Poppy Day by Amanda Prowse

issued with the garment on her first day, hating it on sight. Now, however, putting it on was an integral part of her working ritual. Without the scratch of the nylon stitching against her skin and the static crackle it created when she touched metal, she didn’t feel physically equipped to perform her role. She rollered and pinned Mrs Newton’s hair while her mind tried to sort through the various scenarios regarding her husband’s disappearance.
    Option one, Martin was dead, she just didn’t know it yet. Poppy rejected this; her brain would not allow her to consider this or even process it as a possibility.
    Option two, he had been briefly separated from his mates and was now safely back at the base, possibly injured, maybe with a broken arm or dislocated shoulder. She liked this option the best so far. Oh my goodness! If this were the case, then he would be coming home! Oh thank God! He would be coming home, her beautiful husband. She smiled at the prospect.
    ‘Y’all right, gel?’ Her customer could see she was miles away.
    ‘Yup, I’m fine, Mrs Newton,’ Poppy mumbled against the four hairpins between her lips.
    The old lady nodded, lifting her ample bust with her folded arms. Mrs Newton did not want to be trotting off to bingo with a lopsided do.
    Option three, he really was missing. What did that mean, missing? It was a bloody desert, for God’s sake! Where could he have got to? Poppy knew he had a crap sense of direction, like the time they had to go up West and ended up in Brent Cross, twice. All because of a dodgy roundabout and the fact that he refused to consult the A–Z or phone his mate who was a cabbie. Not even Martin could get lost in a load of sand, could he? If he had fallen off the back of a Land Rover or tumbled off a tank, surely his mates would have noticed and gone back for him… Unless… Unless…
    Poppy felt her knees sway slightly; her head felt cold, the pins tumbled to the floor from her open mouth. The true picture of option three came into perfect focus; her breath lost its natural rhythm. She felt the instant covering of perspiration, chilly against her skin. What if they didn’t mean ‘missing’, what if they meant ‘taken’? An image flashed into her mind, Martin was wearing what she called his summer uniform. She thought about school, when in the summer term you were allowed to ditch your jumper and skirt in favour of a little gingham dress, not that she ever had one. Instead, her mum used to make her roll up her sleeves and go without socks… well, she always thought of the pale desert camouflage as the equivalent of his little gingham dress.
    Poppy saw it clearly: Martin had a helmet on with a strange chin strap and what looked like a microphone sticking out. His face was more tanned than she had ever seen it and he was shouting, ‘Over here! Jonesy! I’m over here!’ He sounded desperate to be heard. His eyes were wide. She could see the whites around his irises exposed. He looked frightened. Was he frightened ? He then made a strange noise as though he had been winded. It was a deep, short, guttural exhale, the like of which you sometimes hear on the sports field when someone takes a blow to the stomach; quite literally as though the breath has been knocked out of them. Then it went dark and quiet. The picture disappeared and there was only blackness.
    Poppy knew then. She knew that he had been taken, she had seen it. She saw it then and she could see it whenever she needed to. It lasted no more than five seconds, but she knew that it was real; could feel that it was real. Poppy wandered out on to the street in a daze, not sure what to do next, who to tell or what to tell them. She doubted that even the National Geographic would have taken her seriously. How could she explain to anyone what she had seen? She would be laughed at. She trod nimble-footed over the pavement until she hovered on the broken white line in the middle of the road, sandwiched between white