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Giving It Everything. By Tanya H. One. As a favour for my platoon leader, I work late one Tuesday evening to sort out Pete Royle's finances. Pete's a typical kid from a Manchester estate who's never had more than a couple of quid to his name until the Army started dropping money into his bank account each month. Now, having gone crazy with capitalism, he's up to his neck in dodgy finance and debt. The platoon leader gives me Friday off, to show his gratitude for saving him a job sorting the lad's finances. With no real plans for a long weekend and fancying a day out, I walk to the station and board the first departure with a ticket to its destination. This method usually gets me to London, but today I end up in Cambridge. Its station seems miles from the city centre, but miles mean nothing to me. Spring sunshine has brought out women in thin dresses and students who should be studenting. Noise and colour and road smells and coffee and crowds and me scanning watching the faces, checking the hands. I tell myself I'm not looking for threats, but I am. Don't look for threats, look at the faces, scan for somebody interesting. A quick burst of joyous laughter from some old gent over the street brings a quick smile. Other people's happiness gives me a glow. Step aside for a woman in a burqa pushing a double buggy, she won't make eye contact but murmurs her thanks. You're welcome. No idea where I'm going, what I'll see, what I'll drink, what I'll eat. There! Interesting. A woman outside a coffee shop behind a table supporting an empty cafetiere and a Danish pastry, she's intent on a book - a thick paperback and about half way through. The pages droop away from the spine with seductive curves. She smiles as she reads, her eyes shuttling along the rows of words, her foot - shoeless - tapping to some internal rhythm. Nice ankles and pretty toes hazed slightly by fine nylon. Ordinary, discreet dress, wavy brown hair loose on one side and tied into a thin plait on the other. Maybe she senses me looking for her eyes lift, meet mine - I'm still approaching - first narrow in concentration, then widen with recognition. Under her light make-up her smooth cheeks turn pale. "If I didn't go to school with your brother, I'm a Dutchman." She tilts her head slightly, recovers her colour. Places down her book and marks her place with a napkin. Her fingers long and neat, nails practical but varnished aquamarine. "Is that your best line, Mr Van Rental?" Her voice comes mellow and smooth, precise and careful with a homely hint of the North. Glass earrings of Mediterranean blue catch the sunlight. I enjoy the way her lips move and glisten. "Van Rental?" "The best Dutch name I could think of under pressure." "Your brother's name is Mark Symmonds, he left school just before me." "You sound very sure of yourself." "I'm good with faces." "I don't have a brother." "You ought to. You ought to have a brother called Mark Symmonds, he's your twin." Now it's my turn to put my head on one side. "Maybe I am getting confused." "I think so, but why are you doubting yourself now?" "Mark never had a sister." "There we go then. Mystery solved. Have you tried this line very often?" "Cherry. They call me Cherry. And no, never. I never met a girl who looked like Mark Symmonds before." "Cherry? Unusual." She finishes her coffee. Closes her book and drops it into a large, canvas handbag with bright, Aztec beads woven in geometrical patterns over it. "Cherry Healey? Have you heard of her? No relation, but we share the surname. It's an Army thing." "You're a soldier?" "Does it show?" "I've never met one before, I wouldn't know what to look for when you're out of uniform." I waved a hand up and down my body. "We all look like this." "Good to meet you, Cherry. I have to go to work now." I smile for her, the most interesting person I have met for days. "If you see Mark say 'hi' from me." "Of course. Good bye, Cherry." She offers her Danish. Like a gentleman I take it, thank her again. Resume my walking thinking aimlessly of The Backs, an explore along the Cam, maybe pie and mash in a Wetherspoons when a voice from the past smashes the back of my head. "See ya, Timmaaay." South Park? Did you ever watch it? Crude, inane, disrespectful, but incredibly funny and including the character of Timmy Burch who could only say his only name. It's not just that somebody has called me Timmy - a frequent wind-up - it's that somebody has called me Timmaaay from South Park. It doesn't pay to react slowly to surprises in my line of work. Slow gets you dead. I turn smoothly to face the source of the words, the tones and exaggerated pronunciation of years past. "Mark?" I blurt, without thinking - scanning scanning scanning, looking for an old mate. No Mark, no ghosts. Just a woman in a sundress with a bright beaded bag swinging from her shoulder, her chestnut hair bouncing and gleaming, steeping easily in sensible heels, her hem swishing around her knees. "Jesus, H, Tap-Dancing Christ." The closest I'd come to swearing since I'd given up, along with beer, eighteen months ago. The woman, really, turns a corner into a side street and I lope after her, overtake, skid to halt, spin to face herhim, mouth open. She smirks, sidesteps deftly and walks around me. "Mark!" "Wrong again, Timmy." Her neck slender, a fine gold chain around it, the hollow of her clavicle - round breast shapes under her dress only half concealed by a creamy cardigan. Hold her eyes - now I'm walking backwards - china blue and direct, lined with black, lashes thickened with mascara. "Give me a clue." "Holly." "Holly?" "Red Dwarf. The ship's computer. Remember?" Of course I remember. We laughed at that almost as much as at South Park. "Holly!" "This is me." Without breaking step, she bounds up some steps, waves her handbag at an access tag and pushes her way through a glass and aluminium door. "Bye, Timmy." Transfixed on the pavement I stare at the building that has swallowed my ex-best mate. The sign over the door reads, Cambridgeshire County