Old Friends in Paradise

This story is mostly off-cuts, a couple of characters and a story line hacked from one of my other pieces 'That Girl and her Fairy Godmother' that I threw into another .doc because some of it I still quite liked BUT it would have dragged what was an 'Author Challenge' piece for the Great BlackRandI1958 into a two or three-parter - more than that it just didn't seem to be 'who that heroine was'.

With some additions and some messing around it pretty much leant itself into this story - and it's why the 'Godmother' Girl ends up going to Cyprus.

I've tried to keep as much of the feeling that it had before, but our heroine is an O.R. and has changed branch but she's still in Royal Air Force blue.

So a second one for you Air Force girls and boys, although it's about the RAF Police so apologies to the service police haters - don't blame me, it's just where the story went, sorry. And there's a Royal Marine and some sailors just for a fair mix.

To save any confusion at the outset, the story is about a girl and a boy, Christina and Christian -- just so I don't get complaints of who 'Chris' is.

Finally - for the purists I was never in the RAF, didn't know anyone in the RAF or been anywhere that close to where they were based. I've never been to Cyprus or known anyone in the CJPU - this is complete fiction and everywhere our star players go or work is purely in my head or based around what Google had articles on or had Images or YouTube videos.

So allow me, the flat unraised spirit, on your imaginary (armed) forces work...

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We do things at school that on reflection we shouldn't have...

*

"Look," said an anonymous female voice, "It's stick-thin Christian!" the girls with her laughed at his expense and his face flushed bright red as he made to brush past them as they spread themselves across the corridor, if not to actually stop him then make his egress more difficult.

"Is your prick really thin like the rest of you?" came a second giggled female voice from the back.

"If he's got one at all," said a third, "Tucker-Fucker".

This was a reasonably new term of abuse coined that day with a very watery alliteration and the skinny boy just knew it was going to catch on.

"Oh... just... Eff off why don't you," he looked at his tormentor with a hint of aggression.

"Can't you manage to say the bad word Stick-thin?" one of the pretty princesses he was reeeeeally starting to hate threw in from the back, "Well you should really think about what you say Fucker because if we tell Simon he might just beat that tiny emaciated body of yours to a pulp. You know Simon don't you?" she said.

'Simon' appeared from nowhere and the girls all crooned, almost on cue. He was as tall as the skinny boy but well built, and wore his expensive clothes well, his skin free of all but a very few teenage spots that plagued his scruffier looking classmate across the corridor from him.

"Hello ladies," he said with a bit of an exaggerated sigh, "Stick-thin Fucker isn't bothering you is he?"

"No Si-Si," said the blonde in front who was pouting to him.

"Not like there's fuck all he could do to bother us." said a second.

The mean girls stood tall and were all bottoms and bustlines, preened in their too short, mid-thigh school plaid skirts, posing for the school rugby captain who was lauded as the new king of comedy having come up with everyone's new favourite rhyming swear word joke not an hour before.

"You forget girls," he said to the group with a proprietorial air, "Stick-thin Fucker is in the School Cadet Force, he's probably gonna get all SAS on our asses - aren't ya GI Joe!" he shoved the skinny boy by his shoulder then pointed a finger an inch from his nose, "but mind your language with your betters Tucker-Fucker," he waved that finger around to the crowd that circled him, "you're not on your scummy little council estate with your foodbank vouchers and charity shop furniture now y'know!" he grinned, "Y'need to make sure you eat up all your free school meals Stick-thin Fucker!" he hissed through clenched teeth then flipped his finger up his victim's face to knock his glasses to the floor, then kicked them across the blue linoleum just as his victim bent to pick them up.

Another grinning boy stood to the side of Simon as he so often was, placed a foot on them ostensibly to stop them moving, but having done that he pressed down some more, breaking them at the already damaged right hinge, the arm uppermost.

The glasses wearer groaned,

"Oh for fuck's sake Gav..."

He bent to get them and the second and much heavier built thug on the other side of Simon pushed the skinny boy off balance and to the floor, adding to his victim's misery by his sharply thrust elbow impacting on his nose as he fell -- the further crack of his glasses breaking some more as his backside hit them was unmistakeable.

