Soldier's Daughters (48 page)

‘Busted. Sorry, I was just thinking about something.’

Not that Michelle seemed to care what her friend was thinking about because she said, ‘Anyway, there’s this guy…’

‘Really? So you’ve really managed to put that whole Seb mess behind you?’

‘Yeah, I think so, and life seems to be going really well at the moment. Even Dad and I are still seeing eye to eye.’

It was Sam’s turn to shake her head in bewilderment. ‘So you said. I mean, logic tells me that the Seb business should have completely put the skids under your relationship with your dad.’

‘I know. I thought it was going to but…’ Michelle shrugged. ‘But somehow it acted like a boot up the bum. We had this huge shouting match but, for the first time, we told each other stuff – proper stuff about feelings and everything. It was weird – we’d never really talked before and even though we were yelling at each other a whole bunch of truths came out. I mean, it’s still tricky between me and Janine but baby steps… And, hey, you and your father are getting on too. Although, in your case, it’s so much more understandable; you’ve never been the huge disappointment I was and when you were lost he must have really thought…’

‘He did,’ said Sam quietly.

‘So tell me about it? Tell me all about Kenya.’

So Sam told her almost everything – omitting the fact that she and Luke had completely fallen for each other and had mutually agreed, before they’d left Kenya, to end their relationship. They both knew it was doomed, they both knew it wouldn’t work and they both knew it would ruin their careers.

‘So you had no idea who this Corporal Blake’s dad was before you got lost?’

‘Not a Scooby-Doo. I mean, why would you make the connection?’

‘I suppose. But when you were alone together… I mean, didn’t you get close, confide in each other, talk?’

‘I don’t really want to go into it,’ said Sam firmly. ‘It was a really horrid experience and I want to put it behind me.’ Which was a lie, but a believable one.

‘Of course,’ said Michelle, thinking she understood. ‘And I think it’s changed you.’

‘Really?’

‘You seem… very sad. Withdrawn.’

‘I expect I’ll get over it.’ When I move on from Luke. Sam stopped walking and gazed into the distance, at the line of silvery-grey sea, just visible on the horizon.

Sam sat at her office desk, looking out of the window and watching the clouds scud across the sky. Over a year had passed since she and Luke had said farewell, here in this office, a couple of days after they’d returned from Kenya, neither touching the other, maintaining a proper corporal–captain relationship – outwardly at least. And, since then, there hadn’t been a day since when she hadn’t thought about him, wondered what he was doing. During his final interview, they had agreed not to contact each other again, not to follow each other’s career, not to try to find out information.

‘Clean break,’ said Sam. She’d longed to hug him, to kiss him, to relive those moments when the terror of the bush had been at its worst and they had clung together. But the fact that her office was a far from private space meant their behaviour had to be seemly.

‘Yes,’ he’d agreed, although his eyes had signalled his anguish.

‘Good luck in your new posting.’

‘Thank you.’

‘I… The team,’ she corrected herself, swiftly, ‘will miss you.’

She’d watched Luke’s jaw tighten. ‘Thank you… Sam.’ His eyes, no longer angry and disapproving but utterly miserable, had rested on her face.

She remembered how he’d held her, the feel of his body, the smell of his skin. She put it behind her, she had to be resolute. ‘Goodbye, Luke.’ She’d willed herself not to cry.

And then he’d saluted, about-turned and gone. And that was the last she’d seen of him.

And that was when she’d told herself that she had to put everything that had happened in Kenya behind her. Whatever she felt for Luke had to be forgotten. She had to get back on track, pick up the threads of her life before Askari Thunder and move forward. Outwardly she was the same old Sam – professional, clear-headed, organised… outwardly. Inside, she was a mess.

When she was alone she still found herself wondering what Luke was doing and sometimes, in the privacy of her room, she would allow herself to weaken and give in to her emotions. And when she’d blown her nose and pulled herself together she told herself that she’d done the right thing, that a relationship with an other rank would never have worked, that she needed to man up and perhaps, in a few months, she’d feel ready to think about finding another relationship, maybe one that was properly suitable.

Now she understood and empathised with Michelle about her obsession with Seb. Yeah, well, what goes around, comes around. Maybe if she’d been a bit more sympathetic to Michelle she wouldn’t be in such a bad place herself right now.

