"You sell yourself short Miss, those statistics are just short of Olympic standards, I could get you a good place in the army on those kind of stats."

I laughed, "The army...I'm a girl, girls don't join the army!"

"We have a lot of women in the army; you could have more excitement and far better pay if you joined the army. You could join 'The Royal Army Physical Training Corps' and after six weeks of basic training, you'd be helping to train future recruits joining the army and in the army, if you're really good at sport the army will help you to compete internationally or even just at inter forces competitions."

I waited for Sergeant Benson to finish erecting his display stand and put a thousand fliers into little piles around the waiting room and when he was finished we walked together to the High Street and his office. He made me more coffee and we just sat in comfortable chairs just chatting in general terms, he made me laugh a lot before he placed a sheaf of papers on the desk in front of me, "Right Miss Porter, read every question carefully before you pick up your pen, you have a lot of time, I'll let you know when you've got thirty minutes left."

I was really tempted to read the first question and then answer it but because Sergeant Benson had stressed for me to read every question first carefully before picking up my pen I did just that. By question four I realised that what I thought the answer to question one was...well, was quite wrong, I was actually helped to answer question one by reading question four and so it went on throughout the rest of the test.

I picked up my pen and dashed my way through the answers, I reached question sixty and the last question, I breathed a sigh of relief as I leaned back in my chair and dropped my pen on the desk.

"Are you finished?"

"Yes."

"Well, you still have five minutes left, if you are unhappy with any of the answers you can try and fix it now."

"Five minutes, you told me that you'd tell me when I had thirty minutes left."

"I was keeping an eye on you, I figured that if I warned you at thirty minutes with ten questions still to answer, you'd probably rush and balls everything up. I'd rather have had two or three unanswered questions than ten wrong answers."

I shook his hand, took an envelope that I would have to take to a doctor appointed by the army to test new recruits. I walked to the doctor's office, I hadn't told my father how badly I'd done in my exams, after every test he'd asked me how I'd done and I'd been non-committal and evasive. I knew that the moment I told him I'd been to the Army Careers Office and taken the test, he'd try and talk me out of joining up. I wanted to arrange my medical for as soon as possible and try to hold off telling my father about the army until after I'd taken the medical.

The doctor was in private practice so he wasn't as busy as an NHS doctor would be, he also didn't keep to strict office hours so I was surprised when he said, "As you're here now and I'm free, we may as well get it over with now."

Well, there was a lot of poking and prodding, listening to my heart and lungs, he took urine tests and blood, bottles and bottles of blood but the medical wasn't for me, it wasn't for my benefit and he didn't tell me a single damned thing about what he was going to say to the army about me.

I got home very late after my afternoon's testing for the army but I told my father that I'd gone home with my friend Mary on our way home from school. I still didn't tell my father when I got the buff coloured envelope from the army telling me that I'd been successful and that I'd been offered a place in the September intake.

I still didn't tell my father anything about the army. He was pestering me every day to do something about getting myself a job, I did get a part time job in a garden centre, lugging heavy bags of soil, sand, fertiliser, stones and slabs out to people's cars for them and stocking shelves.

I got that job because I'd been told that after six weeks I'd have to pass the assault course and that the thing that most girls failed on was getting around the course within the five minutes time allowed, I needed to build up my upper body muscles before I headed off to general training at Catterick Barracks in Yorkshire for six weeks of basic training. I put off telling my father until the last minute and we were still arguing as I walked down the garden path on my way to catch the train to York to meet an army bus onward to the camp.

I was snapped back to the present day by the sound of a heavy diesel engine, a hooter and a, "Hello darling, want a ride in my truck?"

I stopped pulling my suitcase and turned towards the voice and powerful engine, I took my sunglasses off and looked up into the cab of a MAN LSV, nine ton truck, the squaddie driving the truck looked shocked, and then he looked stunned and then he blurted out, "Sorry Sergeant Porter, I didn't recognise you dressed like that!"

"I'm not Sergeant Porter any more, just Vicky Porter."

"You were Sergeant Porter at nine o'clock this morning when you put me on a 'Fizzer' for being on parade with dirty webbing."

"Well, that was nine o'clock this morning and you were part of the duty guard, I marched out at twelve o'clock so I'm not part of the army now."

