Soldiers' Daughters

By Fiona Field

The story of two girls who, on the surface, seem to have a lot in common...

Both motherless. Both sent to the same boarding school for 'army brats'. Both, later, commissioned into the army themselves. Both desperate for their fathers' love and approval.

Samantha Lewis puts everything into being the soldier her father wants her to be. But her heart will lead her in an unexpected direction and threaten her authority over the men under her command.

Michelle Flowers also craves her father's attention, but her impulsiveness will drive her into an obsession with the husband of another woman – with disastrous consequences.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Release date: Mar 1, 2015
• ISBN: 9781781857755

Fiona Field

Fiona Field was a military wife and mother. She lives in Thame, where she is an independent Councillor. She is also the author of the Soldiers' Wives series.

Book preview

1

As her father’s car drew up in front of Old College, Sandhurst, Samantha Lewis felt a surge of fear, raw, primal fear, and for a moment she thought she might actually be sick, as the adrenalin squirted into her bloodstream. She swallowed, shut her eyes and breathed deeply. When she opened them again after a couple of seconds she glanced across at her father, who was staring back at her. As usual his face was expressionless; no reassuring wink, no flicker of understanding, just an emotionless stare.

It wasn’t unexpected, that was how he was and she was used to it now, and over the years she’d come to accept the reason why, but the lack of empathy and sympathy shown by her father stiffened Sam’s spine. Determination replaced the fear. She’d show him. She’d prove to him she could do this. She’d make it, she’d get through the next year and she hoped when he came to her commissioning ceremony he would be proud of her. Maybe, if she succeeded, she’d finally crack the shell he’d developed to protect himself but which had also kept her at arm’s length for twenty-two years.

A warrant officer in immaculate number two dress and Sam Browne approached the car. Her father, Colonel Tim Lewis, wound the window down and turned his attention to the sergeant major.

The senior NCO glanced into the car, past the driver to Sam and said to her father, ‘If you’d like to park your car over there, sir.’ He waved his pace stick at the end of a line of already neatly parked vehicles. ‘And then, if the young lady would like to proceed into the building, she’ll be given further instructions.’

‘Thank you,’ said her father. Then he said, over his shoulder, ‘Get that, Sam?’

Sam sighed. The instructions were hardly difficult. She’d passed the army officers’ selection board, she had a first-class degree in electrical engineering and her father still treated her as if she was at prep school.

Her father parked the car as directed and Sam got out.

‘I’ll wait for you here,’ said her father, leaning across to talk to her through the still-open door.

Sam smoothed down the skirt of her dark suit and took a deep breath.

‘Get on with it, girl. We haven’t got all day.’

Around them, other cars were also disgorging new cadets and Sam glanced at her fellow inmates and tried to size them up. They all looked bright and eager but Sam wondered if they were putting on as much of a front as she was, trying to convince themselves, as much as anyone else, that they weren’t actually bricking it about what the next weeks and months held for them. She slammed the passenger door and headed for the steps to the main door. A colour sergeant was directing the new arrivals into the building so they could register, find their accommodation and then start the process of unloading all the kit they would need to survive in this environment.

A female staff sergeant took Sam’s name and details, handed her a map of the building, marked in pencil, of how to get to the back of it, where her father would be able to park and they could start the process of unloading.

‘When you’ve finished, Miss Lewis, if you could ask your father to re-park his car back out at the front and then if you could all report to the Memorial Chapel at two o’clock sharp for the Commandant’s welcome.’ Again the map was marked in pencil to show Sam where she needed to be. She suspected that finding her way without asking for further directions was one of her first tests here.

Sam returned to her dad and told him where they needed to go.

‘I’m having flashbacks,’ he remarked as he slipped the car into gear. Well, bully for you, she thought, nerves making her grumpy.

