CHAPTER 48
My eyes went straight to Von, and I saw her stiffen. Reading her mind wasn’t necessary just then, for everyone who knew her would understand what it was she was facing. Her left eyelid twitched just once, and then she buckled on her smile, her shield.

“Hello, Eddy. Is… is my boy treating you well?”

I could almost smell the fear coming off the young men, and I admired Will just then; loved him, in fact. Eddy coughed.

CHAPTER 46
It sounds trite to say something as obvious about your own wedding day as ‘I will never forget…’ but that was a simple fact. Things happened, people were there, that engraved it on my soul. One thing, one instant…

CHAPTER 44
Ian lost his job the week after Von took him home. Prolonged sick leave, unsatisfactory attendance, whichever snide form of words they used it came down to the same thing: the companies he dealt with didn’t want a dying man anywhere near their businesses, their premises or their staff. Perhaps they thought he was infectious. I swore when he told me, but the fatigue, the resignation, sat in his voice when he answered me.

CHAPTER 42
He was gone again, home to catch up on his job, Von driving, and I had to ask myself how in hell he was managing to keep it together over there. No girls, no family, nothing to look forward to but another session of poisoning. I asked Von how he was doing it, and she simply looked away, blushing. Ah.

“It’s not sex, see? We don’t… he can’t, can he? All chewed up. Just, look, felt right to give him some comfort, innit?”

CHAPTER 41
I sat by his bed as he cried, holding his hand with my right while my left held the tissues ready.

“I can’t do this any more, Jill!”

CHAPTER 38
“Aunty Jill, where’s the spare loo roll?”

“Under the sink in the wooden cupboard”

“They’re all wooden!”

“The one that LOOKS like wood, Bethy!”

“Oh, right…got it!”

CHAPTER 36
We worked our way through the graveyard, following the old habit of looking for the oldest stone, the youngest and most tragic death. There, on the edge, in a clearer spot, was the one I wanted to see, the shape and pattern so, so familiar.

“This was Alec’s, Stewie’s friend, yeah?”

“Aye, pet. Thought, you know, pay some respects. I mean, all of this here, it sort of comes from her, aye?”

My wife nodded. “You do too, I suppose. This lot, they pulled you out of the crap”

I turned to her, and kissed her gently. “I rather think you had a lot to do with that, love”

“I don’t like to blow my own wotsit---no, don’t even think about making that joke!”

CHAPTER 34
I returned with the three parcels, and caught my wife’s eye as I approached. When I reached them, Hays was partway through a declaration of how old she was and what age Santa was meant for. Ian had been absolutely spot on: she had found a route to grow, to become a person, rather than something left out of sight in a bedroom so as not to irritate her mother.

CHAPTER 33
In the end, it was Eric who came through with a result. Kate knew the right administrators to approach, but it was a man I hardly knew who moved and shook the right people to find Ian his bed.

Annie rode over to see us with the news that weekend, and I had to ask how her husband had managed it.

“Think about it, aye? He runs the path lab. Every surgeon, every oncologist, they all have to come through him, so he gets to know them, aye?”

CHAPTER 32
It was Larinda who reacted first, once again showing who was stronger in our partnership. Ian had cut me off to ring Ralph, Neil, any others who he could find the strength to tell, and my wife just took the phone from my hands, looked through a small notebook she pulled from her handbag and dialled a number. We were still in loudspeaker mode.

“Brains’r’Us Undead Deli!”

CHAPTER 30
It seemed my lover had moved things on beyond what she had admitted to me, and rather presented me with a fixed and fully prepared package. She had been in touch with just about everyone involved, tweaking the details and filling in little boxes where necessary.

“Why not somewhere closer, Pet, like Holland?”

CHAPTER 29
“And what exactly are we planning? “

She almost whispered, “It’s me that’s been doing the planning”

“Aye, well it’s ‘us’ now, OK?”

The wind was a sod. Why did she have to pick February? It blasted across the church yard, swirling past the corner where the new wing was glued inappropriately to the old, concrete to stone. My raincoat flapped around my legs, the tails whipping my calves, as I watched the coffin slowly lowered down into the damp and dripping slot.

CHAPTER 27
I looked at his expression, and sighed.

“Bethy, Larinda’s in the kitchen sorting some food, so…”

“Yeah, yeah, let the olds talk”

As soon as she was gone, and the door shut, I turned to my brother.

CHAPTER 26
Unless you are peculiarly lucky, work is something that serves to highlight the pleasure of what you prefer to spend your time doing. If it weren’t for work, you think, I could do whatever it is all day and every day. You know, though, in the back of your mind, that it would be like bathing in chocolate. Kinkily nice for thirty seconds or so before it would cloy and repel.

CHAPTER 22
Of course, we had to make the introductions to the others, and that was when I realised how sharp Ian’s focus had been on me and Mam, as he hadn’t even noticed the Forster brothers. So many explanations, so much history, and so often his eyes would drift as his mind processed such things as Alec’s presence at John’s side.

“My middle brother Ian; John Wilkins, retired colleague and life-saver”

“Oh, don’t, Jill!”

“Well, it’s true…and Von you might have heard Mam talk about. That’s her boy Will over there with Nelly”

CHAPTER 20
Ian was back in a couple of minutes, his wife turning up with the wayward offspring a few seconds after. She peered at his face, seeming to spot the red in his eyes, and then turned her gaze onto me.

“That’s not really your colour, Rob”

CHAPTER 19
It was a crisp Autumn day, the freshly fallen leaves mixed with the confetti that Neil had insisted on and the sun warm through the net of my headgear once out of the soft wind. It was Neil who had stood up with Ralph, and it was Neil who had spoken to the vicar at High Usworth to arrange my mother’s second wedding in the same church that had celebrated her first.

CHAPTER 18
The meal was no wonder of modern cuisine, but it was properly cooked and filling, and I noticed that it wasn’t just tea being consumed by some of the older sorts. People were happy, that was the overwhelming thing. Mostly in pairs, mostly touching, even Von’s earlier pain seemed to have left the building, as she came to life discussing her baby’s college plans with Kelly and Mark as if Will wasn’t even there.

CHAPTER 16
It was still sitting there, at the back of my mind in one sense but so dominant in others. Larinda. I had said she was special, and it was true, but each time I looked at her Von’s words leapt at me. I was gay, there was absolutely no doubt in my mind. It was as much a part of my life, my soul, as my gender, and something I had found just as difficult to express.

CHAPTER 14
A fortnight later, and they were ready for sentencing Nye. Of course, we had to go, and it was no surprise that Von made her own way there, Will by her side.

She had been making the efforts I had never anticipated, and I had to rein in my urges to be a little snide about it. I couldn’t quite get past the fact that when it had been me, her response had been direct and threatening, but when the perversions came from her baby it made her pause and think. Still, however it had happened, pausing and thinking seemed to have entered her life. I couldn’t really complain about that, could I? I had Larinda at hand for that little job.

“All rise”