"And I'm not part of the duty guard any more, I'm on 'jankers', moving rubbish between camps for a month...I'm going into town now, do you want a lift to the railway station?"

"No, I need the walk but thanks for the offer."

As the truck drove off I shook my head, I'd just got him on a month's punishment duty and off of a cushy number and instead of animosity, he offered me a lift into town.

I returned to my walk and back to my thoughts. I'd really upset my dad when I joined the army, so much so that he refused to come to my passing out parade. I discovered that I had a skill on the firing range, a new string to my bow as it were, I got a company prize for my range score, it was a trophy to put in my trophy cabinet when I got one and crossed rifles with a crown over badge for the sleeve of my number one uniform, I also got a prize for my time on the assault course, not only was I the best female recruit on the assault course, I was only beaten by one man.

My dad was mad at me for sneaking away to join the army without telling him but more because I was moving away instead of stopping at home to look after him, clean his house, cook his meals, do his shopping and keep him company in the evening. He was mad at me alright but when I was the only recruit at the passing out parade without her parents there to celebrate with her, Well I was mad at him as well.

After passing out from basic training we all split up to go on to our various specialist training camps, I found myself travelling with four other members of my training group on my way to Leicestershire, I was heading to 'Two-Two-Four' Signals' Squadron just outside the village of Quorn, the camp was called Garrats Hay and the four women travelling with me were going to start their specialist training as radio signallers but me, I was just using the camp as a hotel...I was going to Loughborough University for six months to study physical fitness training methods.

My two skills, shooting and fitness, gave me two real options in the army, I was taking the Physical Training Instructor option or PTI but I could also have taken the Gunnery Instructor path. It soon got around Garrats Hay that I didn't have any family attending my passing out parade so I got the reputation of being a bastard, literally as well as metaphorically. The men at Garrats Hay didn't get the full story about why I was called a bastard and assumed that it was because of my being strict rather than being fatherless so while my four bunkmates had a whale of a time in a camp full of men, I was shunned rather than befriended by the men.

I didn't mind being ignored around the camp because it did mean that I could put all the more effort into my education and after my six months at the university we were down to three in the female barracks, two of the trainee signallers fell pregnant to one or other of the squaddies around the camp.

After my six months specialist training I was returned to a basic training camp but this time as a member of staff rather than a trainee, I had a single stripe on my arm, a Lance Jack...or should that be a Lance Jill. I got to shout at forty young women for six weeks trying to get them to a level of fitness where they could complete the assault course in the requited time or wash out of the army. I did that for two years and almost overnight the army had a change and the walls between men and women seemed to fall or be pulled down.

I found myself with two stripes on my sleeve and had to shout at men as well as women joining the army. The thing I liked best was on the first day of a new intake, you could spot the 'Jack the lad' types and the hard men as well as the mummy's boys that would shit themselves if I shouted at them.

I had to bolster the confidence of the mummy's boys and knock the hard men down a peg or two. Sergeant Major Barker used to split the hard cases away from the rest and on their second day of training, those few were handed over to me to get their first introduction to the assault course. I would walk the group around all of the obstacles and explain what they had to do and in what order they had to do them in.

Fifteen minutes of directed stretching to warm up flabby muscles and five minutes of running on the spot to warm everything up and pump the oil around their bodies and then I lined them up on the start line.

I'd bellow at the top of my voice, "Marks...Set...Go!"

They all ran at the first obstacle at full pelt and jumped at the rope that would help them to get over the first wall. I'd started the stop watch when I said go and I'd walked over to the finish line and hung the watch on a nail before walking back to the start line.

At each of the obstacles there was an instructor yelling at the new soldiers, trying to encourage them over the first obstacle. I'd stand at the start line and the instructor at the first obstacle would shout, "Right you pathetic bunch, a girl is going to whip all of your arses and she's given you a full minute's head start!"

That was my cue to start. I'd crossed the first obstacle while two men would still be struggling to pull themselves up the first side. On that first introduction I always finished before the first man and stood at the finish line to give each man his individual time and to let them all know just how short of a passing time they were.

I also got to teach the men and women unarmed combat and I really loved that part of the training. I eventually progressed to sergeant and as a nine year soldier that was as far as I could progress unless I wanted to extend my contract to fifteen years. Once I was a sergeant I had to move on again, from a basic training establishment and on to my final posting at the Provost's speciality training camp in Colchester, I'd be boosting the fitness levels of the police force of the army, Fitness and drill, the Provosts would be at almost every important occasion in army life and it was my job for three years to make them the fittest and the smartest police officers in the world.

