The SAS And The Glam That Goes With It

Chapter 6

Sam didn't want to be cooped up inside the labour ward, but she couldn't avoid the shifts. It was worse that the place was dead, everyone pointedly waiting for the single patient to deliver, one way or another. Sam had been left to answer the phones, but enquiries had been few and far between. In the dark countryside around them, the women of Hereford were gestating quietly, minding their own business. In the early hours of the morning, she joined the other midwives huddled in the staff room, the television turned to signed repeats of daytime fodder, and started to pick through her lunch.

She was worried about Price, holed up in London. As Vivianne had warned her, she'd heard nothing for the last three days. She was quite grateful on day one, because Vivianne was an infectious drinker and somehow they'd ended up three bottles of wine deep between them by the time the restaurant closed. She might have drowned her sorrows and formed a new friendship, but she'd spent the next day paying for it, lying on the sofa like a beached whale until the headache finally abated and she went to work.

For the following two days she'd been glued to the rolling news channel when she had any free time, watching its frequent returns to the besieged building with ever growing concern. She squinted at the blurred figures at the edge of the cordon, trying to make out the familiar shapes of Price or Gaz. She really wanted to call Vivianne for advice, but imagined she'd probably have her own worries. Or not. Sam didn't really understand her fatalistic stoicism, and she knew there was no chance of her emulating it.

Is this what it will be like? She thought. A life of watching, waiting? Never knowing the truth? She shook herself. You've not even been on a single complete date with the man yet! She poked her baked potato angrily. What is wrong with you?

"Here. Anyone know what's happening with this thing in London?" Sam was jolted out of her thoughts by a sharp Northern voice. It was Ella, who had wandered through from the ward to join them. She picked up the remote control and started to flick through the channels.

"Oh, I don't know, love. I don't watch the news these days. All bloody misery." said Laura, curled up in an armchair like a nesting hen, flicked through a gossip magazine as she spoke.

"Anyone heard anything?" said Ella, looking around. Sam gave her what she hoped was a nonchalant shrug. Ella stopped at the news channel, but there was nothing about the siege: a young Asian man was giving a report on the state of the Eastern stock markets, against a backdrop of skyscrapers blinking in the sunlight.

"Why?" asked Laura, her soft, Welsh lilt drawing out the single word.

"Just interested." replied Ella "Everyone's talking about it."

"You're not shagging one of them, are you?" asked Laura, with raised eyebrows.

"What?!" Ella shook her head, laughing incredulously "Listen to her!"

"Thought maybe you'd got yourself a toy soldier!"

"Give over! At my age?"

"Aye. That's what it says in here." She tapped her magazine with a pointed finger, stabbing it into the page. "What do you call them? Cougars! Keep you fit anyway." They both laughed, and then Laura said "Here, Sue'll know. Sue!"

Sam looked up, interested to know why Sue was suddenly the font of all knowledge.

"What?" Sue looked round at the sound of her name. Sam eyed her, critically. The middle-aged auxiliary was small, rotund and wearing full make up despite the nightshift. She was not the sort of person Sam would have pigeon-holed as a military expert.

"What's going on with that thing in London?"

"Why should I know?"

"Isn't that what your neighbour does?"