Chapter One

YOU COULD HEAR the clock tick. The freezing night was silent. There was not a gust of wind or the sound of a distant motor. The darkness out there seemed to crouch, motionless, like an animal waiting to pounce on its prey.

Dave heard someone flinging open the door and a moment later a blast of icy air hit him. He didn’t turn around. He focused. Steadily, quietly, he reached out.

The beer glass stung his hand it was so cold, cold enough to have been sitting in the snow. He lifted it, gulped and swallowed. Shit. It scratched his throat it was so icy. He put the glass down heavily in disgust. He had been looking forward to a quiet pint slipping down easily and instead the beer was half-frozen. He glared at the barman’s back.

Someone was standing next to him now.

‘Bloody hell, Sarge, the missus has got a strop on tonight.’ Simon Curtis, corporal of 3 Section in Dave’s platoon, was trying to attract the barman’s attention.

‘Are you talking about my missus or yours, Si?’

Curtis’s face was red, as though he was still arguing with his wife.

‘If there was yelling over at yours I wouldn’t have heard it. On account of all the yelling over at mine.’

The door opened again.

‘Fucking hell!’ said a voice.

‘Evening, Jonas,’ Dave said.

‘My bird’s giving me so much shit I’m not putting up with it,’ said Lance Corporal Danny Jones from 2 Section. ‘I mean, I’m just not fucking having it. All I did was pay the car tax. And she’s: I already did it! Who do you think you are? And I’m like: Duh, I’m the bloke who owns the car. And she’s: Don’t you come back here thinking you’re going to tell me what to do! And I haven’t told her what to do, I’ve just tried to pay the fucking car tax and I’m—’

‘Spare us the details, Jonas,’ said Dave, catching the barman’s eye by glowering at him, ‘and I’ll buy you a pint. We’ve heard it all before.’

‘Not from me you haven’t, Sarge. Me and my bird don’t do a lot of arguing.’

‘From you, from me, from everyone.’

The door slammed behind them.

‘Dave!’

This time Dave turned around in surprise. Corporal Sol Kasanita from 1 Section seldom came to the pub. Dave looked at Sol’s wide, dark face carefully. You had to know the Fijian well to know when he was ruffled and right now he was angry or upset or both.

‘Anything up with Adi?’ Dave asked cautiously.

‘Adi and me don’t ever fight, not ever, and guess what? Tonight she shouted at me!’

‘Never had a cross word until tonight?’ asked Si Curtis sceptically. ‘Not ever?’

‘Listen, we get annoyed with each other sometimes and she goes sort of cold on me but shouting? If anybody shouts in my house it’s me.’

‘Don’t suppose you’ll have a pint?’ Dave asked him. ‘In the circumstances?’ He knew that Sol sometimes did drink with the other Fijians at the camp, but Sol had never yet shared a pint with him.

‘Nah, it’s orange and lemonade for me.’

‘Ice?’ demanded the barman.

‘Ice, no way, I just slipped on some of that outside. It’s enough to make you fantasize about Helmand.’

‘Yeah,’ agreed a few voices nostalgically.

‘The way the sweat used to run down your back all the time, I sort of miss it,’ said Danny Jones.

‘Run faster in the morning, Jonas, and you’ll sweat more,’ Dave told him.

More men arrived. Everybody was moaning. After another pint Gerry McKinley and Andy Kirk of 2 Section were admitting to a group of mates that Christmas with the family hadn’t been much fun.

‘You forget,’ said Gerry McKinley, ‘when you’re in a hot FOB dreaming of a white Christmas with your kids opening presents around the tree, you forget that they start at four in the morning and your fucking mother-in-law’s around the tree too.’

By the time Rifleman Adam Bacon walked in, the pub was heaving with men who had escaped from home. He paused to stare at the crowds and then saw Dave at the bar.

‘Hello, Streaky,’ said Dave. ‘My round, what are you having? I thought you were in Wolverhampton.’

Streaky avoided his eye. ‘Came back, Sarge.’

Dave looked at him closely and saw that the dark face had closed in on itself.

‘It’s just my little brothers are in my bedroom now and … well, everything round my manor’s a bit different, see, since I went away.’

They joined the others and Sol, who was Streaky’s section commander, greeted him warmly. ‘So you came back early. That proves the barracks is your home now.’

Sol and Dave both caught the look of sadness which flickered rapidly across Bacon’s face before it disappeared behind his pint.

‘Fighting out in theatre can change you,’ said Dave. ‘So sometimes lads don’t always fit straight back in when they go home.’

