CHAPTER 30
It seemed my lover had moved things on beyond what she had admitted to me, and rather presented me with a fixed and fully prepared package. She had been in touch with just about everyone involved, tweaking the details and filling in little boxes where necessary.

“Why not somewhere closer, Pet, like Holland?”

“What with a ferry, driving, be a longer trip, yeah? Here we just pop into the airport, quick flight, job done!”

“Aye, but we could fly to Amsterdam in even less time”

That grin again, the grin that saved my life. “Yebbut, they ain’t got no Legoland in Amsterdam!”

Apparently that sorted the argument. A week after he had left our house, I rang Ian.

“How are things down your end, pet?”

Deliberate, that word. Make him accept, make him realise. He seemed to have done so already, but a little gentle reminder every now and again didn’t hurt.

“Canny, Jill. Out with Von last night…”

“Ian, take this the right way, aye? Going very, very quickly there”

There was a short silence at the other end of the line. “Aye, well. Things are a bit complicated just now, like, and she helps cut some of the shite away. We’ll talk some time, aye?”

“You got problems? Talk to me”

“Not just yet, lass, aye? Now, when’s this Danish trip?”

“Next week. The devious woman’s been doing an awful lot behind my back. Sometimes she scares me!”

“Bugger a hell, bro---er, Jill, you have enough scary friends without having to live with one! Send us a postcard, aye?”

“I’ll send one with Lego on. Hays like that?”

“I think she would, aye”

“Ian, you coming to the church for us?”

“Aye”

Just that. The man who cut me off for so many years, in one word, committed to attending our wedding. One word, better than all the flowery phrases ever written. Aye.

“And…Hays?”

“Oh god aye, woman. I was going to ask about that. Hen night, aye? Hays?”

“Of course…oh, bloody hell, Ian, of course she can! Every little girl’s dream, aye?”

“Matching dresses?”

“Me and her, or the bridesmaids? Both, we think. You see Bethy and Hays together, aye?”

A silence again. “Something their mother never did, love”

“This is a family do, aye? We do it as family. Thank you”

“Thank me for what?”

“Coming back to me. Now, I have a lot of work to do…”

And a brother to leave in private while he sorted, in a Manly Way, the tears I could tell were there.

Gatwick was its usual manic self. Annie and Eric had generously made room for us just round the corner, Darren cooking us a mean breakfast, and a taxi delivered us with our luggage to the underground warren that was the drop-off point. Through the stinking allegedly no-smoking areas carpeted with dog ends and into the airport proper, to the coffee shop where three men and a woman awaited us.

Man was indeed the right word for James now, and I smiled at Bethy’s fascinated description of him.

Terry was on form. “People, you may be wondering why I have called you here today…”

Karen slapped his arm. “Coffees, muffins, now! Move it, slave!”

She turned back to us as he disappeared with our order. “That was a demonstration of how husbands should be treated. Bit wasted on you two, wasn’t it?”

She looked at us both intently. “This is box-ticking, isn’t it? No hen night, no big party?”

I nodded, and looked at my lover. She gave a quick smile.

“Dead right. This gets us legal, and we are only doing it because the miserable bastards are dragging their heels over here. Church do, yeah, that’s the proper one even if it’s got no legal wotsits. That’s when we have the family in, the friends. Sod it, most of our friends are more family than a blood relly, yeah?”

I squeezed her hand. “Never thought I would, you know…”

Karen smiled, as John and James worked through some bird magazine together. “What? Get wed?”

I shook my head. “No, simpler than that, like. Much simpler. I didn’t think…well, I sort of had plans not to be here, aye?”

Karen’s face twitched as her husband returned, and she held her hand out blindly for his. “I had, we had, well, we had guessed. That was why…all that time ago, when you spoke to me, seems like another world. We knew something was up, and, well, it was just a chance to see if you would talk to us. I’m so glad you did. We’re glad”

“No maudling!”

I looked at Larinda. “You what?”

She grinned. “Maudling. Being maudlin; just made it up. Come on. Drink up, trough down and get through the rubber glove people. Plane to catch, woman to marry!”

We had done the online thing the night before, so all we had to do was take our hand baggage through security, which was not scaring me in the slightest. I had my carry letter, I had my new passport in my real names, and most importantly I was surrounded by family, who had already shown their worth.

In the event, it was completely without incident, and we trooped into yet another coffee shop and sat watching the aircraft for a while until there was a cough beside us. Two men, in uniform…shit. The much larger one spoke.

