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seventeen-year-old longing to be free, longing to join the army and escape from my adolescent prison. And yet here I was again, back in the same place, imprisoned again, this time by my disability but still longing to be in the army, determined to rejoin my regiment, hungry to be back in command of my troops and eager to be, once more, fighting and killing the enemy.
    I sighed, stood up and looked at myself in the mirror on the wardrobe door. I looked normal, but looks could be deceptive.
    I sat down on the edge of the bed and removed my prosthesis, rolling down the flesh-colored rubber sleeve that gripped over my real knee, keeping the false lower leg and foot from falling off. I slowly eased my stump out of the tight-fitting cup and removed the foam-plastic liner. It was all very clever. Molded to fit me exactly by the boys at Dorset Orthopedic, they had constructed a limb that I could walk on all day without causing so much as a pressure sore, let alone a blister.
    But it still wasn’t me.
    I looked again at the mirror on the wardrobe door. Now my reflection didn’t appear so normal.
    Over the past few months, I suppose I had become familiar with the sight of my right leg finishing so abruptly some seven inches below my knee. Familiar, it might have been, but I was far from comfortable with the state of affairs, and every time I caught a glimpse of myself in a mirror without my prosthesis, I was still shocked and repulsed by the image.
    Why me? I thought for the millionth time.
    Why me?
    I shook my head.
    Feeling sorry for myself wasn’t going to help me get back to combat-ready fitness.

3
    H as Josephine Lost Her Magic?”
    The front-page headline of Sunday’s Racing Post couldn’t have been more blunt. The paper lay on the kitchen table when I went downstairs at eight o’clock to make myself some coffee after a disturbed night.
    I wondered if my mother or stepfather had been down to the kitchen yet, and if so, had they seen the headline? Perhaps I should hide it. I looked around for something to casually place over the paper, as I could hear my mother coming down the stairs, but it was too late anyway.
    “That bastard Rambler,” she was shouting. “He knows sod all.”
    She swept into the kitchen in a light-blue quilted dressing gown and white slippers. She snatched up the newspaper from the table and studied the front-page article intently.
    “It says here that Pharmacist was distressed after the race.” My mother was shouting over her shoulder, obviously for the benefit of my stepfather, who had sensibly stayed upstairs. “That’s not bloody true. How would Rambler know anyway? He’d have been propping up a bar somewhere. Everyone knows he’s a drunk.”
    I shifted on my feet, my false leg making its familiar metallic clink.
    “Oh, hello,” said my mother, apparently seeing me for the first time. “Have you read this rubbish?” she demanded.
    “No,” I said.
    “Well, don’t,” she said, throwing the paper back down on the table. “It’s a load of crap.”
    She turned on her heel and disappeared back upstairs as quickly as she had arrived, shouting obscenities and telling all the world how she would “have Rambler’s head on a platter for this.”
    I leaned down and turned the paper around so I could read it.
    “From our senior correspondent Gordon Rambler at Cheltenham” was printed under the headline. I read on:
    Josephine Kauri was at a loss for words after her eight-year-old Gold Cup prospect, Pharmacist, finished last in the Janes Bank Trophy yesterday at Cheltenham. The horse clearly did not stay the three-mile trip, and finished at a walk and in some distress. The Cheltenham stewards ordered that the horse be routine-tested.
    This is not the first time in recent weeks that the Kauris’ horses have seemingly run out of puff in big races. Her promising novice chaser Scientific suffered the same fate at Kempton in December, and questions were asked about another Kauri horse Oregon at