Eva jumped when she heard the front door slam, even though she'd been listening out for it and she'd heard the key in the door.  A black beret, Frisbee'd from the hall, landed softly on the kitchen surface and slid into the kettle with a ding, its Royal Engineer's badge magnified and distorted in the curved mirrored surface. Rob bounded in after it and presented himself to Eva in a super hero pose; chest inflated, hands on hips, legs apart. Two pints, Eva thought, if not three.
'Where to?' Eva halted, held her breath. She slid her right hand into the pocket of her apron and curled her fingers around an object.
'Hamelin. Marching out in six weeks.' He grinned and kissed her on the cheek, 'CO reckons it means promotion is definitely in the offing.'
Eva exhaled, a long, measured breath pushing down something rising. Another posting in Germany. Another army base.
Rob got himself a beer from the fridge, opened it and swigged. He dragged a chair away from the kitchen table and sat to unlace his boots.
'Jaffa and Minty're both going back home so they're chuffed. Minty's Mrs is expecting again, did you know? Must be mad, that'll be four. No wonder they're going home. Maybe that's what we should have done. Ha! Jones got staff sergeant...'
Eva leaned back against the kitchen sink. Her fingers roamed the object's contours, exploring a landscape in miniature: rough escarpments, curved slopes, a jagged peak. She rotated it until she found a coarse ridge and then, clamping it between thumb and middle finger, she sawed her forefinger gently back and forth along it, finding the slight catch on the dry skin at her fingertip. A chunk of broken crockery, nondescript, this object was both talisman and curse, the source of Eva's anxiety as well as its alleviation.
'...Should be able to get this place sorted in time, Mrs.' Rob twitched his head to indicate the house as he stood up, leaving his boots where his feet had been.
'I'll clean my boots before tea. Going for a drink with the lads after to celebrate.'
He went upstairs to change.
Eva hid her disappointment in the usual places and picked up Rob's beret, got the shoe polish, brushes and newspaper from the cupboard under the sink. Through a window invisible with cleanliness a late afternoon sun cast a search beam around the kitchen, highlighting the worktop and the floor. Everything was in order.  A stack of dinner plates stood by the cooker waiting to be warmed before filling the cutlery frames neatly centred on each side of the kitchen table. Rob hated eating hot food from cold plates.
They had been on this tour for, how long was it, nearly eight years now? Eight years of losing touch with family back home, nephews and nieces growing up, marrying, babies being born, walking, talking, Christmases and christenings, anniversaries, illnesses, all happening without them. Eva's children were strangers to their grandparents and they were all getting older. Eva wanted to go home.
 
Legs apart with the paraphernalia spread on newspaper between his feet, Rob braced his elbows against the inside of his knees and, left arm booted, applied Kiwi Black with a stiff brush, the bristles worn and caked at one end. With the other end he worked the polish into the boot. His enthusiasm for the move was unabated.
'It's a house, Eva, not a flat. Might even be a semi. Apparently married quarters are better in Hamelin.' Rob had been promoted out of flat living some time ago so Eva was neither fooled nor mollified. Even though she remembered lugging buggies, babies and bags of groceries up three cold concrete flights of stairs, she would have settled for a liftless tower block on the other side of the Channel to a castle on this. More of the same, she thought, more of the same. Different town, same everything else, same Eva.
A softer brush brought the boot to a shine in an unbroken steady rhythm. Left, right, left, right. Rob spat on the shiny toecap and worked a duster-sheathed index finger round and round in tiny circles, soft yellow cloth disappearing into stiff black bulges, spit rubbed into a smearless gleam.  On Sunday evenings during term-time, while the children slumped in front of the telly, their scuffed and shameful school shoes were lined up for the same attention. First one, then two pairs, then one again when Jenny went to boarding school. Eva hadn't thought to ask Jenny whether she had to clean her own school shoes now, though when she imagined them side by side under a metal-framed bed in a cold, moonlit dormitory they were gloriously dirty.
 
Over dinner Rob sold the move to the children. He told them what he thought they wanted to hear, skirted difficult questions and made pie-in-the-sky promises.
Eva, watching Jenny, saw Jenny watching Eva whilst studiously appearing not to. Shifty glances fell from couldn't-care-less eyes and slid along the table.
'You're quiet, Jenny.'
'Makes no difference to me where you live.'
You? Not we? thought Eva. She said, 'Don't do that, Jenny. You'll make it worse.' Jenny was poking her knife into a crack in the formica on the table's surface.
'I'm boarding so I don't have to change schools like Simon.  That's where most of my friends are. What does it matter where I go in the holidays?'
'But if we came back to the UK you could come home more often, for weekends and half terms, not just the main holidays. You could have your friends to stay.'