Archive. Two. Spud's my platoon sergeant. I want his job and he's grooming me for it. He's grown into a unique ugliness that becomes brutal beauty under the maroon beret and proud badge of the Parachute Regiment. "You knocked out Dinger Bell from A Company," he says after dragging me into his office. He invites me to sit and offers a jammy dodger, so I'm not in trouble. In the informal hierarchy of our parachute battalion, A Company are bottom feeders. "He's a twat." My defence. A 120k a year barrister couldn't put it better. "Granted, anything else, so I can head off any inquiries from their Sergeant Major." (Another twat.) "Caught him queer-bashing in town." "That it!" Surprise slightly rearranges his lumped features. "When did you start giving a toss about that?" "Since they flew a rainbow flag outside Brigade HQ. Modern Army, Spud. Don't fight it." "But knocking the lad out!" I raise my eyebrows innocently. "Should I have reported it up the chain of command, Sergeant?" He laughs and invites me to combine sex with going away. So I do. And nick another jammy dodger on the way out. Three. As a section commander, with seven other Paras to look after, I have my own room in the barrack block. I sit there one lunchtime ignoring the rowdies and staring at my phone. I don't use my phone for much - phoning and messaging only. I don't do social media because I didn't know anybody I want to social media with. My mates live around me in the battalion, my family didn't want to know me and I've never really wondered about anybody I'd left behind in the crap town where I'd grown up. Apart from Mark Symmonds. (Holly?) He'd left the town about a year before I did and completely dropped off my grid. Now I knew why. After a couple of minutes on Google I ring the number it had found for me. In reply to a scratchy, female voice I ask if I can speak to Holly, who's helping me with a research project. When the woman goes to fetch her I hang up and switch off my phone. Four. My mum didn't do boundaries, apart from never impacting on others. As she spent most of her time campaigning against wars and injustices around the country she didn't really do parenting either. Searching for structure took me to the Army while my big sister, Nicole, went looking for something to fill the mother shaped hole in her life and died of a drugs overdone. I met Mark Symmonds at secondary school. In the boundary free context, while not impacting on anyone, I wasn't a disruptive student, I just didn't see the point in anything other than sport. - which I loved. As the pointless detentions for missed homework and failed tests mounted up, they started punishing me by refusing permission to play sports. Mark was the quiet, unfashionably long haired kid who got on with stuff and knew things. We all fancied his Mum - we'd have long, appalling conversations about what we'd like to do with Mark Symmond's Mum. We often asked him if he could get us a pair of her knickers and he never did. With a maths assignment missing and an inter-school football match in the balance, Mark surprised me by handing me a printed copy of the required homework with my name on it. He pointed out that he'd done some of them wrong, to reduce any suspicion about its origins. Cheeky, thoughtful bastard. Always ready to seize the opportunity, I handed in Mark's work and was allowed to play, and ultimately win, the football. "Why?" I asked him later. "I need to get in the football team." "Again, why?" "Graham's giving me grief. It'll get him off my back." "Who's Graham?" "Mum's wanker of a boyfriend. Don't know what she sees in the prick." I must have looked sceptical, for he said - looking at the floor - that he wanted to carry on with his dancing lessons (dancing lessons!) but couldn't unless he got in the football team. "You hate football." "Not as much as I hate rugby. That's the other option." Now I like a challenge, I don't like a bully and it took some balls to come and ask me what he did, for the reasons he did. I'd never seen him play, but I did have some influence in the PE department because I worked harder and kept going longer with whatever task they set us. Having had my eye on the Paras since I'd been five years old, sport was another way to get para-fit. So I helped him - starting my interest in people projects (I keep getting no-hopers attached to my section because I bring them on). I showed Mark a few things with the ball, kicked it around with him after school and weekends. He'd never have made a striker while his arse pointed downwards, but what I quickly realised was that he had a quiet, steely determination and I pushed him to the PE department as a defender. After a couple of games as a substitute he got brought in on an inter-school tournament. His speed was good, he'd properly get in the way of their forwards; that determination was good - he kept going for the ball, and their ankles when he thought he could get away with it, but what made him stand out was his ability to read the game, to see the patterns and flow then put himself in the way. He did pretty well, I was pleased with him. When he got back to his dancing he kept with the team as well. And he got the teachers off my back. "Come around to mine, have tea," he asked one day. Not only did I actually to get and sit at the dinner table with his legendary Mum and her boobs, I found I liked him. Funny, quiet, clever and not a knob like some of the other mates were. "Why you hanging around with that homo?" one asked. "Why wouldn't I?" "He's a homo." "What makes him a homo?" "He looks like one." "What does a homo look like?" "Like Mark Symmonds." That's the kind of knob I used to hang out with. Five. "Can I speak with Holly please? She's helping me with a research project." "She's off today, an appointment. Is there something I could help you with?" "No thanks, I'll try again later." Six Later is six weeks later, after I go with the battalion to Georgia, USA to work alongside American paras and completing parachute drops from American aircraft. The Americans have a slightly different ethos to