He drove off the huge parade square at the front of the beautiful neo-classical building that was to be Sam’s home for the next year – assuming the army didn’t have other ideas and chuck her out. Not that being chucked out was an option. She knew she had to have the moral fibre and courage to take everything the army might throw at her and get on with it. She had to get through this course. It was only a year. Surely anything was bearable for a year? To fail was unthinkable. She knew if she did she’d disappoint her father and she couldn’t bear to give him more heartache.

While her relationship with her father might be troubled, she hadn’t lacked for affection from other sources. Her grandparents and the succession of three nannies who had looked after her had all told her she was loved and cherished even though her father had never managed it. Now Sam was an adult she understood why, but her earlier bewilderment had left its indelible mark. Back then she’d been sure that he blamed her for the tragedy that had struck his family. Maybe if she’d not been born first everything would have been all right. It was William, her twin, who had died at birth, along with their mother, when the emergency C-section had gone horribly wrong. Sam’s birth had gone well but then William had got stuck and when his heart rate had dipped alarmingly they’d been forced to operate and that was when the placenta had been severed. In the desperate chaotic minutes following this, the team hadn’t been able to save either her mother or her brother. When she’d been old enough her granny had told her what had happened and had assured her that it had been no one’s fault, least of all hers. A terrible accident, ‘one of those things’. But for years Sam had been sure she’d known differently – it was her fault. Her fault for being first.

Now she was older she understood that her father was probably terrified of going through the hurt of loving someone again in case they got ripped out of his life, like his wife and baby had been. Keep everyone at arm’s length, don’t get involved, that way you can’t be hurt again. No wonder her father hadn’t ever been able to love her properly, although for all his shortcomings as a parent she still loved him. And she hoped that maybe one day she’d make him so proud he would love her back.

Michelle Flowers’s father drew his car up on the parade square about ten minutes after the Lewises’ car had been driven off round the back of Old College.

Major Henry Flowers shook his head. ‘You know, I still can’t get my head round the fact that you passed selection.’

‘Get over it, Dad. The army sees my potential, that’s all.’

‘Hmm.’ Her father was far from convinced. ‘Mind you, it’s one thing, pulling the wool over their eyes at the selection board. It’ll be another thing entirely, convincing them for the best part of a year that you’ve got the makings of an officer.’

‘I’ve got everything they’re looking for,’ said Michelle confidently. ‘Brains, courage, spirit…’

Henry snorted. ‘I didn’t hear obedience in that list.’

‘That’s because I’ve got a mind of my own.’

Henry snorted again. ‘There’s a difference between being able to think independently and being wilfully rebellious.’

‘So I don’t behave like a sheep. Baa,’ she added, insolently. ‘I was only obeying orders? Yeah, right. Like those are words which have gone down well in history.’

Henry gave up arguing. ‘Still, it’s made you get rid of those awful dreadlocks and the nose stud so that’s something to be grateful for.’

‘Dad, a couple of piercings and a hairstyle don’t make you a dead loss to society.’

‘No, but a drug habit does. In my day, any hint of drugs or anything like that and the army wouldn’t have had anything to do with you.’

Michelle shook her head in disbelief at her father’s attitude. ‘They’re more enlightened now, as long as you’re clean when you join.’

‘And are you?’ her father shot at her.

‘Chill. Of course I am.’

Her father muttered something about she’d better be and Michelle got out of the car to collect her instructions about accommodation and what she needed to do, as Sam had done just before her.

Sam was on another trip to the car to ferry yet more belongings to her new room. She pulled the ironing board off the top of the pile, one of many items of ‘suggested’ kit on the list that had accompanied the letter formally requesting that she make arrangements to swear the oath of allegiance prior to her arrival at Sandhurst. Also included on the kit list had been shoe-polishing equipment, ten wooden hangers, black court shoes, spray starch, foot powder, padlocks, a steam iron, worn-in trainers, swimming costume, bedding, towels, toiletries, a smart suit, an alarm clock, plus a mass of personal documentation to prove she was who she claimed to be, including passport, birth certificate, P45, national insurance card and her educational certificates. It was like going back to boarding school, Sam had mused as she’d labelled everything and packed it in suitcases which were put in a pile in the hall together with the rest of her kit. Boarding school with guns…

‘Bloody hell!’ exclaimed her father as he turned into the bleak corridor that led to Sam’s room.