Keeping her gaze on the knife and the table, Jenny widened her eyes in mock alarm.
'Leave it, Eva. She's fine, aren't you, Jen? Jen's nearly fifteen. She's got better things to do than hang around with us, haven't you, Jen?'
Jenny didn't answer. She dropped the knife and looped her index finger behind her ear, scooping a thin length of hair. With both hands she divided it into three and deftly began to plait. When she was little and it was Eva with the long hair, Jenny would sit on Eva's lap and simultaneously suck her thumb and stroke her own nose with a thin brush of Eva's hair protruding from her bunched baby fist. For years Eva was oblivious of the matted, soggy strands of hair and then, when Jenny grew out of the habit, she missed them.
There was no stopping Rob today. 'What about you, Simon? You'll be wanting to go off to boarding school next, seeing as your big sister's doing so well.'
Even Jenny looked surprised. Simon was only nine. But Rob was avoiding Eva's eye and scraping his chair back.
'Right, I'm off. What are you kiddiwinks up to tonight?'
'Youth club.' Jenny rolled her eyes for Rob's benefit. 'The highlight of my social calendar.'
'Can I go out to play?' Simon directed his question at Rob.
'Course you can, son. Give your mother some peace and quiet. Home before dark though.' Rob stood over them. 'Hey, isn't it pocket money day?'
It wasn't, but Rob slammed coins from his trouser pockets onto the table and carelessly divided them, sending them whizzing across the surface in alternate directions, left to Jenny, right to Simon. Coins skittered into plates and tumblers and flew off the table while the children scrabbled in surprise. They darted delighted glances at one another and wary ones at Eva, expecting her to object. She shrugged her disapproval because it was expected but didn't say, 'I give up'. They all knew the script. Jenny and Simon gathered and counted their unexpected bounty. They would settle any imbalance between them.
Simon saluted. 'Thanks, dad. Can I go to the sweet shop?'
'Don't spend it all at once or you'll be getting me into trouble with your mother. And talking of your mother, she's going to be busy getting this place ready to march out so you'll both have to keep out of her way from now on.'
 
Eva left the washing up. A decoy. A crime scene and she, Eva, the villain who admits to a lesser crime in the hope that the greater remains undetected. She fetched the stepladders from the cupboard under the stairs and set them them parallel to the long run of kitchen units. Feeling unstable, she rose until her hair brushed the ceiling. On top of the cupboards, in several layers and covering the entire surface, nestled an artfully arranged mosaic of broken china. Hundreds, definitely, if not thousands of fragments, the fractured relics of plates, cups, saucers, bowls. All the same pattern, standard military-issue, grey. Her crime.
Eva nudged a couple of pieces with her forefinger and cocked her head at the effect, nudged again. It was dusty up here. Sticky. She used to take better care of them, keep them clean, but it became too risky. She could never be sure of being alone for any length of time.  The sphere of military life reached beyond the barracks so the wives lived in each others pockets too, knowing each others' comings and goings and expecting trips to the NAAFI or the school run to take place collectively. If the doorbell rang, Eva couldn't ignore it and say later that she'd been elsewhere because for her, for them, there wasn't really an elsewhere. Besides, the caller would most likely come round the back and bang on the kitchen window or bawl up to the balcony and her bedroom beyond. Eva dreamed of solitary walks, undertaken with the sole purpose of putting one foot in front of another, unnecessary soaks in the bath at inappropriate times of day and the sort of books the other wives would not want to borrow. Now she had six weeks to remove the evidence and cover her tracks. Eva felt slightly sick at the thought.
'What are you doing?' Jenny was leaning on the door frame, right foot hooked around left calf, flicking a dangled flip flop to and fro. Eva started.
'Oh, hello, you're back.'
'What are you doing up there?'
'Nothing. I thought you were going to youth club?'
'Doesn't look like nothing? What's up there?'
'Nothing. I was just having a look. To see how dirty it is. I'll have to clean it before we move, that's all.' Eva raised and pointed a dusty index finger. Proof. A warning. She climbed down.
'They're not going to look up there, for God's sake. Who cares about that?'
'I do. Of course they will. They look everywhere. We'll get fined if there's anything out of place and you know your father won't stand for that.' Eva snapped the ladders closed. End of subject.
'Well let him do it then, if he cares so much. Why do you have to do it?'
'Will you just stop. You know it has to be done and you know it is me who has to do it.'
'I'll do it for you. I can do it now. I'm not doing anything.' Jenny, who rarely did anything to help, peeled herself away from the door and approached Eva.
'No. Not now. I've got to wash up and you'll be in the way.'  
'Go on. Give me the steps. I'll do it now. It won't take long.'
'No. Just leave it. There's no point. It'll only get dusty again. I'll do it nearer the time. Get off.'
'Let go. Let go!'
