Soldier's Daughters Read Online Free PDF Page B

even thought of wearing their heart on their sleeve. And a life spent in the army can’t have helped your father in that respect either.’
    ‘Not much hope for me, then,’ said Sam. ‘Same genes, same career choice.’ She said it as a joke but there was a niggle of worry at the heart of the glib sentence.
    ‘Ach, don’t be daft. You’re your mother’s child through and through. It was a shame she was taken so young. If anyone could have softened up your dad it was her.’ She stared at the mixing bowl for a second, deep in thought. Sam’s father might have lost his wife but Gran had buried her own child. Then, falsely brightly, ‘And how’s your little friend Michelle?’ She began to beat some eggs into the sugar and butter.
    ‘She’s not little. She huge, almost six foot.’
    ‘She’ll always be little to me.’ Which was rich as Sam’s gran wasn’t more than five two at the most. ‘I haven’t seen her for…’ Gran did the sum. ‘Ooh, it must be over ten years. She was a cheeky little madam.’
    ‘She hasn’t changed much. She’s still thin, she’s still got big brown eyes and amazingly thick dark hair, only now she’s not all gangly, now she’s more like a super-model. She is so pretty. If I didn’t love her so much I’d hate her.’
    Gran began to pour the cake mixture into the loaf tin. ‘She always had the makings of a beauty, that one. Is she getting on any better with her step-mum? You know, I never thought there was much wrong with her father’s second wife. Why Michelle took against her I never really understood. Of course, I never knew her birth mother so maybe I’m talking out of turn.’ Gran scraped the very last of the mixture into the tins and then gave the bowl to Sam. ‘I suppose you’ll want to lick this out.’
    Sam took the bowl and ran her finger around then sucked off the goo while she wondered if maybe she wasn’t in agreement with her gran about Michelle’s antipathy to her step-mother. She remembered the first time she’d gone to stay with Michelle, back when she’d been about eight. Michelle had filled her head with stories about the WSM – the wicked step-mother – and Sam was honestly expecting to meet some fairy-tale horror like Cinders’s or Snow White’s awful ones. Instead she found a perfectly pleasant woman who seemed to want to make Sam’s stay as nice as possible.
    ‘She’s not so bad,’ she’d remarked to Michelle after the first day.
    ‘You are joking,’ Michelle had screeched. ‘Can’t you see it’s an act? She’s only being nice to you because you’re an outsider. You don’t know anything about her. It’s all because of her that Dad keeps having a go at me. She puts him up to it, I know.’
    Sam had been a bit shocked at Michelle’s reaction and hadn’t dared say anything again since. But she’s always had a niggling feeling that maybe Michelle had made up her mind from the get-go that the second Mrs Flowers was the Bitch-Queen from Hell and, having done so, couldn’t ever be seen to change her mind.
    Maybe, just maybe, it was Michelle who was so unreasonable and her father’s exasperation at the situation was the reason he got so irritated by Michelle. But then, thought Sam, no one really knew what went on in other people’s families so she might have completely misjudged the situation. Anyway, it was none of her business.
    After their leave the two women had to attend special-to-arm training courses before finding out where their first postings as commissioned officers would be.
    ‘Where are you off to?’ said Michelle over the telephone the evening after she’d been informed of the army’s plans.
    ‘The Light Aid Detachment of 1 Herts – it’s the repair centre in the battalion for all their vehicles and kit.’
    ‘And aren’t they based somewhere in Kent?’
    ‘They were. Apparently they’re being arms-plotted to Salisbury Plain. Warminster, to be precise.’
    ‘You happy about that?’
    ‘Very. I’ll