A/N... Thank you to everyone who reviewed, liked and followed the start of 'That's an Order' last week. It was amazing and really encouraging to receive so many positive responses. Thanks also, for the helpful comments about the differences between a niqab and a burka and my poor attempts at including some Arabic, both of which I couldn't reply to directly. They were gratefully received.
Thanks to Tony Grounds and everyone involved in the production of Our Girl who contributed to develop such interesting characters and situations to play around with.
"I'm not sure I want to hear your bloody explanation, Dawes."
Uh-oh, thought Molly. I knew he'd be angry, but I wasn't expecting him to be this nettled."
Before she could reply, shouting broke out all around them and Qaseem ran up with a guard.
"Sir, there's been an explosion at the front gate. You must both come into the building. It's not safe out here."
Molly turned to run to the gate. "Someone might be injured. I can hear crying. I need to go there."
"Don't be so fucking stupid Dawes. It would be suicidal." The boss gripped her arm like a vice to stop her.
She struggled against him, aware of increasingly curious stares around them.
"He's right Molly," Qaseem said with a quiet urgency. "We don't know what's going on. You don't know who they're targeting."
"And you don't have any medical equipment with you either, Dawes. So what are you going to do? The royal touch? They'd love that?"
Molly scowled at his last, sarcastic comment, but seeing the logic of his point she relented and he let her arm go. She rubbed it resentfully, still glaring at him.
Qaseem hurried them into the ministry as several more Afghan soldiers ran into the courtyard.
At the reception desk a guard stepped forward: "Security cannot allow you further into the building because you haven't been cleared. He gestured to a small guardroom just inside the entrance. "But we will let you wait in here."
Qaseem turned to Charles, "Sir, where's your guard?"
"Good question Qaseem. He disappeared right before the explosion."
"That's not good news. Nobody knows what's happening. It's very dangerous for you. Please stay in that guardroom and don't come out until I come back. Qaseem peered round the door. There's a bolt on the inside of this door so lock yourselves in and don't open it. Don't trust anybody. I'm going to find out what's going on and I'll try to get you out of here as soon as possible."
He looked at both of them as he turned to leave. "I can see you've met properly now. That's a relief."
Molly stepped inside a darkened room furnished with a table and an office chair and unexpectedly, a wall clock in the shape of a wooden chalet. There was also a mattress behind the door and a small barred window, set high in opposite wall. She grabbed the chair and climbed up to look outside.
Behind her she heard Charles bolting the door.
"I can't get a butcher's from this window, Boss, it just looks out onto a high wall."
As she sat down on the mattress she realised she'd called him Boss. Why? He was no longer her Boss Man. They'd split up three years ago and hadn't been in touch since.
"Do you have a weapon on you Dawes?"
She shook her head
"Wonderful! Well we'll just have to wait out and put our trust in the Afghan security forces."
"And while we're waiting, Dawes, you can amuse me by telling me exactly what the fuck you are doing here."
Molly looked up, confused. But he wasn't smiling. He was looking down at her with a murderous look on his face.
She took a deep breath: "It's simple really…"
"Nothing's ever simple Dawes," he interrupted as he straddled the chair. "If it was, we wouldn't be sitting here, an ex-army captain and a serving medic, in this squalid room with bombs exploding outside, and neither a gun nor a first aid kit between us.
"You're right about that, Sir," she started to laugh, then looked at the black expression on his face and changed her mind.
"Well?" His harsh voice echoed across the bare stone walls and suddenly it felt like they were back in Camp Bastion and she was wearing the wrong kit and he was congratulating her for not wearing stilettos."
"I'm on holiday, Sir. I flew in five days ago and with any luck, if this resolves quickly, I'll be flying out tomorrow."
"Couldn't you have chosen somewhere a bit safer for a break, like a beach?"
"You know me, Sir."
"Indeed Dawes, only too well, unfortunately. Where are you staying?"
"There's a small deployment of army medics at the hospital. I'm lodging with them at a British Embassy safe house in the green zone."
"So it is official then."
"Well… not exactly. You see I've taken a sabbatical from the army. They given me a bursary and I'm in my first year studying medicine."
For a second she thought she detected a flash of pride in his eyes, but he made no comment and she decided she must have been seeing things in the gloom. "As it's the summer holidays, I wanted to volunteer for something, so my former CO pulled some strings."
He sighed: "At least you'll be protected tonight."
"That's if we get out of here first, Sir."
"Indeed."
"But you still haven't explained your fancy dress, Dawes,"
"I wore it when I went to see Bashira – I always do. I can't draw attention to her. Her brother came out the rusty last year. We've had to move her twice already to keep her safe."
"If it's so dangerous for her, why do you keep coming back?"
"I can't abandon her." She took a deep breath and looked at him: "I can't forget that I killed her father. It haunts me. I still wake up thinking about it."
His eyes met hers and that long, fateful day on the bridge stretched out between them. It all came back to her in a series of flashes, first hearing about his wife and then refusing Smurf's proposal. She saw herself trying not to cry as they lifted off from Bastion and felt once again, the explosive shock of thunder. She tried to banish the memory of Charles kissing her, even as the sweetness of that moment pushed its way insistently into her thoughts, and then her mind was flooded with the memory she could never forget, of Badrai's glassy, dead eyes as he fell, lifeless to the ground.
She looked up at Charles. She saw despair echoed in his face, as he relived the horror of Smurf's hatred and the unravelling of the operation. And then he looked at her. She felt herself becoming tangled in the brown depths of his eyes. Perhaps he doesn't hate me after all, she wondered.
Almost instantly he looked away and the silence stretched out between them as the minutes ticked by on the clock.
Then he gestured at her niqab; "Take it off."
"Why?"
"Because if I'm going to talk to you, I want to see your face."
She pulled it off resentfully. "Is that better?"
He snorted as if it wasn't.
"You see, I have a problem with you Dawes. I don't trust you. I'm sure you'll understand why. No one has ever treated me the way you did – no woman either before you or since."
He got up and walked to the window. "You walked out without telling me. You left me a note."
He swung round to look at her, with piercing, angry eyes. "But it didn't make any sense to me at all. So I called you but you blocked my number. I left you messages, but you didn't answer them. Bloody hell, I even went to your home, but your mother wouldn't tell me where you were."
"It was a spineless way to end a relationship. And, in case you're wondering, it was three years ago, so don't flatter yourself. I don't care about you any more."
Molly flinched at the cruelty of his words.
"All I want now is to know the truth, about why you left."