Time to count your blessings, she told herself sternly. Luke may have left an aching void in her life but her father had come back into it. Surely that had to make up for everything and then some? Things could still be awkward between them but every time they met things improved a little more. And which would she rather have – Luke or her father? No, she couldn’t answer that; no one should have to make that sort of choice.

She thought about the other changes that had happened around her. For a start, there were even fewer women in the battalion since Immi Cooper had decided to jack in her career in the army. Her time in Kenya had finally convinced her that there were plenty of jobs she could do that didn’t involve close encounters with unpleasant conditions and so she’d put her notice in and become a civvy. The last Sam had heard about her was that she was working as a PA to some smart property developer and doing very well. There was a rumour going round the battalion that she’d even got her picture in
Hello!
. Sam smiled at the thought. If it were true she was sure that Immi would be a very happy bunny. If ever there was a girl who would love to be a media star, she was it.

Another turn up for the books had been Dan Armstrong’s glamorous wife falling pregnant and now she was a glamorous mum. And then there had been Michelle, who had made good her promise to sort herself out. No longer was Sam constantly worrying about what dumb ideas her mate would come up with, what pranks she would play that seemed so hilarious when she thought of them and then turned out to be such mistakes. Michelle seemed to be the model officer who never got extras and whose recruits worshipped her. Now their telephone conversations were about their work and their achievements and occasionally their social lives and Sam no longer had to listen to Michelle obsessing about Seb. Not unreasonably, though, she refused to come and see Sam in the 1 Herts mess.

‘I am so ashamed of my behaviour,’ she’d confided in Sam. Which had to have been a first, Sam had thought. ‘Even I haven’t got the brass neck to show my face around 1 Herts. Although I am so over Seb now. But it doesn’t alter the past. However, there’s this guy… Edward.’

‘Single?’

‘Totally! Only not for long if I have my way.’

‘I told you it would happen, that you’d find someone else.’

All in all, life around Sam was pretty good and frankly, she told herself, if all she had to bitch about was a love affair that hadn’t panned out then she should count herself lucky.

She pulled open her desk drawer and took out the file she kept in it. She flipped open the manila cover and looked at the news cuttings. Outwardly it seemed as if she had kept the mementoes of her fifteen minutes of fame, but the reality was they represented the only pictures she had of Luke. Time to move on.

She shut the file again and went to drop it in the waste bin.

‘Hi, Sam.’

Guiltily she dropped the file in the open drawer instead and slammed it shut. ‘James. Lovely to see you.’

‘I dropped by to scrounge a coffee.’

‘Of course.’ She got up and made her way over to the shelf where the tea things were kept.

‘All set for the ball?’ he asked as she put the kettle on.

‘Yup. Looking forward to it.’

The officers’ mess May Ball was, apparently, the big social event of the year. It was held to coincide with some major battle honour won by the Hertfordshire Regiment centuries earlier. The previous year the ball had been cancelled because Exercise Askari Thunder had meant the battalion hadn’t got back from foreign parts in time to organise it properly. Then Sam had thought this a bit ridiculous, but since she’d been co-opted onto the ball committee she’d realised how much work went in to making it happen. This was not a slightly more grown-up version of the Sandhurst party she and Michelle had been involved in – this was a major event.

‘So, how’s it going?’ asked James.

Sam finished making the coffees and plonked the two mugs on her desk.

‘Have you any idea how difficult it is to find proper sola topis?’

James’s brow creased. ‘Sola topis! Why?’

‘It’s all the Edwardian theming. Honestly, I expect the makers of
Downton Abbey
went to less trouble to get things right than blooming Andy Bailey. Perfection doesn’t come close. It’s all rattan furniture and ostrich plumes and tiger-skin rugs – well, fake ones anyway – and art nouveau lamps… and… Sorry, I’m getting boring and obsessive about it and you don’t need to know the details.’

‘But he hasn’t been like this in the past. I mean, it’s always been pretty bloody good but he hasn’t gone completely off on one.’

‘Maybe it’s because this year Pemberton-Blake is coming.’

‘The CLF? But why?’