I was in a queue at the ticket window of the railway station, four people in front of me, I only had seconds left to decide where I was going to go...I could go home...well, to my father's house but he'd see that as a victory, after nine years in the army, running home with my tail between my legs. I could just head for Cornwall; I could have a holiday in the sun. I could go...I suddenly remembered an aunty, my mother's sister. I had been to my auntie's house with my mother twice, she lived in Glasgow and I could remember the street but not the address of where she lived but her house had a witch's hat roof over a bay window at the front and it was the only house like it in the area... "Glasgow please."

I pushed my travel warrant through the window, "Central station or..."

"Yes please, Central station will do nicely thanks."

I didn't know Glasgow well enough to know if one station was closer to my aunty than another, I'd just get into the city, find a cheap hotel and get settled in and tomorrow I'd start looking for landmarks and zone in on her house.

"Thanks."

I took the small, insignificant ticket through the little window, had a face value of one hundred and fifty pounds but all it cost me was a sheet of paper from the army. Platform number one, change at London and again at Birmingham.

I sat on the platform and waited for the train, I zoned out again, I'd have re-enlisted, took on another nine years of service if I could have remained at the Provosts Camp but it was being sold off by the government to a developer, probably be a housing estate by this time next year. The army was contracting; they were using more part time soldiers and didn't need the massive establishments that they once had.

A group of young men were larking about on the platform, they had Manchester United scarves and flags, they were heading to Heathrow for a flight to Madrid to see their team play in an international match. One hard boy was waving his flag from side to side, he kept letting it hit my face to wind me up. He looked away to his mates, they were encouraging him on and this time, he caught my head with the flag's pole rather than just the flag. I didn't even look up, my hand streaked out, straight fingers gently tapped his Adam's apple.

The flag waver didn't see my hand move, his friends didn't either, there was a sudden silence as the flag dropped to the floor and his hands lifted to his throat. I thought to myself, 'Possibly a little too hard Vicky!'

I looked up in time to see his knees buckle slowly and he sank to the floor gripping his throat.

I moved quickly to stop him smashing his face on the floor and I rolled him onto his side, pushing his forehead back to straighten his airway as much as possible.

"Call an ambulance somebody...do you know this man, is he allergic to anything?"

Five mobile phones came out of pockets.

'SHIT!' 'Much too hard!'

I leaned over him and covered his mouth with mine and gave him the kiss of life until the paramedics turned up. Fortunately as they were bagging him and pushing adrenaline into his system my train arrived and I slipped quietly out of the station. The rest of the football fans missed the train and hopefully they'd miss their flight as well.

Close run thing there, I'd have to remember that civilians are delicate little flowers and I'd have to reign in my fiery temper a little.

The train to London was basically two single decker busses joined together with train wheels instead of rubber tyres. Five hours earlier it would have been packed with people up to the roof...standing room only but now, mid-afternoon, the train was almost empty. I found a table with four empty seats around it, heaved my case onto the window seat and sat next to it.

I dropped my envelope with all of my discharge papers in it on the table and started to read through the section on my reserve status and the army's right to call me back into service during times of unrest.

"Mind if I sit here?"

I looked up, 'Fancy Dan!' City suit, clean shaven, collar length hair but slicked down with pomade, his cheeks and chin were shiny so he'd used moisturiser after shaving. I looked around the compartment, forty empty seats in the carriage tables with no one sitting at them and he's asking to sit with me!

"If you need to, help yourself."

"Going on leave...or returning to your unit?"

"Sorry?"

"It's just that I guess that you're service personnel, your hair cut, your muscles...the way you dealt with that football hooligan...so what is it, leave or returning?"

"Neither, I marched out this morning. My career in the army is over. What about you, you look like a banker but you're on a train in the middle of the day, you playing hooky from work?"

"Holiday...I finished a little job this morning and now I'm off to see my mother in Glasgow for two weeks."

"Really, are you doing the London to Birmingham and change to the Glasgow train or are you flying up?"

"Train, like you say, change at London and Birmingham...my employer won't spring to air fares."

