I'll get Along, You'll find Another

Bath – Three months …. One week … Five days … Earlier …

Everything in her world had been just what she'd wanted it to be when she'd got back from her second tour of Afghan, the 'perfect' that he'd promised her and that she'd told him she didn't do, she missed Smurf of course, she'd been devastated at what had happened before she'd gone. She'd been worried about Charles as well, he'd hated it when all that stuff had gone on with him and Candy, Smurf's mum, the way that she'd said she held him responsible for Smurf dying, and for Geraint as well, when none of it had been his fault and she probably knew that really, but she was just lashing out and he was in her firing line, but he was grieving too. But at least he was on the mend and roaring through his rehab at Headley although he was still determined that he was going to resign his commission and leave the army, going to do something else although he didn't have any idea yet what exactly, still there was no rush, he was still recovering so was still a serving soldier.

Best of all it appeared that he still felt the same way about her as he had before she'd gone on her short tour, the one that had been all his idea, and he'd seemed over the moon to see her when she got back, and was still in one piece. He'd been more than happy, as she had, to spend every spare moment that they could find just spending time together at his parent's place in Bath, well, actually spending most of their time in his bed at his parent's place in Bath because they'd found it very hard to keep their hands off each other.

The hardest thing of all for her turned out to be that she didn't see it coming.

It didn't matter what he said, she didn't believe him and none of it should have surprised her because she'd always known she wasn't good enough for him, that he was way, way out of her league and that someone like him was never going to look at someone like her, not seriously. It was funny really how she'd been in this bloody bubble ever since all the shit had gone down in Afghan, maybe he had as well but she couldn't say, but she'd been kidding herself when she'd been happily building bloody … castles in the air ….. about them and the future. Actually she'd had it spot on when she'd stood with Smurf at Laugharne and said how Captain James would never even be friends with the likes of …. well, people like them, someone like her. That day felt like a lifetime ago, but it wasn't, it wasn't long ago at all, just a matter of months, but she felt old now next to that girl.

-OG-

She'd been pissed on far too many nights around that time, it was another one of those traditional things that you do after you've done the going to the hairdressers and having your hair cut off, which she had, well she'd tried, but all those years it had taken for her to grow it that long, all the suffering trying to wash the sand out or brush the tangles out of it when she was out in Afghan, all the agonising over whether she could bear to go and have her split ends cut off had all got to her when the hairdresser had kept on asking if she was sure, if she was absolutely sure. All she kept thinking about was that he'd liked to fiddle with it, had liked to wind it round his fingers and turn it into ringlets and then tuck it back behind her ears, and he'd kept on saying that he would shoot her if she ever had it cut, so that tears had begun to pour down her face until the hairdresser, who on second thoughts might have been a trainee, had ended up making her a cup of tea and listening to her tale of woe before suggesting a compromise and cutting about an inch off of the bottom.

She'd done the traditional crying night after night into her pillow, had cried bloody buckets because Capt'n Ross seemed to her to be more interested in icy knickers Elizabeth, widow of his drippy cousin, but a lady, than feisty Demelza, the one who loved him, but who definitely was not, bastard. She'd woken up one morning with a sore bum, which she'd thought was because she must have bashed into something the night before when she was a tiny bit … under the weather … but which turned out to be a slut stamp on her arse. An emoji, the one with the little red heart, and she had no fucking clue what she'd been thinking of because what sort of tattoo place had they been to for fuck sake? What sort of dive did an arse tattoo on someone who was that plastered? A nice infection on her backside, a bit of blood poisoning maybe, so that she'd have to go and visit the M.O. or even worse hepatitis or something was really going to help to make her feel better …...

She hadn't done the traditional going out with mates to spend an evening slagging him off. Instead, she'd turned herself into the life and soul of the party, up for going out every night with one lot or another, drinking far more than was good for her and telling herself that she was having a blast. No-one asked her about him, well they wouldn't because none of them knew anything about him, had never heard of him, which was a bit of a bonus now because she didn't have to explain anything to anyone, she wasn't sure that she could, not without making a total tit of herself.

