CHAPTER 20
“Hang on a minute. I am actually here, and I don’t remember delegating the rest of my life to you two!”

Rachel gave me a look of utter disdain. “Making such a good job of it you are as well…”

“Yeah, well, it’s till my life”

She turned to Larinda.

“This is how good she is at running her own affairs. Printed this off, didn’t even check which printer it was set to”

She passed the declaration across the table, and Larinda gave it a cursory read, before giving me a little bit of a stare.

“Rachel, how much has he…she…told you about me?”

“That you’ve been seeing a lot of each other. Usually all of each other”

“Has she given you any background? Shit, this is weird, she and her and that”

Rachel took a quick sideways glance at me, as if to check for permission. “Look, this is serious shit. People die over it, and Jill here has made it as clear as whatever that she is what and who she is, yeah? Shitty situation, shitty choices, but let’s go with it for now, yeah?”

“Yeah, but it’s weird, innit, when you see someone in the raw, yeah, and do…STUFF…and then they go girly. Not easy”

Once more, that check. “Yeah, but why hurt people if you don’t have to?”

Rachel drew a slow breath as Larinda winced.

“Look, she’s already hurt you, is hurting you, yeah, so why spread it about? That’s what kids do”

“OK, but look at my side. Not easy: thought I’d finally found someone, you know, the right bloke, not just shagging, yeah?”

I was feeling sidelined by their discussion. “You thought I was queer!”

Larinda rounded on me. “And I was fucking right, yeah, but not how I thought! Look, Jill, Rob, whatever, it’s not easy. I tried, but it’s awkward. Awkward. Useless bloody word. What I mean is that it freaks me out, you dressed like that, I’m seeing two different things at once and it makes my head hurt, I’m trying to make love to two different people, and yeah, it is making love, because…shit, because I thought that was where we were going”

There were hints of tears in her eyes, and I squeezed her hand where it still sat, surprisingly, on my knee.

“Aye…and that’s exactly how I feel”

She looked up sharply at me.

“Then why do you have to go through all this crap? Can’t you just, like, keep on as you are? You’ve managed fifty-odd bloody years!”

She shook her head, abruptly, as I tried to think of an answer.

“Shit, sorry, I’ve read so much on this, I should know better. Forget I said that, yeah? Just…what do we do?”

She turned to Rachel. “I done a lot of reading, once I knew, yeah, and this is all so usual. They go through their life, and they do the bloke thing, the manning up shit, and then one day they say, no, can’t do it no more, and they go to ratshit”

I was feeling locked out of the exchanges at that point, but Larinda turned to me, and she was calm, eyes moist, but voice level.

“When…how many times have you prepared for it, Jill? Topping yourself, like?”

Larinda had the ability to shock me every so often, as the accent and the background concealed the astonishingly sharp mind that hid behind her eyes. She had me cold, dead to rights. That was such an appropriate phrase I started to laugh, and then, naturally, that turned into a hiccup and a sob, and I had to reel everything back in as Rachel sat there open-mouthed.

“Got me, kid…”

Larinda just nodded. “Told you I did a lot of reading. Turned out to be really shitty, and you dropped me into a lot of it. I don’t know what to do, lover. I mean, here’s this bloke, what I fancy to bits, got a nice you-know-what, and it’s either slice it off or slit his wrists. What the fuck am I supposed to think? What the buggery bollocks am I supposed to do?”

Rachel had obviously recovered a bit. “I suppose that’s why we are here. Look, got to be blunt, yeah, but so much of this depends on you, Larinda. I mean, what she does next is going to be little steps at first, but one day it’s got to be, you know, bigger, sort of thing that gets public. Jill, yeah, you dress up at home, right?”