It was a forty minute trip to London, we'd get in at four o'clock and at four fifteen there was an express to Birmingham. My ticket wouldn't allow me to travel on the first train to Glasgow, that was classed as a commuter special and would cost more for that journey, I'd have to sit it out in Birmingham for ninety minutes and catch a train after seven o'clock in the evening.

He was George and he was witty, clever and very well educated. I got the feeling that if he gave me financial advice I'd take it.

George offered to carry my case off the train for me and I pondered, 'I could probably carry you and my case off the train mate!'

"What about your own case, you're going on a two week long holiday and you don't even have a change of underpants!"

"I keep enough clothes at my mother's house just so that I can pop over to see her whenever I have the opportunity without having to go home and gather my stuff together."

In London they were putting out the early editions of the London Standard on the station bookstall, the sales stand had just been fitted with the headlines poster.

I bought a London Standard to read later on in my journey, I knew that I'd be chatting with George on the stretch from London to Birmingham but after that, I expected to wave him goodbye as he took the first train to Glasgow and I took the seven o'clock train. I also planned on buying an evening paper in Birmingham and another in Glasgow. I'd use the jobs sections of each paper to see what the job opportunities were like as well as house prices and rental options in the three cities.

George and I were on the platform at Birmingham together, I would have something to eat in a restaurant close to the railway station while waiting for seven o'clock to roll around when an announcement came through the platform speaker system. "Due to signalling problems North of Birmingham there will be a slight delay to all services to the north."

"So Victoria, what are you going to do while you wait for the seven o'clock train?"

"I'm going to find somewhere for dinner...better than eating curly sandwiches on the train at four quid a time."

"Can you hang fire for a minute while I talk to someone about what's going on with my train?"

I nodded my head. George walked straight past the information desk, he was challenged as he tried to go through the 'Staff only' door, he flashed an ID card and wandered off in the direction of the station master's office. He was back in the station foyer in just ten minutes, he took my elbow, "What kind of food do you like the best Vicky?"

"What about your train?"

George looked all around to make sure that no one could hear him but me, "Just between you and me, they aren't expecting anything to go beyond Liverpool tonight but they don't want to let anyone know just how bad things are until they're sure. I've got a letter for both of us transferring our tickets to the ten o'clock train in the morning, guaranteed seats in first class for both of us. The morning trains will be standing room only all the way to Scotland and as soon as the news breaks, the local hotels will increase their prices to about double and will all be full in minutes."

We walked to the railway hotel and as we stood in a six person queue at the reception desk George said, "Some people are already in the know, this party are civil servants from the Scottish Government, they were heading for Edinburgh on my train but they got a call from their office in Scotland telling them to overnight here in Birmingham."

"But you said that you were going to Glasgow not Edinburgh!"

Same train, just south of Glasgow the train splits into two, the front heads off to Edinburgh and the rear to Glasgow. Even though Glasgow is on the West coast and Edinburgh is on the East coast, they are only thirty miles apart in reality."

We shuffled up to the reception desk, George said confidently, "Two single rooms please."

The receptionist checked his computer, "I'm sorry sir, all I have left tonight is a double room."

"Is that with twin beds?"

The receptionist shook his head.

George turned to me, "You take the room Vicky, I'll sleep in the railway station's waiting room."

"That's just silly, I'm trained to make the most of what I have, we're both adults and if you try anything I could probably break your neck before you get the chance to break my hymen!"

I realised from the shocked look on George's face that I'd overstepped the bounds a little and I blushed.

"Are you saying we should share the double bed?"

I nodded my head.

George signed for the room and I carried my own suitcase to the room.

We ate dinner in the hotel's restaurant and as we ate we watched a constant stream of people being turned away from the hotel looking for rooms for the night.

"Apparently there's a pop festival in Glasgow at the weekend and the start of the Fringe Festival in Edinburgh so they're expecting around half a million people to head north in the next few days."

Dinner was lovely, I had a bottle of wine to myself and George had three pints of beer. We put off heading for our room until ten o'clock but, like the elephant in the room, it had to be tackled...and tackled head on.

I was in the bathroom getting ready for bed and George was at the door talking through it. I hadn't actually locked the door and I got the strangest feeling as I stood just two inches away from George, two thin layers of plywood with a cardboard egg-box filling separating us as I stripped totally naked.

