Part Two
There'll be Time enough for Sadness when you Leave me
"It's the Yemen not Benidorm ….. moron, you know some'ing, if you had half a brain you'd be dangerous"
"That's not a very nice thing to say, is it? I'm only trying to help here"
"Well don't …" She thought for a minute "People used to say that to me all the bloody time, 'n it's the fucking desert not the seaside …. and it's not a holiday, there's no pool" She grinned to show that she wasn't seriously pissed a him and put her hand up to indicate what exactly she meant by a slit for the eyes, with Adam you could never be quite sure "It's one of them strict Muslim places, you know, where women cover up from head to toe and just 'ave this little slit where you can see their eyes so if I wore that I'd probably get beheaded or some'ing"
"I can think of some people who'd look better in one of them"
"Better not be talking about me, sunshine"
"Of course I mean you, I reckon it'd suit you"
"Thanks a bunch"
She suddenly desperately wanted to get off the subject of burkas and hijabs and slits for eyes and strict Muslim societies and all the rest of that shit before the waterworks kicked in. Today was difficult enough already without any of that so that she did her best to swallow the deeply unwelcome and painful memories of being stood waiting in a compound in Kabul looking at the worried expression on the face of a concerned Quaseem and then as a stubborn, obstinate little mare from another lifetime hugged a little girl. Still, no point in thinking about all that shit and any of the rest of the things that she wished more than anything she could go back and change, too late now to do it all different. She forced a grin so that Adam wouldn't notice the tears prickling her eyes as he kept on talking.
And it wasn't Adam's fault that he didn't understand what being deployed on a mission involved, you don't get deployed that often when you work in a bloody wine bar on Guildford High Street, but he didn't even know where the Yemen was, even though she'd tried to show him over and over on the map and had done her best to explain, an explanation that seemed to have passed him by completely.
"We need to talk about timing of all this … court stuff … you know, not that I'm paying for any of it, I thought you could do that"
"Did you? Bloody stingy sod, I got bad news for you, Mr Visa 'asn't got enough spare to lend me so I can take care of any of it, mind you, on second thoughts might be worth selling something just to get shot of you"
"What?"
"Not that, not sure anyone would pay enough for that anyhow"
"I wasn't talking about that, and you know you don't mean it"
"Yeah you were, nah I s'pose you're not that bad on the whole, not as useless waste of space husbands go"
She grinned back as his face had broken into a wide and stupid smirk as he'd held up the bikini he'd pulled out of the bottom of the kitbag where she'd been storing her summer stuff and that she'd just emptied by dumping the contents in the middle of the bed. A year since Vegas, which in any other circumstances would have been about eleven months too long for Molly, but what had started out as a mess had worked out much better than she could have ever imagined. Adam was okay, which to be fair she'd known from day one, he was thick as a brick, which she'd also known from day one, but was exceptionally kind and even-tempered, he always said he was far too lazy to bother with losing his temper, and he put up with all her shit, which was a bonus.
Any outsider looking at them would have thought their relationship was weird to say the bloody least and sometimes Molly would agree with that assessment, she'd often thought that they must both be insane and that the whole situation was just asking for someone to get hurt, but it seemed to work for them. They weren't together together, as in a couple, that had never changed since they'd first realised that the stupid wedding was legal but they did have a relationship of sorts. They were fond of each other even though they didn't sleep together, and although she did now stay over there a lot, but, and it would always be the major stumbling block for her, there were no fireworks, no passion, no love,not of the sort she'd known, but that also meant that there was no pain.
He stopped smirking and pulled a face, frowning as he watched her sorting stuff ready to pack it away in her kit bag, he couldn't help feeling that the end of this, whatever it was, was all a bit sad.
"You will keep in touch, won't you? Send me texts so I know you're okay and you have to promise me you'll be careful and come home in one piece, you've already got one fucking medal for being a hero, Molls, you don't need another one, do you?"
"Nah, bloody coward, that's me, and it's not a war zone so I'm not gonna get another medal, okay? You just make sure that you behave, don't you dare flog me stuff on Ebay cos if you even think about it, you need to remember I'm a trained killer so I'll track you down and jackpot you, and now can you stop being so bleeding nice to me, Patterson, or you'll make me cry … and then I'll change me mind and won't bloody divorce you after all"
"Shit, no, anything but that, you promised I could have my flat back, I keep dreaming about living with none of your bloody crap all over everywhere"
"Pig" She blinked hard to wipe the memory of someone else having a pop at her for being a bit untidy in his space and then resolutely dragged her thoughts away from the past, a past that still had the power to hurt "Sorry hadn't noticed you was a neat freak, anyway you should count yourself lucky I'm not suing for alimony, I'm the one who's gonna be homeless with nowhere to put me stuff, unless I can leave it here" She deliberately put a wheedling tone in her voice and pulled a 'go on, be nice to me' face.
