The Poppy Factory (5 page)

‘I’ve invited a few friends from school round tomorrow evening to meet you,’ he said, out of the blue. ‘Hope that’s okay?’

‘So they can approve me?’ she said, feeling wary.

‘No, you idiot, just to meet you. To celebrate.’

‘Celebrate what?’

‘Your safe return, the end of your contract? I dunno. Do we need a reason?’

‘Can I invite a couple of my friends as well, to even the balance?’

She rang Vorny, who accepted eagerly, and her brother Jonny, who at first said he was busy and then, when she pressed him, admitted that he’d promised to spend the evening with his new girlfriend.

‘Bring her too. What’s her name?’

‘Sarah,’ he said. ‘Oh, okay then. She’s dying to meet the Afghanistan heroine, so I s’pose tomorrow’s as good a time as any. Be gentle, won’t you?’

‘You know me.’

‘Only too well.’

On Saturday morning she brought Nate toast, coffee and the newspaper in bed and headed off to the supermarket for party provisions. When she reached the checkout she discovered that, along with the crisps, nibbles and soft drinks, the boxes of wine and beer cans, she’d slipped a bottle of whisky into the trolley. She could barely remember doing it, but was too embarrassed to give it back to the cashier. At the flat, she hid it in the back of a drawer and tried to forget it was there.

I will not drink tonight,
she promised herself.

But, getting ready that evening and finding herself unaccountably nervous at the prospect of meeting Nate’s work colleagues, her resolve crumbled and, with trembling hands, she took a couple of slugs to steady her stomach. It worked a treat. Vorny arrived early – they’d planned it that way – and they had a couple more discreet glasses together.

Nate’s friends were two couples, Matt and Louisa, Benjamin and Aleesha, and his head of PE, Mary, a tall, rangy woman of about forty. Jess submitted herself to their scrutiny: ‘Good to meet Nate’s mystery woman, after all this time’, and, ‘so you’re the tough girl who went to the front line in Afghanistan?’ She enlisted Vorny to help with the inevitable interrogation, which ranged from the benign: ‘Did you actually volunteer to go out there? You must be so brave, I’d be terrified,’ to the incredulous: ‘Did you really have to carry guns? Even as medics?’

They were nice enough people, but conversations with civilians always made her feel like a stranger from another planet. It was impossible to explain, or for them to gain any understanding beyond the most superficial level, what being on tour in a country like Afghanistan is really like.

The arrival of Jonny and Sarah was the excuse she needed, and she left Vorny fielding questions while she opened more bottles of wine and took the opportunity to slosh a whisky top up into her innocent glass of coke.

Sarah was a tall, slim girl with a dark-eyed seriousness about her – quite a contrast to her sturdy blond brother, whose open face was always ready with a joker’s smile. Jess could tell immediately that she was different from her brother’s previous girlfriends – less glamorous and self-absorbed, more poised and alert to the world around her. From their secret smiles and his soft looks it was clear that this relationship was the real thing, and she was glad for him.

In the past, to the anxious bewilderment of their parents, he’d dropped out of two university courses in consecutive years, and seemed to be settling for a life of minimum-wage drudgery. Then, with the help of a string-pulling uncle, he’d landed an IT post in a law company. The boss had recognised his potential, sent him on several training courses and promoted him twice. It had been the making of him, as their mother liked to say.

She’d never thought of her brother as much of a looker, but his new sense of self-esteem had magically given his features clearer definition, helped by the fact that he seemed to have lost weight and revamped his wardrobe. He’s quite a catch, Jess found herself thinking.

It turned out that Sarah was a teacher too, so it became a party of two halves: the school gang having a heated conversation about education, while Jess joined Jonny and Vorny sneaking a clandestine smoke in the tiny patio garden. Away from Nate’s sharp eyes she drank steadily and happily, sharing old jokes, enjoying the way her brother and her best friend sparred with each other. Everything was going perfectly.

The rest of the evening passed in a flash, until everyone had made their excuses and left, except for Vorny, who was staying the night, and Matt, a short and slightly balding man with an incipient beer-belly whose girlfriend had fallen asleep in the bedroom. Jess and Vorny sat in a happily intoxicated blur on the sofa, half listening to the boys having a rambling, slightly drunken discussion about politics.

