Don't Say a Word about Tomorrow or Forever

It was obvious that he was okay, Adam, not a bad sort of bloke, even if he wasn't someone who would ever set her soul on fire, not now and not ever, and even if he was the last bloke left standing on earth she'd rather go without. Six foot two of blonde beefcake with about one and a half working brain cells, a serious contender for a dumb blonde award if they had one for blokes, which was probably a bit of a Dawsey unfair assessment because she wasn't what you might call at her best either, and it was not his fault that he wasn't her idea of a soul-mate. And it didn't matter how often or how hard Lisa kept on nudging her and winking at her in a suggestive sort of way and nodding her head and lifting her eyebrows towards him when he wasn't looking, in fact she could keep on doing that until the cows came home and it wasn't going to make a scrap of difference, all it did was make Molly want to punch her. He was not for her.

Another awkward bloody silence and lull in the conversation had him telling them all about himself and how he worked in this wine bar and how, much to Lisa's delight and her utter dismay, he didn't even have the decency to live fucking miles away. Guildford, he sodding well lived in sodding Guildford which was only a couple of miles up the road from barracks, something that was more than a bit shit when she wanted him to live, well, the Outer Hebrides or somewhere in one of those little boxes off the north end of Scotland would have been good, somewhere bloody miles and miles away so that there was zero chance of the people at home ever finding out anything about all of this shit. She didn't know him well enough to know if he could be trusted to keep his bloody gob shut like he promised or if he was one of them blokes who'd go home and shout from the bleeding rooftops about "what I did on my holidays" especially when he'd had the odd glass or three. If the lads ever found out she would never live it down. Ever. She didn't want anyone to know, and that meant anyone, anyone at all.

Aldershot – one month later

If Only. The two most fucking annoying words in the English Language, if only it had turned out to be that easy. She had no idea now why she'd believed what Lisa had said, why she'd thought that the other girl would know any more about it than her. She didn't, she couldn't have been more bloody wrong if she'd bloody well set out to be. Lisa had kept on saying that 'someone' had said, but she couldn't remember who that someone was now, and that they'd told her but she couldn't say now what exactly they had told her. Although to be fair even if she'd known there was bugger all she could have done about it because by the time she'd sobered up a bit it was too late, and Molly could now remember enough of that evening to wish that she couldn't remember any of it …

Was it as easy to delete the whole thing as it had been to delete the pictures off her phone? Nope. Was a Vegas marriage legal in the U.K. when both them the happy couple had been so totally out of it that they couldn't even remember being there never mind saying anything? And didn't they have to be living there for a bit, post banns, get a bloody license …. something? Well, apparently as long as they'd showed their passports and signed the papers, Oh and most important of all, paid Elvis his blood money, then that was enough. Had they done any of that, signed anything? Paid anything? Neither of them had a fucking clue, until Adam checked it out with the Clark County Office, and guess what, found that yes they had, even though Molly couldn't even remember having her passport out with her, let alone showing it to anyone, in fact, she was pretty bloody sure that she hadn't so it looked like fat Elvis in the onesie might have lied to get his hands on his money. But there was no way they could fucking prove it. And where was their marriage certificate? Anyone's bleeding guess, but they could have a copy if Adam ordered and paid for one, but it still hadn't arrived so that Molly was still clinging onto the vain hope that it was all some big cock up, mistaken something or other and that it was some other couple entirely. Wasn't of course, Lady Luck had obviously pissed right off out of it, still there was no harm in hoping.

Could they now get a divorce, like just say 'I divorce you' three times and then forget all about it? Yes they could, well sort of, but only after they'd been married for a year, and then one or other of them would have to file for divorce.