Sam jumped and assumed she’d done something wrong. But her father wasn’t looking at her. There, coming in the opposite direction, was an old friend of her father’s, a fellow army officer and the father of a girl she’d shared a room with at prep school.

Sam felt her eyes widen in stunned shock. So if Major Flowers was here that meant Michelle…

And there she was, behind him. OK, she was a lot older than when Sam had last seen her but she was still completely recognisable and still incredibly tall. Only now she wasn’t lanky but elegant and slender, like a gazelle. Sam propped her ironing board against a cream-painted wall and thundered down the corridor.

‘No running,’ bawled a stentorian voice behind her. But Sam had reached her goal and was hugging Michelle. And like their last hug, years previously, Sam still only came up to Michelle’s shoulders.

Both girls were laughing and staring at each other in amazement. And in her absolutely joy at seeing a familiar face, Sam forgot that being friends with Michelle hadn’t always been plain sailing.

‘I can’t believe it,’ said Sam. ‘This is such a surprise. I mean you. You of all people.’

‘I can’t say I’m so surprised about you, following in your father’s footsteps and everything.’

On the other hand, Sam was stunned that Michelle had joined up. She had always been so madcap and impulsive. Maybe she’d calmed down now she was older.

‘Which is your room?’ asked Michelle.

Sam pointed down the corridor. ‘That one.’

Michelle looked at the piece of paper in her hand. ‘I’m twenty-six F.’

The pair scanned the corridor.

‘There,’ said Sam. ‘Almost opposite. Perfect.’ Then she added, ‘Oh, this is so fantastic. I know that everyone says the first five weeks are hell on earth but anything’s bearable with a buddy.’

Michelle nodded. ‘Oh, God. And I thought getting here was fucking brilliant, but now you’re here too…’

Sam suppressed a grin at the look on both fathers’ faces caused by Michelle’s swearing. Maybe she hadn’t changed. Sam wondered how the hell her old friend was going to manage, here at the RMAS, given her past, uneasy relationship with authority.

The beginning of that first day was wonderfully civilised. After all the cars had been unloaded everyone made their way to the memorial chapel, which was across the square at the back of the college, behind Sam’s and Michelle’s rooms. There, surrounded by the names of officers who had trained at Sandhurst and then made the ultimate sacrifice in the mud and blood of the Flanders trenches, the cadets’ parents were assured by the Commandant that the Royal Military Academy would mould their offspring to be leaders, give them an unswerving moral compass to distinguish between right and wrong, just and unjust, how their pastoral care would always be a priority and how they would become valuable members of society. It was sobering and uplifting in equal measure.

Then it was tea and cake in the officers’ mess while their company commanders and the civilian teaching staff, collectively known as the directing staff (or the DS, Sam’s father told her), circulated, making polite chit-chat. But once the parents were off the premises there was a distinct shift in mood and tempo.

The cadets returned to their rooms where they took off their smart suits and donned their issue, one-size-fits-all, green coveralls, which actually fitted no one but would be their everyday garb until they could be issued with everything else they’d need, from PE kit to parade uniforms. Now dressed uniformly, they were directed to stand outside their respective bedroom doors.

And that was when the shouting started. Suddenly they weren’t civilians but the lowest of the low as far as the army was concerned. Pond life ranked higher than they did and, it seemed, was certainly considered more intelligent and was held in higher esteem by the entire army. They knew nothing, they were nothing and if they knew what was good for them they would do nothing but obey orders from their superiors, and it seemed that everyone else at Sandhurst – probably including the stable-yard cat, thought Sam – was superior. Talk about being at the bottom of the food chain.

It was over supper that Michelle and Sam finally got to catch up on what had happened in the intervening years since they’d been sent off to different boarding schools when they were eleven.