‘Yeah,’ said Streaky. They waited for him to say more but he just looked down at his pint. Finally he asked: ‘Where’s Mal and Angry tonight then?’

‘I saw them going back into barracks,’ Sol told him.

Streaky said: ‘They can’t have run out of money this early in the month.’

‘They left when they realized that this place is full of men getting away from the missus tonight,’ said Dave.

Streaky continued to look around.

‘Everyone here married except me?’

‘Soon we’ll all be fucking divorced,’ said Jonas.

‘Too right,’ agreed Si Curtis.

‘Yeah,’ McKinley and Kirk said grimly.

‘Lads, this is normal,’ Dave told them. ‘The more often you go away the more you get used to it. There’s banners and flags and hugs and tears when the coach pulls in. And a few weeks later they’re ripping us apart.’

‘They’re all weeping at the medals parade …’ Sol began.

‘And screaming at us before we’ve got the fucking things mounted,’ Jonas finished.

Dave nodded. ‘That’s the way it always is. There’s usually a bit of truce for the holidays and Christmas, then the yelling starts again. Lasts around three months as a rule.’

‘Well, if she thinks she can manage without me, let her try!’ muttered Jonas. ‘I don’t mind moving back into barracks.’

‘This is no time to make decisions like that,’ Dave told him.

‘I’ve been to the supermarket three fucking times in two days for Rose and every time I get back I’ve spent a fortune and she still yells at me,’ said Gerry McKinley. ‘And the supermarket’s mad this time of year, it’s like an FOB under fire.’

‘Forward Operating Base Tesco,’ agreed Sol.

‘Three fucking times,’ muttered Gerry again. ‘In two days. Then I get home with almost nothing left in my wallet and the mother-in-law’s there talking to Rose about some nursery school which costs an arm and a leg.’

‘I’ve heard about that place,’ said Dave uncomfortably. That was how tonight’s row with Jenny had started: when she announced that she was going to look at some posh, expensive nursery school for Vicky.

‘I keep telling Tiff there’s one in camp. Why are they all suddenly saying they want to drive miles and pay a fortune somewhere else?’ demanded Si.

‘Bloody ridiculous,’ agreed Andy Kirk. ‘We get paid a bit extra for going out to theatre and they want to blow it on some nursery school.’

‘Have you seen what that place wants for a deposit?’ asked Gerry. ‘Let alone the fees.’

Si shook his head. ‘It all leads to one thing: no sex. I mean it. You think about sex all the time you’re away and then you come back and after a while you’re shouting at each other and what’s the outcome? No fucking sex.’

‘Welcome back to reality,’ said Sol.

‘Yeah, well maybe we don’t like this reality,’ said Gerry McKinley.

‘Being in theatre,’ added Andy Kirk. ‘That’s the best reality.’

Many heads nodded in agreement.

Dave sipped his beer. Now that the pub was busy its temperature had risen a little. He felt the velvety liquid slip down his throat.

‘They’re adjusting; we’re adjusting,’ he said evenly. ‘Just go with the flow.’

‘So have you had a row with Jenny, then?’ asked Sol.

Mid-swallow, the beer turned thin and cold and scratchy.

‘Well … yes,’ Dave admitted. ‘Because Jenny’s heard about this new nursery. And we’re both sleep-deprived because the baby’s had a cold. And …’

‘And,’ said Sol, ‘it’s nicer at the pub tonight.’

‘Fucking right it is,’ Gerry McKinley said. Everyone agreed and took another swig of beer.

Dave looked around at their faces. The same features as in Afghanistan but back here their expressions were different. They stood in the pub looking discontented, their eyes dull, their backs rounded. They’d been home only a few months and in that time they had changed. Most had put on weight; a few had developed beer paunches. And they had all lost the lean, alert look of front-line soldiers.

Jenny Henley was still livid with Dave when she sat down at the computer and began to look for a job. Leanne and Rose were coming over but she had a few minutes before they arrived. If the baby didn’t wake up again.

She couldn’t exactly remember all the words she and Dave had hurled at each other tonight but it had started when Jenny said she wanted to see the new nursery school everyone was talking about. Dave thought it cost too much. Jenny said the staff at the camp nursery school weren’t interested in the children and didn’t supervise them properly. Dave said Vicky had to learn to stick up for herself sometime and why spend all that money to take her out of the camp and away from her friends? From there they had argued about money in general, reverting to familiar firing positions. Jenny said that Dave could earn a lot more outside the army and he said didn’t she know there was a recession and if she thought there were so many jobs out there why didn’t she get one herself?

And wasn’t it then that he’d said it? Said that thing? Said that she was turning out just like her mother? The bastard.

