Free The Soldier's Wife by Joanna Trollope Page A

them.’
    â€˜Booze,’ Gus said.
    â€˜OK,’ Dan said. ‘Sex.’
    â€˜Beds. Pillows.’
    â€˜Food on a plate.’
    â€˜Girls out of uniform.’
    â€˜No fleas,’ Dan said.
    â€˜Showers.’
    â€˜Not,’ Dan said, ‘lying for hours in some fucking desert waiting for action and having to roll on your side to pee.’
    Gus nudged him. ‘Families?’
    Dan looked at him. They grinned at each other. ‘OK, altar boy,’ Dan said. ‘Families.’
    â€˜Look at the guys who haven’t got them. Look at someone like Denny in your battery. The regiment’s the first family he’s ever had.’
    â€˜Your kids,’ Dan said.
    â€˜I’ll see mine on Sunday. You’ve still got your little bombshells at home.’
    â€˜Isabel isn’t.’
    â€˜Isabel—’
    â€˜She’s a great kid,’ Dan said. ‘I’m relieved she’s away at school. She needed the stability.’
    Gus leaned forward to turn on the ignition. ‘What if you’re pinked? If you’re promoted?’
    Dan looked at him sharply. ‘Why d’you say that?’
    Gus shrugged. ‘I know you’re thinking of it. We both are. We’re the age to start thinking about promotion, aren’t we?’
    Dan said, ‘I don’t want it to come between us—’
    â€˜It won’t.’
    â€˜It might. They’ll be writing up the command reports already and we can’t all be on target.’
    Gus put the car in gear and peered into his side mirror. ‘We’re young yet. We’ve got eight years or so.’
    Dan said, ‘I’ve done about seven already. As a major.’
    The car swung into the road.
    Gus said, ‘I never thought about it while we were away. All those tensions just vanish. Now we’re back and eyeing each other up already.’
    Dan said firmly, ‘Nothing’ll happen before February.’
    Gus swore briefly at an unsteady cyclist. When he was past her, he said, ‘Just as well. There’s plenty to cope with right now, don’t you think?’
    Dan walked across the grass in front of his house in the dusk, treading softly out of the sightline of the kitchen windows. He moved until he was against the wall of the house and could see in, hoping that Beetle’s acute and unerring instinct for his presence would not betray him. But Beetle was by the kitchen table, his back to the window. He was sitting on hishaunches but his every nerve was strained to focus on what was going on just above him, where the twins, unimpeded by over-large plastic aprons tied over their clothes, were earnestly pressing cookie cutters into an irregular rectangle of brownish dough. Their hair was gathered up with plastic bobbins on top of their heads in absurd little tufts, and Flora had smudges of chocolate on her spectacles as well as on her face. Tassy simply had a broad smear of it across her mouth, like badly applied lipstick. Opposite them, and visibly restraining herself from assisting them, stood Alexa, in jeans and a tight cardigan, with a blue muffler looped round her neck like a cowl. She looked about eighteen.
    There was a sudden flurry and Beetle leaped briefly into the air, snapping at a fragment of dough that had skidded over the edge of the table. The twins shrieked. Beetle, appalled at himself, dropped flat on the floor and quivered.
    â€˜Smack him!’ Tassy demanded.
    â€˜Certainly not,’ Alexa said.
    â€˜He took my cookie!’
    â€˜You pushed it.’
    â€˜It slipped!’ Tassy screamed. ‘It did
that
, and he
took
it!’
    â€˜He’s a dog. He’s a Labrador—’
    â€˜He’s
naughty
!’ Tassy roared.
    Flora looked at her sister. Then she picked up another piece of dough and offered it to her. Tassy glared at it, seized it and hurled it across the room.
    â€˜NO!’ Alexa said to Beetle, before he moved, and then to