CHAPTER 25
Jim raised his hand. “Sam, not a word about nip and tuck, or slicing and dicing, OK? Annie, what is the plan? Do you have one at all?”

“Not a clue, Jim, I just felt that you needed to be aware of what was going on, just in case”

Sam was nodding. ”Makes sense to me, though I am a bit fucking sideways with this. I see what was going on now, though. You stupid thick fucker, you’d given up, hadn’t you? You remember what I said, ‘good cop’? You didn’t give that up, did you? You start checking out of life, but you still keep on doing the job. Fucking typical. Jim, why do the good ones always have to be so thick?”

“Dunno, Sam”

The shifty man who had been moving around the customers finally approached our table, showing us a bundle of counterfeit DVDs.

“You want?”

As one, three warrant cards came out, and Sam said the words.

“Fuck off, son, while you still can”

He turned to me. “See? Reflex. I don’t care how you started out, or what you are, but you are Job to the marrow, and we need you, the nick needs you, the Job needs you. Ah, fuck it, kid, I was going to say we have your back, but looking at this lot….shit. How many more bodyguards have you got?”

Geoff grinned at that. “My wife and family, and you really don’t want to get in my wife’s bad books”

Stewie snorted at that; I would have to do some digging, there was a joke there. I tried to take charge again, this was turning into another back-seat ride.

“Look, Jim mentioned about nip and tuck, aye? Well, this is the situation. I am going to start living as myself at home. What that means, exactly, I will find out. Sally is going to send me to a blood chemistry doctor, because there is a lot of risk in some of this, and my liver’s possibly not that sound”

Sam was nodding at that. I shushed him. “That does not mean I go onto hormones and start sprouting tits and stuff, aye? It simply means that we can discuss what options I have”

Jim was nodding. “Lots of different ways to move forward, Annie, but given the choice, what would you want?”

“To have been born right, Jim, in the first place. Didn’t happen, can’t change that, so see what the quacks say and go from there. Sam, understand one thing, please, I have given up on giving up. I want to live, and I want to be alive, if that makes sense”

Jim picked it up. “Well, at the moment it’s softly softly, OK? We have a lot of ground to cover and one thing I want to do is run some stuff, on the Q.T. of course, past the equality/diversity rep. I know for a fact that the policy is set in stone, and if you do want to make any adjustments the sick leave is unlimited for that….oh, sod it”

He started to chuckle. “It’s unlimited for IVF purposes as well! Don’t you even think about it!”

I suddenly got the joke. “I am sorry, Inspector Atkins, but if I as a lay-dee, wish to try for a child, the instructions say I can!”

The two of us were suddenly out of control, and Eric quietly moved my beer so I didn’t spill it as I laughed. Ginny was muttering something about coppers, or men, or both, but I sobered just as quickly as I had corpsed.

“But I can’t, can I? Ah well, having it all has never been an option. Let’s just see what we can manage. Gents, you impress me. There are two good coppers next to me, I see.”

Sam grinned, and raised his glass. “To good coppers, whatever they are under their uniform!”

We drank to that, and Jim then made a quick call to his wife to say he would be home a little late. “Yes darling, I am out with some strange woman, two of them in fact, and Sam. Be home about ten, we’re round at the Mucky Duck. Love you, bye”

He pocketed the phone and looked at me again. “That’s got the harpy stalled, so we have time to talk as much or as little as you want. Firstly, where do you see this going?”

“Honestly? I don’t know till I have spoken to the various docs and had the tests. It hasn’t been clear to me at all for years, but the more this goes on, the more I talk it through, the clearer things become.”

Sam asked another obvious question. “What was Maria all about, then?”

“Ah, Sam, my dear wife. Last throw of the ‘can’t I just be fucking normal?’ dice, last attempt to purge my mind along with my wardrobe.”

Ginny was muttering “Knew it….”

“Knew what, love?”

