CHAPTER 17
That was the last I saw of her back home. We met up at other places, such as the church in Reading where Arris married Steve, but never at home. She wasn’t out of contact, she didn’t disappear; letters and calls came regularly, but she stayed in England.

I was distracted for a while, for my sergeant’s came up almost immediately after Kevin and Vicky were wed. That made life interesting for a while, where ‘interesting’ means stressful, busy and confusing. Sweating blood studying, worrying about how chapel folk would have taken me standing beside Kevin, and recovering from a truly debauched stag night that finished up in someone’s living room. Whose exactly, I still can’t remember. I do know that I had some other girl’s knickers in my pocket.

It was so different to my own wedding, for the chapel gave space to sing, and as my father had made it very, very clear that Vicky was now part of our family what else could he and his brother do but join in the singing? My father has always been full of life, but when he sings he seems to grow even more alive, more firmly set in the world. Uncle Arwel is a simple man in all things, as is his son Hywel, until it comes to singing. Mam sang with them, and with other voices around them I saw Vicky’s eyes wide in wonder and delight.

Rod stood beside Kevin for the service, Siân and some of Vicky’s friends as bridesmaids. I had been asked, but, well, no. A married couple together in that role would have been too awkward for words, and words there would have been from the guests. I took my seat at the front and bathed in their happiness. Even with Kevin’s feelings for me, the two of them were clearly right for each other, as right as my lover and I were for each other.

Sarah didn’t come.

My examination was unpleasant, I can tell you, but it seemed to me that I did all right. I must have done, for I was offered a slot over yng Nghaerfyrddin, as we both always insisted on saying. That, of course, entailed a lot of searching, but we finally found a bungalow in a reasonable part of town out towards Cwmoernant. It all sounds so simple and quick, but it was a long and messy process only eased by the simple fact that both my wife and I had been renting, and her ‘subtenant’ had cleared off with some strange man. That meant we had no chain, as the estate agents call it, and merely had to give notice once the sale was agreed, mortgage arranged, survey done, black and white cockerels sacrificed in the heart of Pentre Ifan. That sort of thing.

I did do one thing with and for my sister when I found the time, and that was to see the litigation pushed ahead. It turned out that Kev and the Federation man had been spot on, and they folded immediately. Not good for the reputation of the Force, etc., and two more nails into the coffins of two ex-coppers’ careers. Sar spent most of her payment on a mortgage in Dover, and still didn’t come home.

I started out at Friars Park, with a move to Llangynnwr a few years later, so it was typical town centre work mostly. Plenty of theft, but not a lot of robbery; plenty of drunken fights and domestics but not a lot of rape. It was that sort of town. The one thing I did get to do, though, was plenty of getting around on the works Honda. The Gogs may have bigger mountains, but the scenery down West is just as sweet in my eyes, and the vistas are wider. We are the largest constabulary in terms of area, and that means a lot of twisty country lanes. Plenty of RTAs, then, which became RTCs, which is where my seasons of plenty could be rather unpleasant. I will never, ever forget that child seat.

Kev was back from honeymoon, but they were now living up in Aberteifi so it was a bit of a trek to see them. Siân made sure we put the effort in, though, and it was on one of their return visits that the next big news was revealed. Kev was insufferably smug, and Vicky even more drippy round him than normal, as we sat in the front room with snacks and wine. Siân just looked at her cousin and asked the question.

“How long, girl?”

Vicky smiled, and I could see so clearly what called to my wife. “Two months, Doc says”

Ah. I looked over at my old mate. “You ready for this, constable?”

A bright grin. “As ever, sergeant. Seriously, what parents are ever really ready, for their first one, aye? Second one, know what to expect, innit?”

Siân laughed. “And you’ll be up for a second after seeing what the first is like? Shouldn’t you be asking the woman involved first? I mean, not you that will be doing the giving birth, is it?”

I took a sip, thinking. After what had been done to Vicky, pregnancy and motherhood would clearly come with some messy and painful memories.

“Vicky, Kev: what are you hoping for?”

Kev grinned again. “Two arms, two legs and happy, aye?”

Vicky nodded, but then held up a hand, palm towards me. “Lainey, please, don’t think bad of me, but, well, we are also hoping that any child isn’t…. you know…”

I gave my wife a quick glance. “You mean you don’t want it to be like me and Siân?”

Kev grunted, but Vicky sharpened her tone. “No, that is not it. Kev is with me on this one, aren’t you, love?”

