'I am so proud of you,' she whispered.

He looked down at her, the scar etched in his face, white and translucent in the darkness, and then he smiled… and he was no great warrior, no sergeant, he was the man she had fallen in love with, and when he gave her that sweet gentle smile, seen so rarely, but a smile that altered his entire face, she felt for the first time he had come home.

Rifles held aloft, grinning through blackened faces. A pair of boots, steaming gently, inscription: 'Wally's Boots!' An Argie with half his face missing, the other eye hanging on his cheek. Steve clowning around, draped in a Union Jack. A gang of them in the NAAFI canteen at Port Stanley, toasting the camera with fifteen Budweisers. The enemy dead, stacked three deep. Dillon, Harry Travers and Jimmy Hammond on their haunches, raw-eyed, bone-weary, a soiled dressing above Dillon's right eye. Four or five of them grouped round a subaltern (an anonymous hand sticking up behind giving the vee-sign). Three shivering Argie prisoners, smiling scared at the camera, waving. Drunken Taffy pissing in the snow, writing his name.

Steve tapped this last one, shoulders shaking, the jerky wheezing breath that passed for his laugh puttering out of his gaping mouth. He wiped his eyes. Dillon, grinning, turned a page, and this set Steve off again. He'd had it, helpless, wiped out. He pointed at the photograph in Dillon's album, tears dripping off his chin.

Dillon straightened up, stuck his nose in the air, and did a perfect officer's accent, braying, 'What -? What did you say, Harris?'

Dillon put his hands to his ears, miming headphones, and did Steve's part. 'Tank. It's a tank, sir! Tank.'

Officer: 'Where's the bloody tank, man?' Neck straining forward, peering through binoculars. 'Tent you blitherin' idiot! TENT. That's a ruddy tent on the beach, not a tank!'

Dillon broke off, chest heaving, and the laughter swept through him sweetly, and once he'd started he couldn't stop. He fell back into the sofa, legs splayed and quivering, head flung back, shouting out his laughter.

Steve, growing quieter now, sat and watched him, eyes shining with tears of utter devotion and love.

It was a dream. Taffy wasn't fooled, he knew that full well, because it was always the same dream. But he was still trapped in it, and there was no escape. Always the same crushing pressure on his chest. Smell of burning flesh, possibly his own. Screams of agony mimicking the distant wail of sirens. The taste of blood, like salty glue, in his mouth (he recognised the taste). Thick black smoke swirling up past a flickering fluorescent tube dangling from its bracket. And the dream had a musical soundtrack too, thud-thud-thudding in his head, keeping time with the pulse throbbing in his temples.

BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM!

I've changed my mind

This world is fine -

Goodness Gracious! Great Balls of…

The song always ended right there, Jerry Lee cut off in his prime, old Frank's all-time favourite rock classic. Funny how it still went on in his head, the lyric completing itself, even when all he could actually hear were screams and moans and choking and sobbing.

Taffy pushed, straining to shift the massive beam pinning him to the floor. What didn't make it any easier, the frigging thing was alight, pretty blue and yellow flames dancing along it, scorching his eyeballs and searing the skin off his palms.

He was aware of a body close by – a girl's – the beam across her legs, a dark ugly stain seeping through the bright green of her skirt. Taffy gritted his teeth and heaved with all his might. It was moving, definitely. He'd got the bastard! Another shove and they'd be free. The girl screamed as the weight lifted off her. Taffy wanted to tell her it was okay, he'd soon have her out, but he didn't have an ounce of breath to spare… holding the bastard at arm's stretch now, gathering himself for one final push, the muscles in his shoulders nearly tearing themselves loose as he tried to fling it aside.

Something cracked, splintered up above. Taffy stared and through the smoke he saw the rest of the ceiling, sheets of flame racing across it – Holy Shit! – start to give way. Taffy shut his eyes and began to pray. He covered his ears as the crackling roar suddenly welled up, angry and deafening, and the ceiling fell in.

Instinctively, Taffy twisted away, bringing his knees up defensively, and rolled off the bed, ending up in a foetal crouch on the strip of thin carpet under the window. He opened his eyes, blinking warm sweat away, and gazed with trembling relief at the bubbled pink paintwork of the skirting-board, six inches from his nose: his arms, his shoulders, his entire back, aching from the strain of wrestling with that eternal bloody burning beam.

Daylight poured in. What time was it? Morning, afternoon, he hadn't a clue. Only eight pints of Murphy's stout last night, no reason to sleep past ten. He unwound and pushed himself up, feeling through the floorboards a steady throbbing vibration, coming from the bass beat of the stereo next door. Night and day it went on. Day and bloody night. In warm weather it blasted through the open windows, Queen, Phil Collins, Dire fucking Straits, and the lad's so-called music was even worse – a jangled thrashing of tuneless noise like a dozen panel-beaters on piece-time, polluting a quarter-mile radius of the council estate with its mindless racket.

And as if all that wasn't more than flesh and blood could stand, the seventeen-year-old son – dyed black dreadlocks, rings through his nose, ripped jeans, knee-high lace-up boots – was also a drummer in a punk band. Three, four times a week he had his mates round in the back bedroom, smashing hell out of their instruments and loosening the foundations. To Taffy, the singer sounded like he was having his back teeth pulled.

He looked up from buttoning his shirt at Mary's voice, down in the hallway, and listened, frowning. Not arguing exactly, more like pleading. Then an answering man's voice, laying down the law in a flat, nasal drone. One of the kids started crying, and this set off the toddler. What the hell was going on?

Taffy strode out onto the landing, brushing strands of greying hair from his forehead. Two men in brown coats were coming out of the front room, humping the big 16-inch television set between them, while another bloke in a suit and dingy white shirt with curling collar points was waving a sheaf of documents in Mary's face. Taffy caught something about 'Poll Tax' and 'default' and 'reclaim' and he didn't need to hear any more.

Bastard bailiffs!

In stockinged feet Taffy vaulted down the stairs in three leaps, grabbed a bunch of shiny lapel in his meaty fist, fumbling with the front door Yale lock. 'I'll give you bastards two minutes to get out of this house!' Yelling in the man's face, flecking him with saliva.

'Taffy, don't -' Mary clawed at his arm, her chin quivering, brown eyes large and moist, swallowing back the tears. She dragged him off. 'It'll do no good… just get back up the stairs. We can't stop them.'

The big Welshman stood there, panting with rage, wiry grey chest hair exposed through his half-buttoned shirt front. He jerked his thumb towards the kitchen. 'They take the fridge, what'll you do with the food?' he demanded.

Mary shook her head helplessly, biting her lip. The men in brown were edging towards the front door, hands locked under the TV set.

'Put – that – down!' Taffy pointed to the kitchen doorway where his two eldest were clinging to the door jamb, bawling their heads off, the toddler shrieking in the background. 'We've got an eighteen-month-old kid in there…'