CHAPTER 2
I keep coming back to the music and the dancing simply because they are so life-affirming.

It was Chantelle I was watching, as our two couples made up a square set with Steph’n’Geoff, Kirsty and Eric. She still had that skittishness, and it was clear that the idea of a dance involving progressing from couple to couple would terrify her, but here, in what was almost a family setting, she came alive.

I had a truly awful thought as I watched her face in its own dance of emotion and delight, that I could understand how she had been so sought after as a child by the likes of Harton and Petherick. She was going to be truly beautiful when she matured; the promise was there already, but what captivated me was the new life in her eyes.

With Ginny and Kate, she was forever touching. My mad friend was always tactile, I knew that well, and watching the three of them together was uplifting. It wasn’t like Steph and her husband, who seemed to touch as a default state, it was measured and precise. The girl would approach one of her foster mothers, and there would be a hug, initiated from either or both, and it looked natural. There was no air of duty, or obligation; Shan would walk across, and an arm would fall on her shoulders, or she would squeeze a waist. With Darren it was different, and taking hands with him was still clearly a big thing, an exciting thing, and I wondered how it was, how human resilience shone through, that after all that had been done to her by adult men she remained a young teenaged girl in the throes of a crush on a boy.

She shied like a young horse at strange men, but Bill, in particular, seemed to be developing an easy relationship with her, as was Den, and I could only assume that if Den was someone she had seen broken, and as vulnerable as she had been herself, Bill was the father. Despite all of the Woodruff’s odd family set-up, Bill, Jan and Kelly remained a perfectly normal family unit. Kelly danced attendance on Shan (literally, when she was happy) just like a big sister, and Mark’s presence showed how life as a girl could be, perhaps should be. There were arguments, there was laughter, there was simple affection. But with Den…

Shan had watched as her tormenter’s head blew apart in a junk-filled caravan, a place where she had been repeatedly raped. There was little left in this world that could shock her, it seemed. Then, she was presented with Kirsty. There was a woman utterly devoted to her unborn child, and to its father, and there was this big, strong man, everything that had ever tormented and betrayed her, lying broken in a hospital bed.

The dancing came to an end at last, and we found our original partners and the bags and instruments, and after more professional performances we ended up, as usual, in the beer tent, where Jimmy had been all evening, and it showed slightly. Stewie was with him, though, and as Jimmy grinned at our arrival I suddenly realised how old he looked. As Shan and Darren came on, Jimmy was seemingly easing out. He caught my look.

“How, it’s givin’ up the tabs that myeks us feel me years, lass, but Ah’ll still play yeez lot off the floor and drink this bugger under the tyebble!”

That was the last thing I understood from him, as the arrival of Mark and Dennis turned the dialect meter to ‘eleven’ and, anyway, it was time for music. I tried to stay out of my zone for a while, watching the others as they played or listened, or, as is usual with Ginny, performed some odd solo jive in a corner of the tent. We had so many musicians now that we could set the pattern of the evening, so I tried to let others in on the act, but we still ended up with people clustered around our group rather than with their own friends. Again, I was watching Shan. She stayed close by Kate as Ginny twitched and span, but her eyes were switching from Darren to Kirsty, as the former played and the latter grinned, and it was then that I realised her hunger.

That was the thing I had missed, as I had tried to work out her trust of one wounded man. She wasn’t just in love with her first boy, she was in love with everything that had surrounded him, family, friends, parenthood, and I realised that she was in exactly the same boat I had been in at her age.

I had known it was all wrong, I had known I was all wrong from such an early age, but I was surrounded by people who lived the life I should have had just as I was made to dwell in a body I had never wanted. The thing that had eaten away at me in my teens was the realisation that if I had been allowed to I could have changed, stepped into that life I dreamt of, but I wasn’t, I couldn’t, and yet it went on all around me as if deliberately taunting. Girls laughed, and went out, and grew up, and gave birth…

Shan was so like me, I realised. A whole world went on around her that she could never join, and here she was thrust into the middle of what passed for normality with us odd folk. She was me, late to the feast.

I walked her to the ladies’ as the evening aged, and decided to take a chance.

“How’s it going with Darren, Shan?”

You can’t see blushes in the dark, and despite what bad authors suggest, you can’t feel them either, but the way her head dropped told me all I needed to know.

“So that’ll be a ‘good’, aye?”

She was till silent. I stopped walking and put a hand to her shoulder.

“Shan…nobody here will ever hurt you, or let you be hurt again, aye? You know that, don’t you?”

“Mmmm yeah…”

“But you don’t believe it?”

Her head came up, and I could feel her eyes on me in the semi-darkness.

“Annie…I do believe, yeah, ‘s just, I mean…”

“Aye, love?”

Her voice was very small, a frightened child trying to say something important but terrified the answer might be the wrong one.

“Iss me, innit? I mean, look at all your friends, there good people, yeah? An’ me, an’ Daz…”

There was that catch in the breath that comes with the first tear. I held her to me, and she soaked my top, but I caught that word, that nasty little thought that came from her mouth, and I wanted to kill.

“Dirty…”

Just like me. Filthy pervert, crossdressing queer, girly boy, nancy, sissy, grow up and be a man. Jessica seized for burning, and all around the real girls, the ones Chapel God must love, indulged, encouraged, living my life while I had what my Dad beat into me.

Then there was Shan. “Dirty”. Filthy little whore, who could ever want to lead her into the life she saw Kelly live with her parents?

“Shan…you think we’re playing with you?”

She dug her fingers into my back. “I just want…be normal, lahk, but am all shit now…”

“Shan, listen to me, aye? None of us plays with people. We’ve had our own shit, all of us, why would we do that to someone else?”

I put a finger to her lips before she could interrupt.

“What am I, Shan? Darren must have told you, aye? He’s known me a long time”

“You’re a woman, now, innit? Iss right for you”

“Really? According to the law, I’m a man in a dress. According to most people in the country, I always will be, aye?”

“Not most people, Annie, ain’t that bad, they just the ones with the biggest mouths, innit?”

“Shan, that’s not how it feels. I am very lucky in my world, but outside these friends I would have all sorts of shit. What that means is that I make my world important to me, and try and ignore the rest. Anyone here treat you like shit, tell you you are dirty?”

“No…”

“Listen to me, Shan. Women who get raped aren’t guilty of anything except being women, aye? There are people who think being a woman is some sort of crime, and when you are that stupid, you can’t be educated.”

“Rape…”

“Yes, love, rape. Why, were you doing it for fun? At twelve?”

“Nine…”

Oh fucking hell. I took her to me again.

“Never, never again, love. Listen to me, really listen. You think we are playing games, that you are this month’s toy? You really think that of Kelly?”

“She thought was trying nick her boyfriend…”

“And were you?”

“Got a boyfriend of my own, innit?”

Oh yes. “And a family, Shan, and friends. Please, love…my friends, your friends, our friends, aye?”

“But…”

“No. You are not. You are a girl who needs a leak and a face wash, and a new smile. Look, here’s a deal, we can make it our secret, aye?”

“Yeah?”

“My new life started here, a year ago. You think I did the right thing?”

“Course…you ain’t no fella, yeah?”

“Then how about we start your new life today? You can be Chantelle with the two mums and the really strange friends, aye? Deal? And in return, when I have to go into hospital, you can keep Eric from chatting up other women, aye?”

“But he wouldn’t…”

“Not if he knew he had you on his case, girl. So, deal?”

This time I could actually feel the grin against my breast.

“Deal”