Sam shrugged. ‘Search me. I reckon it’s because old Notley got a bit chummy with him when he had to come out to Kenya and now he wants to capitalise on it. We all know what Notley’s like when it comes to the main chance for advancement.’

James laughed. ‘Good shout. You’re probably right. I wonder what happened to his son.’

Was it Sam’s imagination or was he staring at her, as if he expected her to know something? She stared back as steadily. ‘Not a clue. He got posted out and that’s the last I heard, so your guess is as good as mine.’ And not a word of a lie there. But then she couldn’t help herself. ‘Why do you ask?’

‘Oh, I don’t know, except that you two went through a lot together so I thought you’d take an interest.’

‘Nah. Not really.’ She took a sip of her coffee.

‘Hey, talking of guests,’ said James, ‘I hear Jack Raven is coming to the ball too.’

Sam felt a small ripple of relief at the change of subject. ‘Yes, I heard that. Another one old Notley wants to keep in with.’ Sam laughed. ‘Jeez, he’s a bit obvious, isn’t he, when it comes to who he associates with – CLF, the BBC defence correspondent… Makes you wonder who else will be turning up.’

‘Never mind. It won’t stop everyone having a good time, will it?’

‘No, I can’t wait. It’ll be a great evening.’

Sam looked about the mess with a degree of satisfaction. It was, she thought, very
Downton Abbey
, with antimacassars on the chairs, loads of potted palms, faux stained glass made from cellophane decorating some of the windows, a wind-up gramophone in the corner and jazz playing over the mess’s proper music system, plus all the other props she’d managed to beg, borrow or hire to give it that authentic Edwardian feel. ‘Great job,’ said James, standing beside her in his mess kit and looking extraordinarily handsome.

‘You think?’

James nodded. ‘I think you’ve really captured the period. Well done.’ He stared at her. ‘Although I was rather hoping to see you wearing that natty little number you wore to the corporals’ mess that time.’

‘Not appropriate, Captain Rosser, not appropriate. The dress code for officers is mess kit.’

‘I think there ought to be an exception made in your case.’

‘Ha. So much for equality. I can hear Mrs Pankhurst spinning from here!’

The mess began to fill up with couples and although the wives and girlfriends had done their best to outshine their male partners they still looked like peahens next to the men dressed in their peacock, mess kit finery. Many of the wives had entered into the spirit of the evening and had found dresses that gave a nod to Edwardian fashions with ostrich plumes, beaded embroidery, long ropes of pearls or fur tippets. The consensus of opinion was that the whole eve-of-World-War-One theme was perfect.

At last, as the party really began to get under way, Sam felt she could relax, and when the band struck up with some rag-time numbers (which were possibly not of the era, but who cared?) Sam and James put down their glasses of Buck’s Fizz and joined the others thronging to the marquee on the lawn and crowding on to the dance floor.

By the time they’d had a third dance they were both hot and thirsty and they made their way back into the main mess building in search of a cold drink. Sam stood at the periphery of the even-more-crowded bar as she watched James fight his way through to the counter. Over the heads of the others around her she saw the CO and Mrs N. He must have arrived with his house party.

‘Hello, boss.’

Sam spun round. She recognised that voice.

‘Immi!’ Immi Cooper? What the hell…? And there was Corporal Cooper in a show-stopper of a turquoise blue ballgown with a fish-tail train that made her look like a mermaid.

‘Immi… what the heck? I mean, it’s wonderful to see you but what a surprise!’

Immi looked as bit abashed and she smiled shyly at Sam. ‘I’m here as a plus one,’ she said as an explanation. ‘I always dreamed of getting an invite to a swanky ball like this in the officers’ mess and I can hardly believe I’m really here.’

‘But that’s great,’ said Sam, meaning it. ‘Wonderful, and you look amazing. How’s the leg?’

Immi raised the hem of her skirt a few inches and showed Sam her scars – a line of four purple splodges on her shin. ‘They’re fading but I still don’t like showing my legs off. Still,’ she said cheerfully, ‘long frocks cover a multitude of sins, eh?’

‘And your dress is gorgeous,’ said Sam, meaning it.

‘That’s the advantage of being a civvy – I get to wear what I like. Not,’ she added swiftly, ‘that you don’t look lovely in your outfit.’