"Vicky...earlier...in the reception...you mentioned that you could break my neck before I got close to your hymen...were you being serious...are you still...you know...a virgin?"

I looked at my reflection in the bathroom mirror, I was blushing bright red all the way down to my nipples, I responded with a simple, "Uh-huh!"

"Damned it...erm...is it a religious kind of thing...or is it a life choice kind of thing...or, is it more of a...lack of opportunity kind of thing?"

I pulled my scarlet 'Boy pants' on...that's not pants belonging to a boy, it was a style of knickers, bikini brief length in the body of the knickers but with inch long legs, quite tight legs, not like French knickers. They were very thin but heavy weight silk material...it was a kick back against wearing army issue knickers for almost ten years. I'd bought a matching camisole top, no bra under it, I was so fit and so muscular that I didn't need to wear a bra even while going over an assault course...of course, as in every aspect of life in the army, they had rules on the wearing of a bra for female soldiers and a bra was part of that uniform.

I opened the bathroom door, George was wearing boxers and nothing else, I looked straight down at his boxers and he looked from the tops of my legs and up to my breasts, my nipples popped out like the pressure valve on top of a pressure cooker.

George launched himself at me and what followed was something akin to a display of unarmed combat, my camisole top came off in a second and I did a hip throw on George, he sailed onto the top of the bed and bounced like it was a trampoline and he ended up on his knees on the other side of the bed. The fight moved up a gear and I ended up ripping his boxers into shreds. He was strong, he was very fit and he was very well skilled at unarmed combat but I was stronger, fitter and I taught men most of the moves he was trying on me and after thirty minutes I allowed him to pin me down on the bed on my back.

He struggled to get my tight 'Boy-pants' off so I had to help him by lifting my left leg so he could push my knickers off over my left ankle without breaking our kiss and as soon as my knickers were off, I was impaled on his cock and he went off like an energiser bunny fucking me.

He was very fit and proved it by fucking me at a frenetic pace for over an hour.

There was a little blood to prove that I had been a virgin but not much, not half as messy as I'd thought it would be.

I slept with another person for the first time in my twenty-six year long life and found it very difficult, every time he twitched or moved in the slightest I opened my eyes and looked at him, looked at his naked body. We'd put so much effort into our fucking that we hadn't bothered to rescue the duvet from the top of the wardrobe where our earlier battle had left it and so I could see all of his body as he slowly turned in his sleep.

There was a knock at the door, I assumed that it was housekeeping wanting to clean up our room. I found George's shirt on the floor and pulled that on as I opened the bedroom door a crack, "Hi, what do you..."

"I'm sorry Miss, I'm looking for George Campbell, I was told that this was his room."

I looked over my shoulder, George was still sleeping, he was still naked but at least he had his back to the door.

"This is his room but he's sleeping...could you wait..."

"I'm sorry Miss, I only need him for a moment and I've seen him naked many times before."

George woke, he introduced me to his friend as Kelly. Just Kelly, nothing else.

George and Kelly went into the bathroom together and George took a shower, partly to clean the stale sweat from our fucking off of his body but also so that I couldn't hear anything through the bathroom door.

I did hear that there was a DCS Bishop waiting for George at Birmingham's Edgbaston Police Station and that Kelly would wait for George in his car in front of the hotel.

I sat, still wearing George's shirt as he dressed, he left his shirt until last.

"How did they know that you were here?"

He picked up his phone and shook it.

"You told them?"

"No...GPS in my phone, they always know exactly where I am, even on leave they always know where I am..." George lifted his phone close to his mouth, "...and what I'm doing...don't you Kelly?"

As George hadn't pressed any buttons on his phone and he hadn't made a call, I had to assume that his phone had its microphone open permanently and there was a possibility that every word we'd said to each other, and every gasp and groan of our rather hectic sex session last night had been listened too by George's handler. I'd suspected that he was under cover, either army or police. So, I'd had sex for the first time in my life and instead of it being the private and personal thing that I'd always expected it to be it was probably being broadcast...'SHIT!'...there was no clock in the room so George had used his phone as a clock, it had been propped up on the bedside table all night, if George's people could open the microphone remotely, they'd be able to open the camera as well.

I unbuttoned George's shirt so he could finish getting dressed. We kissed and he fastened his tie, "I'm guessing that with the pop festival going on so close to Glasgow you may have difficulty finding a hotel room, here's my mother's address in Glasgow, you just have to tell her you're a friend of mine and she'll give you a bed for the night. It would be really nice to catch up with you again once the police are finished with me."