us, but they're keen, enthusiastic and good people. You couldn't ask for more hospitality, kit, ice cream and other good stuff. In a bar outside the enormous American base Dinger Bell calls me a spunk gargling bender. (He's pissed and I'm not - I don't drink, not after.... Maybe I'll tell you later.) Anyway, some people don't know when to let it go. I knock him out again and floor one of his mates who thought he could take me on. I meet an American girl out there. Lena repeatedly says 'Y'all' in a seductive, smokey accent and shows off her long legs with tight, brief shorts. She lives in a big, chromed caravan and bangs like a belt-fed mortar. Her breasts are magnificent, her curves divine and inside she's hot, soft and slippery. The sex is brilliant and uncomplicated, but I lie when I promise to visit on my next leave. I tell myself she knows I'm lying; she knows I'll never see her again and there'll be other soldiers to take my place just as I must have taken some other soldier's place. Seven. I nearly hang up when HollyMark answers the phone. When she says hello, quizzically, I can hardly speak my mouth is so sandy. I know this is how fear tastes because this phone call tastes like the moment when I pissed myself in my first Afghanistan firefight. "Holly?" "Who is this?" "Tim. Timmy. Timmaaay." "Wow, I'd hoped I'd scared you off." "Hoped?" "I live a complicated life." Is it Mark? Closing my eyes I concentrate on the words, trying to see my mate sprawled on his sofa in joggers and a scruffy T-shirt while we watched some crap or X Boxed. It is, it's him - Mark Symmonds, only a little softer. "Hello? Tim?" "Fancy lunch sometime?" Stop myself before I say Mark, but the present name sticks like a spiked, green leaf in my throat. "Why would you ask me to lunch?" "I hear it's what normal people do." "Normal people?" "Come on, I'm a Para and you're a..." Through the phone's little speaker I hear a sharp intake of breath. I should have rehearsed this, written something down. Too late. Too clumsy, Cherry. A slap's coming. "I'm a?" Is that a breathing space? "Really interesting person?" "Is this a wind-up?" "I promise it isn't." "That if I meet you for lunch you won't kick the shit out of me with your mates watching?" Ouch. "It happens," she says, matter-of-factly. Should I tell her I knocked out Dinger Bell, twice? No. Girls don't like that, but he's not a... "I may have been many things, be many things, but I'm no bully." I hear her breathing again; a friendly woman in the back ground reminds Holly that her coffee is going cold. She doesn't speak, but I imagine him waving a hand to acknowledge the kindness. "Lunch?" We say it together. "Saturday?" I ask. "Sunday. 1230. Where you saw me reading, seems like ages ago, their coffee is spot on." Spot on? So bloody Mark I can see him saying it. Just a sandwich and a brew with an old mate. Honest. Eight. Corporal Kayzia Flaherty drives diggers and big, green Tonka toys in a Royal Engineers regiment along the coast from Colchester. She's lean and tight-bodied with red hair cropped around the sides. A tattoo on her right deltoid reads 'Ubique' - which means something if you're an engineer. I met her at a brigade boxing event. She punched me twice during an informal, lighthearted challenge before I was ready for her - good drills. We started training together after that, boxing at first before she got me into triathalons - I can outrun and outbike her - sheer determination - but she swims like a turbo-mermaid while I splash enthusiastically in her wake. I used to think her gay, until she seduced me. Before I gave up profanity I would have described her to anybody who asked as my Irish f**k buddy - now she's a mate with benefits. After an evening gym session we stop at the Golden Arches, sharing a table while we slurp at fizzy liquid and munch feel-good crap. She has her back to the door, facing into the restaurant - I'm opposite. A message from Holly distracts me a moment - Still coming? What am I supposed to say to that? Yes, seems to be enough - a smily face comes by way of return. "F**k!" says Kez - she talks while she chews, drives me mad. "Why would you do that to yourself?" I follow her look to see a tall, broad shouldered woman walking towards the counter - head high, looking neither left nor right, focussed on the smiling ball-capped lass about to take her order. She wears a black skirt, down to her knees, a longish matching jacket and modest block- heeled shoes. Her glossy tights can't disguise the muscle definition in her calves. "What?" "It's f**king man! Check out the wig. Look at his hands!" Almost turning - I want to stare, really I do - but make myself look through the window. "So what?" "Everybody's staring." "Then don't." "Can't help it, like driving past a car crash. F**k's sake! Why would you do that to yourself? Don't look, he's coming towards us." The clunk clunk clunk of those heels hits me, louder and closer. I want Kez to stop being such a feisty soldier for once in her life, to stop making eye contact when two words cut through me. "Fu**ing freak." I'm standing and turning, carefully placing down my drink. "Cherry!" Kez warns, but in my periphery she's standing too and I know she'll follow my lead wherever it goes. As I uncoil the acne spattered waste of skin at the table behind does a comedy double take and turns ghost - hopefully recognising from the set of my jaw and bloodless fists that I may be a little annoyed. A touch on my arm, it must Kez - but she never paints her nails anything but black when she gets a chance. These nails shine purple and distract me from my target. "Leave it, he's not worth the trouble. It happens." Her eyes shine from the mixed-messages in his made-up face - beautiful hazel eyes that take me further into her world than her clothes and hair ever could. "But thanks," she finishes. "Apologise, scrotum," says Kez, with an evil chill in her voice and the lad does, stammering in surprise. While Kez and I take our seats again, the woman takes herself to a discreet corner. I'm not hungry anymore. "Boy are you