"No you bloody can't and no you're not, and don't start trying to make me feel bad, it won't work"
"Shit, really? …. Shame …. but you will let me know if there are any ….hitches … or anything won't you? I don't want to get back and find you've screwed it up and I'm still married to a tosspot"
The raw pain had faded so that she now managed to go whole days without remembering and surprisingly it had helped enormously when she'd told Adam all about it on the one year anniversary of that horrible day in Bath. The pair of them had got totally obliterated on some Peach Schnapps that was so bloody old he couldn't even remember when he'd bought it back from some holiday somewhere or other, but they'd made this very lucky discovery of the sticky bottle at the back of a cupboard, and after they'd sniffed at it dubiously to see if it was off, had decided you couldn't really tell unless you tasted it ….. and then that it would be a crime to put it back where it came from.
Lovely, kind Adam had told her that he'd always known there was something, someone, and had gone on to say all the right things, the ones that she'd most wanted to hear. How it was his loss and that she hadn't deserved any of it, which she knew was wrong because she had, and then Adam had asked her to consider whether she thought he was sitting at home crying into his beer, or his bloody Peach Schnapps if he had any, which was pretty bleeding doubtful, or whether she thought that he'd be out there somewhere chatting up some girl, some girl who was young and pretty and trusting just like her and who thought he was wonderful just like she had. She didn't really think he was doing that, it didn't feel like something he would do or maybe it was that she didn't want to think he would, but she'd thought about Adam's words a lot in the days after and had begun to make a real effort to stop measuring her life by counting days, weeks or even the hours which was what she had been doing …...
She knew that he'd fully recovered and that he was back, still an officer and still a fully functioning soldier, something she'd thought about time after time when her fingers had been hovering over his number on her phone. She'd thought about maybe sending him a text to say 'well done' or 'hope you're okay' or something but in the end hadn't, had thought better of it because of the deafening silence from him, so she'd made a deliberate choice not to find out where he was stationed or anything else about his life now.
Her and Adam were about to petition the courts for the divorce, they'd both signed all the papers and got all the bits and bobs ready, but even though they weren't in love or anything like that and never had been, they were very fond of each other so it felt like it was just as well she was going to be a very, very long way away for the next three months while everything got sorted out. It also meant there was absolutely no chance of her running into Charles by accident anywhere, not on the base or anywhere else for that matter because she was tired of keeping her head down in case, and the best bit of all was that she was going to learn to be on her own again. She didn't need some bloke to make her feel good about herself, she'd spent more than enough time on the edge of being a fucking lunatic already and had fucked things up enough to last a bleeding lifetime, no more, never again.
They were off to the Yemen, to al-Mazraq or maybe Obock, no-one seemed to be quite certain which yet, but they were definitely going to one or the other to support the old MSF, the Doctors Without Borders lot, trying their best to make a difference at some shit-hole of a refugee camp, where apparently the Somalis were doing their best to get in while the Yemenis were busting a gut to get out, to get away from their civil war
-OG-
"Oi, oi, wait up Dawsey"
Oh shit, she'd have known that bloody voice anywhere, she should do, once upon a time she'd heard it morning, noon and bloody night, well not all night obviously, but a hell of the lot of time when they weren't in their pits cos he rarely kept his gob shut for very long.
"Keep walking 'n don't look round, I said DON'T, shit, shit, shit what the fuck's 'e doing 'ere?"
Molly hastily scanned the crowded departure hall looking to see if there was anywhere to hide, as well as making sure that there weren't any other unwelcome surprises lurking in amongst the crowds of men and women in combats.
"DawSEY, oi wait up"
"Who is that Molly?"
Before she could think of an answer that would put a halt to further discussion he'd run across to catch up with them, to sling his arm round her shoulders and give her a loud smacker of a kiss on the cheek, the same way he'd always done, well, he had before the boss had got all arsey with him about it.
"What, you going Mutt and Geoff on me or something? Didn't you hear me shouting for you to wait up?"
"Sorry, thought I heard some'ing but then I thought nah, can't be, just having a bit of an hallucination, you know, bit hot in 'ere 'n I'm not acclimatised, thought it were just me imagining stuff" She couldn't help the grin that had spread itself across her face without her brain giving permission, she had to grin at him the same way that he'd always made her bloody grin even when she really didn't want to, even when, like today, he was the very last person on earth that she wanted to see, well nearly the last anyway "How are you anyhow?"
"I'm lovely, as you can see, and when did you get too good for the likes of me? Knew they should never have given you that fucking medal, Dawsey, said as much at the time, didn't I? But would they listen to me? Not a chance"
"No-one ever listens to you mate, you should know that by now and I've always been too good for the likes of you so nothing's changed …. what you doing here anyway?"
