The Perfect Soldier by Graham Hurley

sleep.
    Giles began to stir and for a moment she thought she’d woken him up. Then he grunted and rolled over and his breathing resumed the slow, steady rhythm that signalled deep sleep. They’d driven home in convoy from the marina. She’d prepared a simple supper and they’d gone to bed early, closer than they’d been for months. They’d even made love,tender, consolatory, Molly letting him make the running, fitting herself to him, responding gladly to his urgent need to please her. Afterwards, she’d told him how much she loved him, how much he mattered to her, sealing his lips with a single moistened fingertip. No more apologies, she’d whispered. No more tears.
    Downstairs, wrapped in Giles’s dressing gown, she plugged in the electric fire and made herself a pot of tea. James’s letters she kept in the chest of drawers beside the telephone. She pulled them out, a biggish bundle tucked into a Marks & Spencer plastic bag. Since Sunday, she’d wanted to read them again, to rejoin her son, but somehow there’d never been the time nor the space. With the wind howling around the cottage and the rest of the world asleep, now seemed the perfect moment.
    She knelt in front of the fire and spread the letters around her. To her astonishment, James had written regularly, more than a dozen letters in all, and although the blue airmail envelopes had been arriving less frequently of late, each one still contained at least six pages of the awkward, backward-sloping scrawl that was unmistakably his. She reached for one of the letters now, a random choice, remembering the night she and Giles had driven him up to the airport. Even in the car, his excitement had been palpable, an almost physical thing. After three diligent years working for the local authority – a junior surveyor’s job in the Public Works department – he was at last breaking free and getting his hands on something that mattered. The night-school courses had paid off. He had the skills that Africa wanted. He’d even managed to persuade Terra Sancta to bend the rules about minimum age qualification and let him get out there early.
    At Heathrow, she and Giles had waved goodbye beside the queue for International Departures. He’d filed past theman who checked the tickets and he’d paused beside the big smoked-glass doors that led into the security area, glancing briefly back, raising a hand, nonchalant as ever. He’d been wearing jeans and his favourite hooped rugby-style shirt. Over his shoulder, he’d carried the bag Giles had given him as a going-away present. With his day-old crew cut and his carefree grin, he’d looked about twelve.
    Molly blinked. The letter on her lap had dissolved into a blur. She frowned, helping herself to tea, drawing Giles’s dressing gown more tightly around her. James and Africa, she told herself, had been made for each other. The fact that the place had also killed him was simply unfortunate. Given the opportunity again – six months in Angola, the chance to run his own programme, make his own decisions – she was sure he’d be back at the airport in a flash, offering them a final wave, turning on his heel and disappearing behind those hideous smoked-glass doors.
    She started the letter afresh. It had come from Muengo and it was dated early October. That meant he’d been in the place nearly a month. She turned the page, surprised again at how quickly he’d found his feet, impressed by the life he’d managed to make for himself. James had always hated depending on other people. Wherever he’d gone, he always seemed to have existed in a kind of bubble, insulated from the world outside. Nothing fazed him. Very little upset him. As long as he had his Walkman and his tapes and something half-decent to eat and drink, then he simply got on with the task in hand, not thinking too hard about other people, not thinking too much about anything but the next day’s schedule. In one sense it was a blessing, this tunnel vision