“No, Rach, I dress down. THIS is dressing up”

“Fuck off, girl, you know exactly what I mean. One day, you are going to want to stop what you call dressing up, right? Then where do we go? You will have been looking at doing more than shaving, and don’t think that has passed by without comment in the office. Just don’t come in without getting all your make-up off”

“I was never one for make-up, really. Not to my taste. Bit of lippy sometimes, when I was younger…”

Rachel was shaking her head. “This is too bizarre for words”

Larinda laughed, which was better than the state she had been drifting into. “Welcome to my world, woman! I mean, I bought her stockings, just for the try out, yeah, but discussing shades of bleeding eye shadow would be too freaky. Look, we have to come to some sort of way out of this shit, yeah, so listen to me for a bit”

She took her hand away from my leg and extended both arms across the table, clearly waiting to take my hands. She held and squeezed them, and tried on a badly-fitting smile.

“Look, remember what I said to you when we first met? That you would be good for a natter, good company, like, even if you were gay? Well, that still stands, because you are everything I said. Even the gay bit. You have made such a difference to me, I can’t throw that away. Self-confidence, all that crap, yeah?”

“Sorry? Self-confidence? You come strutting down Brighton Pier, groping me in public, and you talk about self-confidence?”

She laughed, and that time it was genuinely better.

“Yebbut, without you there, I couldn’t have done that, yeah?”

“Aye, but all the other stuff? You know…”

I sneaked my own sideways glance at Rachel.

“In bed and stuff…”

Another laugh. “Yeah, but that’s different, innit? I know what I like, don’t I? And fuck me if I don’t know what you like too…look, Rachel, yeah, at some point tonight, sorry to be so blunt, but could you sort of bugger off, not now, yeah, but later, so I can screw what’s left of her brains out? Sorry for the plain speaking and shit, but…”

Rachel laughed out loud. “No wonder he’s been looking so bloody tired at work! This is all very well, you young lovers and crap, but it doesn’t move anything further on, yeah?”

Larinda was shaking her head. “No, you’re wrong there, girl. It changes a lot of things. I got to get some priorities sorted, and one of them is this person here. Took me a long, long time to find someone I can talk to, and I’m not throwing that away now. We are going to find some way of dealing with this shit, coz I ain’t walking away. Just…look, no shagging in knickers no more, yeah? It don’t work for me”

She looked down at the table, and very softly muttered one more word.

“Yet”

Rachel reached out and took a hand from each of us.

“Thanks, Larinda, really thanks. I have her back at work, right, but we really need you for everywhere else. And my glass is empty, and so are yours. Ferret, Jill? Glass of white?”

Larinda shook her head. “No, my round this time. Talk amongst yourselves, yeah?”

She ticked off to the bar, and Rachel watched her bum as she went.

“Receptionist, yeah?”

“Yeah”

“How the fuck does someone as sharp as that end up in such a crap job? Don’t answer, I know that one. She’s got no self-confidence at all, that one. Trust me, I can spot them. You be careful; drop her and she’ll shatter”

“I don’t want to drop her, Rach; I think I might actually have found, you know, soppy fucking term, but, well, The One?”

“Yeah, Carter, and you have to go and complicate the whole thing beyond all belief. Just don’t hurt her, yeah, or I’ll be on you. It’s a girl thing…oh arse, what am I saying? You know what I mean!”

Larinda was back with the drinks, and Rachel changed the subject.

“You coming out with us in a week’s time?”

“That the famous leaving do? Jill told me about it. Man’s a ---“

“Yeah, MAC. Be nice to have you there, make the boys jealous of this one”

“Oh, come on, I’m fifty!”

“Yeah, and if I still have your figure then I’ll be astonished. Look, thanks. I am going to down this one, and then get off home, kick the kittens or whatever. Just, like, leave some juice in this colleague of mine for tomorrow, yeah?”

She knocked back most of her glass, and then tipped the rest into Larinda’s before kissing her cheek and darting away, which as always was an entrancing sight.

“Oy, you, it’s my arse you should be adoring, not hers. Now, get that down you, and take me home. I have plans for your cock…”

She took my hand once again, and her tone changed to something far, far softer than her earlier brassy jest.

“And, well, I want to try and sort out some plans for the rest of you…”