'How do you know?'

'I just know. And then everything will be weird.'

'Does it have to be?'

'It will be.' She was so mad she was crying now. 'And what about you and me? We can't do it now. She's ruined it.'

'I don't see how.'

'Because she turned our caravan into a knocking shop, that's why. It's like a bloody brothel. She's cheapened it. She's ruined everything.'

Rob was laughing now, and that made her madder.

'What's so funny?'

'Sounds like an excuse to me ...'

She hit him, hard, in the chest. Once, twice, and then in a series of flapping slaps, until he took her hands and held them away from his body. 'Oy! Stop it.'

The rigidity went out of her arms, and she crumpled against him. 'Don't you know what I mean? Don't you get it at all?'

'I get it. I think you're being a bit over the top, but I get it. He's your brother, you're protective of him, you're mad at Amelia for doing something that might hurt him, you're mad at her for turning the van into a ... what was it a "knocking shop"?' He giggled again.

She looked up at his face, half laughing and half crying now. 'Don't laugh at me.'

'I love you, you daft cow.'

They sat that way for a few minutes. 'I'll kill her.'

'Kill her in the morning, will you?'

'How about my place?' He winked, and pointed his thumb behind him.

'Haven't got a toothbrush. It's in there ...' She gestured behind her.

'I'll let you use mine.'

'Just to sleep?'

'Just to sleep. Don't worry. I'll keep taking the bromide.' He kissed her on the forehead.

'What's that?'

'Bromide. It's a drug. They used to put it in soldiers' tea, in the Second World War, allegedly it diminishes libido. Stopped them all going mad with sexual desire while they were supposed to be concentrating on fighting.'

'Can you get me some?'

It wasn't the night they'd hoped for, but in its own way it was amazing. They were lying in a bed together for the first time, in just their underwear, their bodies touching all the way down. There was a reverence in the way Rob touched her, once they were like this, that made her feel unbelievable. He knew the mood was destroyed for her, and his touch was relatively chaste, but she could feel everything he felt for her in it, and in his eyes on her in the semi-darkness. She felt every breath, her head on his chest as it rose and fell. Her leg across his lap, her knee bent up, and his arm around her waist, gently stroking her back and side. Extraordinary. Falling asleep together. It was such an intimate thing to do. In the morning, lying beside him, watching him sleep, his eyelids flickering in dreams, Susannah wasn't sure that it wasn't enough, for now.

She was still furious with Amelia. Amelia knew it, too, when she sheepishly stepped out of the caravan several hours after Matt, Rob and Susannah had been up, Alastair trailing behind her, both of them unable to meet Susannah's eyes. Amelia had a towel over her shoulder, and her washbag under her arm, and announced to no one in particular that she was going to shower in the block two or three hundred yards behind them.

Susannah followed her. 'What the hell do you think you're playing at?'

Amelia rolled her eyes. 'I knew you'd be like this.'

'Like what?'

'All judgmental.'

'Is that what you think I am?'

'Aren't you?'

'I think you made a big mistake last night.'

'Why?'

'Because you don't like him. How many times have you said so to me? That you don't fancy him. That you're not interested in guys that are interested in you. He's the ultimate guy interested in you. He's been interested in you since you were both kids. How could you do this to him?'

'We did it to each other, actually. And it was nice.' Amelia was trying not to laugh.

Susannah punched her, hard, in the arm, but then she was laughing, too. 'I'm still angry with you. Just because I'm laughing doesn't mean I'm not.'

'Don't be. It's none of your business, Suze. I love you, but you can be a nosy old cow. We don't all want to do things the way you and Rob do. We're not all so serious.'

'Is that what Al says?'

'I presumed you'd noticed that we weren't talking much.'

Susannah wrinkled her nose with distaste. 'That's what I mean. You don't know what he's thinking. For all you know, he's sitting back there thinking he's just embarked on a relationship a relationship with a girl he's had a thing for for a million years. You're over here thinking you're on to a good little holiday fling.'

'You don't know what he's thinking.'

'And nor do you!' Susannah's voice was high and shrill now.

They'd reached the showers, Susannah having followed her friend round the brown fence that separated the sexes, and Amelia had turned the water on. She held one hand under the flow until it got hot, and then peeled off her T-shirt and tracksuit bottoms, hanging them on pegs. Underneath she was naked. Susannah had seen her naked countless times before, but she'd never seen her naked after she'd spent the night shagging her brother, and she turned away, newly embarrassed. Amelia put her towel on Susannah's shoulders and stood under the water, running her fingers through her hair as it got wet.

