She stares down the scope. The patrol leader is obscuring the ammunition container, but then he stands and she can see he’s right. The contents of the box have spilled over the ground. Sweets and chocolate and cakes. Something catches her eye and she swings the rifle to cover the movement. The washing balloons out as a woman pushes under the line. Her hands are to her mouth and then she’s on her knees in the dirt, screaming, crying, begging. One of the other soldiers comes forward. He speaks to her and translates.

‘She’s the boy’s mother,’ she hears across the airwaves. ‘He was bringing us a present to say “thank you” for being here.’

‘And we shot him,’ someone else says. ‘We shot him in the fucking head.’

Chapter One

Two years later

In her dreams the boy sometimes lives. Not often, but enough times to suggest there may be an alternate reality. A place where her life turns out differently. A place where the boy’s story doesn’t end with a headline and a blurred picture of a smiling face. Each night she wakes in a cold sweat and stares into the dark and clenches her fists so her nails dig into her palms. She prays to whatever God is listening, to whatever demonic force might be willing to make a pact with her. A straight swap. Her life for his. She listens for an answer but there’s only the sounds of a car passing by outside, a siren blaring somewhere in the distance, the rain spattering against the window. At some point she falls into another fitful slumber, tossing and turning until the alarm bleeps and her hand reaches out to silence the unwelcome intrusion.

She struggles out of bed, washes, dresses, eats. She sets off for work but the morning sun doesn’t warm her. Instead she remembers the cold of a mountain pass thick with snow. The sounds of gunfire. The thud of a heavy retort as an explosion rips through a crowded market. The stench of charred flesh and the streets echoing with the screams of men and women and children. The never-ending racket of helicopters. The eerie silence that descends at sunset and the sleep which doesn’t come easily after witnessing so much death. She remembers the joshing and the horseplay and reading dog-eared paperbacks while lying on a bunk in the daytime heat. The boredom. The fear. And the screams again. Always the screams.

In her dreams the boy sometimes lives. But mostly he dies.