CHAPTER 47
He held up so well I started to believe we were turning the corner rather than hitting the end of the road. Whitsun was good to us, and we had an extended family break at Mam’s, Von now being almost as much a part of the family as the rest of us, and of course Rachel was along, more relaxed now than I had ever seen her.

She had always been a great friend, a supporter of the kind you trusted to watch your back and take out the sneaky ones, but now it was more. Her sense of humour had always been sharp, spiky, and when she did relax it had never been absolutely. Always, always there had been that watchfulness, wariness. Not nervous or frightened; just tense and ready to bite.

Now, with Jim’s smile and his clear uncomplicated affection, evident in all he did, she was different. The first thing I noticed was that she was failing to do just that, to notice things about and around her. We had never talked in depth about the beatings her husband had donated towards her education and proper deportment, but the evidence sat in her mouth, the plate to replace what he had knocked out. To be honest, I didn’t want to know more. All I needed was to know that she had now met the right one after spending years with a man who should have been drowned at birth.

My own ‘right one’ was in the kitchen, involved in some mother-in-law argument or other about tea-making or some such, and I was happily sat in Her Chair for a while, watching Ian and Siobhan trying to put some order into their lives.

“But I want to come, innit?”

“You looking for an argument again, like?”

“Well, if she wants one, I got a few around I can share with her. Didn’t see much of her when you were ill, did I?”

Ian laughed. “How, Jill, have words, aye? She wants to sit in on the meeting”

“Meeting?”

“Aye. Ellen wants to contest stuff, so we’re having a what the hell, a moderation thing. We sit down with the briefs and try and get an agreement. Bitch wants the house. All of it. Apparently, I prevented her from having a career, like, by saddling her with kids”

Oh yes, the ones she had ignored as she lay in bed all day watching the television. That career. A thought struck me, and I started to laugh.

“Share, dear sister?”

“Just a thought, aye? Want me to see if that mate of Annie’s is free? The redhead?”

“Er…it might be a good laugh, but I doubt there would be much of anything ‘moderate’ with her about. Anyway, I need the house. We need the house”

Von looked up, with a shy smile. “You know I never liked that place in Brock, not really. And he has the girls, innit? Easier for them to stay with Dad and me, well…”

Ian coughed. “Aye, I think Hays’ll settle back in with her old place again. She has friends there, like, so it’s just Bethy, really”

I knew what he meant. The months over our place had let her develop her own relationships, and I wasn’t just thinking of James. It was like that with army brats: forever moving on as another posting came in, never having the time or the continuity to form the sort of lasting friendships that civilian children found.

“Only one answer, Ian. Ask her what she wants”

“Aye, and if she decides she likes it here?”

“We’ve got the room, you know that”

He paused. “Von, pet, can you give the two of us a bit of a moment, like”

She rose. “I’ll go and see what’s holding up that cuppa, aye?”

As she left, his eyes followed her before they turned to me. “It’s still about the house. I have a claim if the bairns are still there, or rather a better claim, like. And knowing her, she’ll try and stir up an argument over custody, and she doesn’t win that one. Not happening, aye? Ever”

“Aye, I see that, but then there’s always the illness card. You haven’t got them by you cause you’ve been under the doctor, all that. Play it up, like”

He gave me a flat stare, not speaking for a long moment. “Jill, you do know… shite, it gets easier calling you that, aye? You do know I am not cured, I am not well? This is only what they call remission. I could go back to, well, being like that, being absolutely fucked, I could go back to that tomorrow or the day after, aye? I was thinking…”

He trailed off for a bit, looking out of the window. “Look, when it was over, all the chemo stuff on hold, I thought sod this, if it comes back I don’t want all the pain again, just let me go easy, like. Accept it, go out gentle, soft. But that was then, and now, well…”

Once more the cars parked outside seemed to fascinate him. I put my hand on his arm. “Well?”

He looked hard at me, almost as if he was trying to strip me away and leave his brother back in place before him.

“How could you not love her, Jill?”

“Ian, it’s not as easy or as simple as that. I do love her, I always did, and she loved me, but, well, that was never me, was it? That was Rob, and it’s almost traditional, this bit, but Rob was never real, never there. I was never Rob, I just played him, and she could never have…”

I lost it then, and all the months of fear and pain came pouring out of me as tears, and he just held me till it was washed away.

“You haven’t had it easy, have you, lass?”

“Master of understatement, aye?”

“Well, goes with the old job, like. Squaddy way of keeping things under control. This is odd, though. Here I am, worried that my brother still fancies my lass, and he’s never been my brother, but my sister still loves the woman, and, ach shite, easy isn’t the word at all!”

I found my best smile. “I am a happily married woman and she’s my prospective sister-in-law, so of course I love her”

He smiled gently, and touched my cheek. “Aye, that’s it. Doesn’t really matter in the end, does it? The love’s there, on all sides, so we’ll just smile and take it as it comes. Now, shall we ask the girls what they would like?”

In the end, I should have been able to guess the outcome. Bethy wanted to stay with us, for the sake of young love as well as for the friends she was gathering round her at school, but she also played the ‘exams’ card. Much easier to stay in the same class right through the course so as to give her the best chance of gaining a university place. I raised an eyebrow at that, as it wasn’t her normal teenage logic.

“Well, it’s like all the people we met, yeah? That Mr Johnson, and the doctor lady, and James’s parents, they are all, like, graduates, and they see things all wide-angle”

I could just about work out what she meant, but she continued with a truly barbed comment.

“Mum, yeah? She was just SO like girly this and flouncy that, when she could like be bothered, like get out of bed and stuff. Girls, yeah? You get the right hair colour, and like half of Addison’s and you get the man, and he like pays for everything else once you got him like trapped. Don’t want that”

Von snorted. “Valley commandos, innit? Good girl. I did my college and stuff, but it went into storage sort of thing for my babies, my boys. Still went to work again, that’s proper. I don’t do parasite, me”

Ian looked at her, and took her hand. “True, pet. Very true. Ellen… When’s Will joining us?”

Von’s face twitched. “He’s down tonight, aye? With Kelly and Mark, and…his friend”

My brother pulled her into an embrace, her head on his shoulder, still so horribly thin.

“You will be fine, pet. I mean, look at how you are coping here, like”

“I know, love, but, well, he’s still my baby, innit?”

Bethy laughed. “Go on, admit it. You’d be just about as upset if he, like, brought a GIRL down, yeah?”

Finally, a small grin broke through Von’s mood. “Aye, I suppose so. Just, he’s my baby, innit, always will be, but… This is what it’s going to be. This is his life, aye? Just have to get used to it. Not losing my Will, am I?”

That night, we were round at Jim’s place, half the pub ours for the evening. Hays had delivered her decision, which was to rejoin her little community, but with the addition of being allowed to sing (may you rot, Ellen!) and Von and Ian were comparing notes on strategy for the ‘moderating meeting’, and probably discussing who would get to throw the first punch. Suddenly, there was a whistle from one of the more refreshed regulars as a truly lovely young woman entered, on the arm of a tall redheaded man. Kelly and Mark, of course, and behind them…

“Mum… this is Eddy”