Andy McNab: Boy soldier

'You need to learn to control your temper, Watts. And contrary to what you believe, family connections still play a very important part in the army. Your own, for example.'

'Mine?' Danny looked as bewildered as he felt. 'I don't know what you're talking about.'

This time there was no smile. The man got up from his chair, walked round to Danny, and sat back against the desk. 'When did you last see your grandfather?'

'My-'

'Fergus Watts?'

'I… I've never seen him. Ever.'

'Are you certain about that?' The laid-back, laconic style had gone; Danny's interrogator was now firing in questions like rounds from an AK-47. 'Has he tried to make contact?'

'Not with me, no. And what's he got to do with this?'

'Not with you? What do you mean by that?' He leaned closer. 'Answer me, Watts.'

Danny could smell the coffee on the man's breath. His own mouth went dry. It wasn't meant to be like this. 'Someone contacted social services and asked about me, when I was sixteen. I don't know who it was. If it was my granddad he never got in touch.'

The man stared into Danny's eyes. His look was almost hypnotic, probing. Finally he seemed satisfied. He moved away and went back to his chair. 'Fergus Watts betrayed his country and his regiment. You knew he was SAS?'

Danny shook his head. 'I knew he was in the army, that's all.'

'There are certain matters we need to clear up with your grandfather, and if you could help us in any way…' He picked up the application form again. 'Well… there will be other RCBs.'

The black-and-white photograph was yellowed and faded. Three young men in army uniforms, their arms around each other's shoulders. They were smiling, happy. Young comrades.

The photograph was the only link Danny had ever had to his grandfather. He looked at it again and then tore it down the centre and threw the two halves towards the already full wastepaper basket on the far side of the room. They missed and landed on the carpet.

Elena was standing in the doorway of Danny's bedroom. 'You might regret that.'

Danny sat on his bed, his face dark and sullen. 'Why? The only thing he's ever done for me is stop me getting into the army.'

'Don't sulk, Danny, it doesn't suit you.'

'Tough.' The journey back from Wiltshire hadn't improved his temper. He was seething, as well as sulking. 'The guy kept asking questions. Did I know where my granddad was? Was I certain he'd never been here?'

Elena glanced at the two halves of the torn photograph lying on the carpet. She could still make out the smiling faces. 'But what do they want him for? After all this time?'

'He wouldn't tell me. Just said they needed to talk to him.'

'Well, don't you want to know?'

'I don't want to know anything about him. I hate his guts.'

The sound of voices drifted up from the floor below and Elena shifted uneasily in the doorway. 'I'd better go down. Dave the Rave's gonna go ballistic if he catches me up here.'

Danny got up from the bed. 'I might as well look in the evening paper, see if there are any jobs going for army rejects. Part time at Tesco won't do any more, will it?'

'But what about your A levels?'

'What's the point now?' said Danny, brushing past and going towards the staircase at the end of the landing. Elena grabbed the two halves of the photograph from the floor, slipped them into the back pocket of her jeans and followed him.

They lived at Foxcroft, a privately run hostel for teenagers in Camberwell, south-east London. Danny had been there for five years. It was home, or the closest anywhere had been to home for as long as he could remember.

His parents had both been killed in a car crash when he was six. Danny was in the car too, but he had no memory of the crash. Not even in his dreams. With no relatives around to look after him, he'd become a 'kid in care', a social services statistic. He'd been farmed out to four sets of foster parents over the years, but none had worked out.

It wasn't that Danny was a troublemaker. He was independent, he liked his own space, and fitting into other people's idea of family life wasn't for him. He'd lost his own family and he didn't want to be part of someone else's. So when he got the chance of a place at Foxcroft he'd jumped at it. It suited him.

Elena had been there for eighteen months, moving in soon after her mum died. There was no one else for her either; her dad had gone back to Nigeria years before, telling Elena and her mum he was going to make his fortune. He'd always been full of big ideas. Big ideas, but no result.

Danny and Elena had hit it off straight away; they just clicked, even though Elena was a year younger. And at first Danny thought they might be more than mates but Elena soon put him right on that score. 'I want a friend, Danny.' she told him when he made a clumsy attempt at kissing her. 'I'm not interested in going out with anyone. Not yet, anyway.'

So Danny settled for friendship, even though he still really fancied Elena. And sometimes he thought she fancied him too. But maybe that was just what he wanted to think.

Elena was confident, clever and sharp. No one intimidated her, and she knew how to handle people. And that included Danny, who was looking guilty as she joined him at the top of the stairs.

'I didn't even ask about your GCSE results.'

'You're right, you didn't.'

'Look, I'm sorry. So tell me then.'

Elena smiled. 'You want me to be modest or just go for it?'

Danny laughed. Elena always did have a way of making him laugh. 'When were you ever modest?'

'In that case, I did brilliant. Six A stars and four As brilliant. Boff or what? Now, let's go down.'

Elena was a genius, her school's star pupil, but definitely no boff. She didn't spend hours and hours with her face buried in textbooks or bore you with endless streams of useless information. But she didn't mind letting her friends know how brilliant she was. In the nicest possible way, of course.

Foxcroft was an old building. Victorian, with three main floors and an attic where the below stairs maids would once have had their poky little bedrooms. At some time between the First and Second World Wars it had been the home of a government minister.

You wouldn't have thought so now. It was faded. Sad. The paintwork was flaking, the boiler down in the cellar wheezed and spluttered like an old man after a lifetime of too many unripped fags, the sash windows jammed in their runners, and when the wind blew the whole place seemed to groan and shiver. But there was something about Foxcroft that almost everyone who lived there liked. It was reassuring. Something to do with old glory that refused to lie down and die.

Danny and Elena made their way down the stairs to the first floor. The staircase was broad and grand, with a dark oak banister and a threadbare carpet that might once have been red. Boys' bedrooms were on the second floor, girls' were on the first. Telly room and living rooms were on the ground floor.

Dave the Rave appeared on the first-floor landing just as Danny and Elena arrived. There was no chance of slipping quietly by. Dave was a huge bloke. He'd been a rugby player with Saracens in his younger days and might have made it into the England team had it not been for a back injury.

But he was all right; you knew where you stood with Dave the Rave, and right now they knew they were in trouble. Dave was scowling. 'Elena, you know you're not meant to be on the boys' landing.'

'Sorry, Dave, I was giving Danny the good news about my GCSEs.'

'You can do that downstairs. You two are supposed to set an example here.'

Danny and Elena didn't usually step out of line at Foxcroft. They respected Dave Brooker and his wife Jane. They were fair, they didn't try to be like parents, or teachers, or even mates. They were just Dave and Jane: they owned the place and they made the rules.