Back home the notion had festered. She knew her mother would be against it. Since her parents had divorced her mother’s world view had changed. She’d emerged from the domineering influence of Silva’s father like a butterfly breaking free of a cocoon. Her politics were increasingly left wing and she’d recently moved from a secure, well-paid job with The Times’s foreign desk to a position with a news agency that specialised in covering the Middle East and Africa. However when, after several weeks of considering the options, Silva told her mother she was thinking of a military career, she’d been surprised by the reaction. Rather than dismissing the idea out of hand, her mother encouraged her to do some research and make up her own mind. If Silva was happy, then she’d be happy, she said. Silva never kidded herself her mother had been wholeheartedly in favour of her career choice, especially after all that had happened to her, but she never realised she’d hated it.

If that was the truth then her mother had hidden it well. Even after Afghanistan, when Silva had been in the military prison, her mother had been nothing but supportive and there’d never been a word of criticism. Perhaps, Silva thought, unconditional love and support was what being a parent was all about. What it was supposed to be about.

She turned to look at her father. He sat rigid, staring forward, unaware how much his words had hurt. It was precisely because she’d wanted to help people in the same way her mother had done that she’d joined up. Sure, she’d been a muddle-headed, idealistic teenager, but the sentiment had been genuine. To know the truth about her mother’s feelings was a bittersweet agony. Bitter on account of the disapproval, sweet because it highlighted the unconditional love. And her mother had been wrong about who’d won: she’d joined up in spite of her father, not because of him.

Until the incident in Kabul, Silva had never regretted her career choice. The army had meant she could continue to shoot and they’d given her time off to compete. In return she became a poster girl for the recruiting officers, highlighting the very things that had attracted her when she herself had signed up. That effect was magnified when she won a bronze medal at the Olympics. Overnight she was transformed into a minor celebrity. Her picture appeared on the news, there were offers for product endorsements and speaking engagements, and she was shortlisted for awards. Of course the fact she’d been successful and in the public eye meant when the time came, the fall was much harder. Still, through all the chaos, the ups and downs, her mother had stood by her.