He nodded and took her hand as she continued. “Any child of ours we want to be able to love well and love deeply, and we don’t give a shit who. You two should know that. It’s just, well, your sister. No, Elaine, don’t get me wrong. I love her to bits, yeah, but, well, nobody should be given that hand to play. Can you understand that? We just want our child, our children, to be happy in themselves”

I was clearly getting paranoid, and I understood exactly what she meant. Sarah had suffered, would continue to suffer, for no fault of her own. Nobody should ever have to deal with that. My thoughts brought an idea.

“Vicky, aye? Got a bit of a notion, might help. Why don’t you have words with Mam, our Mam that is? I mean, she’s had two kids, obviously. Get some insight, some help”

She looked hesitant at that, and I could read her thoughts. Why would Mam want to get involved? Siân stepped in.

“Far as they are concerned you two are family, aye? Sioned and Twm would love a grand kid, and this could be something like it. Won’t hurt to ask, is it?”

Vicky’s voice was very soft just then. “They would do this?”

I took her hand. “I think they would love to”

I spoke to Mam the next day. Deal done.

The disciplinary hearing came and went, and canteen culture again played a hand as two fine and upstanding policemen retired on health grounds, pensions retained. It is one of the peculiarities of being a police officer that there is a strange sort of double jeopardy ruling in which criminal proceedings are balanced out against disciplinary ones, and the hammer doesn’t fall as heavily in the latter if it is emphatic in the first. Nevertheless, both were now gone. Job nearly done.

I must admit it became almost surreal when we went over to see the Barracloughs in Reading, as Arris had her own little passenger slowly growing inside her. Everyone around us seemed to be producing new life, and my sweet redhead was so wistful it hurt me deeply. We had found another guest on that trip, another big man with dark hair and beard, and even before we were introduced I had guessed who he was. I held out my hand to him.

“Thank you, Tony”

“What for?”

“Making my sister happy for a weekend”

He blushed. Really blushed. “Might have been a bit longer, but for her stupid joke”

“Eh?”

He laughed. “Told me she was a drug dealer, didn’t she? Me in Customs, well, not such a good thing to do, is it?”

“Well, you know better now”

“Yeah, and I am married now, and very happy, and… look, you know how it is? You meet someone, you don’t get it right, you meet someone else and it DOES go right, you don’t forget all about the first one, do you?”

Siân burst into laughter. “Oh don’t we just know that one! You, me, her mate Kevin, all singing the same song, isn’t it? And all happy now, aye?”

He sighed. “Aye. Er, yes. Look, couldn’t help hearing about Sarah, aye? About, you know”

I kept my tone neutral. “About how she’s not really a woman, is it?”

He fixed me with a flat and hard stare. “No. Your sister is a woman. She is a woman I care a lot for. If Steve hadn’t stopped me…”

I held up a hand to cut him off. “I am not going to go any further on that one as I not only have no need to know but I have a need NOT to know, if you get me. I read Joe Evan’s witness statement”

I looked across at Steve just then, and there was something very, very frightening in his eyes that made me wonder exactly what his history was just as I made a firm decision never to try and find out. Tony continued.

“We are where we are, Elaine. Times change, things happen, people move on. If things were different, I would look her up. They aren’t different. This is one case where I can’t help. I would just make things worse, from what Arris says. All we can do is be there, all of us, for when we CAN help. She has to heal herself”

I knew he was right, just as I knew that he would never be in Reading when she came to visit, for we all realised that would break her completely.

I was out for a pint a few days later with Kev, as Vicky was visiting Mam and Dad with my wife, and he dropped another surprise into my lap.

“Remember that lad by the M4, Lainey? The one with the shakes?”

Shakes? In my memories, which often visited me at night, he was sobbing.

“Aye, I remember him. What’s up?”

“Well, do you remember a few years back? Car rammed a bike and blew up?”

I did remember that one, as it was all over the grapevine at work. Three kids burned alive after a car chase, the policeman concerned rammed off the bike that ended up wedged into the front of the car, then blown halfway to Caerdydd as said car went off like a bomb while he was trying to get the boys out.

“Shit, Kev, same copper?”

“Same one, Lainey. He’s had a bit of a break down, they’re saying. He’s had to come off the bikes”

“Poor bastard. That was a truly bad one, though. Kids, aye?”

Kev took a long draught of his ale. “Aye, girl, and when you are about to be a parent, it gets even closer to home. I was lucky on that one, being sent down the road, innit”

A child seat on the road, covered in a blanket. Alternate screaming and sobbing from an ambulance.

“Aye, butt, you were indeed lucky”

I think that was when it all crystallised in me and I knew that Siân wasn’t alone in her desire, her need for children. The world and our friends seemed to be conspiring to show us what others could have. It was up to us to grab it for ourselves.