Lisa, of course, kept on trying to get her to give him a go, well she liked him and couldn't understand why Molly looked at her as if she was fucking insane when she said about not letting him be another one that got away, and kept saying that this one definitely wasn't a dick splash. She only packed it in and got a bit upset and tried to convince Molly she was only doing her best to help when Molly accused her of fancying him, of wanting her 'husband' for herself. She'd denied it vehemently of course, just kept saying loudly that it was because she was the one who knew all about what had happened before Vegas so that Molly made her promise on pain of death, or on her dog's life anyway, that she wouldn't tell a bleeding soul and would take the secret to the grave. Then the back-stabbing big mouth with no taste in men told all their mates about the 'wedding' so they'd all had a bloody good giggle, all except for Molly of course who was still struggling to see the funny side of any of it. She'd had to pretend a bit because if she'd shown that she minded as much as she did they'd have kept on with the teasing and thinking that they were being funny and he was popular with them, her mates. Although she was bloody certain that their general approval had something to do with the number of 'on the house' rounds that he shoved in their direction whenever they drank in his bar, which was a lot because she couldn't think of a reasonable reason why she wanted to go and drink somewhere else, anywhere else would have done.

She didn't fancy him, not even when she'd sunk her own body weight in booze so that she had difficulty in remembering her own name, she couldn't seem to persuade herself that she wanted to shag him …. ever … again …. not if the first time was anything to go by. The decision that she'd come to on the morning after the night before in a Vegas hotel which had been about being 100% totally sensible and tee-total in the future hadn't survived the bad news about their marriage, or rather their divorce, because there are definitely times when only booze and quite a lot of it would do. So she'd set herself a new deadline for growing up, for being …. brilliant … and that was the day that she got her decree absolute though the post, something else that reminded her of him, of what she'd lost, not that she needed anything to remind her. And in spite of all the stuff in those dodgy self-help books that Lees had forced down her throat, all that touch-feely bollocks about how time would sort it, that it just needed for her have patience, well far as she could see time didn't seem to be taking care of any of it like they'd promised.

Adam couldn't be more different if he'd put in a shed-load of effort. What he liked to do, what he liked to read, she never actually saw Adam read anything except for the back page of the Sun or the take-away menu, what food he liked to eat, usually from the same menu, what films he liked to watch on tele, and in all the ways that you can't do anything about he was as different as it's possible for one bloke to be from another. Different height, well there wasn't much in that if she was being strictly honest, different colour eyes, Adam's were blue, quite often with red route map lines in them where he'd been drinking the profits, and he was usually a bit on the pale and pasty side so that he looked as though he could do with more sleep, although that could also be down to drinking the profits. He had different colour hair, not a dark curl in sight, just a sort of dirty blonde mop and it was longish, longer than army regulation cut, but not enough to make it look like he needed it cutting or anything and he was a totally different sort of build. He was much chunkier, okay maybe he was a tiny bit fat in places but that was because he lived on junk food and didn't do any running or anything, his idea of exercise was to stand on the terraces eating a pie while he jumped up and down because some bugger had scored a goal, so he looked much bigger.

His voice was possibly the best thing about him. It wasn't posh, he just had this definite West Country thing in it so that her dad always took the piss and imitated it like he was a yokel sort of thing, but that was because Adam came from Cornwall or somewhere shit like that, although Poldark he definitely wasn't, more's the pity. Her first impression of Adam had been absolutely spot on. Adam was thick … dim … so that he reminded her in a lot of ways of Mansfield Mike, although Mansfield was probably more like someone off University Challenge next to Adam, and if she'd met him in Guildford she wouldn't have looked at him twice, except maybe as a friendly barman. On reflection she thought it was a bit surprising that their paths hadn't crossed before her pilgrimage to Vegas because she'd been in most of the wine bars in Guildford and had got pissed in most of them, if not all, so it must have been his night off when she'd visited his one.

It was obvious that he saw things very much the same way she did, he didn't love her either, even though she was pretty sure he'd probably 'oblige' and have sex if she came onto him or asked him to give it a go, but he certainly wasn't bothered. And in the end they'd talked for hours helped along by a bottle of cheap red, despite working in the wine bar he wasn't a wine snob, or maybe it was because he was a big tight, but they decided between them that their best plan was to wait out for the year and then move on with no hard feelings, and, helped along by the second bottle, they were not going to rub one another's noses in it by starting anything significant with anyone else until it was all over, done and dusted.

So, even though she kept her own name, she was actually no longer Miss Dawes, Private Dawsey, RAMC, full of charm and magnetism, but Mrs Patterson, next of kin Adam Patterson, still RAMC, with a lot more cynicism and a hell of a lot less charm. Like it or not that was going to have to be her for the next year, until she could get a divorce and start over … all over again.

