the assassin’s side. It was followed by a succession of jabs to the kidneys which hurt like all hell. Regardless of this, the assassin rose and brought the flat of his left hand up hard and into his opponent’s chin. If it had been just a few centimetres lower, he might have broken the man’s neck, but as it was it only served to whip his opponent’s head briefly to the side.

Then the man brought a knee up hard into the assassin’s stomach, doubling him over. He brought both fists down together onto the assassin’s back as he withdrew his knee, and suddenly the assassin was on the ground. Before the killer could do anything else there was pressure on the back on his neck. Though he couldn’t see, he reached back around and felt the foot there, but was at the wrong angle to dislodge it. This time his vision did swim and a moment later he was unconscious.

Underneath them both, the remaining assassins had met up again—puzzled that their comrade hadn’t returned. They ascended to the next floor, to complete the mission if he had failed in his duties. The key members of Hood’s elite must be put down tonight and nothing would stand in the way of that.

When they reached the next floor they saw no sign of their team-mate. Exchanging puzzled glances, they made their way cautiously down along the corridor towards the next target’s room. The door was still closed, so the first assassin opened it. The bed was empty, no-one present at all.

He felt a tap on the shoulder, his fellow assassin drawing his attention to something. A figure down the corridor, head bowed, wearing a hood. Holding a bow and arrow. The first assassin couldn’t help himself, he swallowed dryly—the gulping sound audible. The most sound he’d made all night.

Then came another sound as something whirred through the air toward them. Hood had raised his weapon and shot faster than either of them could ever hope to fire their pistols. They separated, one going left, the other right. The arrow passed between them, falling away behind.

The first assassin shot back, but Hood was no longer standing there. Fuck! he thought, fighting the urge to cry out loud, where did he go? Then he wished he hadn’t asked, as Hood dropped from a ceiling beam to land on him, grappling him to the floor and knocking over a candle-stand in the process.

The other assassin trained his pistol on them, then felt something cold and hard pressing into the middle of his shoulder-blades: the unmistakable shape of a gun barrel. “I wouldn’t, if I were you,” said a female voice with such authority that he didn’t dare argue with it. “Now drop your weapon!” Reluctantly, he did as he was told.

Looking over, the first assassin saw he was on his own now—saw the woman with long, black hair streaked with silver, dressed in a vest-top and pyjama bottoms, prodding what looked like an old-fashioned cowboy gun into his comrade’s back. He would just have to do what nobody before him had ever done: take Hood down, and do it single-handed.

He angled his pistol behind him and fired a couple of shots, but couldn’t tell whether either had winged the Hooded Man. Probably not, because the next thing he knew he was being struck across the back of the hand by the end of the man’s bow. The pistol clattered to the ground and Hood kicked it away.

At the same time, flames rose behind them from the felled candle...

The assassin rolled away and rose into a crouch, facing his adversary, who was getting to his feet. The man wasn’t overly muscular, but there was strength there—you could tell from the stance, the way he carried himself. He was also incredibly lithe, moved like some kind of animal: fluid and organic. The assassin tested him, shifting his body to the right, and Hood followed suit: a reflection in a mirror. The assassin reached into his boot and took out a knife, something Hood couldn’t match. Then he lunged at Hood, blade downwards, slashing an arc first one way, which Hood dodged, then the other—catching him on the upper arm.

Hood growled; it had only served to make him madder.

But it had also distracted his wife, and her captive took full advantage of it. He spun as she cried out, knocking her pistol from her grasp with his elbow. The gun went off, deafening them both. The assassin shoved Mary backwards, pitching her to the ground, and scooped up his own pistol.

Now it was Hood’s turn to be distracted, which cost him another slash with the knife-blade—this time across the thigh. In retaliation, he brought the bow up and smashed the assassin in the face with a grunt. By this time, it was too late—and the other assassin had fired several times at the prone figure in front of him.

“Mum!”

The cry came from two directions at once: from a small figure who had appeared at the other end of the hall—where Hood had started off—and from the Hooded Man himself. The child rushed forward, down the corridor; a little girl, no more than eight, with the same dark hair as the woman on the ground, dressed in pink pyjamas adorned with red roses. She launched herself at the killer, grappling his legs and bringing him to his knees.

Hood held out a hand for her to stop. “April! April, no! It’s okay!”

The girl took no notice as she proceeded to bite into the assassin’s calf. He let out a yelp. “Arrgh, get offa me!” the masked man wailed.