‘So you did electrical engineering at uni?’ said Michelle. ‘Bloody hell. You’re a bit of a clever clogs, then, aren’t you? Mind you, your dad always gave you weird presents for birthdays and everything, didn’t he? You must have been the only girl at St Martin’s with a Meccano set and a model railway. At least my step-mum made sure Dad’s presents were more appropriate. She might be a cow and I still hate her but at least she made Dad choose girlie pressies,’ said Michelle.

And your family life probably explains why you’re a bit bonkers, thought Sam, fondly. But, then, she wasn’t in much of a position to cast aspersions on Michelle’s family hang-ups when she had her own to contend with. It suddenly seemed obvious to her that she and Michelle were both desperate for their fathers’ attention, only they tried to get it in different ways: Michelle through her outrageous behaviour and shock tactics, and she by being good and trying only to please.

‘So what about you? What did you read at uni?’

Michelle snorted. ‘Sore subject. I did English but failed my first-year exams. It didn’t help that I had a bit of a fling with my tutor before it all turned sour.’ She sighed. ‘Mind you, he didn’t have to threaten to get a restraining order slapped on me.’

Sam’s eyes widened. ‘What?’

‘He was a total drama queen, if you ask me,’ said Michelle, shrugging off the enormity of what she’d disclosed. ‘I only wanted to get him to see my side of the argument, but he said I was harassing him. If he’d only stopped and listened to me…’ She sighed again. ‘Anyway, Dad went off on one so, what with one thing and another, I fucked off to Aus.’

‘Really?’ Sam barely knew what to say. Restraining order? Although Michelle said he’d only threatened her with one so maybe it had been a scare tactic, nothing more. Even so… sheesh. But she’d made it through selection so what the heck.

‘Yeah. And I had a great time in Aus,’ continued Michelle, unaware of how stunned her old friend was. ‘It’s such a blinding place. So laid back and friendly. At least the people are; their government is a bunch of bastards.’

So she’d managed to cross the Australian authorities as well as her uni tutor? ‘What did you do?’ said Sam.

‘I over-stayed my visa by a few weeks and they got really arsey.’

‘Michelle! Of course they would. There are rules. And how long was a few weeks?’

‘Nine months.’ Sam gasped and Michelle shrugged. ‘Anyway, I was up shit creek because my open return air ticket had run out and I couldn’t work because of my visa – which they refused to renew – so I couldn’t earn enough to buy another ticket…’ She gave Sam a look as if to suggest it had all been a conspiracy against her rather than a total cock-up on her part.

‘Bloody hell. What did you do?’

‘I had to get Dad to bail me out. And of course as soon as I got back he went off on one again. Honestly, Sam, it was only a few hundred quid for the ticket – well, maybe five, but he could afford it.’

Sam didn’t think that was the point but kept quiet.

‘Anyway, as he was being a pain to live with, I decided I’d better get a job that came with living accommodation. So here I am. From making the decision to getting here it’s all been a bit of a roller-coaster, so if I find it’s complete pants I can easily get out. All I need to do is tell them I’m back on the dope and that’ll be me home free. Not that I really want to do that because I really, really do think, for once in my life, I’ve made the right decision. But it’s nice to know I’ve got an exit strategy handy, you know, just in case…’

Sam grinned. Michelle really hadn’t changed. Still nuts, still incorrigible.

‘Dad is utterly convinced,’ continued Michelle, ‘I won’t make it through to Sovereign’s Parade and I really want to prove him wrong. Honestly, if anything is going to keep me going his lack of faith in me will.’

Once again it seemed that she and Michelle had a lot in common – they were army brats, they’d both been sent to boarding school and neither of them had their birth mother around, but now it seemed both of them wanted to prove to their fathers they had what it took to get a commission.

