Our last morning in a tent for a while dawned with a slight hint of miserable weather, the first in what seemed like an age. It had rained during the night, but nobody seemed to care much. All our girls were in light dresses and flip-flops or sandals, on the basis that if they got wet feet, who cared? I remembered the old Scouts camping adage that site dress should be shorts and canvas plimsolls, on the same principle. I somehow doubted that people at Everest Base Camp would concur, but it worked for a typical British Summer.

I stepped up to my baby, laying an arm over his shoulders.

“Do you think you will?”

“How do I know, Dad? Not exactly been in any sort of thing with a girl before, have I?”

“Son… Mum and me, we talked you through where we were, before we met. When we were with Alan and Carolyn”

“They’re still family, Dad”

“I’ll…oh god that’s so warm! I’ll tell you when”

“Where do I?”

“Just there. Just…. Yeah. Push. Gently. It’s…. stop. Wait. Now push… stop stop. Let me wait a sec… Again, Ish, and OH”

It was surprisingly quiet as we turned left off the Welsh Bridge on the ‘Festival Thursday’, but traffic built up a little as we hit the rise to the Berwick Road traffic lights. We were waved straight past what I had assumed would be the entrance and down to a field gate, where a rough track gave way to a series of ups and downs that had me a little worried about speed. We arrived at the other side unharmed and undamaged, however, and went through the ticket check and across the lane into the site proper. The first thing to grab my attention was the sign ‘Kill your speed, not a folkie’, which appealed to my sense of logic. Ish was on his phone.

We stayed in the car while Maz did her bird-naming extravaganza, listening to a new disc Ish had found in Bangor, before heading off to South Stack for more of the same, with the addition of LC’s insistence on counting every step from the top to the bridge over to the lighthouse, and Clara came to the fore just then, explaining what exactly a lighthouse was, as well as its purpose, while I filled the gaps by pointing out seals as well as some of the more famous climbs up the churned semi-rock of Mousetrap Zawn.

“What exactly is that…stuff, Dad?”

It was another superb day, LC managing Equinox, at VS, but I drew the line at Solstice, as it is not just HVS but involves a particularly nasty and sustained layback. We’d started on the relatively easy slab of Jagged Face, which is a balance and small holds affair, going as low as Hard Very difficult or Mild severe, before the far more technical (and vertical) Solstice face.

We ate in the pub again, as neither of us wanted to wrestle with the influx of paying guests for the cooking facilities, and Neil was on his last night with us before heading home. Our two girls came over from Bangor, but just for the evening, and there was a very obvious bit of silent communication between them as they clocked our (bunk)house guest.

I had slipped back for a quiet talk with Maz on the way downhill, surprised at her surge of decisiveness.

We joined the others just as Chrissy caught us up.

“They’re a friendly lot in there, Mike. All my stuff locked away, no humping, not even the nice sort—er, sorry. Sense of humour gets a little direct when I’m tired. Got my ear plugs, so should be safe from snorers”

Ish looked directly at me, before saying “Snap!”, and then we were inside, the lad beginning a round of introductions for the woman, before she simply cornered Steph for a chat about strings or soundposts, or perhaps sanity and its retention. As usual, Geoff simply sat and laughed, as LC quite casually sat in Neil’s lap to show him her photos

I left Hathersage by way of the Hope Valley, making a stop in Castleton for simple tourist games, and a longer one for a boat ride in the Speedwell cavern. That one nearly fell apart, though, as LC froze at the entrance.

Maz and Ish had a quiet chat with her, Ish reporting back to me with a frown.

“Caves, Dad, Being locked up in one, to be exact”

The drive south was awful, almost entirely on motorways once we had hit the edge of Newcastle. Partway through, Maz passed a disc forward, and we spent the next fifty minutes or so listening to ‘Galloways’ by Jez Lowe.

“Dad?”

LC, once again daring to break a silence, even if it was filled with someone else’s music.

Yet again that comment. I decided to leave it for as long as I could so that whatever surprise they were clearly organising would remain just that: a surprise.

We said our goodnights, and ambled back to my family, just as the food was arriving. Ish was staring at his glass.

“Dad?”

“Son?”

“This doesn’t really taste like beer”

“Not quite right, son. It’s the stuff back home that doesn’t taste like beer”

Our second evening was almost as good, spent in the Forth, just up Pink Lane from our hotel, because we had a visitor. We had just given our food order at the bar when Maz squealed, LC looking terrified for a few seconds as Ish calmed her, before turning to offer a hand to our new arrival after he had released Maz from his hug and finished wiping his eyes.

“Neil. Be welcome, mate. Be so bloody welcome! Carolyn?”

She started, almost as if slapped.

“Ish?”

