CHAPTER 70
He was blushing again, but there was a grin behind the lowered head and shuffling hands.

“Yeah, can’t really hide that one, can I? We haven’t set a date, but, well, it was sort of obvious. Pete asked Laura, and I saw the way her mum was smiling, and it just made sense to follow the boy’s example. Too many wasted years…”

He faltered, just for a few seconds, but then the smile was back, twice as bright and utterly natural this time.

CHAPTER 68
The floods weren’t bad that winter, but as usual customer numbers collapsed for a couple of months. We kept ourselves afloat by doing that for others, with a steady succession of boats to hoist out and check for damage, fouling, caulking and the rest. Trevor and Ricky knew what they were doing with that, and it let Darren push ahead with his studies. If things went well, he would get his certificates in time for the school holiday period, just when they would be needed most.

CHAPTER 61
I wandered back along the hallway as my wife thundered down the stairs, and beat me to the living room. As I entered, everyone seemed to be wrapped around everyone else, but all eyes turned to me. I kept the glum face on as long as I could, but Sar wrestled the test wand out of my hand.

“Yes! Two-nil!”

CHAPTER 65
I was really at a loss without her, and when Pete left shortly afterwards to take his boy down I was almost lost. It was an education, in a sense. I had spent so long on my own after Tricia had been taken I had felt that I was comfortable in my solitude, that I didn’t need people around me. I realised just then, as the house emptied and the nearest of my friends headed south, that I had merely been numb, not comfortable. Just because you lose the feeling in a hand or other bit doesn’t mean it can’t get damaged, just that the pain doesn’t tell you if it does. That had been my life: numbed, no pain, but steadily being damaged by my isolation.

CHAPTER 63
She stayed quiet for a while, just staring at the doctor’s letter, till I decided I had to break the silence.

“Happen I’d better start looking at hotels down that Brighton, then”

She looked up, head tilted slightly. “No”

CHAPTER 61
“What brought this on, Pete?”

He was silent for just the few seconds it took me to realise how worried he really was.

“Ah, Gerald, mate, it’s how he is. Bloody stubborn, pig-headed, independent, call it what you will. I can’t tell him… Shit, mate, he thinks I’m lining him up here cause I don’t think he can cope on his own, find his own…”

Another short silence, and again I waited.

“I nearly said ‘find his own feet’, and that would… I’m not making sense, am I?”

CHAPTER 60
Ashley had been right, and there was no chance of a proper knees-up for the newly engaged, so we settled for a proper night in for the New Year. Work came back to haunt us, but in the end it was a relief getting back out of the house and seeing what damage the usual winter floods had done.

We were lucky that year, no wet feet in the King’s Arms, and the first few days of the year were spent setting out priorities for maintenance and refurbishment. Susie had somehow managed to find a source of Bolinder spares and reconditioned engines in Birmingham, and then added to her not-so-little coup by negotiating an incredibly cheap contract for traditional enamel ware with an artists’ studio in Camden.

CHAPTER 58
Harwich was visible from a long way off, or at least the big white reactor dome at Sizewell. There was nothing really visible of England apart from the dome for what seemed like hours, but eventually we were passing the moles or piers or whatever they are called and nosing up to the dock. There was the usual hanging about while sailors did sailor things, and then we were called down to our vehicles. Pete drove, silent that morning, and in a very short while we picked up the first motorway up past Cambridge, leading on to the A1 after a frighteningly busy dual carriageway to Huntingdon.

CHAPTER 56
The bus was quiet that morning, Ashley seeming a little lost. Pete was driving, so I made my way down to where the young man was staring out of the window. He’d said nothing over breakfast, and apart from a quiet ‘morning’ nothing at all since we got up. I slipped into the seat beside him.

“Bit quiet today, son”

He looked down at his hands. “Bit thinking to do, Mr Barker. Not much sleep last night”

CHAPTER 55
Pete was driving the bus the next morning, and I caught him giving me a sly look every so often, when he clearly thought I wouldn’t catch him at it, for he broke into a cheery smile each time I looked round quickly. I collared him before I boarded.

“What’s up, pal?”

“What do you mean?”

“You looking at me all queer, like. What’s on your mind?”

CHAPTER 54
The next morning I had a hangover, of course, but we all did, so while Pete did something with the bus engine we pushed Maurice down the street in his chair for another look at our little garden. The café had done us a continental style breakfast which actually included a lot of sliced meats and cheeses rather than just funny bread and jam, so said hangover was ebbing, at least in my case. I could have murdered a bacon sandwich.