Her fingers clattered across the keys. She found the jobs website of the local newspaper. Jenny had been working at a travel agency when she met Dave. But in the time it had taken to have two children travel agents had all but evaporated, so there was no point looking for that sort of job again. She needed something part-time which would bring in enough cash to make a good nursery school for Vicky affordable. As for baby Jaime, she would pay someone nice to take her for a few hours a week: maybe Adi.

Jenny scanned JobsJobsJobs: General. There were a surprising number advertised. But they all seemed to start with questions to which the answer was no. Could fostering be your next challenge? Are you a campaigner? Do you have experience of fund-raising? Are you a carer with a car and the right attitude? Can you work nights? Are you ready to get on in sales? Do you have a degree in Hotel Management? Are you a nurse who’d like to get back into nursing? Always wanted to work with children?

She tried JobsJobsJobs: Administrative and Office. Most were full-time but there was one vacancy for a part-time medical receptionist. Presentable appearance, pleasant manner, ability to work under pressure and good typing skills required. She decided to apply and then found she had to submit a curriculum vitae electronically. She had been taught how to write a CV at school but that seemed a long time ago. And what would she write now? ‘As a mother of two I have highly developed coping skills. My nappy-changing is second to none. All army wives, especially those who are married to front-line soldiers, have daily experience of stress management.’

She widened her search. Nanny needed for busy, cheerful family … Trainee negotiator for estate agency, must work weekends … Assistant required for popular city bakery. That one sounded OK. No early mornings, training given, uniform provided. Must have experience dealing with the public and an enthusiasm for home-cooked, quality produce. She closed her eyes and imagined the smell of fresh bread. The bakery was a nice one in the city with fancy breads and continental cakes covered in fruit. It was the sort of place you went if you wanted to buy a treat. It would be full of smiling people buying cakes for happy occasions.

She noticed the closing date. Tomorrow. Applications in writing. She would have to do it quickly and drive it over to Market Street.

She wrote:

My last job involved helping clients choose the right holiday destination. Whether people sat down for an hour or just put their head around the door, I enjoyed establishing the kind of relationships which encourage customer loyalty. Finally, I enjoy cooking myself and have a passion for good food which I like to share.

She was so engrossed that she hardly heard the quiet tap at the door. Leanne Buckle and Rose McKinley stood there grinning and holding a bottle of white wine.

They greeted each other in quiet voices. Everybody in this street spoke quietly after about seven in the evening because every house had small children. Dave and Jenny’s bitter row earlier had been conducted entirely in whispers.

‘You didn’t need to bring a bottle, I’ve got one in the fridge,’ said Jenny.

Leanne stepped inside and small, thin Rose behind her was completely eclipsed by her vast frame.

‘So we drink two!’ Her whisper was loud. Everything about Leanne was loud. ‘We’re celebrating!’

‘What are we celebrating?’ asked Jenny. They followed her to the kitchen and plonked themselves down at the small table as she reached for glasses.

Leanne looked mysterious.

‘I’ve got some news,’ she said. ‘I’ll tell you when I’m wrapped around the outside of a glass of vino.’

‘Did Steve mind staying with the boys?’ asked Jenny.

Leanne grimaced. ‘I didn’t ask him if he minded.’

‘My mum came over to look after the kids,’ said Rose. ‘Gerry’s at the pub with Dave and the lads.’

Jenny rolled her eyes. ‘I’m sure they meet up there to moan about their wives.’

‘Bastards,’ said Leanne. ‘They’re all bastards.’

Jenny thought about Dave. She knew he wasn’t a bastard. Her fury had drained away now, leaving her exhausted, as if she had spent the evening running instead of arguing. How could they both have been so angry? Dave had stood right here in the kitchen, his hands on his hips, the features which she loved and had longed to see all the time he was away contorted with the effort of containing his anger to a whisper.

She was still holding the bottle of wine. Leanne took it gently from her and poured it.

‘Get this down you, Jenn,’ she said.

‘Come on!’ said Rose. ‘Before that baby screams.’

They clinked glasses. Jenny’s felt cold in her hand. She sipped the wine and found it pleasantly sharp. It smelled of fruit. Suddenly she thought of summer, of sitting out in the back garden with Dave while Vicky played contentedly on the lawn in the evening sunshine before bed. But not last summer. Because last summer he had been in Afghanistan. While she had been giving birth to Jaime.

‘This is nice!’ she said, picking up the bottle. Dave had started to develop a liking for wine in the last year or two and she had bought him a book about it for Christmas. Then, while he was away in theatre, she’d read it herself. She studied the label now. ‘I think it’s a good one.’

