PART 1
I opened one of the bags.
My boots were inside. The exact pair I had been wearing on the other side of the world three days earlier.
Another bag held my clothes. Hoodies. Jeans. Old PT shirts.
Somebody had packed up my entire life while I was away, and done it badly.
Things folded neatly for the first few inches and then shoved — which means whoever started it was being careful and then stopped being careful about two minutes in.
There were four bags. I counted them before I counted anything else, because that is what I do.
Then my mother spoke from behind me.
She said: you're back earlier than we expected.
I turned round.
Lisbeth stood there as though the scene in front of me was completely normal. My father was behind her with his arms crossed.
I said: I told you my return date.
She said: well, things changed.
My father stepped closer and said: we needed to make some adjustments while you were gone.
Adjustments.
That was the word they decided on, and I would like whoever reads this to sit with it for a second, because somebody chose it in advance.
I looked past them into the rest of the house, and this is the part that took longest to process.
It was not that my things were gone. I expected something; nine months is nine months.
It was that it had been done well. Properly. With a budget.
Somebody had painted the hallway. Properly — two coats, skirting done, the radiator taken off the wall.
You do not paint a hallway you are staying in temporarily.
The furniture was in different positions. There were decorations on the walls I had never seen, and a rug I did not recognise, and my grandfather's barometer was not by the door.
I said: where's my sister?
My mother smiled and said: oh, she's upstairs resting.
Resting. Not she's expecting, love, go up and see her.
I did not know my sister was pregnant. Nine months, and nobody had told me, and I found out from the shape of her in a doorway the following evening.
They had moved in. Maribel and her husband were not visiting.
I said: and my room?
My mother tipped her head slightly and said: well, honey. She needed the master suite.
I said: so where am I sleeping?
My father answered for her, because he always does.
He said: you've got options.
In his mind, I could sleep in the unfinished basement.
Or I could go back to the barracks on base — as though a woman of thirty-four returning from nine months should be grateful for a room with four other people in it and a shared bathroom.
He said it the way you offer somebody a choice of restaurants.
My mother moved closer and said: you're single. You're gone half the time. You don't need all this space.
And then came the line I have heard in different versions for most of my life.
Be a good sister for once. In exactly that voice.
For once. After nine months. Standing next to bin bags with my own boots in them.
My name is Tamsyn and I am thirty-four and I have been in uniform for twelve years.
I have given orders to men twice my size in places where getting it wrong kills people.
And in that hallway, for about four seconds, I was eleven years old again and somebody was telling me to be reasonable about my sister.