Sam might have thought she was fit, she thought she knew how to look after her kit, she thought she knew how to bull her drill shoes and she thought she knew how to march because she’d been in the Officer Training Corps at uni. How wrong she was. In a matter of hours she discovered that she knew nothing. Zero. Zilch. Not a single thing that she did was remotely up to the standard deemed acceptable by the colour sergeant in charge of her platoon of thirty women. But if she thought she was faring badly, it was even worse for Michelle. Michelle might also be the daughter of an officer but she hadn’t a clue about the army or what was expected. Maybe backpacking round Aus hadn’t been the greatest preparation.

After a few days Michelle really began to struggle. She took almost twice as long as Sam to get her kit up to scratch or arrange all of her issue kit ready for inspection, or any damn task they were set, but her worst failing was her total inability to bring her drill shoes up to snuff. Bulling boots was a skill she couldn’t master. Luckily Sam could and had, so as soon as she’d sorted out her own stuff she rocked across the corridor to sit on Michelle’s bed with a duster, the boot polish and Michelle’s drill shoes. And while Sam’s duster-encased finger traced minute circles all over Michelle’s toecaps, her friend got on with ironing her shirts, or de-fluffing her beret with sticky tape, or cleaning the skirting board of her room with a toothbrush.

‘You don’t need to do this,’ protested Michelle as it approached midnight and Sam was still working on her mate’s boots.

‘I do, I owe you. You got me through the first weeks of prep school. What goes around comes around.’

When they’d first run into each other, back when they were both seven-going-on-eight, her initial impression of Michelle had been far from favourable. Sam had been sitting on her bed in her two-bed dorm at boarding school on the first day, feeling abandoned and bereft after her father’s perfunctory departure, when a tall, skinny and noisy girl had thundered in.

‘But I wanted that bed,’ she said by way of greeting, glaring at Sam.

Sam felt irked. She’d got here first, this was her bed and she wasn’t going to be pushed about. But even though she made her mind up to stay put she also felt intimidated.

Then the girl’s father arrived. ‘Now, now, Michelle, I’m sure the other bed is as nice.’

‘But it’s not by the window.’

‘Honestly, Michelle,’ said her mother, who entered the room a second after her father, ‘does it really matter?’

To Sam’s amazement Michelle turned, gave her mother a vile look and then said, ‘Of course it matters,’ in such a withering tone that Sam felt a surge of embarrassment at having witnessed the scene. She pushed herself further up her bed and as far into the corner as she could, clutching her teddy like a shield in front of her. How could this girl treat her mother like that? thought Sam, who, not having a mum, longed for one more than anything in the world.

After this they barely spoke to each other for a couple of days; Sam thinking Michelle over-confident, brash and annoying, and Michelle categorising Sam as wet, shy and a waste of oxygen. But then, when Michelle caught Sam crying with homesickness even her, rather stony, heart softened and tentatively she gave her room-mate a hug.

‘Listen,’ she said, ‘I’m sure you’re the normal one here, missing your folks and everything, unlike me. Isn’t that a good thing?’

‘I suppose.’ Sam sniffed and tried to dry her eyes. ‘Don’t you like yours, then?’

‘Dad’s all right.’

‘What about your mum?’

‘She’s not my mum. My mum ran away a few years ago and left me with Dad.’

Sam didn’t know what to say. She wondered if being left behind – not wanted – was worse than having a mum who’d died.

‘But even so, don’t you mind being away from home?’ Sam sniffed.

‘Nah,’ Michelle said robustly. ‘Can’t stand my step-mother so I’m thankful I don’t have to see her, the mean cow.’

The idea that Michelle had a step-mother, and one who seemed to be wicked to boot, was somewhat thrilling. And it explained the exchange between Michelle and Mrs Flowers that first day.

‘What about your folks?’ Michelle asked.

‘Dad’s always busy working and Mum’s dead.’

There was a short silence that followed that announcement. Then, ‘Sorry. Do you miss her?’

‘Never knew her, but I know I’d have liked to have had a mother.’

‘I miss mine. I wish I knew why she walked out.’

‘You’ve no idea why?’

Michelle shook her head. ‘Dad won’t talk about it but maybe, if he hadn’t married Janine, Mum might have come back.’