I couldn't give George my address, I just didn't have one to give him.

I caught my train, my nice comfortable seat in first class. The man across the aisle from me nudged his companion, "Check the news feed, Google News has just come up with a siege in Birmingham, a gunman is hold up in a restaurant in Edgbaston with hostages."

I looked over, I must have gasped because the man turned his phone towards me, "Bloody marvellous, CNN is streaming live camera footage from outside the restaurant but there's sod all from the BBC!"

I saw the five man squad, all in black combat fatigues with Kevlar helmets and gas masks moving in on the side of the restaurant.

"The BBC knows better than to show a stream like that, if the gunman's got a smart phone he'll see what they are doing, in that kind of operation, surprise is the best weapon the army has..." I tilted his phone towards me a little more and saw blue flashes on their sleeves, "...at least that's blue troupe...so the bad guys can't actually see what's coming."

"What do you mean?"

"Blue troupe are the backup, Red troupe will be doing the shooting and they're probably on the other side of the building."

"Oh...really...you know a lot about this kind of thing do you?"

"I probably taught them how to shoot during their basic training."

He looked shocked, "Are you in the SAS?"

"No...and if I was I'd never tell anyone...not even my family would know but those guys didn't start out in the SAS, they started as regular recruits and that's where I spent the last nine years of my life."

There was a cloud of smoke erupting out of an upper window as the glass popped out into the street.

"Well, it's all over, that was a 'Flash-bang' going in from the other side of the building courtesy of red troupe, anyone holding a gun in that restaurant is dead by now."

There was a series of pops on the small telephone's speaker.

"They're using a telephoto lens and are about a kilometre away from that restaurant judging from the time delay from the flash of the grenade and the sound reaching the camera."

There was thirty minutes of pontificating from the CNN anchorman running through the various options of what all the action in that few seconds could mean and then Google News switched from the CNN feed and went to the BBC, a police officer was standing in front of the camera to be interviewed, the literal across the screen below his face stated that he was Detective Chief Superintendant Bishop of the Birmingham Metropolitan Police.

"Three gunmen with eight hostages were trapped in the restaurant behind me, as the hostages were all elderly people with medical issues it was decided by Cobra, the Government's security committee, to end the siege as quickly as possible. All three terrorists were shot dead by members of the SAS and only two of the hostages suffered minor injuries during their rescue."

"Chief Super. Peter Day of News International, were the gunmen given the opportunity to surrender?"

"We spent an hour trying to make contact with the gunmen but they refused to pick up their phone to talk to us. We believe that the three terrorists were making preparations to detonate a suicide vest inside the restaurant to kill or maim as many of their hostages as possible so the decision was taken to send in the SAS to end the hostage's ordeal as quickly as possible."

"Helen Cooper Independent News, you said that no contact was made with the suspected terrorists...how could you possibly know what was on their mind to send in your assassins?"

"For security reasons we can't divulge what information we had or how we used that information. Standard operating procedure in these circumstances is for warnings to be shouted out as our men go in to the building and the only people that are targeted are people standing and holding weapons. The two wounded hostages were believed to have been wounded by the terrorists; my information says that as my men entered the building the terrorists started shooting at their hostages, trying to kill them before they themselves were captured or killed."

"Helen Cooper Independent News again sir, how can you be so certain that the hostages were shot by the accused men and not by your assassins?"

"I have two reasons to believe that the hostages were shot by the terrorists, the first was that I was watching the body-cam feeds from the soldiers entering the building and the fact that an 'AK forty-seven' rifle leaves a much larger wound and the bullet passed through and exited the hostages bodies, our nine millimetre tumble rounds are designed to enter the body and then stop inside to prevent bystanders being injured by our bullets."

I lost my view of the screen at that point, the man opposite me had lost interest and had moved on to look at a little on-line porn so he turned his screen away from me and pushed his ear-buds jack back into his phone.

We were approaching Liverpool but on the outskirts we stopped, the train's manager announced that they had been stopped by a red signal and would resume the journey as quickly as possible.

There were a few people who were getting off at Liverpool and they were griping that they could walk home from where we'd stopped if they would only open the train's doors.