CHAPTER 58
It was an odd year, in the end. Annie was clearly settled entirely into her new life, and each time I saw her she seemed somehow shorter. I realised she was like my forearms, that tell Siân was always so quick to spot. As she caught life up after so many years of pursuit, the tension was leaving her body. Even though she was like Alice in her devotion to heels, her physical presence diminished as her personality was finally allowed out to face the world.

CHAPTER 52
He took his leave, Susie still trembling as she sat open-mouthed. It was Charles who broke the silence.

“What have I been telling you, my dear? You must have faith. People are in the main decent”

Ernie called back “Aye, but arseholes, pardon my French, stick in the memory longer. Pete. Where we off to now?”

“Short trips, lads, Susie. Pegasus Bridge museum and a cuppa at the café”

CHAPTER 50
Susie wasn’t too late back, which suited all of us, especially as I had been forced to threaten Valerie to go home rather than sit up awaiting the prodigal daughter. I had taken myself to bed, but I couldn’t sleep till I heard the key in the lock, a clatter of heeled shoes on the doorstep and, of all things, a giggle. The next morning, there was a knock at my bedroom door and in came my girl with a tray of tea and a couple of rounds of toast and jam.

“What brought this on?”

“Nowt, really, just felt like it”

CHAPTER 48
He was looking down at his hands as he started speaking again, and I watched his forearms ripple as sinews stood out and relaxed. He was far from relaxed himself, obviously.

“Right. You, we all know what Susie is, here and now. No, girl, let me finish. Not a good place to be, not in today’s world”

Susie snorted. “Better than it were, Pete!”

“Yes, better than it’s ever been, in a way, but we should really say not as bad. I don’t think it’s ever going to be ‘good’, not in any absolute sense”

CHAPTER 47
“So, Andrew, what do you do for work?”

Valerie was smiling and clearly doing her very best for her daughter.

“I’m a draughtsman, at Harwell’s out by Layerthorpe”

Pete looked up at that. “Bit of a narrow field, us three then. All engineers of one sort or another”

“I just do the drawings, Pete”

“Yes, but there’ll be a bit of insight there. Never looked at someone else’s work and thought that something didn’t look right?”

CHAPTER 46
Susie was annoying for some weeks after that, as she fretted for what she clearly saw as vindication of her status. I had spent quite a while trying to straighten out the tax people for her PAYE and that, but no matter how many times she saw her name on a payslip she still didn’t seem to find my recognition ‘official’ enough. The Saturday it finally came, she went missing for an evening, returning home in the small hours in a very well-oiled state. I said nothing as she came in, just made her a cup of tea and saw her safely up the stairs.

CHAPTER 45
The receptionist pleased me, because she wasn’t some dolly-bird but a woman in early middle age, with a little computer screen on her desk and a ready smile.

“Yes? How can I help?”

Valerie stepped past me. “Susie Lockwood to see Dr Hemmings”

CHAPTER 43
Matthew raised an eyebrow at that, and once more his tact ran true to form.

“I will assume that your status is at issue, dear lady. May I ask about your name?”

“Eh? Oh! Statutory declaration”

“So for all purposes it is your name, even for a passport?”

“Yeah, but they’d still put ‘male’ on the bloody thing!”

“I see. I rather suspect there is precedent, though. A brother officer, you know, a donkey-walloper as Gerald here would have said, followed their own star a few years ago. A travel writer, yes?”

CHAPTER 41
Susie gave me a little tug on the arm and nodded towards a dumpy woman sitting alone at a table and reading the Daily Express, which said a lot. Susie obviously felt me twitch, caught my look and whispered in my ear.

“She says she gets it for the crossword…”

CHAPTER 55
I really, really couldn’t accept that in any meaningful way. Miserable bigot goes to stay with Magic Monks, and lo and behold she is turned back onto the fluffy paths of rainbow unicorns, kittens and righteous tolerance. No, not likely at all. There were better-documented cases of airborne pork. Ambrose had a wry smile on his face, though.

“She also predicted that you wouldn’t believe her, either of you. I can see a lot of her in you, Siân: the stubbornness for a start. Look, my cards on the table. You are not the only ones who do not believe her. I gather that neither of you share her faith—no, please. Distorted, unpleasant, confused, call it what you will, she still has faith. Still a deep belief in our Saviour, strange as her image of Him may be. Please…”

CHAPTER 38
The pistol kicked back in my hand, hurting the web between my thumb and index finger, and the muzzle jerked up and to the left as the man in battledress flew backwards off his feet, so much blood coming from him in a great splash, gaudy on the snow, and someone was on my bed, holding me as I felt half a shout leave me.