The story following the prequel "Young love – or how it all began" letting us know what has happened to the quartet of friends and enemies later in life. The setting will be familiar, but as the past was different, so will the future be for the characters we know and love.

Thanks to Tony Grounds and BBC who have created the characters which I borrow for a while for my story. As always, hope you enjoy and grateful for R&R.

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Chapter 1: Charles

Despite that I was running late I was in a good mood that grey October day. My transport had been late picking me up from my home in Bath, but I knew the airplane would anyway wait for me at Brize Norton. The section could hardly leave without their captain and it had just allowed me time to drink one last cup of decent coffee and prepare for many months when I likely would get none. Unless I had my Nespresso machine sent there… now that was a thought.

I was in a good mood because we were finally to take off for a tour to Afghanistan after six months of training the section, 2 section as they were called. It was the fourth tour for me but the first for them, and I had done my best to prepare them. It was a promising group of young men and I felt quite confident they were as ready as they could be for the real deal. I was really looking forward to getting out there with them. There is something special about being on tour. Even if it is deadly serious and you have to guard yourself at all times, there is an easiness to that life, a freedom which I do not experience in any other place. It is like I can be myself for real on tour, like nowhere else.

This time the sense of freedom was enhanced even further already before leaving UK, because my divorce had just gone through. Rebecca's and my marriage had never been good and the last years were a disaster which I gladly had fled from by going on tour time after time. We should not have gotten married in the first place. It was clearly a mistake and truth be told I had behaved like an ostrich, almost literally hiding my head in the sand of Afghan and pushed the problem in front of me instead of dealing with it but I think that maybe I just did not care enough to muster the energy to end it. When she got too fed up with my absence and indifference and finally was unfaithful while I was on my previous tour, it was just the last nail in the coffin and we both were in complete agreement to divorce. It was such a relief now that it was over, and I could leave without a bad marriage and dissatisfied wife hanging over me. I was sure she would be much happier now too, with the teacher colleague she apparently was going out with. I could not care less and maybe that had always been the problem, that I did not really care about her. She just happened to be there and was pretty, nice and eager at a time in life when it felt appropriate to find someone. It was just that she was only that, someone, not the one. I think I proposed mostly because she thought she was pregnant and when it turned out to be false alarm, it did not seem appropriate to take it back and we stupidly went through with it. But no more.

So, this day I felt light as a feather. I was to take off for another tour with a section I thoroughly enjoyed leading and I had no strings attached to home. The future seemed bright.

In a way it is funny that I chose the army, chose to go to Sandhurst and train to be an officer after uni. Voluntarily chose a predominantly male environment, a hierarchical one with strict rules and regulations, despite that I once in boarding school had longed to get away from just that. But I guess that familiar things appeal to the human nature and I was shaped both by boarding school and by growing up as the son of a Brig, so in the end it felt like a natural choice. And I liked it. I felt at home in the army, felt at ease when I was m on tour, when I was hanging out with the privates as well as when I took my place among the officers. Somehow this had become my world and everything outside it was secondary. I think Rebecca noticed that quite soon and it was another reasons it did not work out.

When the vehicle finally stopped outside Brize I hurried inside, only to find Corporal Kinders calm and on top of everything. That is the beauty of surrounding yourself with good people, sometimes you can allow yourself some slack - although in this case it was not actually my fault I was running late.

"Captain James, good to see you, Sir", he greeted me.

"The full section is here", he then informed me. "They are gathered outside on the tarmac for the mandatory photo shoot. We were just waiting for you to join."

I nodded in confirmation.

"In addition, an army doctor will join us on the flight, for transport to the army hospital in Bastion."

Camp Bastion was the large military base where we were first to arrive in Afghan, to then continue to a smaller FOB in the Helmand Province.

Kinders flipped through his papers.

"Dawes is the name. Of the doctor I mean."

I could not help but smiling, as I was reminiscing another Dawes.

"Sir?"

"No, nothing. It's just that I knew a Dawes once, but that was a girl."

"This is too, Sir. Well, not a girl but Dr. Dawes is a woman."

There must be many people named Dawes, yet I got an unsettling feeling when I learned this Dawes was female. Surely for no good reason and I just shook it off. We went out on the tarmac where 2 section were gathered, although behaving quite disorderly and I needed to raise my voice to get them to pull themselves together.

"How long will it take to make you massive cockwombles to pull yourselves together for a bloody photograph?!"