'I can't believe you. You're really shameless, you know that?'

Amelia was lathering her hair now. 'Look, Suze. We had fun. That's all. He's not an idiot. There were no declarations. There won't be. He's going back to Exeter. I'm going to university. It's fun. Not everything has to mean something. We're not all you. I promise, promise, promise not to hurt him. Okay? But I'm not going to stop just because you want me to.'

She didn't either. Rob and Susannah spent the next three nights in the boys' caravan with Matt, while Alastair and Amelia 'shacked up', as Matt put it, in the girls'. An uneasy truce, brokered by an appeasing Alastair and a calming Rob, broke out in the camp. But it had ruined things for Susannah.

Present Day.

Susannah smiled as they passed the turning for Minehead. The early autumn sunshine was bright, after a few days of grey rain, and the foliage was beautiful. Tonight she'd be sleeping at Babington House, in a luxury double in the Stable Block not in a slightly mildewed caravan beneath 600 thread count cotton sheets, instead of a scratchy nylon sleeping bag. It would cost more quite a lot more, she suspected for this one night at the hotel than both caravans had cost for the best part of a week. What a difference a couple of decades made. She wondered ruefully whether she'd have half as much fun, but she already knew the answer, really.

She'd booked the night for her and Douglas it was a belated birthday gift for him. He was notoriously difficult to shop for, and she'd felt slightly inspired by the idea. They'd been once before, a couple of summers ago, for the wedding of a partner at Doug's firm, and they'd been meaning to come back for ages. It had been one of the things they hadn't got round to. One of a long list of things.

They'd have dinner this evening in the relaxed and stylish dining room. Before, she'd tried to interest him in a treatment in the famous Cowshed spa, but Douglas was not a treatment kind of a guy. He'd packed a stack of paper in with his change of clothes and toiletries, and told her she should go that he'd be busy most of the afternoon. She bit back irritation. One weekend without any work, for God's sake. It didn't seem a lot to ask. Then it occurred to her that perhaps he was hiding behind the paper.

She left him in the beautiful, airy room, and crept downstairs in a voluminous white robe. There was a time, she vaguely remembered, when a hotel bed in the middle of the afternoon would have proved irresistible to both of them, and they'd have rolled around in it for hours, sating themselves before dinner and then, probably, afterwards as well. Douglas hadn't so much as looked tempted. And she'd thought of Rob. What he'd promised to do to her in a double bed, one day. One day that had never come.

So, a massage seemed like a good option. She tried, as the young masseuse expertly pummelled and kneaded the knots away from her neck and shoulders, to think about nothingness, but it was impossible. She thought about Rob, and the holiday all those years ago. She thought about Douglas, sitting upstairs, and she thought about Amelia, her poor friend, facing a ghastly journey that, she knew, already exhausted both of them even though they had barely started. She thought about how much the room, and the dinner and the massage, were all going to cost, and about whether or not she and Douglas were going to have sex this evening. They should, shouldn't they? You came to a country house hotel with that in mind. It would be a problem if they didn't, wouldn't it? Amelia would definitely say so.

At dinner, Douglas, who didn't seem any more relaxed by his afternoon with legal documents than she was after her massage, ordered chicken with a pungent garlic sauce. It felt like a sign. Then he had a cheese plate and a glass of port. Which seemed more like an open invitation to indigestion and possibly a migraine than a prelude to lovemaking. She was making too much of this, she knew. Putting too much pressure on herself, and probably on him too. But she couldn't relax. She compared everything that he said and did with everything that she wished he would say and do, and, each time, found him wanting.

Conversation didn't flow. It was as if they were in a maze, and every route they took led to a thick hedge of potential misunderstanding. The kids, Amelia's illness, even a summer holiday. They were on the cusp of scratchiness with each other, and she kept making about-turns in the chat, trying to avert a crisis. Everything felt forced and disjointed. She tried flirting, but he seemed oblivious, and she seemed ridiculous, even to herself. By sharp contrast, the couple at the table next to them had clearly spent the afternoon in bed. They sat perilously close at their table, hand in hand. He fed her from his fork, and she looked at him as if she'd much rather be eating him. He kept bending his head to whisper things in her ear, and Susannah just bet she knew what he was saying. Douglas noticed them, too, but threw them a glance of distaste rather than the wistful envy Susannah felt must be etched on her own face.

