Poppy Day by Amanda Prowse

Author:Amanda Prowse [Prowse, Amanda]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Contemporary Fiction, Contemporary Women, Contemporary, Fiction, Literary, General, Literature & Fiction, Women's Fiction
ISBN: 1781851115
Google: PUQ-AAAAQBAJ
Amazon: B009NY4BHM
Publisher: Head of Zeus
Published: 2012-10-24T23:00:00+00:00

Ten

POPPY DIDN’T PREPARE. She wasn’t thinking straight, functioning on auto pilot, without packing or saying goodbye, she left. Anyone watching her lock the front door, with the familiar double push to check it was secure, or encountering her in the lift would think that she was off to the shops, or to visit her nan. There were no outward clues, nothing that would indicate what she was planning.

Sliding down on the nicotine-scented, velour seat, Poppy watched the concrete of the capital give way to industrial estates. The rhythmic sway of the car encouraged her to doze; one minute grey factories and warehouses; and the next, houses, all squished together with identikit white, plastic conserva tories bolted on the back. Hundreds of families carrying out their lives, shopping, sleeping, eating and loving, cocooned within those red brick walls and draughty lean-tos. Postage-stamp-sized gardens were littered with trampolines, rusted swing sets, abandoned ride-on tractors and deflated paddling pools. Food-encrusted barbecues and grubby gazebos sat amongst miles of clean clothing that shifted gently in the breeze. It all belonged to people, people in families. Poppy considered their lives and thought about the worries that might occupy them. Had they enough milk? What time was the football on? Was it going to rain on the washing? She envied each and every one of them.

Finally, the backdrop was countryside and cows replaced people. She knew she must be getting close. Houses were followed by fields as the world sped by through the taxi window. Almost three hours after leaving E17, the boxy Nissan dropped her off at the entrance to the base. She handed over the contents of her savings jar and stood alone in front of the high-wire fence, feeling instantly self-conscious and slightly illegal.

RAF Brize Norton was like a large airport without any of the advertising hoardings, shopping malls, car parks or shuttle buses. The surrounding perimeter fence was ominously topped with barbed wire. It made Poppy think of prison and concentration camps.

There were military signs everywhere, telling Poppy that she was entering a Ministry of Defence Facility, where only authorised access was permitted, along with other deterrent messaging. She felt as if those signs were written especially for her, they might as well have said ‘PS: Go Home Poppy Day, Leave Right Now!’ But Poppy was determined; she had come this far and wasn’t about to give up, not yet.

She walked through the gates, past low-level huts with corrugated iron roofs, until she arrived at the security building. There was a queue of people. It reminded her of the snaking lines that you see in Argos, as though they had all taken little tickets and were waiting for their number to come up, ‘Number forty-three!’ But no one there was waiting to get their hands on irons, sandwich toasters or pieces of flimsy gym equipment that you might use for a month before shoving under the bed for a further six months and then disposing of.

Instead, they were clutching passports and pieces of paper saying goodness knows what.

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