As soon as they started wrestling with the steps Eva knew that this was going wrong somehow but she didn't know exactly why, or how to stop it. 
'Just wait till your father...'  As soon as she spoke Eva knew she had lost this stupid battle.
Jenny smirked. 'Like he's going to be in any state when he gets home.'
'Little bitch,' Eva hissed, relinquishing the steps, unable to stop herself making things worse, at that moment hating Jenny for not giving her time to think.
Eva watched Jenny unfold and climb the ladders. She climbed slowly, suddenly reluctant. You asked for it, thought Eva. In her head Eva left the kitchen and walked out of the house, away from her family and into the world. But shame is heavy, immobilising, and besides, Eva was a mother whose daughter was at the top of a ladder wearing flip flops, so she hovered within easy reach in a state of detached surrender. The kitchen clock ticked out of time with Eva's thumping heart.
Jenny took her time. Then, 'Oh, shit.' Rob was strict about swearing. Jenny tilted her head back and listened through the ceiling to the rooms above. 'Where's Simon.'
'Playing football.' They registered dusty scuffles and shouts carried from beyond the chain link fence through the kitchen window.
'What are you going to do with this lot? Where did it all come from?'
'I don't know. I did it.'
'Does dad know? Oh, my god. What if he finds out? He'll go nuts. He'll find out when we move.'
'He won't find out.' Unless you tell him. 'He didn't last time. I'll sort it.'
'Last time. There was a last time?'
Eva didn't reply.
Jenny looked again, watched and waited, as if she was waiting for something to register or a thought to occur to her.  It reminded Eva of all those times she'd stood before a younger Jenny, waiting, usually in vain, for contrition or an apology or at least some sign of guilt after some misdemeanour or other. Eventually Jenny climbed down, eyeing Eva briefly and giving her a wide berth, as if she were a stranger behaving oddly in the street. The sun dropped behind the neighbouring rooftops, sucking the last of the daylight out of the kitchen and leaving the air thick and immobile. The silence shimmered. In the dusk, Jenny filled the kettle, opened a cupboard with a trepidation Eva didn't miss, and took out two mugs. Eva folded the step ladders and leaned them against the door jamb.
Jenny eventually spoke. 'And you're both so bloody strict about us breaking anything. Dad drilling us endlessly about inspection and you obsessed with losing points and... even Simon's careful.'
'I know. Sorry.' Eva, spent, sat down and abstractedly scraped and stacked dirty dinner plates. Jenny made tea, brought two mugs to the table.
'I thought you loved it. All this cleaning and housework and looking after stuff. Being an army wife. I really thought you loved it. You do it all the time. You're so proud of it.' Jenny said 'proud' with the derision the young have for occupations they already feel superior to.
'I have no choice. It's what's expected. Everything being inspected and recorded. If there's a chip in the paintwork or a missing spoon or a stain on the carpet it's noted when we march out. It's against dad's record, our record, for ever. It's not allowed, frowned upon. Everyone judges you according to it. People talk. You always hear stories about families who don't look after their quarters. It's important to dad.' As she listed the laws by which she had been living for so long Eva felt a draining of conviction. She had never asked herself whether she cared and she realised with faint surprise, that she didn't, she couldn't care less. Eva got not so much a sense of liberation from this thought as a vague sense of what liberation might feel like to someone else, someone who would know what to do with it. She pictured herself on her knees cleaning her way out of one military quarter and into another. With her backside at the open front door for all to see, literally scrubbing her way out of one building that had never been hers so that she could scrub her way into another that never would be.
Jenny's eyes swept the kitchen, took in the wall cupboards and their invisible secret. 'Amazing. Like, we never knew. All that time. Actually, it's kind of cool. I don't blame you. It's probably what I'd do if...'
If you had my life.
'I just want to go home, Jen.'
'Why don't you, then?'
'Well, it's not as easy as that.'
'Isn't it?' Jenny, raised her eyebrows at Eva.
They sipped their tea in silence in the half-dark.
'Tell you what we should do. We could use the pieces and spell out EVA GO HOME, you know, like in ET on the floor. He'd get the message then. Or... Or we could glue it into one enormous statue and put it in the middle of the parade square... Actually that's not a bad idea. We'd probably win the Turner Prize or something. We could call it Screw Brittania. Although we might have to smash the rest of it for that.'
'Now you're being silly.' Eva smiled. 'He's not a bad man, your dad. It's not that.'
'I know. Look, mum. You don't have to stay here. Why don't you move back? Dad can live on camp and you can go home and live near your family. Simon would never have to board and you could come and see me at school, watch my netball matches. And I could come home more. I could have school friends to stay.'
'Maybe.'
'And you wouldn't have to spend all your time on housework and cooking, looking after us. You could learn to drive... do a course, get a job...'