They hadn't always been like this, had they? She knew they hadn't. The question was, could they ever get it back again ... ? Whatever 'it' had been.

Upstairs in their room, the housekeeper had turned the bed down. Susannah felt a sense of doom about the evening. Sex didn't start once you got into bed. At least, good sex didn't. It should have started at dinner. Maybe they'd take a bath in the beautiful and vast tub ... maybe ... maybe ...

But Douglas had brushed his teeth and was climbing into bed. When she joined him, she made one last attempt at intimacy. She raised herself on her elbow and kissed him, although he smelt garlicky, but their noses bumped awkwardly against each other, as though they hadn't known each other eight minutes, let alone eight years, and Douglas's glasses got smudged. He took them off, folding them neatly on the bedside table, and then turned back to her, returning the kiss, a hand on her breast. She tried to feel lustful, but before she had a chance, his hand was under her nightdress, far too soon, and his probing fingers found her dry and unyielding. He made a small noise disappointment, irritation? then kissed her perfunctorily.

'I expect I'm tired.' She offered excuses too tired, indeed, to tell him what she really felt.

'Yes. Me, too. Tired and full.' He seemed satisfied. 'Lovely dinner. Maybe in the morning ...'

Lying beside him, twelve inches and a thousand miles away, with her nightie pulled back, and her arms by her sides, Susannah listened to his breathing become slower and deeper. Sadness washed over her, and she felt a tear escape from the corner of her eye and trickle down the side of her face into her ear.

But in the morning, when Susannah opened her eyes more refreshed from her sleep than she had thought she might be, the space Doug had occupied was empty, and she heard the sound of the shower running.

1990.

Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990. When news of the invasion broke, Susannah was on a cheap camping holiday with Amelia on Mykonos. She saw it on the front of a two-day-old Daily Mail in a cafe by the harbour. She didn't immediately connect it to Rob. Rob was on one of a succession of different training courses, having graduated from Cranwell. And he connected it to himself immediately.

She'd gone to his graduating ceremony earlier in the year with Frank and Lois. She'd taken the train home from university the night before, loaded with laundry, and stayed at Mum and Dad's. Then the three of them had driven up in Frank's car. No parents could have been prouder. They knew an inordinate amount about Cranwell their knowledge of the course Rob had been on, and of the traditions and rituals of the establishment, was almost encyclopedic. 'There's a carpet, you know, Susannah, that cadets can't walk on until they graduate!'

There'd been a dinner, and a ball that evening after the graduation ceremony. Frank and Lois had left her there they were going to stay in a bed and breakfast in town and take her back down the next morning. Susannah had hired a ball dress a tight black strapless bodice with a voluminous white satin short skirt. She felt unlike herself in it. The dinner was vaguely civilized, but the ball was anything but. Whatever Cinderella fantasies Susannah may have entertained were quickly supplanted by drunken graduating officers and their even more drunken girlfriends. The music was too loud. Rob seemed different.

She had thought, wondered, before she came, whether this night might be the night. But she knew early on that it wouldn't be. It wasn't right. He'd been drinking. He had a swagger about him she didn't remember and didn't much care for. She began to wonder why she'd bothered to come, and to wish she hadn't said she would stay. Maybe, she thought, watching him down two pints in quick succession, their time had passed. Maybe they were moving in different directions.

She stayed in his narrow single bed that night. He slept, snoring, on the floor next to her, too drunk to even try anything except a slurred apology and a sloppy kiss. The next morning, when Frank picked her up, Lois pinched her cheek and winked at her. 'You kids have a good time, did you?' She really hadn't.

When she told Amelia about it, her friend laughed it off. 'You're such a Pollyanna, Suze, you know that? Of course he got drunk. He'd just been through, what was it ... ? Four months, more even, of pure hell. Did you not see An Officer and a Gentleman?'

'There were no gentlemen there as far as I noticed. Him included.'

'Ah, go on. You said he gave you the bed and took the floor ...'

She didn't see him again, after that, until Easter, when they were both home for a few days. Their timing wasn't great. When she was free, he was away, and on the rare occasions when he was around, she always seemed to be somewhere else. It frustrated them both, though she thought it was slightly worse for him than for her, and she felt bad about it. And then, back home, where everything had begun, confoundingly, things were lovely again. He apologized for what he called 'the Cranwell debacle'. He said he'd been tired, and triumphant and too susceptible to peer pressure. She said sorry right back. She'd been a prude, she said. She hadn't fully appreciated how hard it had been for him.

