CHAPTER 95
As he settled back down beside me, mug of tea in hand, Gemma called over.

“Oy! Not going to help put the tent up?”

Hr turned onto his side to face her, waving vaguely at our little camp.

“I do believe mine is already up, serf”

CHAPTER 93
Kim was around early the next morning, which surprised me. I was getting ready to head off on the bike for the first of four days of longer delivery runs, out to Carmarthen, Haverfordwest and Llanelli, loading a flask of coffee and some ham and cheese rolls for my midday break, when she banged at the kitchen door. A couple of the girls were just washing their breakfast bowls as she entered, and the grin plastered onto her face lasted just long enough for her to say the words “Gemma let us know and… Oh.”

CHAPTER 91
Bert had his own sources of information, god knows where, and he simply told me to stay home until the funeral was done. No questions, no options, just a simple and clear instruction to take what time I needed. The papers were going ballistic over what sounded like open warfare at some MCC’s ‘family-friendly event, and among all the sensationalism were an awful lot of stupid editorials demanding that Something Be Done, and I was utterly in agreement with Bert regarding my fitness to drive.

CHAPTER 89
I sat down hard, and Jon’s words came back to me.

‘She was next to that big bastard’

It was a second before my hearing caught up with my thoughts, as the phone continued to shout at me.

“Debbie? Debbie?”

Class, woman.

“Here, Rosie”

“Where are you?”

CHAPTER 87
The news filtered back over the next few days, largely via Paul.

“She hurts, Debbie, but she’s still with us. She’ll be ready for visitors tomorrow, doctor says”

We were all in the back dining room, except for Kim, Gemma and Alicia, and I saw several of the girls sit up, Charlie and Tiff whispering to each other. I knew exactly what it would be, of course, and over the next week we operated a rotating watch over Paula. By ‘watch’, it seemed to consist largely of watching her eat a large number of Gemma’s best treats. And by ‘rotating’. It was mostly Charlie and Tiff that were involved. A few nights after our first visit to the hospital, I had a different sort of visit, as once more a nondescript figure in raincoat and baseball cap was at my back door.

CHAPTER 85
I spent some time as the days lengthened once more working with Heidi and the local colleges, and to my delight we found a couple of vocational places for Charlie and Tiff, while Clara settled into her own A-level preparations, and we lost Alicia.

CHAPTER 83
It was quite a bright Thursday, and I wasn’t on shift. Charlie and Tiff had some excuse or other for skiving, something about having finished and passed their A-levels, so we were all at a loose end. What to do? Decision made, two girls on the bench seat of the Transit, one on a seat in the back, and round to Diane’s. She would definitely have biscuits, because I made sure I put a couple of packs into my rucksack.

CHAPTER 18
Sam and Rosie, naturally. That word sat in the front of my mind as I watched them run across the field, and it was another little barb in my soul. Up and down, my mood; the slightest little thing derailed me.

‘Naturally’. I wasn’t natural, of course, not what they thought I was, not a real girl in any legal sense, but that wasn’t the issue just then. It was how they were acting without a script, natural children behaving naturally. Such things had been beaten and raped out of me in Mersey View, and in other supposedly safe spaces before my entry into that particular circle of hell. I watched two other children of around my age, I saw them dance and laugh, and when I matched them, I had to think it through beforehand.

CHAPTER 80
With a shout from Stevie of ‘Don’t be a stranger, lass!’, I stepped out of the bus and into the car, Jon in the driver’s seat once more. As I settled down in the back seat, Di called to me over her shoulder.

“Hiya, Deb! Hop in. I was just about to start the third degree on Jonny boy here. About a certain fellow officer who officially officiates in our office, sort of thing”

Rhys, of course; you teasing cow. I wondered what Jon felt about being the butt of her humour, but he seemed fine with it. I picked my words carefully, thinking of Gemma’s uncertainty.

“Yeah, some of the girls will be a bit disappointed. Gemma in particular”

CHAPTER 78
I spent the next hour catching up on so many things with Benny, together with his husband and Roger, who drew me out of myself with his absolutely shameless camping. I actually found myself smiling, then laughing out loud, as he told stories of his life with his late husband. I caught a hint of tears from Peter every so often, but when Roger described their wedding, we were all roaring with laughter.

“So there we are, outside our delightful little Danish lattie, and I pick up darling Simon, and I nearly put my back out, and of course he has to do the same, across the threshold, and we have a toast, of course, with decent bubbly”

CHAPTER 76
A fortnight later, and I was sitting awake in my bed at two in the morning, shaking, my laptop screen glowing beside me on the bed. Paula had been as good as her word, and the first chapter had landed in my inbox ten days after that evening meal with the new girl, and the woman had clearly been listening carefully to me. The first part followed the scheme I had suggested, but as Paula came back out of her opiate haze, the bright and potentially high-flying mind was lighting up.

CHAPTER 74
Life seemed settled at last, especially for Charlie and Tiff. They were still rationing their trips outside, but at least Charlie had started wearing something other than night clothes, and when we made our Summer expedition, they came with us, as did Gemma and Kim.

This time, Lim was driven up by Phil, and there were happy grins and congratulations from Cathy and my original Nell. As for Alicia, she rode up with her father, and when Owen the barman commented on how nice it was to have his guitarist back, and Alun made a comment about looking after his daughter, Alicia beamed for days. The weather blessed us for several days, and there was one shining moment that lifted my heart even more than Alicia’s wide smile at her father.