It was only when her and Lisa had been propping up the bar one night for a bit of a session and Lisa had been doing all her agony aunt bollocks with all that self-help bullshit and self-awareness crap and going on and on about the importance of getting closure and dealing with your grief, how talking about it would help whereas bottling up it up wouldn't that she'd told her that it wasn't grief for Smurf that was tearing her to bits, well not only that. She'd told her about all of it although she couldn't swear to what she had said exactly or how much she'd actually spilled or even if what she'd said had made any sense because it might possibly have been a bit of a drunken ramble, but Lees had seemed to get the gist. She'd kindly offered, as good friends do, that she was willing to arrange to track him down and cut his knob off, then staple it to his forehead and turn him into unicock if that was what Molly wanted and had then patted her arm before going on with the good mate mantra of always looking for a silver lining, however difficult it proved to be.

"Listen Molls, you do know don't you?" Lisa was not only badly slurring but had obviously forgotten about turning down the volume switch as she whispered in a shouting sort of way as well as waving her arms around so that she almost fell off her stool "And it's bloody well true"

"What is? What you talking about?"

"Much better to find out he's a massive knob before your Nan bought herself a new hat"

Molly nodded, but didn't actually want to say anything, she didn't want to agree or to laugh, scared that it might be tempting fate to say something bad about him, even if she didn't mean it, if she was only saying it. He wasn't what Lees said, not really, and all Molly wanted was for him to wake up and smell the coffee, or that poncey muck he insisted on drinking rather than Nescafe like any normal person, and for him to realise what a huge bloody mistake this being apart was, massive, and then for him to come and find her, so that she could tell him to fuck right off and that it was far too late now for him to say he missed her and couldn't live without her. Not that any of it was going to happen of course, he was not going to come back and if by some bloody miracle he ever did she wouldn't say anything like that to him, she still loved him, hated him most of the time, but loved him too. There were a lot of days when she wondered if she would ever be able to just forget all about him and move on, find someone else.

"You know I picked the wrong one don't you Lees? If I'd of been sensible I'd 'ave picked Smurf and then him and me, well …. we'd of been two little pigs in shit right now, we'd of been in Vegas, sitting there … having a quiet little drink ….. he loved me you know, he didn't think I weren't good enough"

"Course you're bloody good enough, what you talking about, it was him not good enough for you, not Smurf I don't mean Smurf, 'n I'm sorry … I hate to say it but … I think you might be getting it a bit wrong, I mean I didn't even know the bloke, never met him … or the other one, don't think I wanna know him, dick splash, I didn't know either of them, did I? but you didn't love Smurf, didn't even fancy him so that would have been a fucking disaster wouldn't it?"

"Ssshh, stop shouting" Molly put her finger to her lips "Alright, okay, I could make you right, might have been, but probably no more than what did happen"

"Hate to tell you … oops said that already didn't I? But if you had of picked him, Smurf, you'd of been sitting there now in some bar in Las Vegas having a quiet little drink ….. with a corpse"

She didn't want to laugh, but couldn't seem to help herself as Lisa started to guffaw and snort until they were both falling off their stools with laughing, and the tears, which were never far away, started to run down her face. Somehow it seemed so completely wrong to think that anything to do with Smurf's death was in any way funny, but a great many of her conversations with him had been on the cruel side, just like this one, and she missed him …...

"Why did he want you to go to Vegas with him? I mean, was it going to be a leg-over weekend or something, you never said"

"Nah, he knew that weren't gonna be it" She paused and thought "Think he did anyhow cos I told him often enough, but he wanted us to go together and for me to wear this red frock he picked, really tarty, so would have made me look like I was touting for trade round Kings Cross, but he liked it …" Molly stopped talking long enough to look for a tissue so that she could stop the loud sniffing, then gave it up as hopeless and used the paper serviette that had once been wrapped round their cutlery "He wanted me to wear it when we went to see Elvis in his chapel" She giggled, remembering "and then when I told him that Elvis was dead, he pretended to be all shocked 'n said he didn't even know that he'd been ill …. Fuck-muppet … he wanted us to go to the casino so I could walk in front of him in that horrible dress and gamble all his money on the roulette wheel. I was going to be his lucky mascot or some'ing, gonna win him a fucking fortune ….. poor Smurf"

"Bit shit that, that he never got there"

"Yeah, my bloody fault he's dead Lees"

"How do you work that out?"