‘Do you see her?’

‘Who, my real mum?’

‘Yes.’

‘No.’

‘That’s sad.’ Sam reckoned that was really sad; sadder than having a dead mum. Poor Michelle.

From then on loud, brash, brave Michelle took Sam into her protective care and stuck with her through prep school; making her laugh, making her face her fears and frequently making her late. Oh, and getting them both into trouble when Michelle’s pranks went a bit too far, but Sam also knew that without Michelle her experience at prep school might have been very different and a lot less happy. Now it was pay-back time and just as Michelle had kept her head above water at St Martin’s, at Sandhurst it was Sam’s turn to be Michelle’s life-saver.

2

Despite their best efforts, despite the fact that they always thought they had brought their rooms and uniforms to a state of perfection, they still got shouted at. They got shouted at for being scruffy, shouted at for being late, shouted at for breathing loudly and yet, because everyone was always getting shouted at for the same things, it was, bizarrely, almost funny.

After the first few weeks they were all so exhausted neither Sam nor Michelle knew how they managed to function at all, but function they did. Everyone in their intake at Sandhurst had been turned into zombies by the relentless pressure. And it wasn’t just the endless inspections – there were route marches, PT sessions, lectures to listen to, essays to write, and the transition between any of these activities invariably involved a change of clothes and sometimes yet another snap room inspection to check that, having changed uniforms at lightning speed, your room was still a showpiece. Sleep was a luxury and, like every other cadet, Sam got used to managing with five hours a night, often less, so staying awake in lectures, which took place in warm, cosy classrooms, was a complete mission.

‘Whatthehelldoyouthinkyou’redoingLewis?’

Sam was so startled her bum actually left the hard plastic seat she was sitting on.

‘Sir?’ she gasped, her heart hammering with horror at being caught sound asleep in a lecture on military law. A dry subject and a warm room had proved a fatal combination. She stared at the angry face of the instructor, inches from her own. She could smell mint on his breath and a bubble of crazy hysterical laugher threatened to escape.

‘You were sleeping, Lewis,’ he snapped.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Is my lecture boring you?’

It had been. Tedious was the only word to describe it but Sam knew a big fat lie was in order. ‘No, sir, of course not. I’m a bit tired, that’s all.’

‘Not getting your beauty sleep,’ he sneered.

Sam knew that her kit might be immaculate, as was her personal hygiene, but other than that she looked a complete mess. A comment Michelle had made a couple of days before leapt into her head.

‘It’s all very well being as fit as a butcher’s dog but I wish I didn’t look like one as well.’ Which, considering how pretty Michelle was with her fine bone structure and clear skin, had begged the question that if Michelle thought she looked rough, how bad did the rest of them look?

She couldn’t remember the last time she’d worn a hint of make-up or moisturised her skin. Her hands were calloused and her nails broken and chipped. Her hair, too long to be off her collar, was scraped back into an unbecoming knot, and her lip was swollen and split from when she’d slipped on the assault course earlier in the week and hit her face. Beauty sleep? Who was Captain Philips kidding?

‘So,’ he said, not waiting for her answer, ‘to make sure you don’t drop off again, maybe you’d better stand at the front here. Don’t want you missing any more of my lecture. I didn’t spend hours preparing it for it to be wasted.’

‘Yes, sir.’

The other cadets all sent Sam looks of support and sympathy as she made her way to the front of the classroom and stood next to the whiteboard, swaying with exhaustion. Of course, standing out in front of the class also meant she couldn’t take notes so she’d have extra work to do, copying up somebody else’s.

‘Bastard,’ said Michelle, as they ran back to their accommodation to change into PT kit for the endurance run that was next on the agenda. ‘You can copy my notes. I did them extra carefully so you can read them. Best handwriting and everything.’

‘Thanks, hon.’ Michelle was a good friend.