CHAPTER 72
Paul kept me up to speed, in a very unofficial way, especially when two of Di’s mates started the process with Paula. He was clearly fretting, worried about whether she would be able to cope with the sort of thing I wasn’t sure Di had managed without being hurt. That said, I couldn’t be sure Charlie would be able to take it, but she was now insistent that she was to, as she put it, rip a new arsehole in Ashley Evans’ face. While I wondered about her sense of anatomy, I understood her meaning perfectly. Paul, though, was already suffering. He did put my mind at rest on one issue, however.

“No, Debbie. Got a room rented for her”

“And who’s paying for it?”

CHAPTER 70
I had a day off after that chat with Nita, and as Spring was now with us, I made sure the girls were okay before riding down to the little bit of a wetland nature reserve that had been made close to where I had first met Bert.

The migrants were passing through, some of them coming to stay somewhere in Britain, others heading even further, using Cardiff as a refuelling point on the way. I settled down with scope and flask, and as I scanned the reeds and water, I found my thoughts running through Diane’s behaviour. We had talked, to her obvious embarrassment, about the girls, and about them actually BEING girls, and she had confessed to me how steep the learning curve had been for her. I suspected that the only reason she was able to adapt at least a little had been the shared pain.

CHAPTER 68
I rose to me feet, nodding to her to follow me, and as we left the Olive, I gave Kim a stealthy thumbs-up. Across the road, round the back and through the various safeguards. I caught her gaze sweeping over the two cameras we now had on the back of the house, and eyebrows rising as I undid all of the locks. I shrugged as I put my keys away.

“Some people don’t like us. What can you do but follow the Boy Scouts’ motto, and be prepared?”

CHAPTER 66
I was definitely getting well-past my prime, although both Paul and Marlene, independently, called me a ‘well-aged bird’ after I mentioned it. When Sparky came out with the same joke, adding ‘but still a game one’, I asked him directly if there had been some sort of conspiracy between them.

CHAPTER 64
I pulled into the Shell garage, of course, a little way short of the Waterloo, leaving the girls to watch the van and fend off any approach from the staff about free parking by promising a fill-up when I got back. I wanted to be absolutely sure it was only this particular Daddy Dearest joining us, rather than risk the presence of Alicia’s mother. I didn’t really believe that was likely, but that recent loss was still burning a painful wound in my soul.

I spotted him from some distance, sitting on the low stone wall next to the pay-and-display machine, a cardboard beaker of coffee or tea beside him. Just the one, and no sign of anyone else nearby;

CHAPTER 62
I ended up in a daze for weeks after the wake, in an odd way. I functioned at work, with no distraction or concentration issues when driving, and I apparently managed to act human when at home, but all the time I was chatting about school and college, trips to the hills or to the far West, I was asking the same questions of myself, over and over again.

Is this worth it? How am I making any difference, doing anything useful, when a girl goes up a chimney as soon as she finds her family again? I found myself planning ahead one evening, working out when the last of my brood would finally hit eighteen, and I could pull myself back into my shell. I went all the way through January and into February assigning a departure date to each girl, as Heidi kept away and Paul kept his counsel limited to an occasional prod to take the urn out to Splott or other places of need.

Not leaving the last chapter's hand grenade to fester.

CHAPTER 60
The year had been a decent one, all told, and I was looking forward to the usual festivities, even without Malcolm and Graham’s presence. For once, I had not only the Christmas Day off but Boxing Day as well, and some sad man without a life had actually volunteered to cover New Year’s Day for me. My plans took a slight hit when Heidi dropped in to sort a couple of things at the end of November, those ‘things’ actually being Serena and Alicia. The four of us adjourned to the dining room as soon as Paul turned up with Nita, which I hadn’t been expecting. As I was sorting out a tray of drinks for us all, the kitchen door banged, and it was Kim.

“They here, then?”

CHAPTER 58
I don’t know whether what Marlene and I had called my ‘girl magnetism’ was wearing off, but Heidi and Nita seemed to have come to a temporary half in supplying new residents. We are, after all, such a tiny proportion of the population that I must have been sheltering a major part of the available ‘supply’, and there was also the parallel fact that not all parents are bastards.

CHAPTER 56
Cathy and Nell had left us with one mumbled apology, and that was for their failure to pack up and head home immediately after their term had finished. Nell in particular had done her unsuccessful best to hide a sly smile.

“Leo’s never been to Scotland, so, well… lot’s of places to explore”

Cathy had burst out laughing at that remark, leaving Nell blushing even more fiercely than she had done at that infamous New Year’s Eve party. She started to stammer something else, and I shut her up with a hug and a finger to her lips.

CHAPTER 54
To my surprise, Tiff wouldn’t talk to me when she first arrived. A small, huddled figure reeking of fear, she almost clung to Kim, who looked at me over the child’s shoulder with a little smile that clearly said “Leave me to deal with her”

“Tiff?”

“Yeah?”

“Going to take you out the back. Quieter there, just us girls, OK?”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. That OK?”

“S’pose so… Is there a door?”

CHAPTER 52
Heidi came over a week later, having spent some time digging out the necessary paperwork Frank had asked for. We settled down in the kitchen cum airlock with a cuppa and, purely by the slightest of random coincidences, a couple of Gemma’s treats

“Took some time with one of the family court judges, Debbie. He’s someone I’ve dealt with before, a bit more switched on than most of the others. This is good! Would it, by any chance, be some of Gemma’s work?”

I grinned and nodded.

CHAPTER 50
There was an inquest, of course, and by that I mean the one in Heidi’s office. Paul dropped me a word after we had returned from the mountains, and I was relieved to hear that two women I had grown to feel a deep affection for were out of the firing line. It wouldn’t be the last time we lost a girl, by far, but at least that time we had someone to blame, blame properly, rather than a family member.

Enough on that subject. Old wounds still hurt, hurt even more, when they are opened again.