Back before this happened, according to Sugarboy, the guys had decided that at home in Glasgow, I’d be a 4-10-4. But out here, I was way higher, a 6-10-6, maybe even a 7.

Lack of women, he’d added, with a grin. Changes the odds.

So Seven became my nickname, a compliment of sorts. The Scottish male version of a compliment.

I’d laughed anyway.

I didn’t give a fuck what screwing score they gave me. I knew what my scores for them were. I knew who I’d want stitching me up and who I needed if the skin fried on my body. I knew who would restart my heart and who would be quickest at staunching the flow of blood. Even who I wanted near if the scorpion with the fat tail dropped from the canvas onto my body during the night.

And, best of all, who would make me laugh when everything seemed at an end.

And that was Sugarboy.

I am laughing now, despite the choking red sand that swirls about our blue prison, seeking entrance to it, and us. The cloud that seeks my tight-shut eyes through the prison mesh, and my mouth open from laughing.

Sugarboy joins in, and we laugh the way we’d done back then, before the world as we knew it ended.

It was Sugarboy who had wakened me that fateful night.

‘There’s a fucking big spider! Quick, Seven. It’s on your tits.’

‘Fuck off,’ I’d said, and rolled over.

Then I’d caught the sweep of the beams and heard the unmistakable sound of the chopper. Something or someone was coming in.

We were up and ready, hearts beating wilder than the chopper’s blades, but cool and calm inside. At that point I’d have scored us all at a 9.

The boy appeared first, alone, limping and crying, the tears streaking through the blood on his face. I waved Mitch away and took charge of him, because kids are less frightened of a woman, even in uniform.

I led him to a bed and started to clean him up, trying to work out whose blood was on him. His or someone else’s.

Then the first stretcher appeared, Gordo and him carrying it.

‘A roadside fucking bomb,’ Gordo said. I remember at that moment thinking the streaks on his face made by red sand and sweat looked like rivulets of blood.

The stretcher was weighed down by a soldier in full protective gear, which hadn’t saved him from the blast. I registered the missing leg and arm, the gaping chest wound . . . and stepped in front of the boy to shield him from the horror, just as the next stretcher arrived via Ben and Charlie.

The shape on it was so fucking small I thought it was another kid, then I registered it was a blood-soaked sniffer dog.