The photo was all glossy and it slipped through my hands. It fell to the floor face down and when I picked it up I saw there was writing on the back. In black ink someone had written:

Our love

Has no mind or logic

Our love

Walks on water.

Like the picture of my mother, those words have been saved to my memory. They were the strangest, most beautiful words I’d ever read. The idea of love being something outside of a person, of having a mind of its own, was something I’d never imagined before. I sat for a bit reading the words over and over again and wondering who had written them, because it wasn’t Sarge’s handwriting. But then the door burst open and he came storming in and grabbed the photo from my hands.

I’d never seen him so angry. He told me that I was a snoop and a thief and if he ever caught me going through his things again he’d put me in solitary. I tried to tell him that I wasn’t snooping, I’d just been looking for a book, but he wouldn’t listen. He took the photo and hid it somewhere. I never saw it again.

Not that it mattered. I didn’t have to see the photo. If I closed my eyes I’d see her face, her warm eyes and those beautiful words. I didn’t need Sarge to tell me that the girl in the photo was my mother. I knew it in my heart.

Anyway, for now I must put all thoughts of the dead mother in the desert to the back of my mind and concentrate on the new mission Sarge is planning. He hasn’t told me when we’re going to do it, just that I should expect it very soon. He’s not going to give me any warning so I will have to be prepared and on guard at all times. But, like Sarge has always told me, being prepared is part of being a soldier, it’s what makes the difference between victory and defeat, life and death. I’ve got a lot to prove to Sarge after what happened with the rabbit. I have to show him that I have what it takes to be an elite soldier. When the time comes for this mission, I’m going to make sure that I’m ready.

5

Lisa

It’s getting dark when we arrive back at the lake. I turn off the engine and sit for a moment. I think about the evening ahead of us. The lack of light switches in the house means I now face a whole night sitting in total darkness with a child who is already restless and scared. I toy with the idea of sleeping in the car but that would leave us even more vulnerable and exposed.

I look out of the windscreen. The sky is grey and leaden. A shaft of evening sunlight illuminates the house, making it look, for just a moment, quite beautiful. I notice the chimneys for the first time, three tall brick rectangles poking up to the sky, and the ornate cornicing round the windows. It reminds me of the pictures I used to do at primary school. The teacher would ask us to draw our homes and I would pretend I lived in some impressive stately pile with pillars and gates and peacocks in the garden. I remember my teacher’s face as I handed the drawing to her, a look of puzzlement as she tried to equate the modern first-floor flat she knew we lived in with the ornate palace I had created on the paper. I sit for a moment, the smell of chalk dust and pencil shavings in my nose. Then the sky shifts, the light dulls and I pull myself together.