CHAPTER 18
Life became almost banal after that. There is a tendency for some people, especially the younger ones, to see settled domesticity as boring beyond words. They crave adventure, excitement, action. Well, I remember ‘adventure’ being summed up by someone sensible as ‘something unpleasant happening to someone else’. It was the same with the rookies, as too many of the boys were calling the new chums in the American fashion. They came straight from training and went out hoping for a ruck, for a fight or a foot chase, while I was just happy to get home to my wife without incident.

That’s the thing about being in the Emergency Services: said emergency almost always does consist of something unpleasant happening to someone else, but where we are concerned it happens right in front of us and asks us to clean up the mess, and some of those messes leave marks beyond the physical. I thought of that young copper, Adam whatever, each time I arrived at a smash.

Vicky and Kev had a little girl, pretty as a dew-dropped rose to them and as ugly as sin to the rest of us, but that is the way of babies. They called her Tara Elaine, which made me tear up quite a bit, and that was only made worse when Arris started what seemed like a production line of infants. Along with Steve, she stayed as true to her friendship with Sarah as I had known she would from the moment I had first met her. There is a lot of rubbish written about things like love at first sight, and Siân and I showed that. Her initial comments about my sister were, well, something we would both rather forget.

Sometimes, though, just sometimes, the knowledge is there in your head immediately. This is one of the good ones, this one has a soul and honesty, and that was Arris. In Steve she had found someone similar, another who made his commitments from the heart and held them there whatever happened. It was Reading where we met with my sister, for she would come no further west, and as she filled out softly in the right places her face set firmer into a maturity I would have preferred not to see. Siân summed it up in one word: cynical. So much grief, so young: what else could she feel but world-weariness and suspicion?

Still, for the two of us, life went on in a comforting and comfortable way. Every now and again I thought of how two dead girls had let me out, let me show who I was, and my reward lay beside me crowned with red curls. That was the thing: it was at night when those thoughts came, and it was her presence that kept me grounded in hope and safety. Without her, what would I be? It was in the small hours that I found the balance sheet before my eyes. It was almost like one of those religious arguments, in that I had to ask myself if my happiness justified their deaths.

Shut it, Lainey. Count your blessings and cling to the best of your memories.

Wyn was ‘Wyn’ more and more just then, and I was Elaine rather than Sergeant Powell. With the two festering excuses for humanity swept up and out of the force, I got to know him better as the years went by. It was, well, informative how he kept in touch even though I was working to a completely different management chain, which said so much about how he saw me and my family. It was Uncle Arwel who provided the missing pieces to the puzzle.

We were at some family birthday or other in the Oak (where else) and he was asking the usual uncleish questions about work, incidents, arrests, everything apart from how Siân and I were getting on. That was a bit unnecessary, as she was snuggled into my side with a hand on my knee at that point.

“So how is that senior copper of yours? That Wyn?”

I had learned aeons ago that he almost always had a reason for raising conversational subjects from out of the blue.

“You know him, aye?”

He had grunted, taking a mouthful of his beer. Ever eloquent, even without words.

“Na. The boy, though, he plays with his son, aye?”

Hywel, and no doubt by playing he meant rugby. My uncle had taken another long draught of his ale.

“Aye, that thing with Sam, the boy wasn’t happy. Things got shared in the team, might have got back from young Iestyn to old Wyn, aye? Funny how these things turn out”

I gave him one of my better copper stares, but the effect was spoiled by the redhead cuddling me. He simply raised an eyebrow, as glacial and dangerous as an iceberg.

“Told you, girl. Had a word with the younger shit, aye? Left a warning with Wyn over the other two arseholes. His turf, as the Yanks say, his responsibility, but I got second bite at their cherry”

There are times when my own family frighten even me, and when he turned a flat stare on me and made a very direct comment about outsiders touching his blood kin, well, that was one of those times. He looked away, smiled horribly, and looked back.

“How is young Samuel, then, in that foreign country?”

I sighed, of course. “She isn’t Sam, and never has been, aye? You know what we say—move along, nothing to see? That is Sarah? For fuck’s sake, how can you talk like that about her ten seconds after describing how you threatened serving coppers?”

A cock of the head and a sigh of his own. “Lainey, I am a man of my times, aye? But family is family. I don’t do nancy boys, but he is MY fucking nancy boy, my blood, my kin, my fucking family, Hywel’s kin, aye? Listen. I know who you go and see in Reading, aye? I know who dealt with that little cunt. Wyn knows, but he has held it back, steered the investigation our way, aye? So you give him due respect. Now, the boy is supposed to be getting me a pint, but he is talking to some tart at the bar, aye? We will talk again, but that is enough said for today”

Indeed it had been. I thought long and hard about the worm cans that lay begging to be opened, and decided to close my eyes and leave them well alone.

That was an eye-opener, to say the least. Each visit to Reading afterwards left me wondering exactly how close Steve had come to being sent down for the ‘accident’ that had happened to Joe Evans. We still had to juggle, of course, for Sarah was there as often as Tony, and timing was indeed everything. We even met Tony’s wife Anne and their little boy Jim a couple of times, and I have to admit that hurt me.

I do not like men. I don’t mean that I don’t LIKE men, I mean that they are a foreign species in which I find absolutely no attraction. I look at Steve and Tony, or Dad, or Hywel or Ewi Arwel, and I see good people, people I love, but nothing that stirs my juices. I look at my wife and, well, I am lost.

I could look at Tony and Anne and their kid, and smile, but I could never see myself in her place, even though she was so obviously and so much in love with him. And then she was dead.