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Book and other guides to the philosophy of revolution and guerrilla warfare. Not that she ever shared that joke with her friends. God, no way. She didn’t think anybody else would see the funny side.
    They looked up in unison as she entered and she caught a guilty flicker lingering on Becky’s features. They had been talking about her. Or Jim. Sam pulled a wonky smile, glanced down at the floor to avoid their gaze and surveyed the coffin at their feet. A replacement for the one that had gone missing after they had parked it outside a pub and had come out an hour or so later to find someone else had walked off with it. It was their prop for the CND march this coming Sunday. Along with the funereal black jackets and top hats purchased cheaply from the local Oxfam shop. Pall-bearers. Coffin carriers for humanity in the event of mass death by superpower exchange of nuclear weapons. Armageddon. They had constructed the coffin mark two out of odd bits of four-by-four that Lee had cadged from his dad. All it needed now was a couple of daubs of black paint to cover the remaining stubborn patches of bare pine. And then it would look almost convincing. She joined in wordlessly with their efforts.
    Job done, Paul and Lee sauntered to the offie to buy a packet of Rizlas. Sam slumped on the floorboards next to Becky. ‘Do you fancy a free holiday? Do you want to stay in Orkney for a week?’
    Becky’s pupils expanded, registered interest. ‘What, with you?’
    ‘Yes. And Jim.’
    Becky pulled a face. ‘Not Liz?’
    ‘No. She’s busy. She has to write a paper. She’s asked me to go with him instead. Come with me – we could have a laugh.’
    ‘Not with Jim there I couldn’t. Anyway, I’m going to Greenham.’
    Becky went to Greenham regularly to visit the peace camp outside the RAF airbase that was being prepared for the arrival of American’s Ground Launched Cruise Missiles. Sam had been with Becky a few times. Sometimes they camped all weekend. Other times they borrowed her mum’s car, went up early, stayed for the day, and came home late. In a funny sort of way, it was a lovely place to stay. Greenham was as near to being in the middle of nowhere as it was possible to get in the southern well-heeled Home Counties of England. If you turned your back on the barbed wire, the military paraphernalia, the armed guards and the sinister observation tower, and just gazed out over the ancient common land, it was rather beautiful. Peaceful.
    The first time Sam had trekked to Greenham with Becky was December 1982. They had embraced the base. Held hands and joined the chain of women protestors encircling the sprawling perimeter fence. The second time they had sat down in the mud outside the main gate, refused to move when asked to do so by the police, and had been arrested along with twenty or so other women. Charged with obstruction. Brief appearance at Newbury Magistrates’ Court. Their appeal to the Geneva Conventions had been dismissed as irrelevant and they had been handed a thirty-pound fine. After that, Sam had lost her enthusiasm for the camp a bit. Becky hadn’t. Sam still went with Becky though, every now and then.
    Green Gate, the part of the peace camp where they usually stayed, was overlooked by the watchtower and was situated right next to the cruise missile hangars – grass-smothered silos rising ominously from the flat earth. Burial mounds for giants. The camp was a ramshackle collection of flapping tents and smoky fires, watery vegetable soup and meetings where nobody could speak unless they were holding the bloody conch shell. What bugged Sam about Greenham were the women with posh voices who wailed ‘take the toys from the boys’ and lectured the squaddies about their career choice through the perimeter fence. As if they had a choice. As if they weren’t sixteen-year-olds desperate for a job, scrabbling for an escape route. Like Jim must have been. Actually, what really bugged Sam about Greenham was the memory