‘It’s out of that case of booze the platoon commander gave us.’

‘Gordon Weeks?’

‘Yep. Steve hardly knew the bloke.’ Steve had been casevaced home at the start of the last tour. ‘People keep giving us things because of Steve’s leg. He only has to go into the pub and everyone buys him a pint.’

‘Does he get legless?’ Rose asked. Jenny gave a dutiful guffaw. Leanne frowned and topped up her glass.

‘Yeah, well,’ she said. ‘Excuse me if I don’t laugh but there probably isn’t a legless joke left on earth which I haven’t heard.’

‘Sorry, Leanne.’ Rose flushed. She had a small, round face with skin which reddened so easily to the colour of her hair that it seemed transparent.

‘Come on then, Leanne,’ Jenny said. ‘Tell us your news.’

Lance Corporal Billy Finn was in a pub with old photos and horse brasses on the wall which could have been anywhere but happened to be near Kempton Park. He looked around. Nothing interesting about the place. Nothing interesting about the people. Old men. Few women.

On the TV at the end of the bar was today’s horse racing from Kempton. It was the two thirty all over again. A mate had given Finn an insider’s tip and it had seemed worth driving to Kempton to enjoy the sight of his 25 to 1 punt romping home first. Over the day the odds with the course bookies had shortened and he had felt more and more confident.

The race had begun and the horse had leaped into the lead and then stayed a nose ahead of the field. It was a good jumper and, watching it sail over the hurdles, Finn experienced that soaring feeling he loved, a surge of joy which could turn a grey, cold day into summer and the chapped, red faces of the race-goers beautiful. His heart lifted and beat faster to a new rhythm of its own. His horse would be first past the post and then everything else would be right with the world too. Because when one thing went well, the rest fell into place …

‘They’re showing the two thirty from Kempton!’ said an old man at the bar standing next to him. ‘Just you watch number three, Asbo Boy!’

On the screen, Finn’s horse was again leaping out of the starting stalls and leading the field by a nose, its mane and tail flying. Finn allowed his spirits to soar briefly once more even though he knew what would happen next.

There it was, number three, a big, dull thug, more elephant than horse, lumbering up on the inside. There was another, a bay, close behind it. Finn blinked slowly and, when he opened his eyes, number three was loping past his horse and the bay was just about to. Behind them the sky was leaden and the faces of the punters pinched and cold.

‘Gooo on!’ roared the old man at the screen as Asbo Boy passed the winning post.

‘Have any money on that?’ asked Finn.

‘Yep, a tenner!’ announced the old man proudly.

‘On Asbo Boy? At sixty-six to one?’ demanded Finn in disbelief.

‘I saw him in the paddock and I said to myself: That’s the one. I reckon I’ve got an eye for a good horse.’

Finn glanced at the man, who was probably over a hundred years old and wore such thick glasses that he could hardly see his pint, let alone a good horse.

Finn sighed. After Asbo Boy and the bay had pushed his horse into third place, the rest of the afternoon had been predictable. Loser after loser. Finn had been glad to get into his new car – well, second-hand new – and zoom away from the racecourse. But then he had felt an itch in his throat which said he needed a pint.

The old man at the bar was still smiling. ‘Sixty-six to one!’ he repeated happily.

‘It’s a great feeling,’ said Finn. ‘When your horse overtakes the field.’

‘Yeah. There’s nothing else sets your heart beating like that by the time you get to my age.’

Finn drank his pint thoughtfully. Afghanistan made your heart beat a lot faster than any race could. Fighting in theatre was real excitement. Racing was just pretend excitement because it didn’t really matter who won. You could make it matter by having a bet. But in Afghanistan you realized that racing wasn’t real. There, your heart beat every time you got out of a wagon into the hot, harsh terrain, knowing the enemy might be anywhere and your life could depend on your eyes and your wits and your speed with a rifle. The races were a poor substitute for that. Everything at home in England was flat and dull in comparison. Suddenly, surprisingly, piercingly, Finn felt a longing to go back.

Rifleman Mal Bilaal sat in the barracks under the No Smoking sign and made a roll-up. Rifleman Angus McCall, propped up against a bed, watched him.

‘You going home for the weekend, Angry?’ asked Mal.

‘Nah. It’s not long since I saw my mum. And too fucking soon since I seen my dad.’

‘What about your mates, then?’

‘My old mates are nothing but a bunch of tossers,’ spat Angus. ‘All the time I’ve been slotting the Taliban for real they haven’t done nothing but hang around in the same old places and play CoD. And when I try telling them what it’s really like out there, they don’t want to know. Tossers.’