We'd stopped just short of a minor road that had a level crossing and the other side of the lane there was a large meadow. I wasn't really taking much notice of what was going on, the crossing gates had been closed to stop cars going in front of the train and what was holding my attention was the driver of a van was talking to the train driver, he was protesting that the gates had been closed and they should have been left open so he could get to his farm.

I saw a shadow on the ground, it was a 'Lynx' helicopter shaped shadow and it was getting bigger as it passed by the side of the train. The helicopter however couldn't be seen from the train on either side which meant that it was flying directly above the train and getting lower and lower as it passed above the train.

'Someone could get a box of Milk Tray chocolates out of this if they aren't very careful!'

I pressed my forehead against the window and looked ahead of the train. I watched the 'Mat-black' helicopter land in the field ahead of the train, its wheels touched the grass and the helicopter took off again without the wheels even leaving a dent in the grass of the meadow. Someone had exited the helicopter on the blind side and they were professionals.

I watched the helicopter as it set off towards the Irish Sea, there was no mistaking a Lynx helicopter, even if it was all black with no markings on it, no badges or insignia, no identifying marks or numbers of any kind. A Special Forces wagon, capable of over two hundred miles an hour, the fastest helicopter in the world, it was also the only helicopter in the world that could fly upside down, not for extended periods but it could loop-the-loop to avoid missile attack.

The train jerked into motion and we rolled past the parked van slowly. We only got up to about half speed before we started to slow again for the platform at Liverpool's central railway station. A hand rested on my shoulder, "I think that this is my seat madam!"

I jumped out of my skin but pulled myself together, "George, how the hell did..." I stopped myself asking George how he'd caught up with the speeding train. I just moved over to the other seat and let George sit next to me. We exchanged a passionate kiss and I looked at the men across the aisle from George, they knew something was out of the ordinary going on but they hadn't seen the black helicopter landing just ahead of the train.

I whispered, "What about the debriefing?"

George smiled at me, "Standard forty-eight hours cooling down period, they're coming to Glasgow to interview me the day after tomorrow."

Once in Glasgow I walked with George towards his mother's house, I stopped at the first hotel we came across to see if they had a room to rent to me. They didn't have any rooms that were vacant and wouldn't have one for at least a week. They even checked on-line for me, a central booking agent run by the Glasgow chamber of commerce, they had up to date information from all of the hotels in the Glasgow area and they couldn't offer me a hotel room within a twenty mile radios of Glasgow.

"Come on, my mother will make you welcome, you can stay at her house until the pop festival is over, Glasgow will be awash with hotel rooms then."

We got to George's mother's house but she wasn't home, the wall planner in her kitchen showed that his mother was at Betty's house.

"Oh that's great, we can kill two birds with one stone, you can meet my mother and my Aunty Betty at the same time, they'll love you and if you're worried that I'll make a nuisance of myself if we're living under the same roof, I'm sure that Betty will let you stay with her."

George phoned a taxi to take us to his auntie's house. We approached his auntie's house from a service road at the rear and from there through the back yard rather than a garden. We went in through the kitchen, the back door left unlocked which surprised me a lot.

"Hi Betty...mum, it's only me with a friend!"

Two elderly women mobbed us in the hallway between the kitchen and the living room. George's mother was over the moon that he'd actually managed to get home, "You don't have much of a tan, I'd have thought that Cyprus would be very sunny at this time of the year!"

"Mum, you know that us radio operators don't get out in the sun much, by the time I get off shift it's dark, still bloody hot though."

We got the where did we meet kinds of questions and George lied, he told his mother that we'd met in Leicestershire when he was in specialist training at Two-Two-Four Signals corps training camp and that I was the one that whipped him into shape physically.

"I hated her guts at the time but she was just doing her job, turning a spoilt, flabby, teenager into a fighting man...pity she failed with me, I'm still flabby but not a teenager anymore."

There was talk of why George hadn't ever been promoted, he blamed it on the fact that he didn't apply for front line service, he was in a rear position, a safe haven, a basically office bound job.

I'd told them that I had actually just left the army and that I had reached the rank of sergeant before leaving.

"So...you had to go on the front line then?"

"No, when I joined up women didn't go to the front line so they had to set up promotions more like civvy street, I had to do training courses, pass tests and then, when a vacancy came up, I'd apply just like any other job."