Eva gave a What? Me? sort of snort.
Jenny was on a roll. 'Seriously, dad'll soon request a home posting when you've gone and they'll let him have it. We've been out here for so long. And I do get homesick. I know I never say but I do. I have a chart by my bed, we all do, count the days. I want you home, too.'
 
*** 
 
Rob stood, as he did every weekday morning, with his arm out straight, elbow locked and Eva positioned herself at the end of his clenched fist as if lining herself up for a punch. Today he was hungover and Eva ignored the tension in his body and the restless jiggling in his legs. She took the khaki sleeve by the cuff and tugged it, straightening out any kinks or creases, before turning it inside out, and tugging and folding again. Early on in their marriage she had used a tape measure to check that the finished flattened sleeves were identical in width, but that was when the warmth of his breath and the gradual exposure of his forearm signfied intimacy and she felt privileged to be doing it.
'So, after I got my posting yesterday, I had a chat with the education officer.'
'Oh,'
'Might be a good idea to send Simon to England to school too.'
'Why?' Eva had worn this conversation out in her anticipation of it but was still caught unawares.
Rob sighed to indicate he was stating the obvious with infinite patience. 'Well, if we don't know how much longer we're going to be abroad we'll probably have to do it sooner or later. He qualifies for grants. I checked. I'll ask the lads at work for recommendations of schools.'
Eva continued to turn and fold and flatten out creases until the two bands of rolled cloth sat just above Rob's elbows in perfect symmetry. He'd waited, she knew, until the move was confirmed to raise the subject of school. He knew that her arguments would be weakest when Simon was between schools, that it would make a sense which she couldn't counter with her inexpressible needs. Eva saw her life as a coil, identically repeating cycles, moving slowly forwards, her future indistinguishable from her past. She craved the linear, sudden deviations, stops and starts, awkward angles and had come to rely on the children to supply them. While Eva went round in circles they sailed forth, tacking haphazardly towards an uncharted future. And Eva clung on, existing vicariously, parasitic.
'He's nine, Rob.'
'He's a boy. It'll be good for him. Toughen him up. You're always molly-coddling him.'
Silence.
'Come on, Eva. This was always on the cards. He should have the same opportunities as Jen. Save you a lot of work. Just imagine.'
Eva imagined. She imagined Simon and his grandad digging up potatoes, their two bent forms silhouetted against a low sun. She imagined herself and her mother, arms folded, standing at the kitchen window, nets pulled back to reveal Simon and his cousins playing football, her mother rapping on the glass when the runner beans came under threat. With a little thrill, she imagined herself behind the wheel of a car, driving her parents to Jenny's school for speech day. She imagined Jenny, crossing the stage and discreetly searching them out in the audience, rippling her fingers in a covert wave.
She stepped back and looked up at him, met his eye.
'No.'
'What?' Rob's face, already an unhealthy grey, darkened. This was not a good time.
'We'll talk about it later. Go to work.'
Rob, irritated, grunted. He tugged each sleeve and adjusted his belt, squaring himself up for the day. He rolled up his beret and buttoned it onto his shoulder, then grazed her cheek with serge lips and left.
 
Eva went into the kitchen and saw there was nothing to do. Surfaces clear. Dish cloth drying evenly over the tap. Used tea towel in the laundry basket. She put the kettle on and opened the cupboard for a mug. She stood for a moment contemplating the brittle curves and thrown shadows of a stack of side plates. She picked up the top plate, the same as all the others, with that grey cracked pattern. The same as in all the houses before and all the houses to come, unending. She didn't know what the term was for this sort of glazing but crazy would do. Crazy glazing.
Once, a few months ago, she had taken three carefully chosen pieces from the top of the cupboard and placed them under the mattresses of each of her family members when she made the beds. She didn't quite know what she meant by it, whether it was an offering or a test or a punishment but she stupidly waited the next morning for complaints of a bad nights' sleep and was disappointed when they all mumbled their way through breakfast and each went about their day oblivious and unperturbed. She'd left them there for a couple of nights and finally retrieved them, put them back. It had been a stupid thing to do, pointless. It was all pointless.
She turned the plate over in her hands, waited for her feelings towards it to rise. The kettle rattled and fussed its way towards a crescendo. Eva raised her arm, held the plate aloft over the edge of the work surface. Her heart bounced and quickened and she felt the familiar beginnings of exhilaration. She anticipated the vibration in her arm as the plate bounced off the edge of worktop, splitting, shedding fragments, sending them skittering into shadows. The kettle clicked off. Eva hesitated. It was just a plate. She lowered her arm and then gently put the plate back at the top of its pile in the cupboard. Out of habit she slid her fingers down and swept the gritty seam of her empty apron pocket.