"I'm s'posed to be a medic and I saw him every day, well apart from when he was in the QE, and I never noticed there was something really wrong with him, he was with me and we was talking and laughing 'n that ….. just before he keeled over and he'd said that he had these jitterbugs in his head but I honestly thought he was just a bit fragged, like we all were"

"I thought he died of something in his brain, that's what you said and that he was in hospital just before, so with all the doctors and the tests and the ….. whatsits, scans 'n things how come they never found out he was ill, and why would you when they didn't?"

"I knew him, they didn't"

"It's not your fault, Molls, really it's not, but you know what, we should go, you and me ….. go to Vegas, go to the casino and lose all our money on the slots cos don't think I'll have enough for roulette, we can find one of them cheap deals on the net, it'll be a bit of a laugh and you can get closure"

"Yeah right, like I believe in all that bollocks" She was now laughing and crying at the same time "Sorry Lees but I don't see it, don't think it's my ball bag at all, but tell you what, I'd like to go, can't hurt can it?" Molly's nose was still running so that she was sniffing as well as giggling and shaking her head, remembering how excited Smurf had been that day when he'd shown her the picture of that god-awful red frock "But just so long as you know, I'm not wearing a red frock, well, haven't even got one have I?"

She'd smiled as she thought about the day he'd shown her that picture, but could never bring herself to remember the day that he'd turned up at home with the dress in a box, because that was the day that he'd died ….. she'd given the dress to the charity shop, she couldn't have worn it for all the money in the world ….

-OG-

The three of them, Molly, Adam, her 'husband' of a few hours and Lisa, who couldn't stop giggling as she still seemed to find the whole thing hysterically funny, which was probably because it wasn't her, sat outside the hotel dining room and did their best to get as much of a tan as they could in their last few hours of Nevada sunshine. She probably would have enjoyed it more if it wasn't for the hangover nausea, the cracking headache that was making her feel even more sick if that was possible, and all the horrible memories that kept on popping up in her brain, especially the memory of saying that word, and the way it had happened,a memory which was breaking her heart. She couldn't wait to get home and put it all behind her, to get back to work and forget all about it, and sitting there killing time before they went to the airport was driving her nuts, even though none of them had got the energy to do anything else instead. Bloody Adam kept on saying that he should go back to his own hotel, should go and see if he could find the rest of the lads and make sure they were all still alive. He said that the bride, who was his sister, would never forgive him if the groom, whose name was Derek apparently, had ended up in jail or had gone missing or worse.

Molly thought that Adam leaving to check on them was an excellent plan, not that she gave a shit about bloody Derek, she could only just vaguely remember what he looked like, but she wanted to tell Adam to fuck off and that her and Lisa would try and survive the loss as best they could. She badly wanted to say "Must you? Well, s'pose if you 'ave to, bye" but bit her tongue and settled for a sick grin because she simply hadn't got the energy to get arsey with him. Anyway she wasn't blaming him, not really, what had happened to her wasn't his fault, it was hers and it didn't matter how sorry for herself she got, and she did, she wasn't a victim.

No-one had put a gun to her head and forced her to do something so unbelievably fucking stupid, she was the one that had done her best to drink the bloody place dry and then let herself down and she had to stop doing it. It wasn't going to help and she didn't even want to think what he would say if he found out, which he wouldn't of course, why would he? But she couldn't help wondering whether he'd be upset if he knew about the 'Ditto' but then decided probably not, probably wouldn't even remember by now and even if he did he'd more than likely just shake his head, after all she wasn't anything to him anymore, was she?

-OG-

A/N: Thank you for your feedback, this is not going to be an update a day situation but I had the first two chapters ready and was told by someone lovely last Friday, she knows who she is, to step away from the delete button, so I'm doing my best. The longer you wait between writing and uploading the more editing you do, and the more likely you are to start deleting because you've read it ninety times, or maybe that's just me! For those who were desperate to know why they're not together, all will become clear – eventually. Hope you enjoy this.