‘Took her about six months to die. Painful. They put her in one of those places for the last couple of weeks…’

‘A hospice?’

‘Yeah,’ he replied. ‘A hospice. Gave her liquid horse on a drip.’

‘You mean morphine?’

‘Same thing. She had this button, you know, to give herself more if she wanted it.’

They sat in silence and for a moment Kelly felt closer to him than she ever had. She too had seen a loved one die in this way – an aunt. She knew something of what he was feeling.

‘How old were you?’ she asked.

Jamie looked down. ‘Seventeen,’ he said.

Seventeen. Barely a man. It all sounded so terribly sad.

‘What about your dad?’ she asked.

Jamie sniffed. ‘Army.’ He stood up, leaving Kelly’s hand to fall to her side. ‘Actually, special forces.’

‘What,’ Kelly asked, ‘like…’

‘SAS,’ he interrupted. He pulled gently on the lobe of one ear. ‘Never really talk about it,’ he added. ‘Dad didn’t. Just got on with the job. Know what I mean?’

Kelly didn’t know, but she nodded anyway.

‘How old were you when he…?’

‘Thirteen.’ He spoke quickly, as though he were trying to get it over with. ‘Out on operations. Northern Ireland. They never told us exactly where or how.’

‘Jamie, that’s awful.’

Jamie shrugged for a second time. ‘It’s the life, isn’t it?’ he said, as though he were talking to someone who had undergone the same experiences. ‘You know the risks when you take it on.’

‘But you were just thirteen. A little boy.’

‘No point crying about it.’ All of a sudden he seemed to have closed up. Kelly stood and stepped towards her boyfriend, wanting to give him a hug. But as she approached, Jamie walked into the bedroom. When he returned he was carrying his coat. ‘Where are you going?’ Kelly asked with concern.

‘Out.’

‘What, now?’

‘Yeah,’ Jamie replied. ‘Now.’

‘Oh, Jamie. I didn’t mean to upset you.’

‘I’m not upset. Just want to be by myself.’

‘But I’m cooking dinner.’

‘Not hungry.’ He headed towards the door.

‘Don’t go out, Jamie. Please. I want to talk.’

Jamie Spillane turned to look at her. ‘Yeah,’ he replied. ‘Well I don’t. I’ll be back later, all right?’

Kelly looked at him, her eyes full of sympathy and confusion. ‘All right,’ she replied weakly.

And with that, Jamie walked out of the flat. Kelly sat on the sofa for a good long while after that, staring blandly at the silent TV screen. The supper she was cooking went uneaten; all she could do was think about what Jamie had told her.

His mum.

His dad.

And how alone he really was.

The Lamb and Flag had an old-fashioned pub sign swinging outside. That was its only concession to tradition, however. Inside it lacked any of the trappings of comfort to be expected from a more appealing hostelry: this was a place designed for drinking, not socialising, and the few punters were mostly on their own doing just that. There was a bar with three pumps of lager – one weak, one strong and one cheap – and five optics of spirits on the wall behind it. You’d need to drink the lot, Sam reflected as he approached the bar, in order to start harbouring romantic thoughts about the barmaid. She had a thicker neck than most of the boys back at base and a smile that made the Taliban look like Blue Peter presenters. The best that could be said of her was that she didn’t share the fanatics’ taste in facial hair.

Sam tapped one of the beer pumps at random. ‘Pint,’ he said shortly.

The barmaid poured his drink wordlessly and unenthusiastically, before accepting his twenty-pound note in a chubby hand and plonking the change back down on the beer-stained bar. Sam drank half the pint in two gulps, closing his eyes as the warmth of the alcohol immediately seemed to radiate from his chest. After drinking warm water out of a pouch for the best part of two months he enjoyed a proper drink. He finished the whole pint in less than a minute and, having ordered another one, carried it to a corner table by a window that had a scenic view on to the car park. That way he could keep an eye on his black Audi – the smartest car out there by a pretty large margin and no doubt an object of envy for the shitkickers who frequented this place.

The Lamb and Flag was out of the way and that was why Sam had chosen it. The guys would have converged on one of the regular Regiment haunts in the middle of Hereford, but at the moment he didn’t feel like joining them. They’d be drinking themselves into post-mission raucousness. Good on them. If he hadn’t spent time in the company of his father that afternoon, he’d be doing the same, but now he wasn’t in the mood. He’d even ignored the two messages that had come through on his mobile phone. Both from girls he’d been with before he left for Helmand. Normally on his return from an operation, he’d be pretty much indiscriminate about who he took to bed. The sex was all that mattered and the well-used springs of his double bed would take another battering. But not tonight. He took another large gulp of his pint and ignored the curious looks of the locals.

Sam couldn’t remember a time when he hadn’t known that Jacob was the favourite. Growing up it hadn’t seemed a problem. He had admired his older brother just as much as his mum and dad had. But looking back he couldn’t help wondering if he’d been such a waster as a kid precisely because he knew he could never live up to Jacob’s example. When his brother was a smart young recruit in a neatly pressed uniform, Sam was hanging on street corners and enjoying petty theft. By the time he was fifteen he’d lost count of the occasions he’d been collared for playing truant, hotwiring cars and joyriding. There were never less than three girlfriends on the go, simply for the thrill. There were brushes with the law, of course; the occasional night in the local police cells. Some of them he kept a secret from his family; some he couldn’t. Everyone knew what he was up to, though. He was, as his dad had told him a million times, ‘on a hiding to nothing’.

It had all stopped on one particular day. Sam remembered it as clearly as if it were a week ago. He was in with a bad crowd. Not criminals exactly. Just chancers. Chancers with a plan to mug some office worker. His mates had been watching the guy for a week, making note of what time he left the office with his bag full of cash. On the day in question they were to hold him at knife point. Sam’s job was to borrow his dad’s car for the afternoon and wait on the street corner to pick him up. The hapless victim probably wasn’t carrying more than a few hundred pounds, but Sam’s mates had spoken of the winnings they hoped to receive as if it were all the riches in the world. Sam himself wasn’t that interested in the money. It sounded exciting, that was all. It made his mouth dry to think about it. His blood warm.

To this day Sam didn’t know how Jacob had got wind of it. Maybe he’d seen him take his father’s motor and followed him; maybe it was just fluke. All he did know was that as he was sitting in the car waiting for the job to go off, his brother had climbed into the passenger seat.

‘Fuck off, Jacob,’ Sam had said.

Jacob shook his head. ‘No,’ he replied, his dark eyes more intense than Sam had ever seen them. ‘Don’t think I’ll be doing that.’

There was a silence. A silence that Sam remembered well. It put him on edge and caused a hotness at the back of his neck. Embarrassment.

‘I think you should drive home, Sam,’ Jacob said. ‘Now.’

Sam looked into the rear-view mirror. No sign of his mates. Not yet.

‘You think you’re the big man. You think you’re the brave mister soldier. You think I’m too yellow to do this.’

Jacob’s expression barely changed. If he was insulted by Sam’s words, it didn’t show.