March
She stood and looked out of the kitchen window at the dreary looking garden and the unrelenting rain and tried hard to stop any tears of self-pity escaping. Sam was in the house and Millie was playing in the lounge, and she didn't want either of them to see her crying or for Sam to know how thoroughly pissed off she was, he would more than likely tell his dad. They had been down here for almost eighteen months now and Molly was still homesick for Catterick, for her house, her job and her mates, for the life she had made up there, but she was making a real effort to stop feeling sorry for herself and to stop whinging to Charles. She could feel that he was getting a bit pissed off with it, and she couldn't blame him, she was getting a bit pissed off with listening to it herself, but it was hard. There wasn't anything he could do about it anyway.
They had at last been able to sell the house in Yorkshire, so they could at least start looking for somewhere proper to live; Charlie had promised that they would start looking this weekend, so she was supposed to be looking on the internet for where she wanted to be. She hated the rented house they were living in, it was too small and poky and because of that it was all cluttered, it reminded her of the flat in east Ham where her mum and dad still lived. Half their stuff was in storage, which was costing an arm and a leg, because there wasn't enough room for it and they were still living with curtains that didn't fit properly. It hadn't seemed worth buying new ones because they kept expecting to buy somewhere of their own and not still be living here after more than a year.
Just to make her day a whole lot better, she had to do the school run in a minute and she was dreading it. She'd picked Millie up at lunchtime and she was fine at nursery, had walked in the first day as though she owned the bleeding place and now it was if she did. They were calling her an 'individual' just like in her old school in Yorkshire, and Molly was even more convinced that it was school speak for a bloody pain, although she was apparently very bright, which Charles said she got from her mum, a statement that made Molly laugh like a drain with disbelief. Marcus had been very nervous and anxious about going off to be with strangers, but had made a 'best friend' within days and had been really happy and settled ever since, much more than he had ever been in Yorkshire.
It was Chloe that worried her. She had started off fine, but over the last few weeks Molly could see all the signs that she was seeing school the same way she had as a little girl, getting tummy ache on Sunday nights, complaining of feeling sick in the mornings, hanging back when they got to the gates, always coming out of school on her own in the afternoons so that Molly dreaded seeing her unhappy little face every day after school, it was all the same as she remembered. Charlie had asked Chloe what was wrong, cuddled her up on his lap and tried to get her to talk to him, but she wouldn't, kept saying everything was okay and now she was starting to do a 'class clown' act when she was asked any questions about school. Molly knew there was something wrong but she didn't know what to do about it if Chloe wouldn't say. Charles was all for marching off to the school and demanding answers, saying that they were paying enough for fuck's sake, but Molly wouldn't let him, she had the feeling that Lieutenant Colonel stern-face flinging his weight around wouldn't solve the problem.
Sam was at a day boarding school, coming home for the weekends. It was a sort of compromise that Charles had arrived at with Rebecca who had, predictably, gone ballistic about Sam having to move schools again. Sam seemed quite happy and seemed to be getting on fine with his GCSEs, but Molly still felt it was wrong, that he should be at home but she managed to keep her mouth shut, at least in front of him. He was at home because his school had already broken up for Easter, way earlier than the others, it seemed to Molly that the more you paid, the longer holidays the teachers got. He was supposed to be getting his holiday homework out of the way, but was actually playing some on-line game, which she hoped was nothing x-rated which would give his dad a 'Julius Caesar' if he found out.
Collecting Chloe from school, Molly got waylaid by the tall, skinny old dragon who was the headmistress and who asked if she could "have a little word, Mrs James" which immediately reduced her to being 10 year old Molly Dawes, class clown with an attitude and an attendance problem, rather than a parent who was paying the bill. Molly blustered a bit about the fact that she had all three kids in the car with her but she could come in the morning after the kids were at school and then felt like she was making excuses, but there was no way she was going on her own, this was definitely the time when Lieutenant Colonel stern-face would come in handy.
They asked Chloe if she knew what her headmistress wanted to talk to them about, but she had simply shrugged as if she didn't know or care reminding Molly of all the times that she had done exactly the same thing. When she had said that Chloe was exactly like her, she had meant that she looked like her not that she would be as unhappy at school as she'd been and she was determined that whatever had gone on, this was not going to happen. Chloe eventually started crying, saying that she wasn't going back to school ever, that she'd run away if they made her, that she hated it. Charles took her on his lap and cuddled her but it took him ages to wheedle out of her what was wrong and then, when she finally told them, Molly was horrified but Charles turned away and she had a strong suspicion that he was fighting against laughing, and as far as she was concerned it was not funny.
Apparently they'd had to write a little story about either their mum or dad and Chloe had written about Molly. She had written that her mum used to be a soldier and that the Queen had given her a medal for blowing some bloke's head off, a version of events given to her by Sam, and Molly heard Charlie mutter that he'd kill him when he saw him. Molly asked what happened next and Chloe told them how the teacher had said that she had shown good imagination but how it was important to be truthful when you write about people or things that are real. She had set Chloe the task of thinking of lots of other words to use instead of the word 'bloke'. The other kids had started to call her 'liar, liar pants on fire' and the more she insisted she was telling the truth, the more they'd said it.