Without warning, Matt turned his unsteady gaze towards them. ‘What do you Army girls think we should do about Syria then? Are we just going to let them go on killing each other till there’s no-one left except crazy radicalised religious zealots?’

You Army girls.
How could Nate be friends with such a plonker?
Neither seemed willing to reply until Vorny piped up in a quiet, reasonable voice: ‘There’s no right answer of course. It’s a tragic situation but it’s really complex, and I don’t think there’s much we can do to resolve it without creating even more trouble for the future.’

That should shut him up, Jess thought gratefully.

It didn’t. ‘What, shouldn’t we be riding in on white chargers this time, ready to implant the blessed gift of peaceful democracy? Like we’ve done in Iraq and Afghanistan?’

It was a deliberate challenge; Jess felt sure he’d been waiting all evening for the opportunity. She dug her fingernails painfully into her palm and tried to take a deep breath but her chest felt as though a large pair of hands was crushing her lungs. The anger flowed like a dangerous fire through her body, making her head ache, blurring her eyesight, cramping her stomach.

‘Let’s not go there, Matt,’ she could hear Nate cautioning, but it was too late.

A voice in her head warned her to stop, but it was easily ignored. Her tongue loosened itself and the words spilled out, without consent from her brain. ‘I suppose you’ve travelled widely in these countries, talked to many experts?’

‘Jess, don’t you think …?’ she could hear Nate trying to intervene, but she talked over him. ‘So, have you?
Have
you? And if not, then I’m just wondering what gives you the moral authority to prognosticate about the impact of military intervention in these countries?’

His piggy eyes stared back, widening with alarm. ‘I was just asking your opinion. From two people who have been there.’

Nate was now sitting upright, on high alert. ‘Enough, Jess. Lay off the dogs. This has been a nice evening. Don’t ruin it.’

‘I don’t think for one minute you were asking for
our
opinion,’ she heard her own voice, low and dangerous. ‘You were giving
yours.
And you think you have the right to have an opinion, in your safe little job a million miles away from any conflict, having probably never even had a single conversation with an Afghan or an Iraqi, and certainly without an iota of understanding about what we have been trying to achieve for them out there. Or of the fact that good people, much better people than you will ever be, have given their lives to help free the people of those countries from oppression. And you have the nerve to take the piss.’

Matt rose unsteadily to his feet.

‘I’m sorry to have offended. It’s time we were going home.’

Jess stood too. Discovering that she was, in her heels, slightly taller than him made her feel invincible. She could have floored him with a single blow.

‘Is that it? You run away, the moment anyone challenges you?’ she snarled. ‘What a great example you must be for your students. A pathetic, clever-dick, know-it-all little …’

‘ENOUGH, Jess,’ Nate bellowed, grabbing her by the arm and pulling her away, down the corridor into the bedroom, and throwing her roughly onto the bed. Shocked by his strength, she offered no resistance and she fell like a rag doll, arms and legs akimbo. The bed was still warm from Matt’s girlfriend, who had disappeared. There were groaning noises coming from the bathroom. Nate slammed the door behind him but a moment later it reopened and Vorny was by her side.

‘Christ, Jess, whatever happened there? You certainly know how to blow it, don’t you?’

‘He deserved it. The idiot.’ Her anger was cooling now.

‘You’re not wrong, but you shouldn’t call your boyfriend’s boss a “pathetic, clever-dick know-it-all”, however much he deserves it.’

‘His
boss
? That was the other woman, the tall one, Mary.’

‘No, Matt’s his boss. Mary’s the maths teacher.’

Icy fear replaced the vestiges of her fury. ‘That little fat man’s the head of sports? You’re quite sure?’

‘’Fraid so.’ Vorny shook her head. ‘I was talking to him earlier. About how he rates Nate, what a great asset he is. How well the football team’s been doing under his training.’

‘Bloody hell. I’ve blown it, haven’t I?’

‘You’ve got some serious apologising to do, that’s for sure.’

It would take a lot more than that, Jess knew.

She tried to apologise but Nate refused to discuss anything that evening, and when she offered to clear up he told her sharply that he didn’t need any help, thank you, and she should go to bed before she caused any more damage. He’d sleep on the sofa. End of story.

