All Things Nice » Band of Brothers

84: Shoelaces

Everything Posey had experienced since being evacuated from London seemed like a dream now. None of it seemed real. How was she to know that the ship she'd gone over to America on hadn't simply sunk and she'd been lying comatose, dreaming, the entire time?

Life didn't feel real. There was a disjunct between the life she was living and the person she was in it, as though she was living someone else's life. She didn't feel like a Londoner anymore - everywhere she went people would talk about experiences she hadn't been in London to have, as though an exclusive club had been formed based on shared experience and she was no longer allowed in - but she didn't know where else home could be.

She missed her mother. She wished for guidance. She mourned the life she'd loved and lost and wondered whether she'd ever find a life to love again.

"Moping again?" John asked, coming up behind her with a cup of coffee that looked disgusting and smelled even worse. There was a van outside the hotel that sold it during the week now that so many coffee shops had been bombed out, but the coffee was worse than military coffee and that was saying something. Still, Posey accepted it with a quiet 'thank you' and turned back to gazing out of the window, the blackout blinds pulled aside temporarily to allow her to watch the street below.

"You're one to talk," she replied after a beat or so, leaving a gap much longer than was standard for such light-hearted conversation. Her heart wasn't in the bantering and she could hear it, knew that John would have heard it too, but she kept her eyes outside, watching people queue up to buy the terrible coffee if only to give them something to do.

"Do you miss the men you served with?" John wondered, perching on the window ledge to look down at the world outside the window with her.

Posey smiled sadly even though he wasn't looking at her; she finally understood how he must have felt when she'd kept asking about his crew when he'd been in hospital, when he'd thought them all dead. It made her entire body ache to talk of and think of the men in Easy but she obliged John nonetheless, knowing he was only asking because he cared and because he wanted to connect with her. Finally, they were bridging the gap.

"Very much," she confided, and took a sip from the dreadful coffee, grimacing as she swallowed. "How much do you miss your crew?"

"Very much," he replied, and she watched him in profile as he smiled ruefully. "Tell me about George?" he requested, speaking of the crewmember Posey had met in Reims. "Where did you meet him? How is he doing?"

"I met him on a twenty-four hour pass in Reims whilst my company was on R&R in Mourmelon. He was working in a bookshop. Made me jump when he came up behind me."

John laughed, taking her cup from her to take a sip before handing it back; he could only carry one these days so they had to share. "He was always good at that - sneaking up on people. Used to be a nightmare for it in the barracks in the middle of the night."

Posey giggled. "He was nice. I liked him," she admitted with an easy half-shrug. "We had dinner together before I left and he wanted to know absolutely everything about you. He'd thought you were dead, just like you'd thought him, and he was so, so very happy you weren't I thought he might cry."

"Really?"

She nodded. "Yeah. He didn't know anything about any of you lot, of course, so hearing that even one of you was still alive was a bit overwhelming, I think. It must have been." She paused, watching a little girl skip across the road below followed by an older boy who must have been her brother, a scowl on his face when she turned to look at him but a grin taking its place when she was off skipping again. Posey smiled and watched them until they disappeared from view. "He's well, anyway. George, this is. Or he was when I met him, at least. He's got a job and he's hiding very well and Reims has been liberated besides. He's just sitting tight until he can get home. I hope he gets back soon."