“April, sweetheart. It’s okay.” This was Hood again, rising and making his way over to the pair. “Look, Mum’s all right.” He pointed and the little girl looked past the assassin, seeing the woman on the floor sitting up. There were splashes of colour on her vest-top, too light to be blood.

As the girl ran over and flung her arms around the woman, an alarm began to go off. The felled guards had obviously, finally, been discovered by someone and the flag had gone up. “About time,” grumbled the Hooded Man. The first assassin was rising now, dropping the knife and grabbing a fire extinguisher to put out the flames. When he was done, he pulled off his mask to reveal a kindly face, framed by ginger hair and long sideburns. The other assassin, still clutching his leg with one hand, put down his gun and did the same: he had closely-cropped hair and a sour face, but was about the same age, in his early to mid-thirties.

“Bloody hell and bollocks!” he said, shouting above the alarm.

“Not in front of April,” Hood admonished.

“Not in front of... She fucking...” He paused, then said more carefully: “She bit me.”

A hand went up, one that was missing a finger, and the green hoodie was peeled back. The face was very different from the one who usually wore it. “She wasn’t to know,” Mark—the real Mark—informed him.

“It was all just a game, darlin’,” said Mary behind them, rocking the crying girl on her shoulder, not caring that she was getting the purple paint from her vest all over the child.

“Just pretend,” Mark added for emphasis.

“Tell that to my leg!” the man with the close-cropped hair protested.

“Oh, stop moaning, Chillcott,” Mark snapped, showing him the wounds on his arm and leg. Even with the blade dulled, they’d done some damage. “Trevena got me a couple of times pretty good, and you don’t see me complaining.”

“As did you,” said Trevena, rubbing his reddening nose. “And you were pretty damned close with that arrow.”

“It was nowhere near you. Trust me, if I’d wanted to nail you, I could have... even with a rubber-tipped arrow.”

Trevena ignored this, asking: “And what did you do with Jenkins, by the way?”

“Oh, he’s okay. Sleeping it off in one of the cupboards, out of the way.” Mark thumbed back down the hall. He switched his bow to the other hand, bending to clasp Mary on the shoulder and then stroke April’s hair.

Mary looked up at him. “She’ll be all right, just a little spooked. We should have told her, you know. Given her some warning.”

“You know what Dad would say, don’t you?” Mary nodded. “The real assassins won’t give us any warning.”

“No, but you all knew we were coming at some point over these past few days,” argued Chillcott.

“At some point,” said Mark. “Just like we know there’s going to be a real sneak attack on us here, at some point.”

“So what are you going to do, just wait up every night like you were tonight? Just in case?” Chillcott countered.

“If I have to,” Mark told him, puffing out his chest. “It’s what Dad... Robert would do. And with him not here, the buck stops with me.”

“You do know that...” Mary began, then shook her head.

Mark frowned. “What?”

“Well, not only are you starting to look like him these days, you do know you’re beginning to sound like him, too.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” Mark said, with a smirk.

Mary smiled back. “That’s how it was meant.”

He patted the top of April’s head. “And as for taking after people, you, young lady, are a chip off the old block. Both of them.”

April—who had almost stopped crying—looked up and over at her brother, still hugely confused by what had happened, and now about what Mark meant.

“You’d better go check on the others,” Mary reminded him, and Mark nodded, rising.

“Wait a minute, so who won?” Chillcott called after him as he began descending the stairs.

“Let’s call it a draw,” was Mark’s reply.

 

 

HE TOOK THE stairs two at a time, hurrying to get down and see what the ‘casualty’ situation was. He’d managed to save his mother, but had any of the others survived? Doubtful, as his other two ‘assassins’ wouldn’t have made it upstairs if they had.

That worried him. All of this worried him, in fact. Just another way in which he was similar to the man he’d come to call and think of as his father over the years. Who was he kidding? Mark was thinking about him like that not long after they’d met—when Robert Stokes had saved him from the Sheriff’s men at that outdoor market. So long ago now; he’d only been thirteen. But he wouldn’t go back to those times, wouldn’t swap them for now. He’d been virtually alone back then, since the virus. After he met Robert and Mary, all that changed. He was given another family, and so were they.

There had been hard times, sure—things they’d had to tackle together. The Sheriff, De Falaise; The Tsars (both of them); the Welsh Dragon; the Widow up in Scotland. The Morningstars. But somehow, no matter how hard things had been, it had always brought them closer together in the end.