Charles spent a long time explaining that although it was true that mummy had been a soldier and that she'd got a medal from the Queen, Sam had got it wrong and it wasn't for killing anyone, it was for being very brave and saving someone's life. That mummy had done lots of other brave things as well, and although in a war people got hurt and sometimes they got killed, and mummy and daddy had been soldiers in a war so they'd had to do a bit of that, but no-one had tried to kill anyone and certainly no-one had got a medal for killing anyone.
Molly left them to it as she walked away and was back in a ditch in Afghan with a sniper shooting at her as she had stood, frozen with fear, and she could hear a voice echoing in her head from years before "I'll blow his shitty head off" then she swallowed hard as her memory dredged up another day at Upton Park. She went to the kitchen sink and thought about Bashira and then Sohail dying on a road and Badrai and for a moment she was back on a bridge with everyone shouting, with Charles bleeding to death and her taking a gun and shooting Bashira's dad. As usual, she struggled not to cry about things she couldn't change but would always feel responsible for. Her training as a first responder EMT had shown her that there had been nothing she could have done for Smurf, nothing at all, so the guilt over his death had started to go and for the first time in a long time she wondered about Quaseem and Bashira and how they were doing and made a resolution to e-mail Quaseem the next day after they got back from dealing with the mess that was Chloe's school life.
Molly saw Chloe skip away from her daddy, all smiles and shouting for the others, and looked at Charles' slightly embarrassed face and raised her eyebrows in a question.
"What?" Charles was struggling to look and sound innocent.
She didn't say a word, just stood and looked at him, eyebrows still raised.
"I may have promised her that we can get a dog when we move into our own house" he put his beseeching puppy dog face on "Come on Molls, you know they've been asking for one for ages and it seems to have cheered her up"
"Of course it's bleeding cheered her up, bloody hell Charlie, getting her own way always does that and we know nothing about looking after a dog, neither of us. Did you say she could pick which one?"
"I might have done, with the others of course, and Sam, although he doesn't deserve it right now"
"He didn't mean to cause any bother" Molly started to giggle at the image that was forming in her head.
"Are you smirking?"
"No" Molly tried hard to show him a straight face.
"What's so fucking hilarious?"
"I just hope you're looking forward to walking something the size of a fluffy rat on a lead with a ribbon in its hair, and picking up dog shit"
Charles looked at her with horror written all over his face, "You're joking, right?"
"Nope"
"Maybe she'll forget"
"Yeah right"
"Sam'll have to do it, it can be his punishment"
She was almost crying with laughter as she thought back to the one and only experience she'd had as a kid of having a dog, or any pet for that matter, an experience that had lasted about five minutes as far as she could remember and one that she knew she'd told Charlie about. She had been about Sam's age, maybe a bit younger, when her dad had come home from the pub one Sunday afternoon, well pissed and with a skinny, mangy looking dog on a lead that some bloke in the pub had given him. Her mum had gone ballistic, saying that it couldn't stay, that it couldn't even come in, that apart from the fact that it looked bleeding fierce, had he forgotten that they lived in a maisonette with no bloody garden, that there was no room for a dog, that it probably had fleas and that there was more chance of her winning Strictly than there was of her walking round the estate picking up dog shit. So her dad had taken it back, by which time the bloke had sensibly pushed off so her dad was forced to take it all the way to Battersea, where they didn't believe that it wasn't his. Molly wiped the tears of laughter from her eyes as she remembered that he hadn't stopped moaning for days.
Charles hadn't had a pet either, boarding school had seen off that possibility and Molly wondered how much was the kids wanting a dog and how much was him, although she knew he would probably want a big posh sort of dog, a Labrador or something, not the tiny little lap dog that she knew Chloe would choose.
Charles was glad that laughter had replaced the sadness on her face, he knew she'd been thinking about Bashira and Badrai. No matter how hard he tried, nothing would ever convince her that none of it had been her fault and, as usual, any mention of that day bought an expression of guilt and regret to her face that he had the urge to immediately kiss away, so he put his arms round her and hugged her hard, before gently kissing her and then starting to kiss her properly. She pulled away from him slightly.
"Are you okay?"
" I killed him, Charlie, however you wrap it up for Chloe, I killed him"
"I know, but you know that if you hadn't, none of us would be here today, not me, none of the kids, probably not you either. You did what you had to and don't worry about Chloe, Molls, she'll be fine, we'll sort it. Let's put the kids to bed and go to bed early"
"It's a bit early innit? I'm not tired"
"Good"
Author's notes: My guests have shoved off for a few days to sort out their house now their tenants have moved out, although their stuff won't be arriving for another ten days or so. I have no idea why I went on a clean freak trip before they arrived, the house was a tip within ten minutes of their arrival from Gatwick and stayed that way. Believe it or not I will miss them when they go, even the sister-in-law from hell who had live-in domestic help at home and found this house a bit of a culture shock!
As you can see I've been allowed back into my parallel universe for a few days so I'm catching up with Molly, CJ and their family who are now living back in Wiltshire and are trying to adjust to the changes in their daily lives.
Reviews would be lovely.