CHAPTER 53
He was back in Crawley once more, the treatments wearing away at him, and this time Von was at her father’s, her own wear and tear needing some running repairs. She wasn’t hiding from Ian, I was sure, but her own family continued to live and breathe in what must have felt like another world.

I slipped quietly into his room, set discreetly to one side of the main ward, with my little bundle of gifts and palliatives. He was beyond such things as chocolate, for the nausea was crippling on its own, and flowers had been given a rigid veto by Larinda.

“Too much like a funeral, yeah?”

So the choice was initially difficult, but in the end much simpler. Mints, as they seemed to help with the vomiting, and even if they didn’t they took away the aftertaste. And books. Lots of books.

Ian had found an author called Birmingham, who wrote techno-thrillers that took place in alternate pasts, differing presents, and his geeky obsession with weaponry and the military chimed with Ian’s own past. Von had bought him an e-reader, and while we tracked down the books for him and ordered them through his account on our own computer, all we needed was for someone to take his little device down the road to one of the local cafes with free wi-fi to get the stories loaded onto the thing. It had become a ritual, leaving one of us, whether me or Von, some private time with him, some space where the emotions could be set free, guards lowered, without loss of the face that was the only thing I felt was keeping either of us afloat. Neil was due down in a week, just to serve his own penance for the years of stupidity that had festered between the three of us.

Someone was already with him, a woman, and it was at least three seconds before I realised who it was.

“Hi, Jill”

“Hi, Shan. What you up for? Sorry! Didn’t mean it like that, like. Just, well, didn’t expect anyone here”

“Mum Ginny rode me up, lahk, on the tandem. She’s off with Eric, getting teas and stuff. You want tea?”

“Later, aye?”

“Yeah…we was talking, me and Mr Carter…”

Ian grunted from his chair. “It’s Ian, lass. How’s you, Jill? Larinda?”

“Fine, aye? Just as always. She’s doing a late one today, so I’m on chip duty on the way home”

“You want to watch those. Aye, your behind does look big in those shorts”

Mountain bike shorts, of course. I still had luggage I didn’t want, and that meant lighter stuff was off the menu.

“Always a flatterer, my brother. How are you all doing, Shan?”

“OK. Daz got a match tonight, so we are going to go see him play and stuff”

Ian chuckled, a sound like gravel in a bucket. “And is it the ‘stuff’ that brought you up, then?”

She blushed, but stared him down. “Nah, told you, was Mum Ginny and a tandem, yeah?”

Ian grinned, but she continued to stare at him.

“Mum Kate, she says you two wasn’t talking for years”

Ian nodded slightly, and I could read his confusion. Where was this coming from, and where was she headed? The girl drew a deep breath, and let it out slowly.

“I watch people. I watch them all the time, yeah? Cause some of them is shits, thass obvious, yeah, keep me safe and thing, but also…”

She trailed off for a moment, gathering her words about her.

“What it is, yeah, iss family. Iss… IT’s what I never had, yeah?”

There were sharp lines settling into place between her eyes, her face suddenly far, far older than it should have been.

“You got family, yeah, blood family, and you should never throw that away, never shut a big door on it”

Ian gave me a sideways glance before speaking, his voice as gentle as he could make it.

“But you’ve got family, pet. Your Mums, like, and Annie”

Shan nodded slowly. “Yeah, and you know what? They the best, the best ever. I love my Mums, and my big sis, she so cool, so sweet, an’ Eric… but I had to find them, they weren’t THERE. Not like blood family, not like you and Jill an’ your Mum an’ Neil. Sometimes, I just wish, lahk…”

Before I could stop him, as the pieces suddenly fell into place, Ian asked the question.

“What happened to yours, pet?”

I held a hand up quickly.

“Not a good question, Ian. Shan, forgive me, but it’s sort of come clear in my head. You… you said once you were a rape survivor, aye?”

She nodded, once. I drew in a breath as I took Ian’s hand, an action inconceivable such a short time ago.

“There was a trial, Ian. A nasty business. One of Annie’s mates got shot, Den got bombed. Shan… love… am I right? Was it you in that place?”

There were tears there now, rolling one by one from her eyes. She nodded, once more a single sharp motion, and Ian sighed.

“Jill, pet, was that the one with the Cuthberts?”

“Yes”

He just held out his arms for her, and Shan stumbled into them. I knew the story, of course, it had been impossible to miss, but the names of the children had been kept from the papers. The beaten, the corrupted, the raped. If she was that girl…

Dear god. Nine years old. Ian was crying now, and I could hardly hold my own. This girl, this young woman, had been taken from a hell created by her own family, and fate or karma or whatever had brought her to people so different to all she had ever known, women who had given her the life she should have had by rights, and yet she was still looking at others and feeling the loss of her own kin.

