12 Seconds (#1 in Military series)

Chapter 29

Chapter 29

 

“What you say in the next few minutes will decide the rest of your career in Her Majesty’s Navy.”

The words struck her with the same amount of pain and ferocity as a bullet.

Her body swayed ever so slightly as it felt like a swift punch had been delivered to her gut, her lips parting in shock.

Memories of sitting at her bedroom desk, forging her doctor’s signature suddenly flashed through her mind with a torrent of regret.

“Sir-” Julia tried to speak but, although she did not know what she was going to say or if she could even manage to assembly words into a sentence, her words were drowned out by the voice of General Ridgeway.

“See, Sergeant Reynolds, this is the dilemma we have . . .” Ridgeway reached out and began to fiddle with the piece of radio that lay on the desk beside him.

Julia watched as his fingers spun the dial back and forth, twisting it until it broke and he moved on to the next contraption that would amuse him for the next couple of minutes, before that too collapsed.

But as she watched, Julia’s mind was trying to conjure a suitable excuse for forging Dr Barter’s signature, a felony in itself, and tricking her way back into the military.

The more she looked at it, Julia was nothing more than a stowaway that had just been caught where she shouldn’t be.

Jules thought of how far she had come as she saw the end of her adventure draw nearer. She had remembered so much more than she had planned, among other things.

She had not planned to like it here- no, love it here. She had not planned on becoming fast friends with her comrades, or falling back in love with Marcus.

But the one thing that hurt more than the rest of it, was that she had not planned to feel like this when the time came for her to leave.

She felt terrible, beret, relieved, angry and sad all at the same time.

She saw herself back working in the library in Bishop’s Green, picking up saucers of milk that Batty Beatrice had left for her imaginary cat.

Julia wondered who was picking up the saucers whilst she was here, or did the library now smell of putrid milk rather than old books?

“Sergeant Reynolds?”

Well, Jules vowed that if she was discharged - although she would have to be on active service to be discharged – that she would never go back to working in Bishop’s Green corner library.

She would find something far, far away from that little village of hypocrisy.

“Sergeant Reynolds?” A voice grew insistent, shocking Julia out of her thoughts.

Looking up, startled, Julia found Strong and Ridgeway both watching her with disapproval.

Re-straightening her shoulders, Jules clasped her hands tightly behind her back and stared straight ahead.

“Did you hear what I said, Reynolds?” That was the General.

Julia swallowed, “No, Sir.”

A tense silence passed, where every possible punishment for insubordination flipped through her mind in a matter of seconds.

But it seemed her imagination had run away again when the next sound she heard was the gurgling sound of General Ridgeway’s laughter.

It was such a strange noise that Julia had to look at his face to make sure he was laughing and not dying.