With satisfaction and an inner smile, I saw them all straighten their backs and take their places, and I took my place among them. But as the photographer took the photo, my eye was caught by something moving on the right-hand side of my field of vision and I could not help turning my gaze there. It was a woman. By the uniform and dark blue beret apparently the army doctor. Twelve years had passed but it did not take me one second to recognise Molly Dawes. Doctor Dawes as it seemed. She was occupied checking something in her Bergen, so her focus was not on us, on me, which gave me time to compose myself. So many times, I had imagined meeting her again, but never in this setting. Not in the army setting. Never had I imagined that she too would find her way to the army, like I had. I panicked on the inside although I'm quite sure I managed to keep the indifferent outside the army had taught me. Keep my emotions in check at all times. I did not want her here, here in the world where I needed to stay alert and focused on my task, leading my men and fighting our enemies. She had absolutely no place here. I would have loved to meet her anywhere in the world, but not here. I decided I would have to pretend like nothing, to her, to all others, to myself. I looked straight ahead again and ignored her as we finalised the photo shoot and boarded the plane.

I think she did not notice me first. I was just another man in uniform, but when we sat down in the plane I found myself closer to her than I had wished, as she sat diagonally across me. I tried to avoid looking at her, but it was terribly difficult, even unnatural, during such a long flight. Especially as I felt myself wanting to look at her all the time. In the end, I could not resist, and my gaze made its way to her face. By then she was already looking at me, searchingly. She was examining my face and now I felt that she scrutinised any reaction on my part. I gave her nothing, ensured my face was carved in stone as I simply gave her a courteous nod to acknowledge her presence. She looked surprised. I'm not sure if it was surprise because she recognised me and had not expected me there, or surprise because I did not seem to recognise her, or maybe both.

"Charles?" she said.

"It's common protocol to use ranks here. I'm Captain James", I said. "Do I know you?"

"Don't you?" she asked, and those green eyes seemed to look into me, wanting to know my innermost secrets, but I had no intention of giving them away.

"No", I said, probably one of the most dishonest statements of my life.

She looked confused and disappointed.

"I'm Molly Dawes. We knew each other a long time ago, when we were kids."

Yes, we were kids, but on the verge of being adults. And I had desired her in an adult way at the same time as she had been my best friend. Very, very dangerous past to reminiscence in this setting. I just could not afford that.

"I'm sorry. You need to remind me, where would this have been?"

I was amazed at my own capability of lying right to her face.

"When you were at boarding school. My father was the headmaster there. You don't remember?"

She looked at me incredulously. Of course, because how could anyone forget something like what we shared? But I felt I had to pretend, because if I admitted to that, she would bring up memories and it would all come flooding over me, the feelings I had back then. I smiled politely but distantly and said;

"I'm sorry, but no, I don't remember. It was a long time ago and it's a time in my life I prefer not to think about."

She bit her lower lip and looked sad.

"Okay. It was a time that meant a lot to me."

I felt my heart cringe at those words, but I did not take back what I had said, and I made sure my voice did not sound very regretful when I said;

"Sorry, Dr. Dawes, I just don't remember."

Then she said sharply;

"If we are going to keep to the correct ranks, Captain James, it's Captain Dawes to you."

Of course. Army doctors would have minimum the rank of a captain, and I felt like a school boy who had been put in his place by the teacher.

She looked away and so did I, despite that what I really wanted to tell her was that I did remember, in more detail than could be expected. Despite that I tried to push it away, I remembered more for every minute that passed sitting across her in that damn plane. I would have loved to ask her what she had been up to all these years. Then it struck me that as she was an army doctor she would have gone to Sandhurst for her training just like me. How ironic that we somehow had chosen the same direction, but due to the age difference not been there simultaneously and only now we crossed paths again.

I kept my ears open when Kinders asked about her previous experience. That way I got to know that she had gone through basic military training, followed by training to become an Army doctor and gotten a full degree in medicine. So, as could be expected she was both a soldier like me and a doctor. She had been working as a General Duties Medical Officer, so far mostly based at home and only participated in exercises abroad. This would be the first time she went to a real war zone and she admitted to both being excited and terrified. It stroke me as corageous that she openly admitted being terrified but still did not at all seem to hesitate about going. Then again, it did not surprise me that the girl I once knew seemed to have developed into an extraordinary woman. I always thought she would. I was just so damn uncomfortable about being close to her in this setting, why in all these years could I not have run into her in a supermarket or something instead of here. It hit me that in case, just in case, I would develop feelings for her again, I would find myself in a situation much similar to the one many years ago, in an environment where rules and regulations made romantic feelings inappropriate. That time it was because she was the headmaster's daughter and I'm a student, and in addition she was so young compared to me. Now, the age gap had shrunken to nothing, but the army setting would make it just as improper. It was out of the question to let any feelings sprout when full focus had to be on the job. But I did not know why I even bothered thinking about it after all that time. With a row of dates, girlfriends and even a wife between then and now, there was no reason why my teenage crush should affect me in any way. Or at least I did my best to convince myself of that, but my good mood was gone and I had an unsettling feeling in my stomach throughout the flight, as I did my very best to avoid looking at her openly at the same time as I could not stop sneak-peaking at her – the woman who was the girl I once had loved.