For one thing he felt certain he’d seen her somewhere before, but no matter how much he racked his brains, he couldn’t think where. It could be that he’d dreamed about her when bone weary following yet another push, another battle full of noise, blood and bodies blasted to pieces before his eyes. Mary Anne was the sort of girl most of the soldiers dreamed of in their rest moments – the girls they’d left behind, the girls of their dreams. Other soldiers dreamed of their mothers. He’d never dreamed much of his mother or of the girls he’d left behind because there hadn’t been any. As for his mother, she’d been a poor thing, unable to stand up for herself against his father’s temper and the cuffs and blows that came with it. Once he’d got over the ‘found under the gooseberry bush’ thing and knew the truth about how babies came to be, it surprised him that regardless of his father’s bullying, his mother produced one child after another. He vaguely recalled having two or three younger siblings, if they’d survived the deprivation that is; he didn’t know for sure if they had.