Everyone laughed -- except the boy on the floor who cried out in real pain, a trickle of blood running from his nose and then to everyone's shock from his thigh as they saw the plastic arm and metal spike of the broken glasses obscenely sticking out of it, the leg of his grey trousers turning a deep crimson around it.

The laughing stopped and it was as if the entire group took a shocked deep breath at what had been a bit of innocent fun had suddenly become a bloodbath.

Those at the back disappeared, some closed their dropped jaws and spun around and walked away heads down while the last two, not as fast as their colleagues, developed a conscience and pulled him up and to the first aid room, disappearing as quickly as their friends as soon as they heard the words 'ambulance', 'hospital' and 'stitches' and the mention of a report being written.

My name is Christina, and this all came back to haunt me about ten years ago, in paradise.

*

Paradise? Yeah pretty much.

At the time I was a quite senior corporal in the Royal Air Force Police, a lady 'snowdrop' so called because of the white tops on our blue caps. I'd been a good girl and had done my share of shitty jobs and been posted to the sometimes scary, sometimes boring postings that the RAF had to offer at the time, but seeing as I'd behaved myself and was pushing for promotion I'd signed on for another three years, and was given a two-year tour that would take me to The Cyprus Joint Police Unit. I signed out my posh tropical dresses, polished my shoes, and stepped out.

The Cyprus Joint Police Unit was made up of soldiers from the Army's Royal Military Police, a few Royal Navy 'Regulators' and us from the Royal Air Force Police and we all lived in similar accommodation, carried out similar patrols, trained with similar weapons and dealt with all manner of servicemen and women and their families, and dealt with all of the bad behaviour and occasional domestic problems from the married quarters that normal police officers get to deal with, only we did it in the two Sovereign Bases and the two infantry battalions and support arms and services stationed at Dhekelia and Episkopi on a holiday Island in the Med, and occasionally working with any British Forces training or staging there. We were rarely involved in the United Nations task of enforcing the peace line between the Greeks and the Turks.

I never planned to join the Armed Forces at all and how I came to be in the RAF is a long story.

A family friend was our local Bobby and always in our or our neighbour's kitchen drinking tea, eating biscuits and generally being the wonderful community policeman that everyone knew and respected. Because of him I was all about the police and as a kid watched all of the TV programmes (within reason) then Mum and Dad bought me a policewoman dressing-up costume that I would mess around with as I grew out of it, buying new white blouses and black skirts, stitching the epaulettes from my original to the shoulder. I even made my own equipment belt for my toy handcuffs and a truncheon.

I left school with a reasonable collection of qualifications then after some research went to college to study 'public services', a diploma course for people that wanted to join the police, fire brigade or the forces.

I was all fired up to sign on and fight crime as a police officer with my new diploma and was most distressed when every police force I applied for cheerfully turned me down as being too young, too naïve and on one occasion too sweet and suggested I go away and get some life experience, two of them pointing out that I didn't have the degree in criminal justice studies that all of the other applicants three years older than me seemed to have.

All I'd ever wanted to do was be a police officer, and them not wanting me was gut wrenching, including London's Metropolitan Police who according to one of my lecturers took almost anyone. I tried again when I was nineteen; still the same response.

What I didn't realise was I was at the cusp of the big change in police recruitment - forces were, and apparently still are, employing either young graduates or older ex-service personnel.

Still stinging from their second rejection, one bright lunchtime I was walking through the shopping precinct of my hometown and past the new joint army, navy and air force recruiting office just opening after a major refurb. I was working in a large chain store where I'd been a Saturday girl while at college and suddenly there were lots of men and women in uniform, table-top displays, lots of weapons and some trucks of varying descriptions.

I stopped to look, as much at the smart young men in various sorts of uniforms as anything else.

"Are you happy working for Boots the Chemist young lady?" said a man in the khaki uniform of the British Army seeing my corporate clothing and name badge, and interest in what was going on.

"Not really," I said, "but I'm not interested in the Forces, I want to join the police."

