law that you had to try and wind him up anyway, just for the fun of it.
I couldn’t stop thinking about IEDs. Those things were just out there, buried in the ground, waiting for you to drive over them or step on them out in the field. Rumour also said that if you stepped on one, the last thing you’d hear would be a click as the connection was made between the electric charge and the detonator. I was more worried about IEDs than about getting zapped. I suppose it was because you had no control, no choice, you couldn’t even fight back. It just happened or it didn’t.
But it wasn’t just Taliban IEDs that blew our soldiers up, it was the Russian mines too. They’d been buried in Afghanistan years ago, but they were still active. The Russian mines were called legacy mines, not that it mattered much to us who laid them or when. All that mattered to us was that there were thousands of them out there just a couple of inches under the ground and no one knew exactly where they were. Except, I suppose, some old Russian back in Moscow with the world’s biggest map of Afghanistan stuck full of drawing pins.
Chapter Nine
I scraped my chair in next to Flash, who was using a spoon to get the mouthfuls in quicker. Si couldn’t keep his eyes off the TV screen at the back of the room. Football repeats, of course, but he’d watch anything a hundred times over before even thinking about turning off the telly.
Flash stuffed a giant spoonful of meat into his mouth. ‘Mmmm. Not bad. Not as good as me dad’s mince, though. He makes the best.’
I picked up a fork and got stuck in too. ‘Your dad cook, then?’
‘Yeah. Better than me mum, even me missus. He does roast beef with big fat yorkshires every Sunday.’
Sounded good to me, but I couldn’t really chip in with the Happy Childhood Memories game. ‘Never saw my dad cook. Never saw him do anything really. He legged it before I started school.’
Flash always listened to what I had to say. ‘Yeah? He was in the Falklands, wasn’t he?’ He barely got the words out before the spoon was loaded up and heading for his mouth again.
‘Yeah. In the Guards.’
Si’s eyes flicked away from the screen and he began pumping his arms up and down like he was marching. ‘Oh the Guards … left, right, left, right, left, right …’
Flash lowered his spoon for a second and glared at Si before it was his turn to get a slap around the back of the head. ‘Shut up, Si! Dickhead.’ Si grinned and went back to his TV viewing. ‘Go on, Briggsy, your dad was in the Guards?’
‘Yeah, but I don’t really remember anything about him, except that he was always drunk. Well, that’s what my mum says. He used to come back home from the pub, give her a good slapping, and then disappear for days on end. My mum reckons the day she did a runner with me was the best day of her life. I don’t think so, though, she still gets upset about it.’
Flash finished his meat and turned to his mashed potatoes. ‘Harsh, mate. Harsh.’
Si looked away from the screen towards me. He’d obviously been listening as well as watching and eating. ‘Poor little Briggsy,’ he said in a sing-song voice, but his eyes didn’t turn back to the telly.
I took a forkful of mince. ‘Nah, it was all right. Mum got a job in the biscuit factory and we moved to a different estate. I got my own bedroom and everything, know what I mean?’
Flash was spooning so fast he’d got a big blob of mash stuck on his chin. He rubbed at it with the back of his hand, but the potato only spread out even more. ‘Did your mum help you with your reading then, what with you having dyslexia and all that?’
‘Nah. She didn’t really notice. She was out working too much. She sort of feels guilty now, like it’s her fault I’m in the army. The schools weren’t any help. I didn’t even know I was dyslexic until I joined up. I thought I was just thick! Well, I am …’
Flash started to rub his chin with two fingers in a more determined effort to get the spud off. ‘You’re not, mate.’
‘I know, I know. Just a reading age of ten. Ain’t good, though, is it?’
‘How’s