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the street, Lieutenant, before I allow you in my company.’
    Sholt’s obsequious smile only widened and became more hideous. ‘Begging pardon, sir, but I’ve already put in for the transfer, sir. None of the other companies need a captain, sir. Only C company, sir. And it’s Captain now, sir,’ he pointed to his pips. ‘Promoted in the field, sir.’
    Will’s face turned to granite, and he leaned in close. Eve couldn’t help but notice that all the other officers had gone quite silent.
    ‘Oh no, Lieutenant ,’ Will said deliberately, ‘you won’t beg my pardon on this. You’ve a list a mile long of things to beg my pardon on, and they all come higher than this. And one day, Lieutenant Sholt, you will beg indeed.’
    Sholt’s horrible smile grew a fraction more horrible before he said, ‘It’s up to the good Colonel now, isn’t it, sir? Newly promoted too, sir. Colonel Harker – oh no, sir,’ his smile turned, if possible, a little more sly, ‘that’s not her name any more, is it, sir? Changed back to her maiden name, I couldn’t help but notice. No longer using your name, is she, sir?’
    Will looked like he was going to punch Sholt, and Eve couldn’t blame him. Then what the horrible little man had said penetrated her brain.
    She stared at the crown on Will’s shoulder.
    ‘Don’t you have something else to do, Sholt?’ he said, making the man’s name sound like a bad word.
    ‘Yes sir, Major Harker, sir,’ said Sholt, saluting greasily and oiling away, and Will turned back to her with a face like thunder.
    Conversation suddenly resumed around them.
    ‘Well, he was a horrible little man,’ Eve said brightly to Will. ‘Not one of your friends?’
    ‘If there was a way to blast him off the face of the planet I’d do it,’ he said, and the look on his face frightened Eve.
    ‘Can’t you just order him to take a long walk off a short bridge?’ she said. ‘I mean, you are a higher rank than him, aren’t you? Major Harker.’
    He scowled and threw himself into the chair by the overburdened desk, lighting up a new cigarette and pulling on it furiously.
    ‘Why did you lie to me?’ Eve said, lowering herself into the chair opposite him.
    Harker ran his hands through his already dishevelled hair. ‘I didn’t lie,’ he said.
    ‘You said your name was Will–’ Eve began.
    ‘It is.’ He gave her an unconvincing smile and poked gingerly at the debris on the desk. ‘There’s a sign around here somewhere.’
    Wordlessly, the man at the next desk reached to the floor and picked up a desk sign. Into the slot at the front a piece of card had been inserted with a typed name on it. He handed it to Eve, who read Maj. Wm. Harker . It had a slightly temporary look about it.
    ‘You let me think you were a rank-and-file soldier,’ she said, edging the sign on to the desk, from which it promptly fell off again.
    ‘Would you have made friends with a major? Would you have told him what you were really doing with that glider…’ he waved his hand, ‘thingy?’
    Eve scowled. ‘Yes,’ she said, and honesty forced her to add, ‘maybe.’
    There was silence between them. Eve waved away some of Harker’s smoke. ‘Thank you for saving my life,’ she said, unable to inject much gratitude into it.
    Harker dragged on his cigarette. ‘Weren’t going to let you drown, was I?’
    ‘Well, I don’t know.’ He didn’t talk like a major, Eve thought. Matter of fact, he didn’t look like one, either. Majors ought to be stout, hearty fellows with greying handlebar moustaches, who said things like, ‘What ho!’ and called everyone Old Stick.
    A major shouldn’t be a man in his thirties who looked like a vagrant, talked like a steelworker and smoked as if it was the only thing keeping him alive.
    Harker looked up as a woman approached, her frizzy hair battled into a plait, her face bare of make-up. Eve itched to tell her to get some decent conditioner, but judging by the stuff she’d found in the