That was when I saw Ian as the father, the protector, the comforter in the darkness. He was always there for his own girls, of course, but this was my brother as archetype, and I realised in some deeper way than I had ever felt that I loved him. All the harsh words, the condemnation, all of them floated out of my soul and away, and I knew fully what a good man Ian was, and that was when my tears finally broke free as I looked at him in the bed, and it WASN’T FAIR.

I fumbled in my backpack for a tissue, and realised there was a shadow by the door, tall with flaming hair. Ginny. I handed her a tissue to save her having to find one of her own, for she was in the same state as me. She took my hand and drew me from the little room of stinks and despair, and laid my head on her breast. Her voice was quiet, her tears warm.

“She gets this now and again, Jill. Touch of the envies. Makes me and my girly feel fucking futile, sometimes. Dunno what to do, yeah? I mean, me, I take things head-on, fucking in the face, but this…”

I could feel the effort in her as she forced the tears back. “Come on, Jill. Eric’s got brews. Leave them to a bit of healing?”

We slipped away, her arm round my shoulders, to the staff canteen, where he did indeed have some cups ready, as well as a plate of biscuits, and Ian’s comment about my arse slowed me down for less than a second. I would ride the calories off anyway. Eric looked up at us, frowning.

“And? Apart from the obvious, what’s up?”

Ginny threw herself down in one of the plastic chairs, which I half expected to break.

“Shan having the envies again, mate. Girly stuff, we’ll sort. She loves us to bits, I know that. Kate knows it too, fuck yeah, and we know she knows we love her, but, well, you did that thing for her, with the war graves, and that was sweet, but, well, she needs some roots”

Her voice dropped. “Eric, it was like she was with Den, yeah? A man’s broken, ain’t no threat”

He took a mouthful of tea. “More than that, Ginny. See how she is around D.A. for a start”

She was nodding. “Yeah, and that’s another bit of the envies. She sees a family, she gets all the shit back cause she never had one of her own”

Eric nodded. “Tell me about it. I’m a dad, and I never even had to do the messy bit”

Ginny gave him an arch look. “Think you do the messy whenever you get the chance, way Annie walks sometimes”

Bless him, he blushed. “Not what I meant, yeah, and you know it. Our boy still has his own little moments, so we just try and be there for him. I mean, both of them know their families had good people in them, they’re not all shit. What’s she doing now?”

I put my empty cup down and took another biscuit. “Cuddling my brother”

Eric nodded. “Fits. Broken men… come on, let’s go and say hello”

Shan was sat by his bedside when we arrived, a soft smile in place and Ian’s hand in hers.

“Sorry, Jill, was all stupid”

I gave her cheek a kiss. “Rubbish. Your Mum’s here, and Eric”

Ginny went to her with a hug. “You better now, love?”

“You saw? Sorry”

“No sorries, never, yeah, not for being real, OK?”

“OK. Mum… Mr Carter-“

A grunt. “Ian, pet”

“Yeah… Ian, he says I got to look both ways, lahk”

Ginny squinted at her. “What the f---lip?”

“He says I go all backwards, look behind, lahk, and life goes two ways, like missing a bus. You see one going off and iss gone, yeah, but there’s another one coming, so you don’t cry after the first one, you just wait for the second. He says…”

She turned to look at Ian, as if asking if she had it right.

“Aye, pet. Ginny, I know she’s just a bit bairn, aye, but, well, I tried to remind her of something about family, and that’s the simple thing, that family can start anywhere. A bit older, and the right man, she gets her own family, her own roots. That’s if she’s into lads, like. Are you into lads, pet?”

Shan blushed at that, and Ginny laughed.

“Into one lad, anyway! Come on, girl, we got a football match to see. And no bus factory just yet, Shan”

She turned to my brother. “Me, me and my girly, we ain’t into lads, but that don’t mean we hate them just cause they is all unnatural in the naughties. You, Ian Carter, you are a good man, so I don’t believe what your sister says. Come on, Shan, we got to pedal!”

The three of them were gone, and I sat alone with Ian as he tried to read, the energy he needed for conversation spent on a wounded girl. I left after he fell asleep, placing his little device in his bedside drawer. It was a lonely ride home, stopping to pick up the chips as a drunk stared at me in the usual way. He lacked the bottle or enough of its contents to have a go, so I wound my anger back in with my despair and continued home.

Shan had been right: we had wasted so much of our time together as family, and it was only when it was looking late that we had realised how precious a thing it was.