Mark remembered some of the times they’d had as a family and smiled again. That Winter Festival they’d held at the Castle. What a wonderful night that had been! He’d danced with Sophie until their feet hurt, laughed with her until their sides hurt.

It hadn’t been too long after that they’d got engaged. It had been the business with that Native American, Shadow—who’d stolen into the castle, a little like his men had tonight, and kidnapped Mark—that had sealed the deal really. Sophie had been so worried about him, had realised she couldn’t live without him then.

They’d married a few months after that, the Reverend Tate presiding over it just as he had done when Mary and Robert had got hitched. They hadn’t wanted a big affair, just friends and family, with Mary heavily pregnant by this time. Dale had been his best man—strange, how close they’d become, when at the beginning they’d always been at each other’s throats; mainly because Mark thought he was after Sophie, it had to be said. He’d been a bit of a ladies’ man back in the day, had Dale. And who could blame them for falling at his feet with those good looks, not to mention he’d played lead guitar in a band back before the world went to shit. Then Dale had met Sian—saved her from the Dragon—and fallen in love. The pair of them got married the year afterwards, back in Wales where they’d lived for a while until the Ranger presence there was well and truly established. Just like it was in most parts of the country now, not to mention Europe—thanks in no small part to their alliance with the current monarchy and its forces. And while they were still separate entities in their own rights, the Rangers and His Majesty’s New Royal Infantry knew they could rely on each other when needed. They’d fought together on many occasions, not least when trying to quell the troubles in Russia and Germany.

Robert himself was currently travelling with a compliment of NRI himself, on a tour of some of the Ranger stations abroad. His second-in-command Jack ‘The Hammer’ was with him. As was Azhar, possibly the finest fighter they had in the ranks of the Rangers.

Mark understood that the trip was necessary, but the timing could definitely have been better. There was increasing unrest at home, rumblings from those who disagreed with the ban on firearms that had been imposed in the wake of what had happened with the Dragon and the Widow. The Rangers had simply reasoned that it was much easier to keep the peace when you knew you weren’t going to get your head blown off, especially when they themselves still didn’t carry guns. Robert had never approved of them, hated all they stood for—mostly all that was wrong about the previous world that had destroyed itself. It was bad enough that those who attacked from other shores had access to such weapons, without having to worry about stuff like that at home.

But it wasn’t as if Robert and the Rangers just decided on their own. It had been in conjunction with the monarchy, and after a vote from the fledgling council system that had been set up—formed out of as many representatives from towns and cities as they could find. People who knew what Robert had sacrificed to defend them, who trusted him to carry on doing just that. It was no different from the system that had been in place before the A-B virus struck, anyway. Ordinary citizens couldn’t take the law into their own hands then, weren’t legally allowed to own firearms; they had to trust the police—of which Robert was a former member himself—and military to protect them.

Of course, even back at the start there had been voices of dissent: those who argued that people needed a way of defending themselves, just in case. A small but vocal band that had grown in size over time, and now even had their own resistance movement. Their propaganda would have people believe that the council was a joke and the Rangers were lackeys of the new regime. That last one made Mark absolutely furious: the Rangers were nobody’s playthings.

It was because of this misguided resistance effort—the so-called ‘Defiants’, who had stepped up their activities over the last year or so—that they all had to be prepared. Ranger spies had learned that they were planning on covertly striking at Robert’s core leadership team to destabilise the Rangers. They weren’t big enough to come at them head on, so it made sense that a small assassination unit would be sent to do this (a decision had been made to downplay all this, as Robert would have returned immediately).

They just didn’t know how or when it would go down...

One of the reasons why exercises like this were so critical. The three Rangers involved had been trained to think as those people would, trained to be able to infiltrate a heavily guarded city and castle. And they’d managed to pull it off, maybe not getting to Mary or Robert—if he’d been here—but certainly taking out enough of Hood’s most important people to cause the maximum amount of damage. The loss of Dale and Sian, of himself and Sophie... Mark closed his eyes, sucking in a breath and suppressing the tears that were threatening to break free. The thought of that last one—of losing her—was just too much.

