Andy McNab: Agressor

As I walked out of the building for the last time, en route to pick up my bags from an apartment I was never going back to, I felt nothing but relief. Then I thought, fuck it; George could have tried a little harder to keep me.

There was a noise like a drunken hod carrier tap-dancing on the roof and I slowed down; I knew exactly what it was. Silky jumped out and stood on the running board. Her surfboard was coming unstrapped again; the wind was getting hold of it. It didn't matter how many extra bungees I bought her, she always insisted two were enough. She didn't think the fact we had to stop and do this three or four times a day undermined her argument.

She jumped back in, slammed the door and smiled at me, then started slapping her thighs to the music again as we drove on. The hippie thing was just a piss-take. We'd met at a boogie just outside Sydney. She was in her late twenties and had been travelling for the last six or seven years, working the bars, fruit-picking, hitching rides. It had started as a gap year, then she'd forgotten to go home. 'The beaches are better here than in Berlin.' She'd laughed. 'I bet the same happens to you.'

She'd hitched a ride north with me. Why not? It was only a couple of extra thousand miles in the magical mystery tour that she called her life. I was hoping for a little bit of that myself now.

Silky stopped slapping her thighs and went and dug around on the back seat for some water. She clambered back beside me, sorted out her towel, and passed me the bottle. 'So, who exactly is Charlie?' With the Libertines and the wind rush in full swing, she had to shout.

'Tindall? Known him for years. We worked together.'

She held back her hair with her free hand as she took a swig. 'Doing what? I thought you worked in a garage, not on a farm.'

'That's just what he does now. We used to do loads of stuff – a little bit of freefall, that sort of thing.'

'Is he still jumping? Is that what we're going to do?' She jerked her thumb at the five-cell Raider rig on the back seat.

'No idea, I just wanted to catch up with him while I'm here. You know how it is. You're really close to someone for a while, then you don't see or hear from him for years. Doesn't make you any less of a mate.' I picked up the map that lay between us and threw it at her. 'Except we have to find him first.' Four hours of long straight roads and one petrol stop later, and we were approaching a small town that sounded more like a tongue-twister than a place on the map. The instructions Charlie had emailed me took us past a store with a tin roof and three saddled horses tied to a rail. We took the track left immediately after a blue letter box at the roadside, made out of a milk churn nailed sideways to a post.

We turned a corner or two and a haphazard collection of red tin roofs and a water tower started to take shape in the distance through the heat haze. We had arrived at Charlie's farm. Well, his son-in-law's, but all the family had chipped in. They'd sold their houses and moved to Australia lock, stock and barrel. Once Charlie had reached the magical age of fifty-five, God's own country had welcomed him with open arms – as long as he took out private health insurance and didn't expect an Australian pension. His own had kicked in when he'd left the army, though it was hardly enough to keep him in caviar and champagne. Charlie had been offered a commission and taken it. As an officer, he could stay in an extra fifteen years, instead of getting binned at forty.

We drove down half a mile of track, post-and-rail fencing either side of us. About a hundred metres from the house, a woman on a horse, waving like a lunatic, overtook us. I couldn't see much of her face under her baseball cap, just this huge smile. I slowed, but she waved us on. She stopped at a gate and we carried on along the track.

'Who was that?' Silky didn't sound jealous. A perpetual traveller couldn't be.

'Probably Julie, the daughter. The last time I saw her she was about seventeen with a face full of zits. That would have been a good fifteen years ago.'

We pulled up by the house, alongside a weather-beaten Land Cruiser and a pick-up truck that had seen better days.

Charlie stood on the veranda to welcome us, a big man in a green T-shirt. With his cropped, dark red hair, he was on his way to doing a pretty good impression of a traffic light. I could see Silky trying not to stare too obviously at the grey socks he insisted on wearing under his sandals. 'Don't worry about it,' I said. 'It's a Brit thing.'

Hazel came out and slipped an arm through her husband's. She was dressed more or less the same as him, except her feet were bare. They both walked down the steps and out into the sun to greet us.

Charlie was heading for sixty but still looked as fit as a butcher's dog; there wasn't an ounce of lard on him, and that ginger hair somehow added to the healthy outdoor look. The sun hadn't been kind to him though; his skin was more burned than tanned. He thrust out a hand, small and out of proportion to the rest of him. He certainly hadn't shrunk with age; he was still a good two or three inches taller than me, but his grip wasn't as strong as it once had been. 'All right, lad? Glad you've come.' He kept eye contact to make sure I knew it.

We finished shaking and Hazel took over. I put an arm around Silky's shoulder and introduced her to them both.

'My name's really pronounced Silk-a,' she corrected me. 'But Nick calls me Silky. It's maybe easier if you do the same, otherwise you could confuse him.'

Hazel still had the same long, dark brown hair, and very clear, untanned skin. Her eyes had wrinkled with laughter when she was younger; I remembered her beaming behind the counter in Dixons in the precinct, always happy to use her employee discount for any Regiment guy who came in. They looked older and wiser now. Maybe sadder, too.

Hazel started to hustle us into the house. 'Sure you can't stay more than a night?'

'No, we've got to move on. There's a boogie in Melbourne on the ninth.'

Silky took Charlie's arm as we hit the steps up to the veranda. 'Do you still parachute? Nick said you used to.'

'No.' He gave me a questioning stare. 'Not any more.'

'While she's freshening up, lad – what does she know about work, besides the parachuting?'

It was a question Charlie had to ask. He didn't want to put his foot in it.

'Nothing. She thinks I'm a panel-beater.'

'With a boss who lets you take the year off? Or did you tell her you're retired? She's obviously got a bit of a soft spot for the elderly.'

I returned his grin just as Hazel came back into the living room with a tray of orange juice and glasses.

'I hope he's not trying to sell you a horse, Nick?'

A few notes of German drifted down the stairs as Silky relaxed under the shower.

'Nah, he's been giving me a hard time for not following his example.'

'But you're too young to retire…'

'I mean about not getting my hooks into a gorgeous girl like he did.'

Hazel smiled as she put the tray down. 'Has he told you about the lovely life we have now?'

'Not yet, but I'm sure it'll only be a matter of time!'

Hazel fussed around like a mother hen as she rearranged all the things neatly on the coffee table. Eventually she poured three glasses and we clinked them in an unspoken toast.

I pointed out of the window. 'Was that Julie I saw riding?'

Hazel's face lit up. 'She'll be over soon. She phoned to say she'd seen you.'

'The pair of them – like that, they are.' Charlie went to cross his fingers to show how entwined the two of them were, but couldn't quite manage it. His forefinger seemed to have a mind of its own. He brought his thumb and little finger into play instead, as if he was on the phone. 'And when they're not together, they're never off the blower. And Hazel emails the kids every day after school.'