He looked at the line of children. It would take an hour to reach Father Christmas, maybe more. A quick glance at his watch told him they didn't have time — the train back down to Hereford left in forty minutes, and they still had to struggle across London through the Saturday afternoon Christmas shoppers. He glanced at his wife, who shook her head imperceptibly.
He bent down to look at her face to face. 'I'm sorry, sweetheart,' he said. 'We haven't got enough time. Another day, hey?'
Anna's lip wobbled and she gazed at the floor. He knew what she was thinking, at least he thought he did. You always say that, Daddy. You always say you haven't got enough time. You always say another day.
But she didn't say anything. Obedient. Good as gold. Like always.
'Come on, love,' he said, doing his best to sound bright. He took her little hand in his and together the family of three wove their way through the crowds. Anna kept looking back and gazing at the line of luckier children, and each time she did he experienced that little surge of guilt that only a parent can feel.
He put his hand on Laura's shoulder. 'You go on,' he told her. 'I'll meet you downstairs, by the entrance.'
His wife looked at him with a mixture of suspicion and amusement. 'What are you doing, Will?'
He avoided the question. 'I'll meet you downstairs,' he said, before lightly touching Anna's hair. 'Stay close to Mum,' he warned.
Still smiling, Laura led Anna off down the ornate escalators. He watched her disappear before turning back into the toy department. He knew what he wanted. Anna's eyes had lingered over an enormous fluffy dog, as soft as snow with a big brown ribbon. It was expensive — even Anna could tell that, he thought. Certainly it was too expensive to be bought on a whim with a Regiment salary, but what the hell — he spent half his life in the most farflung shit holes of the world. Why shouldn't he treat his little girl now and then? He grabbed the toy and headed to a till.
As he handed over his credit card he heard the explosion.
There was a momentary silence all around him, and then everyone started to panic. The line of children dissolved into a mass of worried faces, and from the corner of his eye he saw two security guards rushing towards the escalators. He dropped the cuddly toy and didn't bother to grab his card back from the cashier. Instead, he ran through the crowds, ignoring the shouts of the couple of people he pushed out of the way with his impressive bulk. He reached the escalator before the panicked crowds could swarm towards it, and charged down several steps at a time, his heart thumping.
The pungent department store smell of perfume hit him as he charged for the exit, his eyes darting around, trying to get a glimpse of his wife and daughter. But he couldn't see them; all he saw were frightened faces. And as he grew closer to the doors, he saw other things too, things that would have turned the stomach of a civilian, but which barely penetrated his emotional shell. He saw a woman with a chunk of shrapnel embedded in her cheek. Her body was shaking with shock, and a woman next to her was screaming at the sight. He saw a man whose white shirt was soaked red and who fell to the ground as he passed.
But he didn't see his family. Not until he reached the door.
They were lying on the floor, Laura's body draped over Anna, as though she were trying to shield her from something. And around them, seeping outwards, was a pool of blood.
He had seen hundreds of dead bodies in his time. Hundreds of mutilated corpses. He had seen children gasp their last breath, women garrotted. He had seen men die as a result of his own1 bullets.
But never anything like this. The scene sliced through him like a cold knife.
'no!' he roared as he launched himself towards them.
A security guard stepped in his way. 'Stay away, sir,' the man instructed, but nothing was going to stop him. He punched the guard squarely in the jaw, then threw himself down to his family. He felt his trousers soak through with their blood and he touched his trembling hands first to his daughter's neck, then to his wife's.
Nothing. No pulse. Their faces had the deathly pallor that he recognised so well.
'Wake up!' he shouted. 'Wake up!' His brain refused to process the information that it had been so clearly given. He refused to accept that they were dead. He grabbed his daughter's face in his hands and bent down to give her the kiss of life. As he did so, he felt himself being grabbed from behind. The colleagues of the guard he had floored — three of them — were on him, pulling him back. He tried to struggle, but somehow he felt as though his strength had been sapped, so he allowed himself to be pulled away.
The air was filled with screams and with the jolly sound of Christmas music being piped around the store. And then there was shouting. A man's voice, hoarse and desperate. He realised it was his own.
'My family!' he bellowed. 'It's my family! Let me see them. YOU HAVE TO LET ME HELP MY FAMILY!…'
'you have to let me help my family!'
Will Jackson awoke with a start, surprised by the sound of his own voice. Sweat poured from his body, but he was cold. He looked around, expecting to see his wife and daughter there, then the brutal reality hit him, as it had done every morning for the past two years. His wife and daughter were not there. They were lying in a churchyard on the outskirts of Hereford. They were cold and dead.
What he saw instead was a small apartment. After the bombing, he had moved out of the military accommodation he shared with his family and given up everything that went with it — though there was no way he would have been able to face staying in that place without them even if he had carried on in the Regiment. Instead he had moved into this one-bedroom ex-council flat several floors up that had little to recommend it other than cheapness and the fact it was close to the churchyard.
It was a bland place, with none of those little things that turn a house into a home, none of the softening touches that a woman's hand can bring. In fact, no woman had been in this place since he moved in — not for any reason — and it showed. Dirty washing-up was piled in the sink, clothes were scattered over the floor, and by the door there was a collection of empty bottles that he knocked over with a curse at least twice a day. There was an empty bottle by the sofa on which he had crashed, too. He drank vodka from time to time to numb the pain, but there was a down side. The more he drank, the more vivid were his dreams. Night after night he was forced to relive with crystal clarity the horror of that Christmas shopping trip two years ago; night after night his family were brutally taken from him yet again.
He pushed himself to his feet and immediately regretted it as a wave of alcohol-induced nausea surged through him. He retched, then ran to the bathroom where he vomited a thin, putrid liquid into the toilet, before resting his back against the bath, head in hands as he waited for the cracking pain in his skull to go away.
Two years. They said the pain would go away and he had believed them. Christ, he'd lost enough people over the years — friends, colleagues — so many that he'd lost count. But they were different. Soldiers always know that death is a possibility. He'd killed enough enemy targets in Afghanistan, Iraq, Sudan and Pakistan to accept that there would always be casualties on both sides. But a mother and her daughter. In London. At Christmas. That you didn't expect. And the pain couldn't be healed with a Regiment funeral and a few beers in the mess afterwards.