CHAPTER 20
I should have seen that one coming, I really should. I knew, after all, what Sal specialised in, and with hindsight Steph had been just a little too straight, a little too hard edged. She covered it up well, and everything about her shouted ‘woman’.

“So Steph’s…”

“Like you? Oh yes. Just started a little earlier. Has had her share of problems, but her husband and in-laws have been wonderful to her. Look, I told her I had another patient, I hadn’t told her it was you, but she read you as soon as she saw you. Her first words after you left were ‘what’s her name?’ and then she offered to help. You really have no idea at all how lucky you are.”

“So you didn’t tell her?”

“No, as I said, she spotted you for herself. That is one of the things that are worrying me, Annie, that at the moment it is only people like me, or others like yourself, who are seeing you, but every time you relax, every time you get happy in public, I see you start to show round the edges. Tell me, have you started touching people?”

“Er…yeah”

“Where?”

Shit. “I put my hand on his…”

“His what?”

“Hand. On the train coming up to Victoria”

Ginny murmured ‘fuck’ and Sally shook her head. “He is likely to punch you unless he is a very unusual man, and I suspect one of his punches would be rather unpleasantly forceful. I am not going to set you rules or targets, but you really, really need to decide where you want your life to go. I am not here to tell you, just listen and advise. I will tell you one thing, though. If you decide to go back to what you were before Ginny dragged you out, I am walking away.

“Annie, I don’t deal with slow suicides. Either piss or get off the pot. Do it clean, so we can get the mourning over, or don’t do it at all. I am not losing another patient. Got that?”

She was breathing hard at that point, but she kept staring at me, her eyes unblinking.

“What do you want me to do?”

“Make some sort of decision. Take control of your life”

“Yes, but what? You want me to start dressing up?” Again?

“You are sending echoes again, Annie. No, drop that idea. We aren’t talking about ‘dressing up’ or wearing knickers to work, we are asking which way you want your life to go. The rules on that are straightforward: before you get any go-ahead to change your status, you have to live properly for at least a year. The dressing up bit is more of a badge, a declaration, for those purposes. Got me?”

“Shit, Sal, you really are talking about me going for it, aren’t you?”

“And you don’t want to?”

Yes. Oh yes. “I’m not at all sure about that. I have real doubts I can do anything like that.”

“Well, today is not the day for that decision. We have another proper session in three days, yeah? That is when we should do some serious talking, not now. All I wanted to do today was stop you putting yourself in harm’s way”

She fumbled in her pocket and brought out a business card.

“Here, Steph sent this for you. It’s a hair removal place she used, says they are very understanding. And there’s a band session in two days’ time if you want to have a go with the rest of them”

She slung her handbag as she stood up. “I will see you in three days. Steph’s number is on the back of the card; give her a ring. And remember: keep yourself on ‘pause/think’ before you do anything”

The storm that had hit my life was off out the door on a pair of kitten heels as Ginny smirked. I looked at my knees again.

“Not a word. This is a hard thing to face. What I need now is some room to think, OK, and I don’t want my decisions based on the last thing said to me.”

Ginny took my hands from my lap.

“Annie, love, you know what you are. I think you always have. It’s just, well, that we know now. Look, whatever you do, just remember, we are all here and we will not be going away, even though you tried fucking hard to get rid of us all. Remember what I said, about cutting away your life till it was gone? That’s over now. We are just leaving you to decide what your life will be. Your choice, your call. Now, you have shirts to iron”

“Why don’t you do the ironing?”

“I may be married, Price, but it ain’t to you!”

Work was thankfully quiet for the next two days. I concentrated on getting through the shifts without letting any more of me leak around the edges, and Den filled me in on how good the curry had been and how dreadful some of the beer, with a spicing of acerbic comments about yoof fashions in Crawley. He made one particularly rude remark about a badly packed kebab that had me snorting my tea, before changing the subject. We were in the back office having a few minutes of admin when he dropped the bombshell.

“You aren’t really into lasses, are you, pal?”

Shit. “What do you mean, Den?”

