Encounter with a Commanding Officer

She didn’t gasp; she didn’t need to. Her shock and distaste radiated from her.

‘How long were you in foster care?’ she asked at last.

In the distance the flash of a headlight rounded a hillside, a local vehicle crawling along the dirt road. It provided him with a welcome distraction but no real relief.

‘I was shuttled between care homes, foster homes and my old man from the age of about seven.’

He heard the steel edge in his voice, felt the way she flinched on his behalf, as though it had cut her personally. He didn’t know what to think. To feel. So he did what he did best and he shut down the side of himself which held the awful memories and just focused on the basic facts themselves.

It was the only way to avoid losing control.

‘What about the stab wound?’

‘That one was a wallboard saw.’

‘A what? Your foster mother again?’

‘No. Foster father. Different family. Earlier time.’

‘What happened?’

Ash shrugged before realising she probably couldn’t see him. And still he kept his voice as neutral as possible.

‘He was a gambler. And a heavy boozer. Probably lost at the former and so didn’t have enough money for the latter. I was late in from my paper round—I used to do two but he didn’t know about the second—and he was waiting for my weekly pay so he could go to the pub.’

‘How many foster families?’

Ash could hear the horror in her voice. He steeled himself but still he was finding it harder and harder to stay detached. He could hear the incredulity in her voice and something twisted inside him. Why had he told her? The last thing he wanted was for her to look down on him. As people had looked down on him when he was a kid.

‘Too many to remember, but they weren’t all like that.’

‘Still...’

He cut her off, not wanting to hear it since he couldn’t change it.

‘We can’t all come from army blood and boarding schools.’

He actually felt her flinch beside him.

‘It wasn’t like that,’ she bit out.

‘But your parents never hurt you.’

It was a statement rather than a question, and he could almost hear the unspoken accusation in his tone.

Why was he getting angry with her?

It wasn’t her fault his life didn’t match hers. Ash shook his head. For over a decade he’d had a chip on his shoulder the size of a surface-to-air missile launcher, but he thought he’d managed to get rid of it over the years, as he’d progressed through the ranks and begun to accept himself for who he was. Somewhere along the line he’d realised his own worth.

Yet this one woman made him re-evaluate himself, and where his life was heading.

‘I don’t know who my father is and whilst my mother never physically hurt me the way you were hurt, she wasn’t...kind.’

The words were uttered so quietly, he almost missed them at first. But the bleakness cut into him.

‘But your uncle, the General?’ People rarely caught Ash out.

He didn’t like the feeling. When your life depended on judging people and situations quickly and accurately, it was a skill you learned to hone early on.