"But you don't have enough experience?" said the soldier.

"Yes," I said, a bit surprised, "How..."

"Happens all the time, we take on lots of lads and lasses who join the Military Police, get some qualifications and leave after a few years and go straight into the police force of their choice." he grinned and handed me a leaflet from the table, 'REDCAP - a career in the Royal Military Police', "Here, have a coffee and read through that and see if that's the kind of thing you're interested in." He handed me a polystyrene cup and pointed to the flasks on the table. While I was struggling to make the thing work with one hand, I gave a cursory inspection of the leaflet.

I was altogether failing to get coffee out of the flask when I was approached by a woman in Royal Air Force blue.

"Did I hear you say you were interested in the Police?" I nodded, "Oh well then, you don't want to bother with that shit," she whispered, and I looked up from the still non-functioning flask.

She was slim, attractive and a blonde like me, and I now realise was wearing a tailored uniform and black heels, while the soldier I'd spoken to before was slightly overweight, and his uniform and appearance lacked the effort she'd made.

She took one look at the coffee pot, flipped up the handle, took the cup from my hand and pumped the coffee into it which showed off her slightly long, shiny, glossed fingernails,

"Milk and sugar?" I nodded and she added both before handing it to me, taking the army leaflet and handing me another much like the first but titled 'Join the Royal Air Force Police.' The pictures were different and the RAF lady noticed me noticing.

"The army's OK," she said looking across to her compatriot, "If you like that sort of thing." She poured herself a coffee and drank it black, "Oh don't get me wrong, we all get to dress up as trees once in a while, but the 'Redcaps' seem to do rather more of that kind of thing than the Snowdrops." She showed me the pictures and explained the differences, making the Royal Air Force seem that much more glamorous and more comfortable than the army.

The soldier that had first spoken to me was away and talking to three young men and had obviously lost interest, so the RAF lady settled in.

Like the soldier had said, she said that lots of wannabe police officers joined the services and gained experience and policing qualifications, and this could just be the answer for me. The Snowdrops in the leaflet were all smart, wearing the same body armour and carrying the same equipment that the real police did and they ALL became dog handlers -- I sooooo wanted to be a dog handler! The entry requirements were quite simple and more than covered by my Public Services Diploma.

The RAF recruiter did her job to perfection - she'd seen me, clocked my blonde-haired 'pretty girl' persona and played straight to it. She sounded quite 'girly' about the whole thing; the uniform was smarter, the caps were almost the same as real policewomen wore, the RAF was rather more sophisticated than the army, and I'm sure she was only seconds away from saying 'RAF boys are so much more gorgeous than army boys...' when I agreed to take home the DVD and watch it.

Sold to the pretty blonde in the 'Boots the Chemist' overall...

She tucked the DVD into the booklet, I finished my coffee and she refilled it and I headed back to work reading. I also had a carrier bag with more paperwork to read and some forms to fill in if I was that interested.

My 'bitch of a line manager' was waiting for me and making a big point of checking her watch even though I still had a good seven or eight minutes to be back at my work. That was the final clincher if one had been needed.

Growing up around my Mum's beauty business I'd never wanted to follow in her footsteps, but thanks to being surrounded by it as I kid it was quite a nice 'In' to that part of the world until I could achieve my dream. I sold perfumes and hairspray, did make-up demo's and I looked at my bitch of a manager who was forever telling us that she'd started out on the counters just like us and with some hard work and commitment we could reach her dizzy heights... blah-fucking-blah.

Right there and then I knew I didn't want to be a high street store acting assistant deputy team leader in twenty years, I wanted to be like that cool, smart, sophisticated woman I'd just spoken to in the blue uniform with the three stripes surmounted by a crown and walking home that night I speeded up to try and match the military marching pace I'd seen on the TV, and imagined that I was marching with a large German Shepherd Dog at my side.

I went home and watched the DVD on my laptop and filled in the forms, taking them back the next lunchtime. The RAF lady was there, and she talked me through what I'd need to do if I was going to make this a career. Mum and Dad were a bit worried seeing as Afghanistan and the aftermaths of the second Gulf War were still in full flow, but could see how this was going to be a career before a career, and was almost everything I'd dreamed of since I was a kid, or a way to achieve it at least. I signed on.