Their first term at Sandhurst edged towards Christmas and a fortnight’s leave. Before they all departed there was a dinner night for their intake where the officer instructors all arrived in myriads of different regimental mess kits, turning the evening into a parade of peacocks. And then the final event of each and every term – Sovereign’s Parade – the commissioning parade for the senior term. As Sam stood on the parade square in front of Old College, immaculate in her number one dress uniform, a high-necked, navy-blue suit with white collar tabs, gleaming white belt, white gloves and black drill shoes bulled to a mirror finish, and watched the top intake march past the saluting base before going up the steps and through the doors of Old College, she knew she wanted to be commissioned more than anything in the world. Sod how tough it all was, stuff the sleep deprivation, and bollocks to the hard work, it would all be worth it for that moment.

‘What you doing for the Christmas leave?’ asked Michelle. ‘Going to your gran’s as usual?’

Sam nodded. ‘Now I’ve left school and I’m grown up, Dad isn’t entitled to a quarter any more so he lives in the mess. I can’t really go and stay with him there, can I? Anyway, I think he’s going skiing with some friends.’

‘Can’t you go too?’

‘I think I’d rather be with Gran and Grandpa. It’ll be more normal. And after a term at Sandhurst I could do with a dose of normal.’

Not, thought Sam, that holidays had ever been really normal, not since she could remember. When they’d lived in Germany, she’d been palmed off on other families on the patch. It had been OK but she’d always been conscious that she was a guest in someone else’s house so it had been difficult to really relax, not like you could in your own place with your own toys and belongings. Then they’d moved back to England and shortly after that she’d been sent to boarding school. Sometimes she went to stay with her maternal grandparents but sometimes her father took leave and she’d go and stay with him in his quarter for a week or so. But, of course, with him being posted on a regular basis, on several occasions ‘home’ wasn’t the same ‘home’ as it had been on the previous visit, so she’d arrive at a strange house, on a strange patch with strange neighbours and unknown children in the play-park. Her belongings might have been unpacked into this new bedroom but it never felt like her room; her room was the one she shared with Michelle at boarding school and then later the one at her public school. That was the constant that didn’t change in her life, that was home. The place she stayed with her father was just a house.

Right now, the calm normality of her grandparents’ cottage held far more appeal than a skiing holiday with her father. It might be in a village in the back of beyond, where the only social life took place in the local pub and where the average age of the customers had to be topping fifty, but the thought of having two weeks during which she could eat, sleep and relax and not be shouted at seemed heaven on earth. Besides, her grandparents would smother her in love and cuddles – and she could do with a dose of that too.

From the first day of her second term, Sam knew there was a distinct but subtle change in her intake’s training. For a start, they were no longer the junior term. The new intake’s cadets were the ones who were the focus of the opprobrium of all the directing staff. Sam’s intake was treated a smidge more like grown-ups. There were slightly fewer pointless changes of uniform every day, they had more time to themselves, there were fewer show parades, fewer inspections. And they could only feel sorry for the new cadets who were being put through what they had survived. Sorry, but also a little smug. After all, they had survived it… well, they had but some hadn’t.

At the end of their first term there had been casualties: the cadets who had been told they were never going to make the grade; not committed enough; not clever enough; not fit enough… And the outstanding cadets were already being promoted. OK, the promotions were to meaningless unpaid cadet ranks but these promotions did bestow kudos because it meant the DS had recognised and acknowledged who was ahead of their peers. Sam was amongst the chosen ones and was now an officer cadet lance corporal along with two other colleagues. At the other end of the scale, Michelle was on a warning.

‘What’s that all about?’ asked Sam when Michelle had exited her company commander’s interview ashen and close to tears.

‘He said I don’t pay enough attention to detail.’

‘Oh, hon.’ Sam gave her a hug.

‘And he said I question authority.’

‘Well…’

‘But some of the stuff we have to do is bonkers. Pointless.’

‘I know, but it’s the way it’s done here. Once we get commissioned it’ll all be different. Just suck it up for the next few months and stop asking why.’

‘I suppose,’ said Michelle, despondently.

