Encounter with a Commanding Officer

‘I told you, it was nothing.’

‘So you say, but I ran into some of your old platoon in the field, and they didn’t seem to think it was nothing.’

Ash frowned. ‘My old platoon?’

‘Mick, Jonesy and another guy...they called him Donald but I don’t think that was his name.’

The names rushed through his head, leaving a trail of memories in their wake.

‘Donaldson,’ Ash said quietly. ‘His younger brother had died in an ambush a couple of months earlier.’

‘I’m sorry; I didn’t know.’

‘How could you have?’

‘They told me you saved their lives, throwing yourself on a grenade.’

He stared at the sun, now so low behind the horizon that it was becoming quite dark up on the roof.

‘I happened to be closest.’ Ash shrugged. ‘Any one of them would have done the same.’

‘They said you’d say that.’

‘Because they know it’s true.’ Ash brushed it off easily.

Fliss flashed him a sudden, genuine smile, and it was as though the sun had sprung back up into the sky again. It dazzled him, flowed into him, and filled him with light which chased down to even the darkest corners.

‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘What about the other scars?’

The flooding light inside him pulled up sharply and began to recede. They both knew which scars she meant. He’d never told anyone about them before—except for the army doctor, of course—and he didn’t particularly want to now. He’d faced the enemy and been hopelessly outnumbered on countless occasions in his career. He’d been cornered in the most brutal firefights and he’d had to escape and evade in the most hostile of environments.

But he’d take any one of those situations over facing down this resilient woman any day.

Except that Fliss was asking him to trust her, and he had an inexplicable urge to keep being honest with her. He liked the way it made her look at him, the way she responded to him. She was challenging him to open up—the one thing he couldn’t afford to do. It would make him vulnerable, and he never wanted to be that again.

He pulled his lips into a tight line, determined to quell the storm inside him so that when he stood up to bid her farewell he wouldn’t betray himself. He wouldn’t reveal the quagmire of emotions raging within.

But before he could speak, Fliss did.

‘Tell me about the cigarette burns, Ash.’

His world stopped.

And then started spinning. Wildly. Frighteningly. Out of control.

‘If you already know what they are, then what’s to tell?’ he bit out.

But still he didn’t stand up. He didn’t leave.

She sucked in a breath. ‘Who did that to you?’

He glowered into the night.

‘Please Ash, talk to me.’

He shouldn’t. But the compulsion to answer her, the need to answer her, was too strong.

‘Foster mother.’