It didn’t take much to turn Angry from brooding to apoplectic. Mal passed him a roll-up and then started on his own. He said: ‘My mum and dad are talking about coming down again.’

Mal’s family had travelled all the way from Manchester to see him a couple of weeks ago. Angus had been shocked when they walked in because Mal drank and got off with fit girls in clubs just like any normal person. But when Angus saw his family he had to admit to himself that Mal wasn’t normal. Because he was a Muslim.

His dad was brown-skinned and smiling. A couple of Mal’s sisters, one in particular, were downright fit. But his mum! She dressed like the civilians in Afghanistan. She didn’t actually wear a sheet thing all over her face but she had a scarf across her hair. And when she spoke she sounded like she’d only just got off the boat. It had taken all Angus’s concentration to understand what she was saying. He’d nodded and grinned while she held his big hand somehow inside her tiny one, talking to him until Mal dragged her off. Despite the clothes and scarf, the woman had shown him a lot of respect. Angus tried to imagine his own mother greeting one of his mates so warmly. Impossible. And impossible to imagine his dad looking at Angus with the same pride and affection Mr Bilaal showed his son.

‘Your mum’s really nice,’ Angus said now to Mal. Mal lay back and blew a thin line of smoke from the skinny roll-up.

‘I’m fucking worried about her. It’s driving me crazy that there’s people in Wythenshawe out to get my mum.’

Angus laughed. ‘Out to get your mum? Get? Your mum?’

Mal nodded. His face was beginning to narrow with anger. His eyes widened; his voice was raised.

‘And my dad and all of them. Because there’s some people in Wythenshawe don’t agree with me fighting my Muslim brothers out in Afghanistan. And you know how they show it? They’ve put petrol and flames through her letterbox. Proper fucked up the carpet, and she likes to keep it nice.’

Angry breathed out noisily. ‘Whooooar. They could kill your mum and dad doing that.’

Mal’s voice grew louder. ‘Shit, man, you don’t know how I worry about it. And there’s my brothers’ taxis: someone tried to torch them. That’s everything they’ve got, their living, all gone up in smoke! And my sisters are walking down the street and there’s blokes who come up to them and spit right at them. At my sisters. And they ain’t done nothing wrong. I’ll tell you. I want to go up there to Wythenshawe and I want to sort these people out. I just want to fight them till they stop. Or till one of us dies.’ His hands closed into fists and his knuckles whitened.

‘Fucking hell,’ said Angus. ‘I never seen you so upset, mate.’

‘Well, it’s all because I’m in the army, right? So it’s my fault. My mum and my dad and all my brothers and sisters, they all got trouble because of me.’

Angus’s fury was easily triggered on his friends’ behalf and now his face was reddening.

‘Shit! Shit, go up there, Mal! Sort it!’

‘I can’t—’

‘These bastards are bothering your whole family! Don’t let them get away with it! You’ve got to go up there and see them off!’

Faced with Angus’s fury, Mal seemed to deflate and his own anger became smaller.

‘They’ve asked me not to, Angry. They say I’ll just cause more trouble. That’s why they come down here.’

‘You’ve got to sort it, mate.’

‘I was thinking of it at the end of the tour when the first letter-box fire happened but Sarge said to me, he says: No, listen to your family. They don’t want you up there making things worse.’

‘Did your mum tell the police?’

‘Yeah. And the police don’t do nothing. Community relations or some crap reason.’

‘Fucking hell.’

Mal hung his head and drummed his fingers on the top of a tin of lager. ‘If there was some way I could kill him, I would,’ he said miserably. ‘I mean it. I want to kill him.’

‘Kill who?’ demanded Angus. ‘Is it just one bloke doing these things?’

‘There’s more than one but I know who the main man is. It’s my friend Aamir.’

‘Your friend! A fucking friend’s torching your mum’s hallway!’

‘Well, he used to be my friend. All through primary school. Then we went to the Quran study centre every week and he used to be round at ours all the time; my mum treated him like her own son. Then we got old enough to discover girls. Man, I knew what I wanted. And I wasn’t going to get it at the mosque so—’

‘Where does he work, then, this Aamir?’ Angus was impatient.

‘Big furniture warehouse shop by the motorway, the last I heard.’

‘What’s the name of this warehouse?’

Mal thought. ‘Dunno. World in Your Lounge. Lounge in Your World. Something like that. My mum went there once but she said their chairs was too pricey unless they was on special offer.’

Angus chewed the roll-up, his eyes half shut. Mal looked closely at him.

‘So … why’re you asking?’