His Occupation

I hugged myself on the living room floor. And clutching the soft camel toy he’d sent home months ago, I cried and cried.

Thank God, I thought.

When her soldier husband goes off on tour, Lara is usually happy to be left behind. Stephen’s job takes him all over the world but she is more content at home. This time it’s different. She’s eight months pregnant on the day he leaves, and it’s not a business trip he’s going away for; it’s a war. Lara has to face the struggles of birth and motherhood by herself, afraid of terrible news at every knock on the door, and wondering, even if her husband does return, whether she’ll be the same woman he left behind …