“ ‘A friend made them for me’. Bollocks, it was you, wasn’t it? Well, if you can sew that well you can start on my darning! Lazy sneaky cow that you are”

Jim put a hand on my shoulder. “Young lady, if you wish I can give you a referral to the domestic violence unit”

And we were off again, laughing, joking, hamming up my femininity in ways that stopped short of actually taking the piss, Ginny doing her larger than life bit in the middle of it while Eric and Stewie sat quietly and smiled.

Jim was on track, though. “What do you see as the main problems? Or should that be ‘who’?”

“I don’t know, really. I mean, I read about girls like me…”

Did I just say that out loud?

“…girls like me who get attacked by men, like poor Melanie, but to be honest it’s the women I’m worried about. There’s a lot more shit seems to come out from the harridan tendency than the ones with dangly bits. As far as I can see, as long as yer ackshull man’s man doesn’t feel you are trying to drag him into a shag, he doesn’t care that much. There are some women, though, that see themselves as a members’ club…some of them hate men so rigidly and passionately that they can’t think logically”

Eric then said something that made me want to kiss him.

“But you aren’t a man, are you?”

“Eric, if you ever need a kidney or other body part, you know where to come!”

He grinned and tipped his glass towards me, and I got serious again.

“Jim, Sam, I am over the moon with your reaction to this pile of crap. Leave it with me and my friends now, but I promise you I will give due warning well before anything kicks off, aye?”

They both nodded.

“Ginny and I and the boys are going to…shit, sorry, lads, I was about to drag you away from a pub! Ginny and I are going to shoot off home, and I promise I will keep you up to date as soon as I know things. Sam, Jim, thank you”

Eric muttered something about a spare bed, and Ginny just smiled and handed him her key with a rude comment about coming in quietly. Geoff joined us for the ride home while the others stayed for more Ferret, and we enjoyed the whoosh down to the sports centre roundabout. As we worked our way through Crawley, Geoff was pumping me about the upcoming day of dance.

“Look, Annie, my darling wife has a need to show she has some talent. She doesn’t mean it in a nasty way, but when she gets all hairy it just goes silly. Now, you are bloody good with that flute, so she asked me if you wanted to do a sort of duet thing, you know, while the punters are gasping between dances and Jerry is trying to sell raffle tickets. She was thinking of that Jethro Tull stuff you did”

“Oh, come on! She chewed me up and spat me out on that one!”

“She also said she was really impressed by your playing. The idea would be a sort of duelling banjos thing, where you alternate solos.”

Ginny called across “That bit where you do everything except fart through it! And do some of that Japanese stuff, that is really atmospheric”

Geoff nodded. “Steph really likes that”

“Yeah, but I would really need a wooden flute to get the best sonority and that….oh, sod it, I know where I can get one. Just, Gin, don’t expect me to do it standing on one leg!”

We left Geoff to continue on home as we got to ours, and got ourselves to bed before Eric stumbled home. I didn’t hear him come in at all, and apparently neither did Ginny. I was busy with other things

It was the dead baby this time, sitting in its car seat, eyes open, looking at me in accusation. Why didn’t you stop this? Why did you let my mum drive so badly? Isn’t that your job?

I was thrashing, the nighty tangled around my legs and Tabby on the floor, Ginny holding me and shushing as I left the motorway and came back to my bed. I was crying, as I always did after that one. The others made me shout, that one always left me sobbing, sweat cooling on my skin. As I woke up and reality came back I settled into Ginny’s arms and wept.

There was a sudden weight on the edge of the bed. Eric’s arms came round Ginny and myself as he hugged us both. Softly, he murmured in my ear.

“Is this what you get every night, Annie?”

Ginny answered him. “Not so often, since, you know, coming out a bit. I think it’s been a big day and, you know. Thanks, mate”

We lay there for a while, and then Eric started to pull away. I took his arm, and held it to me.

“Please, mate. There are spare ear plugs in the drawer, aye, cause she snores so badly.”

He slipped under the duvet, and as I lay in Ginny’s arms, tears drying on my face, he spooned me from behind.