"So, if you were in England and George has been in Cyprus since he finished his training, how did the two of you ever meet?" Betty was wracking her brains as to how we could have developed any kind of friendship when we worked two thousand miles apart.

"Well, when I needed to practice Morse code for one of my training courses, George was one of the few signallers that would spare the time to help me to practice and build up my speed. It came as a total shock when we bumped into each other at the railway station, George recognised me on the platform, he'd had nightmares about me since his specialist training...I didn't recognise him at all, he was just one of thousands of men that I'd tried to whip into shape over the years. We had five or six hours to chat and get to know each other properly."

"What are you doing in Glasgow?"

"I'm here for the pop concert..." I could have told the truth but that would have been very convoluted, the whole mother leaving home when I was young and never seeing her again, the aunty that I remembered living in Glasgow and that I was going to start my search for my mother by first trying to find my mother's sister if she was still alive. If I knew my auntie's name at least for her address I may not have sounded quite so crazy, "...I'm not even really into pop festivals but when I finished in the army I just threw a dart at a copy of what's on around the country supplement in the Sunday papers."

"And the dart stuck in to the advert for the TRNSMT Pop festival here in Glasgow?"

"Well...to be honest...the dart went through six pages so I had the pick of twelve things but the hole was slap bang in the centre of the TRNSMT advert...well and a dog show in Penzance but I'm not really a dog person."

Betty stretched the dinner she was cooking for her and George's mother to feed the four of us and at eleven o'clock at night a taxi was called to take us home. We left by the back door again, the answer was simple, the road in front of Betty's house had been pedestrianised, it had been a residential street for many years but so many of the houses had been converted into bars and fast food outlets for the students studying and living at Glasgow's University which was just around the corner.

There was a moment of embarrassment when George told his mother that we'd only need the one bed making up. When George set off on 'Sexual Olympics part two' I tried to stop him, "Your mother will hear us!"

"Good, I had to put up with her doing my various 'Uncles' all through my childhood, it's her turn to listen to me fucking now!"

My second fuck...it should really have happened sixteen hours ago, shortly after Kelly butted in and took George away from me but it was fucking marvellous. We stopped just short of swinging from the light fitting but had a good two hour long fuck and I cursed myself for waiting until I was twenty six years old before starting this wonderful new activity.

I woke early, I couldn't believe that George didn't, after nine years of waking up at six o'clock to the sound of a bugle I just couldn't sleep later, even when on holiday. I nudged him in the ribs twice to try and wake him up but it was fruitless so I dressed in my shorts and a T-shirt, slipped running shoes on my feet, I'd go for a run before breakfast. I didn't really need the exercise, I'm sure that what I'd done with George for two hours just four hours earlier would count as a ten mile run.

George's mum was in the kitchen reading her morning newspaper when I walked in. She insisted on making me a cup of tea and a slice of toast before I went out for my run. As I ate and drank I looked at the wall, there was a series of photographs making up a montage and in the middle of the wall was a picture of a house with a witch's hat roof over a bay window. I pointed at the picture, "That's an unusual house, where is that?"

"That's my sister Betty's house, you were there last night."

I choked on my toast but hid it from George's mother.

"Is Betty's real name Elizabeth?"

"Yes dear, that's right."

"Can I ask you what George's father's name is, he told me he never met his father!"

"My husband's name was Victor Porter, I was six weeks pregnant when I left him and I was divorced before George was born, that's why George has my maiden name of Campbell."

I left the house without saying a word and started my run. How the hell was I going to break it to George that he was my brother! I was running at a pace that, if I'd have kept it up over my usual distance I would have broken the world record, the friction between my legs from new nylon running shorts and my panting for breath reminded me of my last two night's of sex with George. My legs suddenly went weak and my breathing had increased more than had been caused by my running. I fell against a tree to hold myself up and my mind raced ahead, 'I'll tell George he's my brother before he has to go back to his regiment...definitely tell him then...or perhaps I'll tell him if he ever asks me to marry him...perhaps...definitely before he wants me to have his baby!!!

8,562 Words.

Already seen Marching Out Part 1, click here to read part 2 or here to read part 3 or here to read part 3

Click isabella-30-uk@hotmail.co.uk if you would like to comment on this, or any other story by Isabella.

Please help to support ASSTR by making a donation HERE