The UnTied Kingdom Read Online Free

child’s drawing of a smile, and with his hair sticking up in a dozen different directions he looked like a cartoon character. ‘Tower hospital, miss.’
    ‘Is it … I mean … you said there was a major …’
    ‘Military hospital,’ he clarified for her.
    ‘Oh.’ Something unpleasant was occurring to Eve, who wasn’t entirely sure why being in a military hospital might be a bad thing exactly … but she was also fairly sure it wasn’t a good thing, either. ‘Um, am I in trouble?’
    He hesitated again, which Eve glumly figured probably meant yes.
    ‘You’ll have to ask the Major,’ he said eventually.
    ‘Major … what was his name?’
    ‘Harker.’
    ‘Right. Major Harker. Is he in charge here?’
    ‘Well, um …’
    Eve rolled her eyes. ‘Can I go see him?’
    ‘No. Sorry, miss. You need to rest here.’
    ‘But, look, I can hop or something. Do you have any crutches I could use?’
    The young doctor was already backing off. ‘Sorry, miss.’
    ‘Stop saying that! And don’t go!’
    But the door had already fallen shut behind him.
    ‘Great,’ Eve said, slumping back against the pillows, which were lumpy. ‘Fantastic. That was a load of help.’
    ‘It’s the military,’ came a voice from behind the curtain, making her jump. ‘They’re not supposed to be helpful.’
    Eve froze for a long second, then reached out, balancing precariously, and tugged back the curtain. On the other side of it was a man lounging on a hospital bed, his hands behind his head, his ankles crossed. He, too, was wearing khaki, t-shirt and combats the same faded shade of sludge green. His right arm was bruised, and he looked like he hadn’t shaved in about a week, or had his hair cut in about a year.
    He gave Eve a nod, reached into a pocket and pulled out a packet of cigarettes and then, to Eve’s horror, lit one up.
    Mistaking her expression, he offered her one.
    ‘Er, no,’ she said. ‘Um. Should you be smoking in here?’
    He shrugged and took a deep drag. ‘Don’t see no laws about it.’
    ‘Uh,’ Eve said. ‘I’m pretty sure there is one. This is a hospital, right?’
    ‘Apparently.’
    ‘Then–’
    ‘Ah, military, see?’
    She blinked away smoke. ‘You can smoke in a military hospital?’
    ‘No one’s ever stopped me.’
    Privately, Eve didn’t consider this to be the same thing at all. ‘Been in many?’ she said.
    ‘Yeah, a few.’
    She ran her eyes over him. There was a long scar running from his wrist to his elbow, and his nose looked like it had been broken a few times, but there were no obviously new injuries visible.
    At first glance, he didn’t look like he had a soldier’s discipline. But muscles flexed in his forearms and under his t-shirt, and he had a lean look about him, as if he was made of muscle and bone and nothing else. She wondered if he’d ever carried an ounce of fat in his life.
    Her eyes went back to the ugly bruise on his arm. Befitting his calling it, too, was khaki.
    ‘What happened to you?’ she asked.
    ‘Someone kicked me.’
    ‘In the arm?’
    ‘There, too.’ He puffed contentedly. ‘You?’
    ‘I, er, I had a sort of accident.’
    His eyes travelled slowly over her, and Eve became aware that the make-up she’d painstakingly applied that morning would at best have dispersed in the river, and at worst, still be sliding down her face. Her hair felt heavy, limp, dirty; her head pounded; she felt … grey .
    ‘I was paragliding,’ she explained, limply. ‘Something went wrong, and I ended up in the river.’
    ‘Paragliding?’
    ‘You know. With the parachute and the sort of sling … I bloody told them I shouldn’t be out alone, I’m really sure you’re supposed to have training and stuff – well, more than they gave me.’ She made a face. ‘But they said it’d make better TV that way.’
    ‘Why were you paragliding?’
    Eve winced. ‘I just said. TV.’
    She waited for him to make the connection. Okay, she was looking really rough right now, and