It didn't take long for word to get out and for the rumours to start spreading, although she didn't know why that should have come as any sort of surprise to her when she worked in a place that was a bloody rumour mill even if most of them did turn out to be total shite, but it did. She'd been sort of hoping that if she kept her head down and her gob tight shut no-one would believe any of it. She hadn't changed her Facebook status, it still said single and she'd stopped posting, no new pictures, no updates, nothing about anything, and she didn't answer any of the posts, e-mails or texts that she got from anyone, not the lads or Jackie or any of her other army pals asking her to tell them what the fuck was going on and whether what they'd heard was true.

She didn't move into Adam's flat, just spent the odd weekend there, but even right at the beginning when she'd been trying to work out whether she possibly could, it was obvious that it was not going to happen. She didn't want a relationship with him, she actually didn't want a relationship with anyone ….. so she stayed over occasionally, often when he'd gone home to see his mum and dad when it was lovely to have the peace and privacy that you don't get in barracks. It wasn't exactly ideal of course, any of it, but it wasn't a disaster either and waiting out was something Molly had done before, she was used to it.

Her family were over the moon, thrilled, they all loved him to bits, well there was no earthly reason why they wouldn't because there was nothing to dislike about Adam, unless you were looking for brains or intelligence or wit or any of that sort of stuff, which they weren't. He was polite and he was good looking, he had a nice smile which he used a lot and he spoke nicely, not too posh or anything, and he was friendly with no strong opinions on anything so that he didn't argue with Dave, or Nan. He had all his own teeth and owned his own place, and best of all he had a job. And he had what her dad would call the ideal career, he served behind a bar.

She didn't tell the family anything about how they weren't really a couple, she never told them that although they were only married until they could get a divorce, and she never said how they'd met or about the wedding. She'd done a lot of lying, or creative explaining, about all that and had told them that the wedding photos had got themselves lost somewhere in the post and that the U.S. postal service were still looking for them. She wasn't 100% sure that Nan believed a word of it, but even Nan eventually came round and obviously decided it would be better not to look too close because Adam was a hell of an improvement on her previous efforts. He didn't go round trying to shag her mates in public toilets or try and tap her mum or her Nan up for money, fat chance of that working, and he didn't nick cars for a living like Robbie had. To be fair Molly hadn't known that the car was stolen when the old bill had pulled them over so she hadn't been in the shit with the law, but she could have been.

Her mum kept on and on smiling and saying how Adam reminded her so much of Smurf, not his looks, he looked completely different, but how he was such a nice bloke, how good he was with the kids and how they'd have lovely looking kids themselves one day and how her dad liked him and how he'd make a lovely dad and how lucky she was and how kind he was and how he was so lovely and easy to get along with, which he was, he was all of those things and Belinda was absolutely right, but Molly wanted to yell at her that he was not the right bloke.

-OG-

Bath …. 5 months … and a bit ….. earlier …

He hadn't been at his best that day. He'd been edgy and irritable ever since she'd got there, but then she knew him well enough to know that he could be a bit of a moody sod sometimes. She'd known that about him ever since those early days in Afghan, like she'd known that he was bloody good at sulking, although to be fair it had been known for her to get a bit pissy now and then as well. But she also knew that she was getting on his nerves by keep trying to jolly him out of it, it was stupid and it was pointless and would have irritated the fuck out of her as well if the boot had been on the other foot, unlikely as that was. To keep on asking him what was the matter with him was putting herself on a hiding to nowhere when he just kept on saying 'nothing, leave it' and getting more and more arsey every time she opened her mouth and asked, but she couldn't seem to stop, couldn't seem to just keep her mouth shut.

There was something wrong and she knew it, so why the fuck had she kept on pushing it the way she had, maybe if she hadn't, maybe if she'd of done what he said and left it, it wouldn't have blown up in her face the way it had ….

-OG-

A/N: Thank you for your reviews, please keep them coming, otherwise I'll think you've all given up – Chapter 4 is the start of Part 2 when other people start to come back into her life. I hope to update AYSAPP as my favourite soldier says, I am on a bit of a roll at the moment so will stick with it while it keeps on bugging me to get out of my head and onto the page ..…