The track was rutted and puddled, speckling Tom’s legs with mud as he pounded along. He ran fast, filling his lungs with damp English air to clear out the last of the sticky Helmand dust. He came to the brow of the hill and paused to take in the view. A grey mist hung in the trees like smoke. Even in this light, with the rain falling around him, it was serene. There was no sound other than that of a pair of blackbirds in conversation and, further away, the drill of a woodpecker. Just where the track dipped down and disappeared into the trees a Mondeo was parked, no lights on, but a wisp of exhaust indicated it was occupied. The car looked as if it had been driven a long distance down a rainy motorway, its colour almost completely obscured by a thick coat of road grime out of which the wipers had cut clean semi-circles.

Everyone in the village and its environs knew each other, and Tom dreaded a conversation with some well-meaning neighbour eager to hear about what he was doing for his country and so on. He kept going, but something about the car bugged him. He had seen it before. As he pounded on, he replayed his movements since his return but couldn’t place it. By the time he stopped to take a second look it was gone.

For the first twenty-four hours he had done nothing but sleep – turbulent semi-consciousness crowded with shattering dreams: Dave’s limp, blood-drenched frame, his frozen, wide-eyed expression; Qazi’s contemptuous sneer. The poor Afghan kid, already wounded, helpless as he died. He knew better than to try to resist these replays. They were part of a process that had to be gone through. Emotional cold turkey, he’d once heard an army shrink call it. He woke drenched with sweat, gasping for breath, as if some unseen hand had got him by the neck, mistaking the sweat for Dave’s blood. He had taken the precaution of locking himself in his bedroom. One of his mates had once broken his daughter’s nose when she came in to wake him.

He also dreamed of Delphine, the early carefree days, but then her face dissolved into frozen blocks of pixels.

During the day he virtually barricaded himself into the TV room, flipping between the BBC and Sky’s rolling news as they ran a continuous commentary on the riots. Not only had his own world been pulled from under him, the country itself was in turmoil. No wonder Delphine had wanted out. He thought of Blakey, coming home from fighting the Taliban to this.