“I mean I don’t know what I mean, if you see what I mean”

He grinned at that, and then turned serious.

“You don’t look at girls the way I do. Look at Ruth. You say ‘a bit heavy in the chest for her height’ while every other bloke is going ‘wibble’. Well, you are being a good mate to me, Adam, so I just thought I better say that I don’t have a thing for lads. Now that’s said, we can get on with being mates, all right?”

“You think I’m gay?”

“Well, you give off all the signals. What was that with my hand on the train?”

“Ah, Den, that’s just spending all my time with the girls, you sort of forget it goes differently with blokes, aye?”

I pulled my control together. “Was it a problem?”

“No, Adam, not really. I just thought I better set out my stall, like. Clear the air. Now, you going to this band thing tomorrow?”

“Yes. They are doing drinks and munchies, so should be fun.”

“Want some company?”

“In what way, Den?”

He sighed. “I don’t know what you are, Adam Price, but I am going to be working with you for the foreseeable future. I think seeing you in the wild some more will be better than watching you at work. I’ve seen enough of you to know that you are one of the good’uns, and after what happened up North I get a little protective. Deal?”

“Deal, sort of. Ah Den….no, forget it for now. Tell you some time”

Pause/think.

The next day e cleared the early shift crap of a couple of remands and a bail-back away before changing for the run up to the little village where Steph lived. The route took us right under the airport along part of the same cycle lanes we had ridden to get to Brighton, then off past a big supermarket and then quiet country roads to what turned out to be a surprisingly large house in its own little copse of trees. As we crunched up the drive in our cleats, the front door opened on a wiry, fit looking man with short dark hair.

“Hello, which one of you is Adam?”

“That’s me, this is Dennis, a colleague who heard the words ‘free food’”

“Geoff Woodruff, Steph’s other half. Come on round the back and we’ll lock up the bikes”

He led us to a rather solid-looking shed, which revealed one hell of a lot of bikes and a seriously good workstand by a large toolbox. I clocked the sticker on one of the bikes….PBP. I showed it to my friend.

“Den, whatever you do, don’t try and outride this bloke. He’s a bit good”

“Ah, that was years ago. I just do the SRs each year now”

Don’t you hate it when someone uses the word ‘just’ when talking about some seriously hard event? There didn’t seem to be any false modesty, though. He just seemed to be an open, what you see is what you get sort of man. He took us into the conservatory where a number of people were sitting or standing around, including an older couple and a girl who was either in her late teens or very early twenties, and the introductions went by in a blur. The only ones that stuck in my head were Steph and Geoff, and of course Eric, who I was supposed to know already. Now, however, I can say that the main offenders were Geoff’s brother Bill, his wife Jan, their daughter Kelly, and the next door neighbours the Woods.

There were several instruments lying around, plus music stands and the sheets that went with them, and the large table in the centre of the room was laden with covered dishes. Steph was in some green dress thing that left no doubt as to her gender, and as I watched her family around her there wasn’t a hint of anything beyond the banal and ordinary. That did things to my hopes. I didn’t want beauty, I didn’t want Hollywood’s idea of romance, I just wanted a normal life, and she seemed to have it. Could I get there, ever? Steph gave me a hug and whispered to me.

“Be very welcome, Annie”

Then, in a louder voice. “Naomi, can you be mother? I take it you both want tea, or Dennis is it? A beer?”

We both went “Yes please!”

Steph grinned at me. “He’s not on a diet. I have instructions about you! Now, get your axe out and let’s see what you know”

Ag well, tea it was to be. I put my flute together and checked the tuning, then started out on the old favourite, the Tull Bourrée, and the others gradually picked up their own instruments as I blew. Geoff had some skinny lute thing that he jangled along to my tune with, and Steph had a fiddle, which she rested on her knee as I played on to the overblown and heavily-tongued ‘lead break’, fingering the strings lightly and nodding. As I came to the end of the break, she played it again, her way, on the fiddle.

As I watched and listened, my flute silent in the dust of her passage, I quietly resolved to kill my doctor and two of my friends. They could have warned me!