‘You know why you’re here, don’t you, girl?’ he said. He put his hands on his hips and kind of spat out the word ‘girl’ like it was a dirty word, which in a way it was because only a few hours earlier I’d been Number 1, a soldier, one of the elite. Now I was nothing but a girl.

At that point I had no idea why he’d brought me here so I shook my head in answer to his question. When I did that he laughed but it wasn’t a funny laugh because his eyes were cold.

‘You have been brought here because you have committed a serious transgression,’ he said. ‘What do you have to say for yourself?’

I realized that he was talking about Isobel again and I knew that I should apologize for swimming in the lake with her, tell him what he wanted to hear, but I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t betray Isobel like that, say that she wasn’t important to me, because she was. She is. So I just sat there and said nothing.

Then Sarge put his head down and made this weird humming noise that went on for several minutes. It got louder and louder then he stopped and looked up at me. ‘Well, your silence speaks volumes,’ he said. ‘So I’m afraid you’ve left me no choice.’

He stared at me for a few moments then his eyes softened and he looked sad, sadder than I’d ever seen him before. He carried on staring at me, like he was willing me to speak. But I couldn’t. My throat was so dry and tight that even if I’d wanted to I wouldn’t have been able to get the words out.

Then, keeping his eyes on me, he stood up and said: ‘Interview terminated at sixteen hundred hours. You fool. You stupid little fool. You have no idea what you’ve just done.’

He whispered the last bit and shook his head. Then he turned and walked towards the door. When he got to it he looked up at the ceiling and muttered, ‘Forgive me.’

I don’t think he was talking to me because he never looked back at me and I wondered if he was hearing the voices, whether they had got inside his head again. I didn’t know and I couldn’t ask him because after that he opened the door, stepped outside and locked it behind him.

21

Lisa

The pub is empty when we arrive save for a couple of elderly men standing at the bar nursing pints of the local ale and grimacing at the Christmas hits medley playing in the background. It feels strange to be in a pub, to be anywhere halfway normal, anywhere that isn’t the house. I’ve been there barely two days and already I feel like it’s the only world that exists. I can smell it on me as Isobel leads us to a table by the window; a mix of dead animal, damp and something else, something bad. I try not to think about it as we take our seats but the smell remains lodged in my nose.