After a quite simple exam and not overly rigorous physical test I was accepted and to the surprise of the rest of my family and many friends I packed my bag. I loved my Phase 1 training at RAF Halton and passed out after two months at the top of my class, moving to the Defence School of Policing at Southwick Park for my 22 week trade training where again I excelled, graduating as best overall in the squad and as an acting-corporal.

I was posted to a very busy RAF Brize Norton and labelled 'keen' because of my excellent reports from phase two, but being attractive and blonde I wasn't taken that seriously and my flight sergeant all but told me I must have been given an easier time because of it, so decided to drop me in at the deep end.

He read my reports from my dog handler course and after two weeks I was given the biggest, nastiest Belgian Malinois called Boomer, that everyone else was terrified of but behaved like a pussycat with little old me. I ran him out each morning and each night and we patrolled the base and its boundaries, around numerous aircraft and on his long lead my mate Boo-Boo gambolled around like a puppy-dog, would roll onto his back for belly rubs and would lick my cheek (just getting a taste I told other handlers), even though my flight sergeant wouldn't come close to me until I kennelled him.

After learning my trade at Brize it was time to get operational and I started to collect medals and was posted to RAF Aldergrove in a mostly peaceful Northern Ireland. This trip was cut short and I was issued with desert camouflage for my first 'warts and all' tour and deployment to Basra.

Over my time I flew into Baghdad, Bastion and Bagram, Kabul, Kandahar and Kenya and lots of places like that wherever the RAF were stationed, sometimes with a dog, sometimes not, but I got about and got my promotion to full corporal relatively quickly. I was shelled or shot at a few times, shot back (not sure how successfully) but came through unscathed, physically at least.

I still really enjoyed my life despite the ever-present danger on the operational postings and was actually saving money for the eventual house deposit, taking educational courses in lots of policing roles, getting loads of policing and security experience, the sports and recreation was out of this world as it always is with the services. I really got into scuba diving and sport parachuting and was having tonnes of fun. I drove my super-mini when in the UK but it spent lots of time at my parents' home in the garage when I was abroad.

I'd gone out with a few different RAF guys purely because I spent my life surrounded by them, all Policemen I'd fancied or I thought were funny or cute, but it never really got serious with any of them and I proud to say that I never 'put out'.

I wasn't looking to be a virgin bride or anything, it was just something my Mum and Auntie Jo had said to me when I was younger. I take after my natural blonde, curvy Mum and Aunt and the whole Anderssen side of my family and had started to turn heads shortly after my thirteenth birthday.

I had been rather conspicuously passed over for being a bridesmaid for a Mair family wedding and my quite annoyed hairdresser/beautician Mum and dress designer Aunt put me into a bright strappy stretchy shorty summer dress especially made for the occasion in which I made rather a splash, and I really liked it.

The attention grew as my skirts became shorter and my blouses tighter then in my tenth school year we were finally allowed to wear some make-up and I soaked up the praise and the attention.

Both Mum and Auntie Jo were beauties in their own right and of course so much wiser than me in so many respects and did tell me that while it was really cool and exciting to be the centre of attention there was a real danger that I'd become a target for different guys rather than finding the man of my dreams that would care for me and about me.

With that still in my head and finding it for real on a few occasions I'd held out until my early twenties when I had met my first real boyfriend since school, a guy called John that I worked with. We were on the same station and in the same flight and we clicked, so we went out, partied and played around.

We had a rather nice weekend away, staying on a campsite in Norfolk where, after a lovely day and even nicer evening, he relieved me of my cherry, not believing it until he saw the faintest hint of blood on his condom when he disposed of it the next morning.

We went out for four months until a year's posting came up for a security officer for UK troops transiting through Dulles International Airport in Washington DC and that was that.

It kind of went with the job and I didn't and still don't blame him, it was a great tour and he really couldn't turn it down, and we said a very half-arsed goodbye, with me kind of hoping that I might have meant more to him.