unpredictable. Still having nightmares?" "Not so often." I had woken up shouting a couple of times, in her bed. She'd done more Afghanistan and Iraq tours than me and knew not to ask, but we'd shared some of what haunted us - only some. I could never really open up, even to her. "Come back with me. You know, do you wanna...?" "Wanna?" "You look like you could use a good wanna." And I do. Right there and then I want nothing more than to see Kez naked and gorgeous, to cover her sinuous form with my own and see if I could find some comfort inside her. We drive away in silence, music filling her car until she turns down some track I've never seen before, rumbles over the ruts and halts by a secluded pasture overlooking the estuary near her barracks. Turning off the engine, she removes my seatbelt and takes my head between her hands, making me face her; leaning in for a long, slow sensual kiss. She tastes of gherkin and mint gum, her lips warm and slick. But she pulls away, eyebrows arched. "Where are you right now, Cherry?" "You know I love you, Kez." She colours. "You too, bro. But?" "Not today. Okay?" "Don't wanna? No dramas - disappointing, but no drama. I can sort myself out later. Want to get some beers and loosen up. Sh**, not for you - sorry. You want to box again? Go for a run? Come on, let's run." We did. Too fast, too far on too little water, but it felt good, just right - even when I puked burger into a bush. Nine. I've only ever seen Cambridge in the sunshine and I'm starting to feel well disposed towards the city. Leaving my car in an outskirts car park I get the Park and Ride to the centre. If Kez had asked me how I was feeling, I'd have told her about being nervous, but an enquiry from anybody else would have been brushed off. Is it bad that I drove up here kind of hoping some honourable excuse would throw itself down in front of me? I couldn't make it (Holly) because; I stopped to help out at a really bad crash; I was involved in a really bad crash; I had to help a woman give birth on the side of the A14 near Bury St Edmonds; I stopped an international crime syndicate attacking a cash in transit vehicle; my malaria came back; I'm scared of seeing you again. Or that I don't really walk as fast as usual, hoping I might be fashionably late and (Holly) might have got tired of waiting and gone. When I turn the corner and see that coffee shop, commendably five minutes early, I grind to a sudden stop and almost get trampled by a party of Japanese tourists. What if she isn't there? He isn't! I hover in the doorway and check the tables - twice. No brunettes - nobody with the right quantity of shiny brown hair. In fact no customers under the age of 30. Check my watch. A waitress watches me curiously. Bollocks - even if I've been dumped (this isn't a date) I could do with a (spot on) coffee. Five minutes and one polite fending-off of the pretty waitress later and my ex-best mate makes the bell over the door ring. I tell myself not to stare, but stare anyway as she sees me. A fleeting smile, wriggle of fingertips to say hello, then she's weaving through the tables and customers to my corner. Should I stand, offer a hand? What's the etiquette for having lunch with your ex-best mate? And he's dressed like a woman - am I supposed to compliment the shoes? The skirt? His hair, drawn back into a wavy pony tail, bounces and swings as he comes towards me. Cherry! Don't even glance at the tits or see the way they move under that top because tits aren't proper tits if they're made from latex or padding or silicone. Precisely feminine she smooths her skirt under her and sits opposite with that familiar, faint smirk easily recognisable under a layer of lipstick. "You came." Long beaded earrings swing even after she's become still, watching me. I haven't got a clue what I'm looking at; what to say; what to do. I once saw a young man run up to an Afghan police patrol in some half-wrecked village to blow himself and them up. Incomprehensible; what would make a man do that to himself? "Are you going to speak, Tim? Or just stare?" Get a grip of yourself, Corporal Healey. With the sunlight as a backdrop through the coffee shop's windows and his hair pinned up the resulting, partial silhouette looks ordinarily Mark. Apart from the earrings. And the twists of hair falling down from the pony tail down to his jawline. And the small, sapphire in his nostril. "Why wouldn't I?" "Speak?" "Come." "I didn't think you would. I've been here for the last fifteen minutes, in the clothes shop over the road pretending to be interested in some dull tops while watching to see if you'd come. And then, when I saw you, I watched some more in case you just legged it as soon as you saw I wasn't here." Her eyes narrow. Where was Mark behind the shimmers of eyeshadow and mascara? I hunt for bristles or a five o' clock shadow under the faint matt of his foundation that doesn't conceal an ancient chicken pox scar on the left cheek. Or the freckles on his nose and cheeks. I tried a smile. "I'm glad you came in." "Are you?" "I came, didn't I!" "Why have you come?" "For a good coffee." "And?" "I wanted to see you." "Well?" "Well what?" "What do you think?" She opened her hands in the kind of gesture that invited me to have a look, even though I had been shamelessly staring since he'd come in. "Do you live in the city?" She laughed, quickly. "I can't afford to live too close, you saw where I work - how much do you think the council pay its archivists? I get the bus. How about you, where did you end up with the army?" "Colchester. It's a dump - too many squaddies." A grin and a shrug - this is easier ground to walk upon. "You were always pissed on getting in the army. Is it what you wanted? Has it lived up to expectations?" "I love it." The waitress comes over - thin legs, tight skirt and a big smile - she remarks on Mark's earrings and they share recommendations about independent jewellery shops before deciding a tuna melt panini would be just the thing. I order soup and a sandwich and we decide to share a big cafetiere of a Columbian