Joe looks at me with a bewildered expression.

‘Didn’t,’ he says, his eyes filling with tears. ‘Was here.’

‘Come on now, don’t tell fibs,’ I say. ‘I’m not cross with you. I was just worried. You must never run away. Not here.’

‘Didn’t run ’way,’ he shouts, the tears running down his face now. ‘You said Mummy making porridge. Didn’t run ’way. You did.’

18

Soldier Number 1

Rowan Isle House, 20 September 2004

I’m shaking as I write this because I have no idea what is going to happen to me. Sarge has lost it completely and it’s all my fault.

The day started like a dream, a good dream that you never want to end. I got up at seven and, as always, I went over to the window to see if the world had changed while I’d been asleep. Sarge says that life can turn on a heartbeat, that you can be alive one minute, dead the next, and this makes me nervous. That’s why, ever since I was a kid, I make sure to look out the window and check that nothing bad’s happened overnight. Then I can get on with my day.

All was as it should be when I looked out this morning. The sun was shining on the lake and for a minute I thought I saw the little figures dancing on the surface, the ones I used to see when I was a kid. I’ve never known whether they are real or whether I see them because I want to. I’ve never told Sarge about them though. Like the vixen and the image of the dead mother in the desert that I keep in my head, those figures are my secret, something to hold in my heart and treasure. Because that’s the thing with Sarge. He likes to get inside your head, control what’s going on. And I’ve let him do that all my life. But the heart is different. ‘Never say you know the last word about any human heart.’ Henry James said that in his book, Louisa Pallant. I borrowed that and The Turn of the Screw from the mobile library and though I found the story a bit complicated, and not as interesting as The Turn of the Screw, I loved that line so much that I just read it again and again until I’d memorized it. There was something about the sentence that felt like Henry James was talking directly to me and only me. I understand what he was trying to say because it’s true, no one knows what goes on in my heart and they never will. I make sure of that.

Sarge likes to think he knows me better than I know myself but that’s rubbish. He doesn’t know the last word about my heart, he doesn’t even know the first, which is probably why he did what he did today.

Where was I? I’m getting so muddled because I’m scared of what’s to come and that makes it harder to think straight. Oh yeah, the figures. Well, I was standing by the window looking at them dancing and twisting when I heard someone whistle. I blinked because the sun had made white dots appear in front of my eyes, and then I saw her standing by the gate. Isobel.