As usual, the RAF C130 flight back from Africa was as boring as fuck and very uncomfortable. Anyone complaining about airline seats should be forced to spend nine hours sat on webbing straps. Finally, at just gone midnight, we touched down at RAF Brize Norton to the west of London. There were no TV cameras or flag-waving wives and girlfriends to greet us, just bored looking RAF movements staff and a line of buses – my unit hadn’t officially been in Sierra Leone.

By 0500 on that July Friday morning, we were de-bussing at our barracks and dragging kit off Army trucks. “Listen in!” screamed the RSM, “Weapons to the armoury, make sure they’re well oiled, sort your shit then get some scran down your necks. Parade at 1400 in the gym for the CO’s address.”

We were well aware of the routine but RSMs like to shout and bluster. The CO rambled on for half an hour – great work, credit to the regiment, no discussing our deployment, blah, blah. I only perked up when he said, “Three weeks leave.” Very fucking generous. After a five-month deployment where we worked 7 days a week, that’s the equivalent of a civvy working seven days a week and getting two hours off on a Sunday afternoon. Still, better than fuck all.

Most of the lads were heading off to parents, wives or girlfriends. I had none of those. My parents were dead and my girlfriend dumped me two months into the deployment. I phoned my sister, Steph, who lived near Norwich in deepest Norfolk. We’d never really got on but she was all I had. When I was eight and she was sixteen we lived with our parents on a farm just outside of Cambridge. We didn’t own the farm, our father was a basic farm labourer and we lived in a small cottage that came with the job. He was proud of our working-class roots and wouldn’t hear of us going to university. Steph planned her escape. One warm evening in June, aged sixteen years and four months, she got permission for a sleepover at her friend’s house. She and Emma raided the wardrobe of Emma’s older sister, put on make-up and hit the town. By midnight they were in the apartment of two wealthy students being fucked stupid. One of them, Charles, did the right thing and married Steph two days after her s*******nth birthday and a few weeks before baby Eloise was born.

Charles was a twat but a rich twat. His father was President of a merchant bank and owned a dozen sugar beet farms that fed the vast sugar factory outside Norwich.

“Hello, sis,” I said when she answered.

“I thought you were fucking dead,” she said by way of greeting.

“They’d have told you,” I said, “You’re listed as my next of kin.”

“Hmmph,” she grunted, “Not even a fucking postcard?”

“Weren’t allowed, you know the score.”

“Oh yeah, superman in his secret regiment. Why couldn’t you have joined the Catering Corps like a normal bloke?”