CHAPTER 25
It was a good job the others were late back, because our clothes took a little while to find. I grabbed one of my ‘Tabitha’ nighties after a rinse of, well, just there, and joined my lover in our bed, where he had already settled himself after making two cups of tea. He took one look at the nighty, and simply shook his head.

He pulled me under the duvet once I had stripped again, and cuddled me into his chest.

“Now we are where we are, love, I just want to feel you against me, skin-to-skin, yeah?”

He was right, and I settled my head onto his chest, tasting the salt of our mingled sweat and feeling the ache where he had so recently been. I kissed him there, and found myself getting aroused all over again, his smell, his simple presence…

I was sore indeed when the others came back, and there was a soft knock at our bedroom door. I pulled the covers up, and there were four of them there, all but one grinning. I just pulled his head to me for a kiss, and when I looked back, the only one whose grin hadn’t faded to moist-eyed soppiness was Merry. Her expression was one of elation, pride. Kate caught her look.

“Annie, this is not the end of anything, you know that, and we could be as trite as all hell and talk about beginnings, but I am going to say one thing. Eric Johnson, we are proud of you. This girl would be lost without you, so just remember that”

Eric cuddled me to him. “Kate, girls, you may not have noticed it, but I would be lost without her. I have said this so many times, but I just wish we had seen who we were years ago. So much time wasted. Now, I know this is a silly question, but are you going to award us marks for style, or are you going to piss off to bed? Shan, breakfast duties, OK?”

Two in the morning, and I was awake again. Something about what we had been doing left me needing yet another leak, and I had just settled the new parts onto the seat when there was a knock at the door. A voice whispered to me, “Annie?”

It was Shan. “Just a minute, aye? Washing my hands”

She asked for a word, and we tiptoed down to the living room.

“What’s up? No sleep?”

“Been finking, lahk. Just all this sex stuff, yeah…you like it?”

“Oh god, Shan, I am so sorry. I didn’t think…”

She had a distant look on her face. “Yeah, but you like it, don’t you?”

I knew what she was thinking. How to explain to such a victim the differences between love and rape, especially when the actual concept of love had been beyond her at the time?

“I know what you do, yeah? I know where it goes….but it’s not the same thing, is it? You got a man, Eric, he love you, he don’t do nuffink bad, lahk”

I started to say something about it all being good, make a joke of it, and she just cut me dead.

“There ain’t nuffink you can teach me about sex. I done it all, or they done it all and I cried, and they, that big cunt, he like it when I cry, yeah? Annie, how do I make it all good again? How I make a guy want me and not my dirty bits, yeah? I just so worried, Daz, I love him, yeah, he look after me, but what if he want to do that? An’ I don’t? What we do?”

Nine. Nine years old, and turned into an object. How the hell do I deal with that destruction, that waste?

“What does Darren say?”

“I ast him if he wanted to fuck me an’ he say no, yeah? I said, is it cos I is dirty, an’ he says no, it’s cause you is beautiful an’ it not right, and I’s too young…I mean, Annie, I want him to know what I fink about him, an’ how do I tell him?”

I took a deep breath. “Shan, do you know what the French do with geese? They put a funnel in their beaks and they push corn in until they are stuffed. Makes their livers big and fat, and the French like to eat that. Now, do geese like to eat corn? Yeah, they do. Do they like to have it pushed down their neck with a stick? Na, don’t think so. I love Eric, I think, in some ways I always have, ever since I met him. Sex with Eric…it’s making love, it’s picking the corn I want to eat, it’s not a big stick thing pushing it in”

“He only got a little one?”

“Cheeky girl. No, it is a way we can be really close, and show our love, aye?”

“Is it nice for you?”

I thought back to how things had felt, just then, and I shuddered. “Very, very nice, love, but it is even better because I love him and he loves me”

“But Darren won’t…”

This was what we had been worried about, her assumption that affection lay between her legs. I was, just then, ready to kill her surviving abusers. I drew a breath, as I thought.

“Shan, Darren says no because he loves you. He hasn’t told me that, but I can see it in his eyes when he looks at you. He also knows a few things, like how illegal it would be for you two to make love, and how badly you were hurt, aye? He isn’t ignoring you, he is protecting you in the best way he can. Look, your body is YOUR body, and no one else has any claim on it. You will grow up, you will be a good woman, I am sure, and if things are still going well with Darren, then, well, look at me, look at Kirsty, look at your mums”

“Yeah, but they dykes, is different”

“Ah, Chantelle, love, then look at Merry and Simon. Do they love each other?”

She grinned. “Oh yeah! Iss sweet!”

“And all they have done is kiss. Does that make their love any less real? Look around you, we have so many people who love each other, they don’t need to bonk in public to let people know, aye? It is all about being there for someone, and a look, a word, all sorts of little things, that’s being in love. You know what? You and me are really alike, aye?”

“How’s that?”

“Neither of us was allowed to be a little girl, aye? But me, I never got to be a teen girl, I never had a chance to do the girly stuff, be silly, just be myself, aye? You, you can do all that, you can wear silly clothes, giggle and stuff. I have to be all grown up all the time, aye?”

Shan gave me a sudden and very odd flat stare, as if she had disconnected from the world, and I realised how she had survived the years of hell. There was a shudder, and she was back.

“Annie, I got a deal, lahk. We show each other how we be girly, teen stuff, all together , yeah? We both lost out, not fair we don’t both get a second chance together, lahk. You wanna be my best girlfriend, forever? I never had one…”

“Oh, Shan, love, neither did I, and yes, oh yes, please, BFF?”

“BFF?”

“Best Friends Forever, aye?”

She laughed. “Na, we gonna be BFFAEAE, yeah?”

I lurched forward as she did the same, and we hugged our agreement as I wept. She was so, so damaged, we both were, and at last there were the first green shoots of new growth. I made us both some hot chocolate, and we grinned at each other’s cocoa moustaches in true girly BFF style, as I explained about Tabitha, and the return of my dear lost Jessica.

“I didn’t think I would ever see her again, aye? Then Merry, and Aunty Esther, they brought her back”

“My nan got rid of my dolls…”

I thought quickly. “Shan, oh, hello Merry, want cocoa?”

She nodded, and I quickly added hot water to another mug.

“Shan, Merry here helped look after Jessica for me, aye? I really thought she was gone, so I took her name, aye, as my middle name when I did the paper stuff. But she is back, and she won’t be leaving me again. I have another friend, though, and I was wondering….would you like Tabby to go home with you for a while, just to watch over you, till you find someone you want as your own little friend?”

She was moist in the eyes again, as Merry sat and hugged her. “Annie has Jessica back, so Tabitha might want to see what your home is like. She hasn’t travelled much, has she, cuz?”

“You would let me take her?”

“Aye, otherwise how could I call you my BFF?”

And so the deal was arranged, and Merry’s smile to me over Shan’s head said more than any words could, and she hugged her till the chocolate was finished and we steered the littlest one back to her bed. As she left, she turned to me, and asked yet another show-stopping question.

“Annie, you do like it, what Eric do to you, yeah?”

I gave her as innocent a smile as I could, and then to Merry’s theatrical disgust, I said:

“Not sure yet, so I’ll wake him up in four or five hours and check, aye?”