‘When will your warning be reviewed?’

‘Four weeks.’

‘You can do it,’ said Sam. ‘Head down, work hard and don’t question orders.’

‘But this is what I said to my dad. I was only obeying orders isn’t a good argument.’

Sam laughed. ‘The DS aren’t asking you to shoot unarmed civilians – they’re seeing how far they can push you.’

‘Maybe.’

‘And why not take some initiative? The DS like that. They want to see us being proactive – you know, leading from the front.’

‘Doing what?’

‘I dunno.’ Sam scratched her head. ‘Look, Arnhem Company ran that talent night. How about doing something like that?’

‘The talent night was pants.’

It had been embarrassingly awful but it wasn’t the point: the point was that Arnhem Company’s cadets had taken it upon themselves to try to entertain everyone else. ‘So organise something that isn’t. Look,’ said Sam, ‘if you sink your father will have been proved right. And if that happens you’ll have to go home and live with him and your step-mother and eat humble pie.’

‘You’re right.’ Michelle leaned over and gave Sam a big hug. ‘OK, Dettingen Company is going to have a party. And it’s going to be the best ever.’

‘Sounds good to me,’ said Sam.

‘When?’ said Sarah, the cadet most likely to win the sash of honour. ‘When are we going to do this?’

She, like the rest of Michelle’s colleagues, was lounging around in one of the battered leather armchairs in the cadet mess anteroom.

‘This party has got to be on a weekend when everyone’s here,’ said Kim. ‘We don’t want it to be a flop because half the others are away on exercise. Hang on, I’ll get the programme.’ She shot out of the room to the noticeboard, which had the copies of Academy orders and company daily detail which together mapped out their daily, weekly and termly routines.

A minute later she was back with the green A4 sheets. She flopped back into the chair and began leafing through the pages.

‘Nope, nope, nope,’ she said as she scanned the weekly programmes and saw which platoons were being sent off on adventurous training or on exercise. ‘Eureka. Got it. Oh, and it’ll be Valentine’s weekend.’

‘It’s written in the stars,’ said Michelle. ‘So what’s the theme to be? Vamps and Tramps? Shipwreck?’

There was a chorus of catcalls.

‘You think of better,’ she said, sulking.

‘Films?’ suggested Sam.

‘That’s rubbish,’ said Michelle. ‘All the lads’ll pick characters from The Bridge on the River Kwai or The Longest Day or A Bridge Too Far. Honestly, they’ll all turn up in uniform and what’s the point in that?’

‘But that’s exactly the point,’ said Sam. ‘You know what men are like when it comes to stuff like dressing up: they’ll only do it if they can do it easily. If we make it too difficult they’ll bail out.’

The others agreed. ‘And anyway,’ said Sarah, ‘we can all glam up. We can be film stars. Sam can come as Scarlett Johansson. She’s little and blonde with enviable knockers.’

‘Oi,’ protested Sam, throwing a cushion across the room, despite the fact that what Sarah said about her tits was true. Even in a top-of-the-range sports bra, running was always uncomfortable because of her boobs and army uniforms had never been designed with an hourglass figure like hers in mind.

Everyone else laughed but then the cadets began to discuss who they would come dressed as.

Michelle realised she was completely outnumbered in her objection to the theme and joined in. ‘On that basis I shall come as Nicole Kidman. Isn’t she hugely tall?’

‘Good shout,’ said Kim. ‘Tall and gorgeous. She’s yours.’ Michelle preened.

‘Well, I’m going to use a year’s supply of cam cream and come as Princess Fiona in ogre mode,’ said Sarah.

There were hoots of derision but there was a definite air of excitement in the mess as the cadets discussed the arrangements.

‘Hang on,’ said Sam. She grabbed a notebook. ‘We need a committee. Michelle, as it was your idea, I vote you to be chairman. All agreed?’ She looked around the anteroom. ‘Carried. And I’ll take the minutes.’ She began to write notes as the cadets came up with ideas thick and fast.

Later, when they