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she is about as proud of her father as it is possible not to be.
    Karen was the innocent result of what, on my part at least, was a brief, inconsequential affair with an American nurse called Nancy Goulden; close to sixteen years ago in Durban. I had been wounded in a border action against nationalist insurgents and sent to Durban’s military hospital to have a bullet removed from my thigh. It was during the convalescent period after the operation that I met, and subsequently bedded the impressionable 23 year old Virginian, in Africa on a field mission for some stateside charity organization. It was a long time before I realized just how impressionable Nancy actually was. She had been a virgin which, at the time, had pleased my ego greatly. Some men are born thick and stupid; others have to work hard at it. Both were true of me.
    When I returned to active service I had some pretty lewd tales to tell of my deft handling of my first virgin in years. And I told them. Reveling in it. And whilst I was telling them, Nancy was carrying Karen, and writing me daily letters which I would receive periodically by the bundle. I did not read many of them, but in those that I did glance through there was never a mention of her pregnancy. Eventually I did not even bother opening them. I did reply once, but only to tell her that she was wasting her time, and her life. I was a mercenary soldier, I told her, and would never be anything else. But the letters kept coming, even following me on up to Angola, my next country of employment. To my lasting shame those bundles of letters became a drag even to toss onto the nearest fire. As I say; some men have to work hard at being stupid.
    Then, two years after Durban, and via a mutual acquaintance, I received a photograph. It was of a baby wrapped in a hand-crocheted shawl. Nancy had written the words Nancy McCann in one corner. Nothing else. No letter. Nothing. And the man who had delivered it could tell me nothing either.
    My first thoughts were, to say the least of it, uncharitable; the girl was trying it on. It was someone else’s baby. The real father had abandoned them and Nancy was merely looking for someone to name the baby after. And I waited for the crunch letter to arrive.
    But no such letter did arrive. In fact, no more letters reached me at all. And that was when I began to brood. Could the child be mine? And, more to the point, did I give a damn?
    Stupid doesn’t cover it.
    Imbecilic comes closer to the mark.
    I wrote Nancy’s last address; what the hell was it all about? I received no reply. I wrote again. Still no reply. I brooded on. A shade too late, to be sure, but I brooded.
    Then, four years later, when I was stationed at the mercenary base at Kinshasa, they arrived at the gates, out of the blue, mother and child. In the middle of hell on wheels!  It was an experience well outside my comprehension.
    Nancy insisted she wanted nothing from me. She only wanted me to see our daughter in the flesh. They were on their way back to the States, where they were going to live with Nancy’s parents, and the stopover - stopover! - had not been hard to arrange. Don’t worry, she kept insisting, they were just passing through, “...but I had to let you see her, just once...”
    At all events, in the four days they were there - I had arranged a room for them in the officer’s quarters - I came to realize the truth; that Karen was truly my own flesh and blood.
    Fate has a hand in everything.
    On the afternoon of that fourth day the Simbas attacked in force. The garrison held but was blasted to hell and back. Nancy was buried beneath several tons of rubble. Karen survived. In a nutshell, I resigned my commission for a year and took her back to South Africa. I tried to do it properly, as God’s my witness. But I just didn’t have it in me. I still don’t. Karen ended up in a foster home and I ended up back in the mercenary business. Eventually I managed to place her in a well known School