"Same as you by looks of it" He grinned "Seeing as you're not going to introduce me to your mate here, looks like I'm going to have to do it myself, Hello Sweetheart, I'm Fingers and I'm a very old friend of Dawsey here, we go way back, and you are?"
"Sane, that's why she won't be messing with you, mate"
"I'm hurt, nah, cut to the quick is what I am"
Tilly started to giggle as he clapped his hand over his heart and pulled an 'aarrgh I've been stabbed and I'm dying' face and then pretended to stagger around a bit so that even Molly was giggling and that was something Tilly rarely saw. The other girl tended to keep herself very much to herself, not that she was unfriendly or anything, she wasn't, she was always pleasant, it was just that she didn't mess around and exchange that much banter with any of the blokes they saw every day. Tilly had a feeling that she was married, that she had a husband tucked away somewhere, or had been married or something or so she'd heard, but the other girl didn't talk about her private life so she hadn't got a clue who this bloke was or where he fitted in. The worst of that was that she couldn't tell whether she was supposed to laugh with him or not, but then couldn't help herself.
Molly had never mentioned anything to any of them about any of it, not about the lads or what good mates they'd all been in Afghan, or how it had stayed like that even when they'd got back and even after she'd been shifted to her new permanent section, how they'd used to be her sort of family. That was before Smurf of course, and all the rest of it, what had gone down afterwards, which meant that although it was a bloody lifetime ago now it could have been yesterday the last time she'd seen him, the last time she'd listened to him rabbiting on with his particular brand of bullshit. It was obviously a tiny bit awkward for Tilly who was now giggling almost in spite of her better judgement, but then Fingers always had that effect on girls, she'd often thought that it was only her was immune to him, but there had been reasons for that ….
"Hello, I'm Tilly and it's nice to meet you, I've heard a lot about you"
"Who from? Not from me you 'aven't"
"Thanks Dawsey, missed you too, it's really lovely to see you as well"
He was obviously only pretending to be offended as he slung his arm back round her shoulders and carried on walking with them towards a big crowd that was gathered in front of the open doors to the tarmac. All of them were in combats and all of them were standing with their kit bags stacked in piles and all making the usual pre-tour hell of a din, chatting and laughing and calling out to each other so that there was that general air of excitement and anticipation that always went along with the start of a mission, no matter how shit they thought it was going to be. It was very, very warm in the hall so despite the doors being kept open by the people standing in front of them, some of the groups had already spilled out onto the tarmac in front of a Hercules transport, making Molly breathe out a big sigh of relief. There was only a minute or two, maybe three at most, for her to survive and then she and Tilly could be safely tucked into the middle of their section, away from anything with the potential to be bloody awkward.
And then he ruined it. He ground to a halt but still held on tightly to her shoulders so that she was forced to stand still as he looked down at her with this serious expression on his face and asked the one question she didn't want to answer. He wanted to know whether the rumours that they'd heard were true. He said he'd had to tell people over and over that that couldn't be right, that she'd have told them, her mates, so what the fuck had she'd been up to, what was it all about? Why had none of them heard a single bloody word from her at all in over a year and why hadn't she ever answered e-mails or texts? He was being kind, looked like he was genuinely concerned and not just nosy, but all she wanted to do was shrug him off and run away or tell him to piss off and leave her alone, she didn't need or want any of this right now. What the hell could she say without having to go into loads of stuff that she didn't want to talk about in front of Tilly, so she just prayed that he wouldn't push it as she tried her best to swamp him with bullshit, so that even to her ears she delivered the most pathetic shitty load of excuses that she'd come out with in a very long time. But it was the best she could do on the spur of the moment as she frantically searched her brain for some way of avoiding telling him anything and at the same time changing the subject.
"Sorry about that, you know how it is, people to see, places to go, things to do 'n that and sometimes there's things you just don't get round to, so, who else is here then?"
"Let me see now, Brains, Dangles, Kingy, oh no you don't know him he came after… Monk, you don't want to know him, he's a bit of a tosser, good lad though …. Oh and Mansfield …"
"Mansfield's here? Mike?" He was one person she would actually love to see, she wouldn't mind the others of course, but Mike was well ….. Mike "Baz? Nude-Nut?"
"Yeah Mike's here but not the others, they've moved on like you have, Lane's here though, Oh no, you wouldn't know her, she's the medic replaced you, not as good as you of course"
"Course not …. Bloody arse creep"
"Alright have it your way, she's a fit bird who's not a crap medic like you were, oh and Eggy he's shoved off as well, but he got himself promoted so they'll probably see through him any day now and then he'll be on his way back, could be here any minute"
"Fuck-muppet"
He stopped laughing long enough to look over her left shoulder and then put his hand in the air in order to point down at her head.
"Boss, Boss, over here Boss, have you seen who's here?"
-OG-
A/N: Thank you for your feedback – please keep letting me know if you're still with me as life gets a little more complicated, if that's possible …..