blend. The person sitting opposite watches me expectantly, a half smile on those glistening lips. I should do something, say something, but my jaws have clamped together. "What are we doing, Tim?" My body has always done exactly what I told it to do, even if it has been firmly opposed to the idea. The jaw will obey me. "Waiting for lunch?" "Why have you come?" "How is your Mum?" "Do you still fancy her?" I meet his eyes, has she even blinked yet. I haven't felt this pressured since I had an interview with the Colonel a couple of weeks ago - a big part of my career development. He'd stared into me as well. Thinking of the Colonel gives me an idea of what Mark wants from me. I nod, "We all did. She was very beautiful." Another faint smile. "She's okay, under the thumb. I don't see as much of her as I'd like. Like I said, under the thumb. She still looks good. We share make-up tips; she gave me these earrings. Do you like them?" "Yes, they look good." He inclines his head, tilting the earrings. "I'm not so sure about long, drop earrings like this. Do you think they suit me?" That waitress saves me with coffee and cups, condiments and cutlery. I have force my legs to be still, to keep my hands neatly folded as Mark busies himself with milk and pushing down the cafetiere's plunger. It smells great, the coffee, his movements are deft and precise, eyes flickering across the table, dark under mascara and eye liner. "I came because I wanted to see you and I don't understand" "What don't you understand?" "What happened to you?" She laughs and her ponytail bounces with merriment, her mouth open with delight. I wonder what I said, what I did. "That is exactly what I have to live with now, Tim. My life is so much more difficult than it needs to be because most of the people around me don't understand and because they don't understand they think I should go away or live a life less troubling to them." "I'm sorry." And I was, frowning with regret. "You don't have to be sorry, I should be sorry for causing all the turmoil written into your face. I seem to spend a lot of my time thinking I should apologise to the people around me, to the people who think I have hurt them. Do you feel hurt, Tim?" I shake my head, still frowning. Then the food arrives and there's another break for me to gather my thoughts and wish I had written something down - a speech or something. "It's only that I can't wrap my head around it." "Around what, Tim?" He licks a crumb from her lips. "You being like this. I remember you, Mark. All the times me and you spent together and now, you, like this." "Like what?" My heart thuds, I have a spoonload of soup cooling between bowl and mouth. "Like a woman." "I'm not like a woman." She leans forward and as much as I want to pull away I don't. "I am a woman. I've always been a woman." Then she leans back, I half expect her to fold her arms and say, 'so there.' My mate has always been a woman. Through the football and the messing about and sleepovers and all the stuff we did together, Mark has always been a woman. "Now you can speak. Or get up and run away screaming. Punch me in the face if you like, as if everything I have felt over the years, as if the pain and dislocation of trying to be what people expected me to be is somehow a betrayal of our friendship. It happens." I slurp my soup. His... Her knuckles are white about her coffee mug. His... get a grip of this, Cherry... her shoulders practically thrum with tension. "Did you really pick Holly because of Red Dwarf?" A tight lipped nod. She puts the mug down. "I still love that show." "Second season was the best." Her shoulders round down a little. "Agreed." We'd always agreed that; the second series was the one we'd watched over and over. My next smile came a little easier. I met her eyes. "That makes Holly a really cool name." Ten. Holly moves easily, gracefully. Even on the football field there was a fluidity in him... her, but now in a skirt and long hair, with dangly earrings, it shows more. Though we are a similar height, next to her, and in my lightweight walking boots and hiking trousers, I feel like a Hulk. Jamming my hands in my pockets I wonder if people stare. She leads me onto the backs where the sunshine has brought out tourists and students with picnics and ice cream, frisbees and dogs. Punts glide along the river. Holly does a good job softening her voice, but often I hear Mark and then when I turn to face him, his twin sister confronts me. I suppose Mark was a decent looking lad, but he's made an ordinary looking girl, but not so ordinary that you'd look and say - man. Except me, because I knew him. Or anybody else that knew him. But we're a long way from Saltburn. "We should do this again." Holly purses her lips, she has a little ice cream spoiling her lipstick. "Why?" "Aren't you enjoying it?" There's a wariness about her, even here under the sun and surrounded by strangers - as if I really am here to arrange some kind of beating for her. "I keep remembering times when we hung out together," she says. "That's good, isn't it? We had a laugh." "Good times, Tim. But would you have hung out with me if yI'd been a girl?" "You said you were a girl." A quick laugh. "So you were listening." "So I was hanging out with a girl. Right?" "It was a weird time for me." It's easier if I don't look at her. This is a weird time for me and I wonder why I'm putting myself through it. Eleven. "Kez?" "Um, hmm?" "What defines a woman?" She's quiet a moment. Under my arm I can feel the steady rise and fall of her chest. My nose is close to her neck; her scent is a heady mix of grapefruit shower gel and after-sex glow. We're in a tent in a campsite on the North Norfolk coast. I can hear seagulls, waves and other campers sociably bedding down for the night. I hope we haven't just been disturbing them. "A legendary ability to multi-task coupled with bleeding four days each month without dying. Does that answer your question?" "Not really." "Then put some effort into working out what it is you're trying to understand. Knob." "What makes a woman, is it body or soul?" "Nice one, Mr Existential." "I don't know what that means." "Me neither, but it sounded impressive. Why are you asking me this?" I stare at the tent's fabric, filtering the last glimmers of daylight above us and hope she'll just go to sleep. I'm absolutely knackered. Not only from Kez's energetic sexual demands, but also the walk she led me along the cliff tops and beaches today. We dined on seafront fish and chips washed down with fine ale in a quiet pub. For the ten days before that I have been on a company exercise in Wales. It rained - a lot. The Army has a doctrine about individuals training to the next level up, it's all about keeping moving when levels of command start getting killed. I ended up as Platoon Sergeant while Spud ran the platoon. That gave me 24 lads to manage and I loved it. The Colonel took me to one side at the end of it and clapped me on the shoulder. 