In the morning she reached across the bed for him before remembering, with a wave of self-disgust, what had happened. She found him already at work on the dining table, marking school books.

‘Nate, I am so, so sorry about last night.’ She moved behind him and stroked the back of his neck – his weak spot.

He swatted her hand away and swivelled round, his face fiercer than she’d ever seen before. No wonder he makes a good teacher, she found herself thinking, he must be utterly terrifying to the kids.

‘I think you’d better sit down,’ he said.

‘I’m going to make a coffee.’ Her mouth was dry, her stomach turning somersaults. ‘Do you want one?’

He shook his head and turned back to his marking. She boiled the kettle and made a mug of strong black instant, then went to sit at the table, facing him.

‘Okay. Let me say my piece first, please?’

He looked up and nodded, his face impassive, his eyes coal black.

‘What I said last night was completely out of order,’ she started. ‘I don’t know what got into me. It felt as though he was attacking everything I stand for, the reason why James and all those others have died. I just lost it, and the words came out without thinking. I am really, really sorry.’ She looked back at his stony expression and felt tears burning the back of her eyes. ‘Please forgive me, Nate. I can work through this and get better. I love you.’

He sighed wearily. ‘I’ve been doing a lot of thinking. All night, as it happens. This is the conclusion I’ve come to: I can’t deal with it any more, Jess. The drinking, the anger, all that. You’ve turned into someone I don’t recognise.’

‘I know. I’m sorry.’

‘You keep saying you’re sorry, but what have you done about it?’

‘I didn’t drink all last week.’

‘And when you did, look what happened. What I’m sorry about, Jess, is that I’ve stopped believing that you want to change. When you’ve sorted yourself out, rediscovered the old Jess, then get in touch.’

She managed an aghast, ‘Are you telling me it’s over?’

He nodded, but could not meet her eyes. ‘Till you get yourself sorted, yes.’

She just had time to say, ‘You don’t mean it? Just like that?’ and hear his retort, ‘I do, Jess. I really mean it, just like that,’ before the nausea hit her. When she finally emerged from the bathroom, Nate didn’t even raise his head. ‘When you feel better, please pack and leave,’ he said. ‘I’ve got work to do today.’

‘But …’

He held up a hand, like a policeman stopping traffic. ‘Please, I don’t want to talk about it. I’ve told you what I think and I’m not going to have another row. Don’t make it more painful than it is already. Just go.’

Once she’d packed she tried again: pleading and trying to reason. But he was immovable. ‘I’ve made up my mind,’ was all he would say.

In the face of this resistance and his complete unwillingness to talk or compromise, Jess’s anger returned in full flood; the red behind the eyes, the heat at the back of the neck. She wanted to hit him but, as if sensing it, he stood and faced her at full height.

There was nothing else she could do.

‘You bastard,’ she shouted, before slamming the door.

Only when she got back to the safety and privacy of the barracks did she allow herself to weep, with burning, desperate rasps that seemed as though they would never stop. She texted Nate with abject apologies, but there was no response. She cursed herself over and over again: she had never loved anyone the way she loved this man, never trusted anyone so much, never fancied anyone in the way she fancied him, never met anyone else that she’d consider spending her life with. And now, for the sake of a few drinks, she had thrown it all away.

Without Nate, life felt bereft of all meaning, all anticipation, all joy.

Chapter Three

The next few weeks passed in an alcoholic haze. She averted her eyes from mirrors and hurried past shop windows to avoid seeing the dark rings shadowing the eyes in her haggard face, the hunched shoulders and gaunt frame, a woman looking old before her time. She persuaded a mate, a doctor, to prescribe tranquillisers and even, at Vorny’s insistence, got herself referred for counselling, but bottled it at the last minute.

‘I can’t sit there like an idiot, whining about losing the love of my life,’ she admitted, ‘when I know perfectly well what I need to do.’

No-one except Vorny knew what had happened with Nate. When her mother inquired, she fobbed her off, saying they were both so busy it was hard to find enough time together. She would manage without drinking for a few days and then, buoyed by her own success, would call or text to tell him the good news. But when he failed to respond, yet again, her resolve weakened.