CHAPTER 3
It became a routine for a while, the run up to Aber. I would finish work after the right combination of shifts and jump onto bike or into car, heels and other trapping gear packed ready in advance. Two and a half girls would greet me with hugs and squealing, and after I had replenished my depleted stocks of tannin we would be off and out.

I always got a smile from Cathy, as well as some of the others I came to know, and one Friday evening, as the music pounded, Sar dragged me into the ladies’. My mind answered its own question: where else would my sister go?

“Chwaer, you don’t have to hover over me all the time”

“I’m not hovering, Sar, I’m just being there if you need me”

“I don’t, Elaine. No, no, I didn’t mean it like that! Look. The girls here, aye? From the Uni, most of them. They know me, know about me, aye? Most importantly, they know I’m not interested”

There are moments when reality leaps into your face waving, destroying all your complacency. That was one such; I had come to terms with my sister as a woman, I had ceased thinking of her in any way as male, but there she was all but declaring her, well, her heterosexuality. It seemed there were still little pieces of Sam wedged deep into my mind, and that was one. It was even worse than imagining our parents doing the dirty with each other. Sar was shaking her head.

“I can see where your mind’s going, Elaine, and we aren’t in here to talk about me, so no, I haven’t, I’m not, and I have no plans to, right? Nor opportunity or anatomy. It’s you, mooning around like a moony thing”

I started to get something out, but before my mouth was fully open, her fingers were there, just like Jo with Becky.

“Pause, cariad. I’ve been watching, aye? She’s not always on her own, but she is tonight. I have the girls with me, so what could possibly go wrong? Here…”

She handed me a tissue. “What’s that for?”

She tenderly kissed my cheek. “To wipe my lippy off, aye? Not to confuse her? Now go. See you tomorrow if it goes well”

She took my hand and led me from the toilet, pointed me towards the bar and gave a little push. Cathy was there.

“Hiya Lainey, can you drink tonight?

“Aye, not driving tomorrow. Two nights I’m here”

“How’s little sis?”

I looked over to where she was gyrating with her friends, realising as I did how short her skirt actually was, and turned back to Cathy’s eyes.

“Not so little any more, I think. I think I need to step back a little”

Cathy smiled broadly, then parted her lips. The tip of her tongue briefly touched the upper lip and then withdrew, as the smile turned into a grin. She reached out for my hand.

“Fancy a change of air?”

It was a short walk before we were climbing the slope of Pen Maes Glas Road. Cathy put a key into a door before turning to me and saying something that almost made me love her.

“You sure your sis will be OK?”

I had a little trouble swallowing. “Yes. I am sure”

Sure about so many things, right then, and really sure that I wanted this woman so strongly I thought my heart would explode. She took my hand again, which she had only released to get her key, and drew me into her flat, drew me to her, eyes locked on mine.

“Traditional thing is to offer you tea or coffee, darling. Can I do the traditional thing afterwards?”

“After what?”

She lifted a hand to my breast, and I felt so, so stupid.

“Just ‘afterwards’, yes?”

The next day, after I woke them up, we four girls made our pilgrimage to the clifftop again, and there were knowing glances and shy smiles. Assumptions were being made, and obviously the right ones I found myself grinning and, more to the point, blushing. I held onto that memory such a short time later.

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Becky had been clear about liking a girl in uniform, so I made it as perfect as I could. I was screaming inside, all the usual childish stuff about fairness, but it still came down to a wet and miserable day with the matching pairs of distraught families and coffins. I couldn’t tell Sar right then, but I was hearing hints that the driver had been watching a video, and I made a note to be at his trial and give the fucker the eye.

Sarah looked smart, in a suit clearly bought for the occasion, and I wondered if she would ever be able to wear it again. I looked at her, stared at her, and Sam simply wasn’t there. I mean, she had worn him for the occasional trips home, but this was simply a young woman I saw before me. The decision rose up before me. No way could I allow all the work her first true friends had ever done to be cast aside.

“We go now, Sar. We do it now. There is nothing we can do for the families beyond what we have said, aye? We don’t know them. But the girls knew you, they cared for you. We put things right, now”

She was away in her thoughts. Fuck it.

“Brawd!”

Her head jerked; attention caught. I softened my tone, but only slightly.

“Chwaer, we need to sort out a few things at home. You can either do it now while you still have the numbness, and the time left to hide at college, or you can do it when you come back from college, nowhere to hide and me not there to support you. Let’s just do it now, OK? I am angry enough to get you through this one, and I am not leaving you to him while I am off in Llareggub or wherever. Can you do this for me? For yourself?”

She seemed to find her feet fascinating for a while, and then her voice came back to her, bleakly soft. “You mean, like you subtly told me you were a dyke? Oh, bugger it, in for a penny. What can he do?”