'Good work, Corporal H,' he said. 'This'll look good for your board next month.' On the last night we got into a fantastic pub fight with a rabble of Artillery, so-called hard cases, who thought themselves enough to take on me and my lads. Regimental honour was satisfied as we won, and cleared out before the military police arrived. The black eye I sported on the exercise final parade well worth it. A final piece of advice came from the Colonel before we got in the coach for the long trip back to Colchester. "Get your brawling out of your system before you go on your selection board, Corporal Healey." I assured him those days were behind me. "Pleased you saw off the gunners though," he added quietly. But Kez isn't asleep, she won't let me muse my career, fighting glory days or let my question lay. "Why the sudden fascination with woman, Cherry?" "There's this girl." "Oh, here we go. What is it with you and girls." 'Biology, duh!" "Biology! Some of those creatures you danced with that night, yes that one, weren't even human!" "It was a public service, they have feelings you know!" "Tell me about the girl." More staring. She gave me a sharp elbow into my side. "Is this going to be like Mary- Belle, or Trixie-Lou or whoever it was in Arizona?" "Lena. Her name was Lena." "That's what I said." "No, it's not like her. This is... You see, she's somebody I knew at school." "And now she's claiming you're father to her five kids?" "She was one of my best mates." "One of your best mates was a girl! I'm impressed." "You're one of my best mates. Only back then she was a boy." A sharp breath. Her body tenses under my arm. "And that's a knotty problem for you?" "Can't get my head around it, Kez." We both stare for a moment, maybe a couple of minutes. Then she rolls over, lays a thigh and one arm over me. Her eyes shine in the gloom. "She's living as a woman?" "Full time." "Not just a man getting off in a dress and heels?" I shook my head. Way, way beyond a man in a dress. "Do you want my advice, Cherry?" "Always." "Either walk away and never see her again, never think of her, never contact her." "Or?" "Get over it. F**ks sake, Cherry. Look at me, I'm hardly the poster girl for womankind - life's flexible." "I just... I can't stop thinking about all the time we had together, all the things we did - the stuff we shared. And she was a woman all along." "Bellend!" "What?" "You just answered your own question, if you can remember what you f**cking asked." "I did?" "Stop playing the thick grunt." Kez kisses me, a gentle and salty pressure to my lips. "Or look at it this way. What makes a good soldier? A soldier like you, or me?" She cups my balls gently. "Is it here?" Then my bicep gets a squeeze. "Here?" "Or here?" She taps my forehead. I kiss her again. "You're too good for the engineers." "Don't I know it." "There's more." "Oh my God, you've kissed her!" "No! She's having her balls off in a fortnight." Twelve. I don't much like hospitals. In my mind I have strongly linked them to death and suffering. My big sister, Nicole, died in one - LSD overdose - and I can still see her messed up face before I was led away and they turned off the machines. A good mate of mine, Gripper Toyne, died at Selly Oak hospital after being casevaced from Afghanistan. I was still out there when he sent me a selfie - him sat up in his bed - grinning, thumbs up - just before they took him to the operating theatre to get some more shrapnel out. He died in there - some complication. I wheeled Loz Pinkney out of Selly Oak - he'd stepped on an IED and was lucky to be alive. Me and him had been the forwards for the battalion football team, but he wouldn't be running with the ball until they sorted out his prosthetics. It's not the hospital that causes the problem in my head - good places crewed by good people - just the associations. So, when I walk into that place down on the South coast I feel irrational tension stiffening me, making me wary of corners, of voids concealing ambushes, people whose hands I can't see. Then a pretty, but officious nurse won't let me onto the ward. "Family only!" She folds her arms, glares up at me and sets her jaw firmly. She's so petite I could swing her over one shoulder and carry her away and lock her in some storeroom, but having already decided on a policy of truth by disclosing I'm not Holly's brother I can hardly get kinetic with her. "I drove all the way from Colchester," I try, with my most charming smile. "You could have crawled all night over broken glass and I still wouldn't let you in." A tallish, willowy woman in jeans, trainers and a baggy jumper breaks the stalemate when she walks into the nurses' station from deeper in the ward. Her hair, more silver-grey than blond swings in a long plait and her face wears the pinched expression of one who has a loved one in a bed somewhere close. Before she does a bug-eyed double take at the same time I recognise her. "Tim Healey?" "Mrs Symmonds!" "Judy please. Wow, look at you all grown up." She makes vague hand gestures to encompass the spread of my shoulders. "I'm just here to..." She frowns, looks over her shoulder, bites her lip. "I've come to see Holly," I say. Her