LC simply looked confused, but it was our son’s turn to help, Ish calling out, “When I was very little, I had a stuffed rabbit”

“What’s a rabbit?”

Moments like that cut me, for each was a reminder of how much of our child’s life had been stolen by those bastards, along with that of my wife. Ish was still on point, though.

“It’s a little animal, Carolyn. We’ll show you some real ones, but mine was a toy, like your bear, for cuddling. Another name for a rabbits is ‘Bunny,’ and because I was very little, I called mine Bunbun”

“Have you still got it?”

Our first morning in the UK was brighter, a communal breakfast taken in the conservatory and garden, bunkhouse style in the way everyone clubbed together. I still felt like shit, my usual reaction to long haul flights, but Maz and I had been woken by our daughter at about seven, Maz pretending to be asleep even after a prod from the girl. I understood why when LC finally turned to me for permission.

“Dad?”

“Yes, love?”

The slightest of twitches from her, and then that surge of confidence, or maybe hope, that warmed my heart.

“Can I play with the dogs again?”

Candice was most definitely channelling Fluffy, without the slightest hint of Blonde.

“What it is, Mike, is we talk you through it, and I type it up as we go, so I might stop and start you several times. We then read it through a few times, and you’d be surprised what can pop out of the back of your mind”

“Why didn’t the Malaysians do this?”

“Having read the paperwork, I suspect it was due to a lack of any shits available for giving. Hang on: Lexie, am I down to do Fluffy or Fang?”

“Fluffy, I believe”

Candice smiled once again.

The place wasn’t familiar, of course; the stench of Charlie Cooper was still hanging over every part of the City, but we were out at Winsford, not that far from Neil’s address. Mr Sedgewick had been cheeky, asking specifically if I could possibly visit Gemma’s before the trip, so both Candice and I were carrying several cardboard boxes of pastries in readiness. She had found a pub that did rooms in a place called Little Budworth, as there was sod-all in Winsford, and neither of us fancied a Purple Palace again. She was driving, a works car, because the public transport was also non-existent. At least the HQ had a decent amount of parking. We waited at the desk like good little girls until a civilian came to collect us, and off we went to Mr Sedgewick’s office, towing the consolidated evidence bundle in a non-small pull-along suitcase.

We got the formal ‘Go’ from the Super the following afternoon, presumably after he had cleared up the pecking order with Sedgewick and the Cheshire brass. Sammy was absolutely in full focus.

“Di, I want you to take Candice for the bags. She does fluffy better than you—shut it, Blondie. You know full well you can. Take a works car, and make sure the stuff gets locked away properly. Some of the court boxes, the ones with padlocks, they’ll do. And Blake?”

“Yes?”

We joined the other pair after two hours, Alys having stepped in halfway through with fresh cups of tea and a plate of non-greasy nibbles, plus a hug and cheek kiss for two of us. The story was even worse than the bare bones Mike had given us. Lexie was calm, gentle in fact, throughout, but I was picking so many cues from her face and hands it was clear how hard she was having to work to keep that poise. There was one episode Neil recounted, involving a particular dress, that made me want to hit someone. Lexie’s jaw muscles worked a little as she spoke.

Neil was late in arrival, and we had already given up on him and headed for the pub. No music, but an awful lot of people to smile at and be lifted by a smile’s return, often with extra warmth. Debbie and her girls were still with us, and Alys and I had a quiet moment of pleasure spotting which ones we recognised, and which were still coming to terms with their new lives. I could almost read their minds: is this real? I get to be myself, in public? There’s no catch, no taking it all away again?

My darling wife was cooking that evening, which was sometimes a bit of a lottery. While I love her to distraction, her culinary skills are a moveable feast. By that, I mean that there are times when she gets overambitious, and we have to move said feast from our dining room to a local pub or takeaway. One thing she does do well, though, because she was taught by experts, is a decent barbecue. There are local issues on that score, however, geographical ones related to typical precipitation patterns and being resident in North Wales.

CHAPTER 86
Life went on, though, as it almost always did. Ish went to school, where he switched his sports to rugby and swimming, Maz and I started the ‘matrix’ training, and the ‘protection’ stayed in the bedside cabinet’s drawer.

The letters became more frequent, eventually becoming bulkier as her mother started sending her own photos down, all of older members of her family, according to Maz.

CHAPTER 85
Agreement to our proposals was surprisingly quick, given the allegations about ‘Wily Orientals’ I had grown up with, and within two weeks we were already at the stage of drafting a training roster, splitting Maz and I so that we could work twice as fast while still leaving time for our childcare responsibilities.

The first lot were the ‘matrix’ people, including Audrey, who turned up in one of my classes. They were all frighteningly intense in their approach to the work, and I began to suspect that the local working culture might be just a little competitive, maybe with a touch of canine cannibalism.