They had a few gorgeous days together and it felt like the old days again. His swagger was gone, and by the time she went back to college, and he went off to the next course, her doubts had disappeared, and she believed, again, that they could make it. That they would make it.

By the time she and Amelia were back from Mykonos that September, with their Sun-In streaks and their hard-won tans, the military PR machine was in full swing, but it was still difficult for Susannah to engage seriously with the idea that it might somehow directly affect her. She couldn't believe Britain would go to war, and she certainly couldn't or wouldn't believe that, if they did, Rob would have to go, too. She went back to university in October, and normal service was resumed.

When Rob first told her he was shipping out to the Gulf, it seemed surreal to her. Men didn't 'go to war' it was the stuff of film, and books. Too young to have anything but the vaguest memory of the Falklands Prince Andrew in his helicopter and crowds waving flags at Portsmouth Harbour as ships came in Susannah couldn't conceive of it. Couldn't grasp that Rob was flying out deployed with his kit in a pack, to fight in a war.

For Amelia, it might have seemed impossibly romantic and thrillingly dramatic. For her fellow undergraduates, it barely registered, apparently, except as fodder for a bar debate over Western intervention protecting oil supplies under the cover of defending freedom a political issue for those proactive or pretentious enough to want to discuss one over their pints.

For Susannah, it was terrifying.

Years later, flying through Atlanta, the big US hub for United Airlines, just after 9/11 had started the Second Gulf War, she'd been moved to tears watching soldiers in their desert camouflage uniforms, changing planes on their way to and from the fighting, children staring and old men nodding their respect. The feeling never really went away.

Rob could be killed. That was her constant, stark thought at first. For weeks and weeks it hit her, the simple anxiety, as she went about her own unchanged daily routine, sitting in lectures, cycling through town, in the cinema, in the shower. He could be killed. He could already be dead.

She worried that she'd wasted their time together. The Minehead holiday, the Cranwell ball not seeing him the whole summer after their few golden days together at Easter. It all felt pointless and silly to her now.

Thin blue aerogrammes arrived from him every few days. At first, she was happy to receive them. They felt like tissuey proof that he was still alive nonsense, she knew, as they took at least a week to arrive, which meant you could get a letter from someone already six days dead. You could hear that news and still get a letter from the dead. And she wouldn't even hear the news. It would be Frank and Lois who would get a phone call, or a knock on the door. They would have to walk across the common, once they'd found the strength to think straight, and tell her own parents. Her dad would have to drive to Bristol, find her, pull her out of a lecture hall, or wake her up in her room. In her dreams she imagined his mouth shaping the words.

But then the tone of the letters changed. So did the length.

In the early letters, Rob's messy handwriting covered every inch of the available space with information about his mates, the food, how hot it was. How he loved her, how he lay in his cot at night and dreamed of her.

The letters reconnected them. It was like the old days again the days of first being together they were sharing their thoughts and dreams again.

Thank you for your letters. The funny thing is that you're so far away, and I can't see you, or touch you, but when I read them I feel so close to you. It sounds weird to say you can be lonely here when you can never be alone, and something is always happening. But I get so lonely. I can hear your voice in my head, when I read them, you know. Your laugh. And it helps.

The letters were all she had. Phone calls were impossible. At the beginning she called Frank and Lois often they were more likely than she was to have heard his voice, know his news.

One night, she called later than usual. She'd been in the library, working on an essay, and she felt a sudden urge, walking back to her hall, to hear that he was okay. It was almost too late to call, but she knew Lois wouldn't mind. But they didn't answer immediately she was about to put the receiver down when she heard Lois's voice, which sounded strange. She felt a flutter of panic in the pit of her stomach.

'He's had a bad time, we think. He cried, tonight, when he called ...' Lois was tearful herself. She couldn't speak.

Susannah heard Frank tell her to go and sit down, to drink her tea, before his deep voice came on the phone. 'Susannah? Frank. I'm sorry about that. She's a bit upset.'

'What's happened?'

'We don't know. He can't really say.'

'Is he okay?'

'He's fine. I think Lois was right he's had a bad day is all, love.'