frown gets pushed aside with open-mouthed shock. She makes some fluttering gesture with her hand, back the way she'd come. "Our Holly?" "Got her a present and everything." I show her the two gift wrapped boxes I've brought in. More hand fluttering, she starts to speak and changes her mind - maybe she can't speak at that moment for she looks close to tears. My velociraptor nurse gets another charming smile when Judy convinces her of my provenance and gets me in. I can feel her stare boring into my back as though I have somehow tricked her and Judy both. "I saw your Mum the other day." "How's Graham?" That evasion earns me a sharp glance, but she doesn't push it. "I left him. Priorities; he didn't want me to see our Holly; didn't approve of her! Couldn't have that, not now. Us girls have got to stick together." Holly has a room to herself, Judy stops with her hand on the door handle, starts to speak again, but changes her mind. Pushes the door open a crack, looks back at me. Her eyes shine wet. "I really appreciate you coming. There's nobody from home who..." "I thought you were going for a latte?" says Holly, from inside. Her voice sounds rough, tired. More Mark than Holly, but I put that notion away. "Got a visitor, love." I think back to a time of hangovers and puking, a sleepover at hers when next morning I'd seen her sprawled in her bed looking very much like she did now. If her hair wasn't tumbled raggedly over her pillow she'd have looked very much like her younger twin brother had on that morning. "Hey up, Holly." The shock cutting through the sleepy remains of the anaesthetic makes the journey well worth it. "Cherry!" "Cherry?" asks Judy. "It's an army thing," say Holly and I together. "Tim's his dead name," Holly points out and Judy nods. "You look rough," I tell her - bluntly. Pale skinned, eyes pink with black pouches hanging beneath them; there's some kind of tent thing over her hips and unpleasant looking tubes emerge from the bedding. Limp, boneless hands lay atop the sheets - another tube emerges from a cannula on her left hand; her skin seems so pale and fragile you'd hardly dare touch it. What really catches my eye though is the neckline of her baggy hospital gown. I'm not staring, honest, but can't help looking at the smooth, freckled curve of a breast rising from under her collar bone. Not latex, not silicone, but woman. "I'm sore in all kinds of weird places." I look to the door, easier than looking at her cleavage or the sheets tented over her hips. "Do you need...?" "I'm fine, honest. Thanks." "You look like the morning after that time I stayed over and we got tucked into Graham's brandy. Remember?" Judy obviously does. "She sicked up most of it over my new bloody sofa!" She? That was Mark, all Mark - no sign of Holly then, though she must have been there and he did keep his hair unfashionably long. The whole situation is relentlessly confusing for a simple soldier like me. "Graham went mental,' Holly chuckles, and winces. "Please don't make me laugh." Judy edges back onto the ward, going for her latte. She promises to bring me one, smiles beautifully at me before vanishing. I sit on the edge of a chair, almost close enough to reach out and touch her hand. "How are you, Holly?" "I'm fine, really. I'm glad you came." "You actually went through with it." "I really did. Now I can wear tight jeans, straight skirts - swimming cossies. At least when I stop walking like John Wayne." "But your balls..." "I never had much use for them." "Your balls!" "And all the female hormones I've been taking meant they weren't up to much anyway." "And your cock, Holly!" "Oh, I've still got that." She even smiles when I look up so suddenly from contemplating the creases in her sheet I practically give myself whiplash. "The look on your face, Cherry. They turned it inside out and pushed it inside. You know..." "I do not!" "I'm really pleased you're here." She watches me for a moment, biting her lip just like her Mum had done back at the nurses' station. "Didn't you ever really hurt yourself to get what you wanted?" I contemplate her sheets again. "I got you a present." Another evasion. I hand over the boxes. One wrapped in brown paper, the other in gaudy, metallic pink. Her lifted eyebrows ask the question. "That ones from me." I tap the brown one. "The other's from a friend of mine, Kez - Kayzia." "A friend of yours?" "We talk a lot." "About me?" "Sometimes." I've bought her earrings - dangly ones, with alternating beads of gold, cream and maroon. The maroon's for my regiment, the Paras, but I don't tell her that. She says they're lovely, a little breathlessly. Would I put them in for her? The cannula, she explains. I've never helped a girl with her earrings before, and it's been a long time since I've touched Holly - probably some play fighting or arm wrestling or something. Nothing as intimate as sliding fine gold wires through the holes in her ear lobes. I may have trembled slightly. Then she unwraps Kez's present; I'd been surprised at the gesture, but Kez is as unpredictable as she's amazing. And off the wall when it comes to presents - I find my cheeks hot, matching the high colour in Holly's when Kez's parcel is opened to reveal a slim, cream vibrator with a ribbon tied around it. "A friend of yours?" "Not any more!" I mutter. "There's a note - Dear Holly, A little something for when a man lets you down. He knows what I mean. Best wishes, Kayzia M." "You do?" she asks, innocently - brows raised. "Mutter mutter mutter." "Don't make me laugh! I'm pleased Mum missed that! Tell her, thank you, when you see her." I was actually thinking about punching her, but she'd probably be too quick for me. Background noises of speaking, a trolly banging, somebody moaning intrude the silence between us. Thoughts of mutilation crowd me. Out on tour we'd sometimes had hushed conversations about mutilating injuries - what would you rather have blown off, cock or balls? Childish stuff, I know - but that was almost the worst damage we could imagine; better to loose both legs than your cock and balls. A