“You Jill?”

I nodded. How did he know? Well, look for the bloke in a dress, of course. I had no illusions; they were punctured every time I went out to work at a trader’s.

The smaller man pulled up a couple of chairs. “Hi, that lump’s Dave, I’m John”

Not another one. This was getting silly.

“Steph sends her regards and best wotsits. Got caught up with a job, so we came over to make the complaints”

I was goldfish-like in my graceful reply. “Complaints?”

He grinned, showing a missing tooth below his impressively broken nose.

“Yeah, bloody right! Two women marrying, no sodding stag do for close friends and hopeful hangers-on to get pissed at!”

The bigger man, Dave, rumbled out a laugh as Terry bristled in mock outrage.

“Absolutely! What are the male alcoholics of this area meant to do while the women are knocking back the tart fuel? I think we should form a rival group!”

Dave laughed. “Redhill Stag Knights-with-a-K!”

Terry frowned. “Stag Knights of Redhill!”

John with the nose: “Redhill Knights of Stag!”

Terry: “Splittists!”

Karen sighed. “Bloody men and Python. Girls: quick look round the smellies?”

I looked over at the other two. “James be OK?”

Karen smiled. “With John? Absolutely. I think…Jill, you were saying about your brother’s girl, the one living away?”

“Aye. I see what you mean. Similar enough to communicate, aye?”

“Aye. Er, yes. I actually think John over there has done an awful lot to bring our boy into this world, so thank you. Smellies and oooh! There’s a Monsoon over there, with the ‘S’ word!”

Later, as the plane droned East over the North Sea, I thought of our little period of separation. There was a niggle there, but a small one. Had Karen taken me away as one of the girls, or because she wanted me to feel like one of the girls? Sod it, it didn’t matter. I was where I was, what I was, and never going away from that.

Bang! Wheels down, and I realised I had been asleep, slumped against Larinda, and my bra’s left strap had drifted away from its proper place, which led to some fumbling inside my blouse. The seatbelt light came on, and shortly thereafter, with a bit of a wiggle, we were down and taxiing. Immigration was no problem, though there was a slightly closer look at my face from the official as he clearly spotted the ‘M’ in my passport, and then we were on a bus to the former youth hostel that Lego had absorbed. James was still amazingly open.

“Mum, there’s a campsite, look. We should have brought our tents”

“I don’t know if Mr Wilkins camps, love”

“John. His name is John and he is my friend. He told me he is my friend and friends use their first names even when they change like Rob to Jill”

He smiled again, and I saw him with Bethany’s eyes. Larinda broke the spell, quite deliberately nudging me.

“Lunch first. Appointment at four, but we need to sort something out, lover”

“What? I thought you’d already done all the sorting, pet”

“Not quite. Names, yeah? Surnames?”

“Ah…”

“I thought…arse, this is going to sound like that Monty Python silliness the boys had. Carter-Simmons. Works for me. You going to be a splittist?”

I whispered in her ear. “Later, if you’re lucky” and for once she actually blushed.

“Be serious, love. This is important. This is our name for the rest of our lives!”

She shook her head. “Please be serious. I am here for you, forever, for as long as either of us breathes, and I am about to drag you down to some Danish office building and say that officially, and…”

So I kissed her. No alternatives were left, and I hadn’t spotted her nerves because my own were screaming at me. Karen giggled.

“I’d say ‘get a room’, but you already have one! Come on; bags on beds, glad rags on, vows to swap before saliva! Chop-chop!”

She began to walk away, but stopped to call over her shoulder.

“Terry says the restaurant does an eat-till-you-puke deal!”

Men.

A bus ride; such a prosaic journey. We signed in, stood and said yes, signed out, and that really was it. Legally married, whatever the UK decided. I felt confused, numbed by the speed and simplicity of the whole thing. I mean, the chapel or room or whatever you called it was nice, and Larinda looked gorgeous in a dress that matched mine, and Karen (and John) cried, but it was really, truly a non-event as far as I was concerned. What it meant, though…

What it meant was that at last we had a say in each other’s lives. No longer could a doctor or nurse tell one of us to mind their own business because said business was now joint. Carter-Simmons and partner, spouse, wife. Oh yes, the ceremony was nothing special, but the result, well, I will admit that Karen and John weren’t the only ones who wept.

Terry and John had acquired champagne while we girls were in Monsoon. There was more wine in the nearby shopping centre. Lesson to myself from the following day: theme park rides do not mix with a hangover.