“Speaking from unfortunate experience, kill both of us, but that’s unlikely. I am going to make a couple of calls just before we go in, OK?”

We drove out just as far as the first phone box I could find, and I rang work. Thankfully, Kevin was on the desk, one of the better lads.

“Kev? I need a favour”

“Problems at the funeral, Lainey?”

“Na, more possible ones at home, butt. Got a bit of a possible domestic ahead, need someone nearby just in case, aye?”

“What you up to, girl?”

Sod it. “Mate, you know I don’t exactly sing from the same hymn sheet as most of the other girls”

He laughed. “I think the whole station knows that, love! Ah. Would this domestic possibility concern that beast of a dad of yours? You coming out, aye?”

“More than that, Kev”

There was silence at the other end, as I watched my money counting down.

“Elaine…”

“Aye?”

“You know my cousin Elwyn, he’s Custody up at Aber, aye? He said, you know, things. Your brother, innit?”

The tears came, just when I didn’t need them. “Sister, Kev. These two girls, we just seen them burned, aye? They loved my little sis, and they did so much, so fucking much, and now they’re soot and shit and nothing!”

“Give me the number of that box and hang up, girl”

I did, and fought to get my face back under orders, and then the phone rang again.

“Two of the boys will be waiting on the junction. They’ll have a spare radio for you. Stop, pick it up, and any shit you just press the red button. Talk to me when you can, aye?”

“Aye, Kev. I owe you one”

“Not one you haven’t already paid in full. Talk to me after, aye?”

“Will do”

“And Lainey?”

“Aye?”

“We find a day, and we go out together and we get pissed together. Those girls got you this upset, they need a proper wake”

All I could do just then was hang up, but I knew he would understand.

I gave Sar an edited version of the chat, and drove her home. My right foot wanted to get heavy with anger and loss, but I held back, held to my task. I picked up my radio, and we parked outside the family home.

“Wait in the car”

I walked up to the door and slid my key in. Mam had clearly heard us arrive, because she was in the kitchen ready to make tea.

“Leave that please, Mam, we need to talk”

She looked hard at my red-rimmed eyes. “You OK, cariad? That funeral, they were Sam’s friends, na?”

“They were mine as well, Mam, in the end”

Dad nodded. "Bit odd, aye, double funeral like that”

“Not really, Dad. They were a couple”

Mam looked up. “Couple? You mean they were woman queers? And you left our boy with them?”

“The word is lesbian, Mam. So they would hardly have been a threat to a boy, would they?”

Dad muttered to himself. “Bloody unnatural, that. Women with women. Not right, not right”

The anger swallowed my restraint. “It’s not right they’re dead, is it? And if they weren’t right, then neither am I!”

Mam went pale. “You are saying these girls, that you, that they led you into---“

“Oh, don’t be stupid! I’ve fancied girls since I knew what it was all about, aye? Don’t give me that look!”

Dad was almost snarling. “And Sam? I can see there is more in your story than your own perversion. Are you telling me our boy is also a homosexual?”

I snarled back. “As far as I can tell, as straight, as heterosexual, as anyone could ever be”

Mam sighed in obvious relief, but a cruel streak held me just then. “No, I don’t think she fancies women at all”

Really nice touch, Elaine; how to handle a minor domestic by the book, not. I took a breath.

“I’ll call her in, but you keep your hands to yourself”

I went out and tapped on the car window, Sarah jumping in shock, and the next few minutes ticked every box I had been so frightened of. The shouts, the threats, the instructions to go and change into proper attire, and I had had enough. Two girls, dead. I pulled the rage back and started doing what I got paid for, and eventually people were talking rather than giving instructions and making statements.

“Listen, you have a choice, aye? You two need to understand one thing, and one thing only. Much as we love you both, we have a lot of problems ahead. You can either be with us, or you will be without us. Sarah here has been this way since she was old enough to know what a girl was, so don’t you dare come out with another comment about the University.

“What do you want? Two daughters, or none?”

I realised it wasn’t only Mam crying, as Dad rose from his chair and pulled her to him, tears falling freely from both of them. Sarah moved to go to them, and I knew what it was going to be: sorry, I didn’t mean to make you cry, I’ll go and change…

I held her back, and saw Dad whisper something. Mam just nodded. Dad stared hard at me, muscles working in his face.

“Then two pretty daughters it is. I don’t like it, I don’t want it, but it’s the bed I have and I have no choice. I will not abandon a child of mine for anything”

Mam nodded again, and then tried on the saddest smile I ever saw her give.

“Just…please, don’t rub our noses in it”

I took my aching thumb from the red button on the radio, and went to heal my parents.