21. Sarah
21. Sarah
Danny was waiting for me outside the hospital when I finished my shift. He was behaving oddly, even more agitated than normal, pacing up and down.
‘Hey you,’ I said, coming out of the doors.
The minute he looked up, I knew something was wrong.
‘Caroline,’ he said. That was all he needed to say.
I knew she was gone.
We clung to each other for a long time. I couldn’t stop Danny shaking. I could feel his heart racing against my chest, and his cheek, next to mine, felt clammy.
It felt unreal, that Caroline could be gone too. Caroline with her neat plaits and immaculate uniform. Her kind brown eyes, with little flecks of yellow that looked like they were gold in the sunshine.
Caroline was one of those perennially upbeat people who couldn’t bear to see others feeling sad. She told me once, after I’d watched her cheering up one of the other nurses, that she just wanted the whole world to be as happy as she and Jobbo were.
I think it was more to do with having known so much unhappiness herself, and not wanting others to have to suffer like she had. But either way, she spent an awful lot of time worrying about everyone else.
Caroline was the one person who knew the truth about my feelings for Carl. She saw me break down that time in the hospital, after he’d been injured on patrol, but she was too tactful to ask me directly.
Instead, she waited until we were in the gym together, a couple of weeks later. ‘How’s Danny doing?’ she asked gently.
I stared ahead at the monitor on the running machine so I didn’t have to meet her eyes. ‘Things haven’t been right between us for a while,’ I admitted.
I told her how my feelings for Danny had changed, even before I’d got to Afghanistan. That I’d wanted to talk to him, but that he seemed fragile, was struggling enough with the tour.
It was so exhausting, pretending everything was fine, that for a moment I felt relieved to have told someone. But then I immediately felt guilty for betraying him.
‘I can’t bear to make things worse for him,’ I went on. ‘Besides, I love him still, a part of me always will. I don’t want to hurt him.’
We had both stopped running by then, and Caroline turned to face me.
‘People don’t get to choose who they fall in and out of love with. Good people stick with things, with relationships, because they think they ought to. But Sarah, if being out here has taught me anything, it’s that life is short – happiness, love, it’s there to be seized. And love shouldn’t be about obligation.’
Her words came back to haunt me now, on the night of her death.
Had she been shot? Blown up? For a moment I felt as if I’d been blown apart too, as if I was no longer there. But I was. I had to be. For Danny. Pulling away from him, I took a deep breath and held out my hand. ‘Come on. Let’s get some tea.’
It was one of those crazy Afghan sunsets where the sky turns ice-lolly pink and orange and purple. I used to think they were beautiful, but that night the sunset just felt sinister, as if we were all on the set of an apocalyptic horror movie. Which, in a way, we were.
With each new death, every harrowing patrol he made it back from, Danny had retreated more and more into himself. Now, losing Caroline too, I feared he would disappear even further.
He stared at me trustingly as we turned to walk towards the mess, and that’s when I saw them.
Carl and Assami, knocking on the door of Rose Cottage.
A shiver ran through me. Rose Cottage was the morgue.
The powers that be must have thought that calling it Rose Cottage would make it less upsetting every time an announcement had to be made about the morgue. But they were wrong. Calling it that didn’t make it any less horrific for any of us. A morgue’s a morgue. Naming it after a romantic flower doesn’t hide the stench of death and formaldehyde that hits you the second you step inside.
Danny tightened his grip on my hand. The sight of them was so desperately moving. Carl adored Caroline. Assami did too. He used to bring her tubs of delicious-smelling sweet rice dishes his wife, Habiba, made to thank her for the sweets she bought all the time for his children.
Assami was hovering protectively at Carl’s side, his hand on Carl’s shoulder. I had a sudden urge to run to Carl. For me to be the one to comfort him, not Assami.
But at that precise moment Danny slumped to the floor beside me. He buried his head in his hands. ‘It’s our fault,’ he moaned.
His hair was covered in a smattering of dust. I reached down to brush it away. Then I sat down next to him, put my arm around him and pulled him close.
He started to cry. ‘It’s our fault Caroline’s dead.’
‘What do you mean?’ I asked gently.
He told me that, although it hadn’t been confirmed, the word spreading around camp was that her death was due to a friendly fire incident.
I wanted to cry then, too, but I knew I couldn’t, not in front of Danny. But I could be angry. Not the sort of anger I felt when something upset me at work, which it often did. Not even the sort of anger I had felt when Dad left.
This was different. This was a visceral fury that had been curdling inside me for days, weeks even. All this death. Not only our soldiers but death on all sides.
Just yesterday we’d treated a 35-year-old farmer who had lost his legs driving his tractor over an IED. And last week a five-year-old girl had been badly burned in a bomb blast that killed both her parents.
Caroline’s death – a needless accident, if Danny was right – seemed to sum up the pointlessness of it all.
‘It’s not fair,’ Danny was saying. ‘None of it. Fridge and Squadron and Tom – and now Caroline. What happened to Sarge too. All of it. I was so sure when I came here that we were doing the right thing, that we were the good guys. But death is death, isn’t it? No matter what side you’re on.’
I reached out to him but he became more agitated, and pushed me away.
‘It never occurred to me that I was a bad person before. I always just assumed I was good. Good enough, at least.’
‘You are a good man,’ I said, kissing him. He tasted of salt and dust.
‘Then why am I out here, killing people?’ he asked.
I tried to reason with him, but he wouldn’t listen.
‘When I’m out on patrol I feel this sickening dread that I’m going to be next, and I pray that it won’t be me, that it’ll be someone else instead. But who does that? Who prays for one of his mates to get killed instead of himself? A monster, that’s who.’
Night had fallen by then, its thick black veil hiding Danny’s face. I thought of the day he first asked me out. How innocent we both were, how much we’d changed since then, and felt overcome with sadness.
‘You’re not a monster,’ I told him.
‘Don’t ever leave me,’ he said, shaking. ‘You’re the only thing that keeps me from thinking I’m a terrible person. Because if you’re with me, I can’t be that bad, right?’ He smiled weakly. ‘Please don’t ever leave me, Sarah. I need you.’
I felt myself freeze.
Caroline was right, love shouldn’t be about obligation. But at the same time, how could it not be?
‘I won’t ever leave you, Danny,’ I said. ‘I promise.’