CHAPTER 10
The order came to halt, and an hour after Bill had handed round his own version of a brew, Mr Nolan was pulling up in a jeep.

“Can I have a quiet word, Sergeant?”

Bill looked up. “Brew, sir?”

“Later, Hamilton”

CHAPTER 23
I slept that night much happier about our little game with my sister. I had passed the news on to Vicky, of course, and she had promised to let Kev know, and all were happy as happy can be, but for me the main feeling was relief. Matchmaking is a risky business, and it can so often end up with three people hating each other rather than what was hoped for.

CHAPTER 7
We got the news over the net piecemeal, and then three or four days later we had a formal announcement by a visiting staff officer, his shoes clearly unused to the snow and frozen mud that covered our leaguer and rest area. We formed the usual hollow square and he spoke in the usual public-school whine.

CHAPTER 5
We rolled into the big city, and Wilf went looking for the best pub. No, not really. There were no pubs. No houses, no streets, nothing but rubble and blank-eyed locals staring at us without any life in their faces.

CHAPTER 3
“Ginge, Ernie, I want you sharp, now. One of those buggers did half the Fifth in. We’re not going to get a shot at his arse, but we can smash a roadwheel or two, Trouble is, he gets a shot on and we’re brown bread”

There was a mutter from Wilf. “Bloody well toasted!”

CHAPTER 1
We weren’t there in the first wave, thank god. We had sat offshore in an LCT for hours while things the size of an Austin 7 flew over our heads to burst inland, and I was more than happy to keep well away from either end of their flight. The lads at the other end had been having a closer view for more than twenty-four hours, while we had waited and fretted.

CHAPTER 20
The internet is a wonderful thing. I look back at how things were before we got it, and I simply do not understand how the hell we coped. Siân has a different take on things, of course. We might be a double act, but we don’t always sing in unison. Harmony, perhaps. Well, most of the time.

CHAPTER 18
Life became almost banal after that. There is a tendency for some people, especially the younger ones, to see settled domesticity as boring beyond words. They crave adventure, excitement, action. Well, I remember ‘adventure’ being summed up by someone sensible as ‘something unpleasant happening to someone else’. It was the same with the rookies, as too many of the boys were calling the new chums in the American fashion. They came straight from training and went out hoping for a ruck, for a fight or a foot chase, while I was just happy to get home to my wife without incident.

CHAPTER 17
That was the last I saw of her back home. We met up at other places, such as the church in Reading where Arris married Steve, but never at home. She wasn’t out of contact, she didn’t disappear; letters and calls came regularly, but she stayed in England.

CHAPTER 14
Dad was a rock for the next few weeks. Siân took her parents’ rejection hard, which in one way I found surprising. After all, she had surely expected nothing really different?

“Lainey, Lainey, yes. I know. They said all that years ago. It was just, well, I hoped, I thought… I thought they’d see you, and it was like I thought about Vicky, aye? How could anyone not love you as soon as they met you? I thought that would be the difference, that would make them think!”

CHAPTER 13
I drove us back, as Siân was having difficulty seeing through the tears.

“Did you know, Lainey? Did you know what they planned?”

CHAPTER 11
Sarah was falling apart, slowly but inexorably. I had watched her as she exploded into life at university, then pushed her to make her life real. Her style would never be mine, but she had become the archetype of a hard-rocking biker girl. Not the cliché I had once heard described as a 'back warmer' by a certain type of male motorcycling sexist, but a rider in her own right. She had grown into exactly the right type of woman for that, long and lean, and the short skirts she liked worked well combined with her rather stunning legs.

CHAPTER 9
Christmas was a good one, but quiet, and I was a little disappointed because I was still trying to live with Mam's request not to rub her nose in things. I was with my family, I was loved, and especially so by my father, but there was still a Siá¢n-shaped hole in things.

CHAPTER 7
It turned into a good solid evening, enough beer passing my lips to relax my tensions but not so much that all carefulness went back to the bar with the empty glasses. Vicky was far more entertaining than I had expected her to be after the revelations in the toilets, but Siá¢n still seemed to be on guard, paying careful attention to everything Kev came out with. The man himself seemed to think that he was the centre of the world, as why else would three women be so rapt?

CHAPTER 5
That was the start of a new life indeed. Each time I had visited her at university, she had been clearer and sharper in the focus of her femininity, truer to herself. Up until the funeral, it had all had to be folded away and kept in storage whenever she came home. Now, the bird was free, and I had to keep a careful watch on where and how high it flew. I had Kevin to watch, for starters. Then again, her tastes seemed to be heading more in the direction of the shortest skirts she could get away with. The genie was well and truly out of the bottle, and that container was in the local recycling bin and headed for a crusher

CHAPTER 4
A little later I left the three of them to find what accommodation they could, and it struck me just then how natural my sister was. I had almost threatened her into doing what we had just started, for I knew it would not soon be finished, but she sat there, skirt and heels and stuffed bra, and every move, every little nuance, was woman. If I could see that, then so must our parents.

CHAPTER 3
It became a routine for a while, the run up to Aber. I would finish work after the right combination of shifts and jump onto bike or into car, heels and other trapping gear packed ready in advance. Two and a half girls would greet me with hugs and squealing, and after I had replenished my depleted stocks of tannin we would be off and out.

CHAPTER 2
Beginnings…

I had watched my brother so carefully all those years ago, but now I could hardly remember him. Sarah was so clearly Right Here and Now that I sometimes found false memories arriving, where she had been a young girl rather than a non-boy. That first day, in a dress; I mean, I knew she was going down the girl route, but there she was, filling my eyes in stereoscopic womanhood.