He couldn’t let his wife see him like that, see how worried all this made him—how scared for them all he was, for her. Mark was at the bottom of the stairs anyway, making his way along to his quarters. A Ranger called Abney had been standing in for Mark these past few nights, just as Mark had been standing in for Robert, providing added protection in case something did actually occur. Mark trusted Abney, both he and Sophie had known the guy and had been friends with him long enough for that. You’d have to, to let him ‘share’ a bed with you, in whatever capacity. But Mark had absolutely no worries on that score. Not only was Abney in a serious, long term relationship with somebody, that somebody also happened to be a guy.

So, it was quite a shock for Mark to round the corner and find not Abney, but a totally different Ranger there instead. A brown-haired guy wearing a tight-fitting T-shirt and tracksuit bottoms. Even through his top, the outline of his broad chest and six-pack could be discerned—and as for those arms... Not that Mark was any slouch in that department, he couldn’t afford to be; it was just that being confronted by it for some reason made him feel strangely inadequate. The man was dotted in that same light purple paint, ‘killed’ by one of the assassins obviously, and was now sitting up on the bed crossed-legged. Booth, his name was, Mark recalled. One of a batch of new recruits the other month, who had only just finished his basic training if Mark remembered rightly. Something the bloke had relished, perhaps a little too much. Sophie was propped up at the head of the bed, pillows bracing her back; she too had been ‘murdered,’ judging from the purple paint that stained her white satin chemise—which had a plunging neckline Mark was altogether too aware that Booth was ogling.

It took a moment or two for them to register the fact Mark was even in the doorway, Sophie laughing—actually laughing—at something Booth had just said. Those freckles on her face, though less pronounced than when Mark had met her at fifteen, were infinitely more apparent when she smiled or had the giggles. But what was annoying him more? The fact that neither of them had taken this exercise seriously, or that Booth was making his wife laugh in a way he hadn’t seemed to be able to do in a while?

When they saw his face, the laughing stopped. Booth went rigid, getting off the bed and saluting. “Sir!” he said, voice cracking slightly.

Ordinarily, Mark would have told him there was no need for all that: he wasn’t in the bloody NRI. But right at that moment, Mark was glad of a chain of command, of his superiority over this man—even though he was at least five years younger than Booth. Mark didn’t salute back, however, and didn’t give him permission to relax his own either. So there he stood, like a statue, or a robot awaiting further commands.

“Mark,” said Sophie, rolling her eyes sideways and nodding, encouraging him to do just that and put the guy out of his misery.

“At ease, Ranger...” said Mark through gritted teeth. “Booth, isn’t it?”

“Sir,” replied Booth, sticking with the military theme.

“Where’s Abney?” Mark asked, of either Booth or his wife, he didn’t care who answered.

“Cried off sick tonight,” Sophie told Mark, quickly. “Some sort of stomach bug. Tommy here kindly stepped in at the last moment.”

Tommy now, is it? And I’ll bethe stepped in.

“I see...” said Mark, drawing out the last word. “And what was so funny?”

Sophie and Booth exchanged a glance, as if struggling to cast their minds back all of a few minutes. “Oh,” said Sophie, finally. “We were just tickled by the fact Tommy had fallen asleep by the time your guys burst in.”

Booth looked extremely sheepish about that, it had to be said. “I pulled double shifts sir, sorry.”

“Okay,” said Mark. It was how he’d have ended up himself if he’d been here, but the fact remained that he hadn’t been. It had been Tommy, asleep, in bed with his wife. “And you were both...” He couldn’t bring himself to say killed about Sophie, even for an exercise. “You both got shot, I see.”

“Yeah, ’fraid so,” sighed Sophie, as if she’d just missed out on winning some sort of competition. Didn’t she see the danger in all this, didn’t she understand why they were doing it?

Mark couldn’t help himself. “Jesus, if this had been for real—”

“But it wasn’t,” she said, sitting up even straighter in bed and folding her arms. “Was it? This was just some silly game.”

“One that might save all our lives,” Mark insisted.

“Won’t happen next time, sir.” This was Booth again. Next time? Mark wasn’t about to let any of this happen again, either as an exercise or for real. He liked to think, with his reactions, tired or not—asleep or not—he would at least have been able to save Sophie.

Mark glared at him. “You’re dismissed,” he said. “De-briefing will be tomorrow morning, oh-nine-thirty.” He wanted army talk? Mark could fucking do that.

Booth took one last look at Sophie, nodded, then left.

Sophie still had her arms folded, waiting for her husband to say something. When he didn’t, she began instead. “You know, all of this was your idea, Mark.”