couple of the lads had said they'd rather be dead, but here was Holly who'd chosen that disfigurement. "You know I used to think about you a lot, when you left to join the Army," she says. "Tried to imagine what you were putting yourself through. I was kind of able to imagine it because you'd told me so much about it - the selections, those really hard tests you had to pass to be a paratrooper." Really hard didn't come close, but it's tough to articulate to somebody who hasn't been through them what the selection tests for Britain's Airborne Forces feel like. Or what it means at the end when you're paraded and they call out your name with a 'pass' after it. Or how some people (your own mother, Cherry) hate you for being a para, a soldier - for existing in their mind as a crude stereotype without bothering to imagine you might be a thinking, feeling person. "Was it worth it?" Holly asked softly. Our eyes met. Something cool touched my hand - her fingers resting lightly on mine. "Every bit. I am what I always dreamed I would be," I said. She didn't need to reply. We both knew. Excitement seizes me, I have news, a distraction from anything deeper. "Big news, hot from the press! I haven't told anybody, outside of the Army yet. Last week, I went away for a selection board - I passed. I'm going to be an officer; I'm off to Sandhurst." Holly squeezes my hand, I squeeze her back. "Council estate boy from the shit town makes good. I am so proud of you, Cherry." There are moments when you have to let your heart take over, because your brain is always overthinking stuff; don't climb that tree - you'll fall out; don't join the Paras - you'll get blown up; don't jump out of that aeroplane - your parachute won't open; don't get in the aeroplane in the first place; don't kiss Holly - people with think you're gay. I kissed her, very softly on her forehead. "Really proud of you too, Holly." Then jerk away from her, like I've been electrocuted when the door swing open and Judy pushes through, a cardboard coffee cup in each hand. She looks from her daughter to me and back. I think my cheeks must glow. "I couldn't remember if you took sugar, Tim." A frown. "What did I miss." "We talked about dead-naming, didn't we, Mum? This is Cherry - Tim went ages ago." Judy hands me a steaming, hot cup - for hospital coffee it smels delicious. She must see Holly and I holding hands, but at that moment in time, bathed as I am in warm, uplifting clarity, I couldn't care less who sees us. Thirteen. "How does it feel?" "Relax, you feel amazing. You are amazing." "But, does it...? You know? Like the real thing?" "Shhh. It is the real thing, you're the real thing." "But..." I have to kiss her quiet, but while we're on the subject... "How does it feel for you, Holly?" "Dreamy." "Worth it?" "Every minute. Stop talking now." Fourteen. The Sovereign's Parade at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, where the British Army trains its officers, is a big, important affair. It's the graduation ceremony for a year long course where civilians and enlisted soldiers like me are transformed into officers and leaders. We don't get the Sovereign herself for mine, she doesn't do so many nowadays, but they have found a minor royal who dons an appropriate uniform from one of the regiments he is associated with. Not mine unfortunately - though I am pleased to report that not only am I commissioning as a Second Lieutenant, but I have also made the grade for my old regiment. I'll be returning to my former battalion once I complete a platoon leader's course. Happily the sun shines as our course's survivors form up ready to march out under the evil, eagle eyes of the malignant, magnificent Academy Sergeant Major. After weeks of screaming, stamping, marching up and down, polishing, ironing and scrubbing - none of which was good enough - he squints along the immaculate ranks of my class and pronounces, "You'll have to do." He has one last piece of advice for us. "Ladies and gentlemen." (When he refers to us as ladies and gentlemen we are well aware he means something much less civil.) "When you march out there in a few minutes to form the centrepiece of military excellence in this centre of military excellence do not make the mistake of searching the lines of visitors for your own people. This will be a mistake which will grievously spoil the immaculate perfection of my parade, for you will be unable to stop yourself grinning and if there is one thing me and the Queen, God bless her, hate on her parade is one of you creatures grinning." There will be no opportunity for me to let him down. Nobody came to my first passing-out parade when I became a soldier and I have decided not to impose Sandhurst, it history, traditions and narrow world view on the people meaning the most to me. I am secure enough in their feelings for me, and mine for them, that I don't need them there. After marching out to formed our precise ranks and files, and while awaiting inspection by this royal, I screw my eyeballs left and right (the only independent movement allowed to me) to look for George Akamba's hot sister. George has helpfully described her eye-catching purple dress so we can pick her out easier. While discreetly inspecting the respectfully quiet rows of civilian guests, trying to look interested as the inspection proceeds, my attention is caught, not by George Akamba's hot sister's purple dress, but by fixated glaring coming my way from a tall, copper-haired girl in a navy blue trouser suit. As soon as our eyes meet she winks. Beside Kayzia, a tall, silver-blonde, older lady wearing black trousers and a lilac top sends me a discreet wave. There, standing next her mum is a girl in a wonderfully fitted powder-blue dress, her chestnut hair loose and blowing in the breeze and her face illuminated by the most dazzling smile you ever saw. I'm not sure how this day could get any better. I'm sorry Mr Academy Sergeant Major, sir; I tried my best I really did, but couldn't help grinning. Hopefully His Royal Highness didn't mind. Can I go and meet them now please?