of the few bits of fun we get. We even had the extra set cut in town, so we didn’t get into trouble if one of you ran off with them.’
‘Well, thank you, Julia,’ Rosie said politely. ‘You’ve no idea how helpful you’ve been.’
The last of the sun had disappeared during their little classroom escapade and Rosie buried her hands in coat pockets as she headed back to the accommodation hut. As she got closer she could hear people cheering and broke into a run when she realised that their marks had been handed out.
Between the next two huts Rosie saw Poles trying to knock down a Frenchman who’d climbed on to the roof of their hut and was kicking down sheets of snow, while another bunch were engaged in a snowball fight with the Norwegians.
When she got up to her own hut, the door flew open and the five boys rushed out, pelting her with snowballs. Rosie yelped as snow hit her in the face. She tripped on the edge of the footpath and wound up with her bum in a puddle of freezing water.
‘You’re all dead!’ she yelled, as she scrambled to her feet. ‘I just changed out of my other trousers. Now both pairs are soaked!’
‘You got twenty-six out of thirty,’ PT told her. ‘Me and Luc twenty-eight, Marc twenty-seven, Joel twenty-five. But the main thing is we all passed.’
‘Oh that’s brilliant,’ Rosie said, her mood somersaulting as she moved in to give PT a kiss. ‘What about Takada?’
‘Thirty out of thirty,’ PT said. ‘Which is just showing off if you ask me.’
Their embrace ended abruptly as a snowball hit Rosie in the head. She looked across and saw that it was Marc.
‘You think you’re getting away with that?’ Rosie roared, as she bent forwards, scooped up a handful of snow and yelled after Marc as he sprinted off into the darkness. ‘Yeah, you’d better run.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
‘Hurry up, move, move, move!’ Corporal Tweed shouted, as he stood in the doorway of the accommodation hut. ‘Briefing in classroom P. Put on some clothes and get out into that lovely snow.’
It was half one in the morning. After lacing his boots, Marc grabbed a hunting knife and a packet of boiled sweets.
‘May as well leave ’em,’ Tweed said. ‘Trainees are only allowed the clothes on their backs and the equipment you’re given in the briefing room.’
While the five healthy trainees scrambled around getting dressed, Paul sat up in bed, bleary-eyed, shivering from the wind blasting through the open doorway and glad that he could go back to sleep once the commotion was out of the way.
‘Good luck,’ he told Rosie, as she walked past his bed.
Takada had also been woken by the noise. He stood at the doorway of his little room in his vest and pyjama bottoms. ‘Take plenty warm clothes,’ Takada advised. ‘Two jumpers. Warm gloves. If you have too many, throw them away, but too few and you’ll freeze!’
Luc heeded Takada’s advice and turned back to grab an extra pullover. He looked at Paul with uncharacteristic friendliness. ‘You did good with all that sneaking around earlier,’ he said. But as always with Luc there was a sting in the tail. ‘Little stick-man like you though, it’s probably best that you’re not coming on the exercise.’
Paul shrugged it off. ‘Try not to fight with the others,’ he sighed.
Luc was last to reach the door and Tweed bawled him out in the doorway. ‘When I say move, you move. You don’t go back to your bed and start putting extra clothes on. Now shift it, double bastard time!’
With the last trainee out of the door, Takada pushed it shut and wandered between the beds towards Paul. As he walked, he picked scattered belongings from where the kids had dressed in a hurry.
‘They won’t be back here,’ Takada said, as he took one of Luc’s plimsolls and flung it towards the suitcase on his bed. ‘We’ll pack everything up first thing tomorrow. McAfferty’s sending a truck up to collect everything and take us back to campus.’
‘I hope the others do OK on the exercise,’ Paul said, as Takada sat down on the next bed. ‘Whatever it involves.’
‘I’ll second that,’ Takada nodded. ‘If our unit shuts down, I’ll be back in an internment camp.’
Hearing that made Paul wonder if he should have confided in Takada earlier in the day, but it was too late now.
‘Glad I’m not doing the exercise in a way though,’ Paul admitted, as he glanced towards