CHAPTER 15
Stewie. He clearly knew. I gave Sally a look, asking with my eyes, and she murmured “He is part of my therapy kit for you”

Dinner was excellent, the ‘cabbage pie’ going down a treat, as Ginny kept her beady eye on my wine consumption. Sal looked around the table, waiting for a pause in the conversation.

“Ladies…Stewie…Kate tells me, Annie, that you have told her and Ginny as much as you can about your situation. That allows me to be open with them, as long as you are OK with that. Stewart here is a different matter. Historically, he has a bit of experience in a very similar situation, and I have taken the liberty of involving him as a sort of buddy. Not exactly the normal way we do things, but I made the decision as I truly thought it would be beneficial. If you are unhappy with that, I will take the flak and apologise”

I sat and thought for a while, and remembered almost my first conversation with Stewie. ‘You know’ had been the important words, and I saw what Sally was hoping for.

“This is a tag-team now, isn’t it? Torquemada there, starving me to death, Kate slapping me around when I slip, you talking me through who I am, and Stewie….”

I paused once again, gathered my thoughts and my words. “It’s like the AA. Hi, my name is Adam and I have been fucked over by stress. Hi, my name’s Stewart, and so have I. Is that about right?”

He looked at me, just the trace of a smile on his lips. “Yeah, about right. I have only the stuff I picked up about Mel to give me any idea what you are going through in that way, but Sal thought we might be able to separate the two issues a bit, stop them ramping each other up”

He played with his fork for a few seconds, as if the metal had become somehow important, and then spoke in a much softer voice. “I never got to know Melanie, and that was a real loss. I had a true friend, the best friend I have ever had, if I exclude my wife, but it’s still almost a dead heat there. She was killed, and so we never met. It doesn’t happen again. End of.”

He looked up again. “If that isn’t OK, just tell me”

Confidence. Two meanings here. Sally had not kept it, but I still had it in her. Nobody had ever got to my core the way she had, and I had never met someone before who had so obviously understood what my demons were and where they came from.

“Sally, you are worried about a malpractice complaint, aren’t you?”

She kept her face as neutral as ever, but the tells were still there. “Yes, Annie”

That was an obvious ploy, but I let it go. “What I said stands. Ginny and Kate have got me to a state where work is recognising the improvement. Ginny has got me sleeping again, though partly because she kicks me awake every time the dreams come. You…you have finally got me talking about myself, and Stewie, well, you show me that survival is possible.”

I paused once more. Fuck it, lighten the mood. “Fine by me. What’s for pud, Ginny?”

Sally didn’t actually slump in relief, or say ‘phew!’, but it was close.. I could spot the little flickers, but that was rather unnecessary, as Stewie reached out and took her hand. Once again, that steady look of his.

“Thanks, really thanks. You have to understand a few things, Anne, especially about where you sit with my wife.. No, Sal, has to be said. Ladies, Sal has dealt with more than a few GID cases. One of them was Melanie, who was Mike, and another was someone who became a very, very close friend, so close that Sal had to step away from her therapy. Sal is very good at what she does, but she suffers from one big handicap: she cares about people. Yes we are a tag team, but only because she insisted I take some fluffy counselling course so that it could all be legal.

“Annie, you are not unique, that’s what’s so awful. That’s also why Sally decided to step outside official good practice and tell me”

Sally did sigh, then. “All I could see was Melanie all over again, Annie, and I was frightened. You do know, don’t you, that she was out celebrating the news of getting a date for her surgery when she was murdered?”

“I heard something about that, Sal, but I was off work for a while….afterwards”

Speeding cars. Night. Body parts, and the sound of someone trying to cry while being sick. I realised I was trembling, and Ginny had her hand on mine.

“Mate, it’s bread and butter pudding, you’ve earned it”

Holding me and passing a tissue till I settled. Stewart smiled.

“Did you ever meet her, Annie?”

I thought back, and suddenly I had to laugh. Stress relieved, or the memory, but it was still real laughter.

“I ran into her a few times, after she had transitioned. She was a big girl”

Stewart snorted. “Big, and bloody hard as nails. We were half of a fire team for ages”

“I had some minor dealings with her through the Mall’s security, you know the sort of thing…but it was the graffiti that caught my eye”

Sally was giggling at that, and it seemed the tension was broken. I continued, the memory still as fresh as the paint had been.

“When she was out, somebody painted ‘peedo’ on the side of her flat, that’s P-E-E-D-O, and she not only corrected the spelling but crossed it out and wrote ‘Lesbian’–“

“Dyke” interrupted Sally.

“Dyke, then, and wrote to the local paper and suggested that rather than locking up their kids it should be their wives”

Ginny snorted her cranberry juice. “Fuck, wish I’d met her!”

Stewart raised his eyebrows sadly. “Wish you still could. She’s buried locally”

Sally grinned. “The dance! Stewie, the dance! Annie, what sort of music do you play? I know you have a flute, but is it classical, jazz, what?”

“Well, sort of classical stuff, with a bit of rock and that sort of thing.”

My flute had been one of my few bits of girliness I had managed to get past Dad. As he remembered Jethro Tull, with Ian Anderson in his most manic tight-breeched cock-rock phase, I had used that to justify my playing, though had to do a lot of hard tonguing and grunting through my instrument to keep up the pretence. He saw me as emulating a rock god on one leg, while I was dreaming of wispy girls with strapless gowns playing Debussy. Sal was still grinning, though, and talking.

“The local church, where we had the service, has got a bloody brilliant vicar, and they have an LGBT group based there, and every year they do a sort of barn dance thing, live band and that. Just a thought…”

“Folk music? Bit tumpty-tumpty simple stuff, isn’t it?”

Husband and wife looked at each other, and burst into laughter. Stewart stopped first.

“Oh, you are in for such a shock, Price! Seriously, really seriously, I am assuming you are happy to talk here, in front of everyone?”

I cast an eye over Kate and Ginny. “What, in front of my family? Of course”

“Then my missus here has a plan of action. She continues a formal therapy strategy, while I keep an ear ready if you just need to talk, you know, about those sort of things. The other sort of stuff, if you feel you need to, we have a guy called Jerry, who runs the support group. Just an idea, but Sal thought that it would show you that you are far from alone in this.”

Sally chuckled. “And you better get a lot of practice in if you want to get up to the necessary standard”

Kate raised a finger. “She does play folk music, I’ve heard her.”

I harrumphed. “Them’s not folk tunes, they are Welsh traditional devotional music! You cannot compare Myfanwy with Nellie the Elephant!”

Sally had a truly evil look on her face. “Ooooh, you are in for SUCH a shock!”