Did your wife realise how much danger you had been in whilst in Iraq?
When I wrote the book, there were bits that I'd told Lucy about but they tended to be the same bits that I'd sort of referred to. And it was when I'd write a chapter and I'd always read to it to Lucy to ask her thoughts and how it sounded, et cetera, et cetera. And there were times she'd just sit there crying, saying I didn't realize that had happened, I didn't realize you'd gone through this. And there's the bits as well where I talk about the relationship between the two of us and the conversations we'd had and tried to sort of capture those conversations accurately as they happened. And that again is quite an emotional thing as well, when the two of you are talking through it and reliving those arguments and reliving those difficult times as well. It was a really cathartic experience. It was a brilliantly, very emotional, but a really great release as well, which is great because I think that's why people have all sorts of post-traumatic stress and things like that because they just don't get a chance to talk about it or get it out of their system. And writing a book is obviously a brilliant way because you spend a lot of time getting it out of your system as you're tapping away at the keyboard.
