This little short came to me while waiting for a Funeral Cortege to go slowly along the road and into a local church. It is a variation on a piece that I wrote for my writing class.

[four months later]
It was a slow Wednesday morning when Ray and Jade came into the shop. She said her hello's to Sylvia, and me before leaving on an errand for Ray.

Ray’s son Phillip descended on our little world three days later. I say descended because his first port of call was the coffee shop where he said loudly,

[Late October 2017]
“Good morning Ray. Shall I prepare your usual?” I said to the latest customer who had ventured into my coffee shop that morning. It was blowing a bit of a hoolie out there. A strong south-westerly wind that was predicted to become a full-on gale before midday was dragging rain squalls along with it. Not a nice day to be out and about.

Heather left me to sort out our travel arrangements while she beat the hell out of some pork for her Scottish influenced version of schnitzel.

The news that there was still a price on my head rocked me sideways, backwards and finally a somersault that ended with me landing flat on his face.

The pair of us worked long into the night cleaning the house. Despite my best endeavours, Heather would not divulge what she had planned for us when we finally left out current location.

[three days later]
“Thanks for picking me up. This is most unexpected,” I said as I embraced Sylvie at Sky Harbor airport in Phoenix.

She grinned.
“It is all your fault you know!”

I felt at a bit of a loss the next morning now that Sylvie was going back to her duties with the FBI. She had arranged for my stay to be extended by one more day and as one or other of the FBI or DOJ were picking up the bill. The only upside I could see was that I was under no pressure to check out by 11 am.

After a great lunch where Sylvie refused yet again to sample Grits and instead, settled for a Pork Sandwich with all the trimmings. I had the chicken version of the same Sandwich while Jared settled on some Meat Loaf that, to be honest, looked and smelt fantastic.

“That was nice if a little unexpected,” said Sylvie as our kiss ended.

"That was to keep you safe, ok!"

“Which way now?” asked Sylvie when she drove us away from the Post Office.

I thought for a moment before replying,
“I’m trying to put myself in the shoes of those two idiots and their father. They will have seen the North Carolina plates on this, and will more than likely be thinking that we’ll be heading back there as fast as we can.”

Once the opposition legal team had introduced themselves, I made myself comfortable and let the proceedings begin. Lane had hardly asked his first question when ‘they’ objected to the presence of Amy.

[At the State Trooper HQ in Spokane, WA]
The Lieutenant turned the laptop around and showed me the screen. On it was the front page of that day's Washington Post. The headline got my attention in a flash.

I slid, as quietly as possible, another ten yards down the hill and began to circle away from the Cabin and the track down to the road. The small bushes and trees that had been left to grow in recent years gave me plenty of cover. The ‘crew’ that my half-brother had with him were making plenty of noise like you do when driving hogs into a trap. The hog they were after was me!

The Judge made me feel very much at home in the cabin. It felt odd. Not odd for anything bad but odd for me to actually like a place. I’d been on the run for so long that there were times that I thought that I was destined to be a ‘queen of the road’ for good but there was something about the place that got to me within a couple of hours of me seeing it for the first time.

After a very restless night’s sleep, I decided that I needed to kill the tour and then make good use of my time on this side of the Atlantic Ocean. I knew that my decision would not go down well in some quarters so I had to vanish for a while at least. In order to disappear, I needed to find somewhere nice and quiet for a few days or even a week so that I could try to get some of the story ideas I had rattling around in my mind typed into my laptop.

Louisa continued her rehab with renewed vigour now that she’d got the news of her transition off her chest. After a gap of almost three weeks, another shopping trip was organised. This time, she managed to buy some clothes and even go for a Coffee on her own. It almost ended up the same way as the first. She was drinking her coffee when a man started to chat her up. It was only the intervention of Toyah that prevented a disaster.

Louis Vaughn, could never quite figure out what it was that he had done but he'd become a man in demand. That demand had come about very much either by accident or the luck of being in the right place at the right time, he’d carved out a second career as an escort. No, not the dirty sort of escort but a person who could be relied upon to behave properly when they are in the company of women and in particular the women who called upon his services. The other sort of escort was not what Louis was about.

My journey home from Sunningdale was plagued with worry. A thousand and one questions were buzzing around my brain. They were a mix of questions relating to me, but mostly they were to do with Mia. When the train stopped at Staines, I knew that professionally, I was about to get very much out of my depth but there was more, far more.

I got away from Melanie's place as fast as I could do without embarrassing either of us.

The wintery sunshine that appeared as the daylight was fading did nothing to help my mood. I'd agreed to spend Christmas day with a woman that I hardly knew, and that woman was going to enjoy dressing me up as god knows what, probably just to post the images of me looking like a fool all over social media.

“Have you ever talked to someone who really understands what it is like to be the real you?” asked Maxine when I had recovered at least a bit of my composure.

I shook my head.