He pouted. “Not just mine, we—”

“I just don’t get what your problem is! I’ve played along, haven’t I? Even though I think it’s the stupidest thing in the world. How can you plan against a surprise attack? The whole point is you’ll never see it coming.”

“That’s comforting,” said Mark with an edge of sarcasm that wasn’t lost on his wife.

“It wasn’t meant to be. I think sometimes you forget how we first met,” she said. That wasn’t very likely: he remembered every moment of that day. Going on a ride-along to a village with the Rangers, spotting Sophie in that yellow dress. Feeling so sick and nervous talking to her. Then the Sheriff’s men—grabbing and ripping her clothes. Mark offering himself up to go with them instead. Absently, he rubbed the stump of his missing finger, the one the Sheriff’s torturer Tanek had taken from him... Maybe she had a tendency to forget as well? But he didn’t bring that up—he hadn’t done it to impress her. He’d done it because he felt something for her, even then, even having only known her for such a short space of time. “Look at the world we live in. These have always been dangerous times, there’s no escaping that. And there’s no ‘planning’ to prevent things from happening. You have to live for each moment.”

“They’re not as dangerous as they used to be,”’ Mark replied.

Sophie snorted. “If you think that, then you’re just kidding yourself.”

Mark walked over to the bed, sat on the end of it. “Perhaps I am,” he said sadly. “But it’s only because I want to keep you safe.”

She reached out and took his hand, noticing the cuts on his arm and thigh for the first time. “You’re hurt.”

He shook his head. “Just scratches. I’ve had worse.” A lot worse. They both had. “Just some silly game, as you say.”

“Maybe I should take a look?”

“I’ll be fine, it was just...” But then Sophie was pulling at his top, pulling it up and kissing his stomach, then his chest. Mark let out a low moan; it had been a while since she’d done something like this. Something so spontaneous. What could have...

“Tommy,” he said without thinking.

Sophie broke off from kissing him, pulling back. “What?”

Mark didn’t know what to say now, hadn’t meant for the thought to pop out of his mouth.

“What about him?” Sophie pushed, then when she didn’t get an answer, said: “You think... What? What do you think?”

“I just saw the way he was looking at you, Soph. Especially dressed like that. He—”

Sophie pulled back abruptly, folding her arms once more.

“Not this again. I don’t care how he was looking at me,” she barked. “Doesn’t mean I was looking at him the same way, does it? And this is what I always wear to bed, you know that. You said you wanted things to be as normal as possible during the exercise. You put him in here—where you should have been, I might add. For the last few nights, in fact.”

“Actually, I put Abney in here.”

“Yes, and we both know why. Don’t you trust me?”

“Of course I do,” he whispered. Why couldn’t he just have relaxed, been in the moment, enjoyed the sensation of Sophie’s lips on his skin? He had to go and spoil things again.

Sophie looked to the side, staring at the wall. “You’ve got a funny way of showing it, Mark.” There was silence between them for a few moments, then Sophie turned to him and said: “This is just like what happened with Dale. You’ve got such a jealous side to you, Mark. It makes you—”

“Makes me what?”

“Sometimes...” Sophie drew in a breath, as if wondering whether she should say the next bit. “Well, sometimes it can be a bit ugly.”

Mark felt those tears rising again, this time for a different reason. How could he tell her, that he only got that way because he knew how men looked at her—had always looked at her, even on the day they met? How he shouldn’t worry, but couldn’t believe his luck that she’d wanted to be with him in the first place. Was always terrified she’d wake up and realise her mistake, then want to leave him. The rational part of his mind was saying that if he kept up this kind of behaviour, he’d push her away anyway. But it wasn’t logic that was in control when he had these feelings. He wanted to say all these things, yet in the end it was easier to just say: “I’m sorry.”

“Hey, and how are you two lovebirds doing?” As if on cue at the mention of his name, Dale was at the door to check in on them. “Not interrupting anything, am I?”

Mark’s expression told him he really wasn’t.

“I see you got nabbed, Soph,” said Dale, changing the subject, his hair flopping over his eyes so that he had to brush it back with one hand. Then he indicated the paint splodges on his own T-shirt. “Us too. Never would have happened a few moons ago. Must be getting too old for this shit, eh, Mark?” He laughed, but Mark didn’t join in.

Probably because right at that moment, in spite of the fact he was only in his twenties, he felt ancient.

Old, useless—and very, very ugly.