CHAPTER 37
I left them to their chat, for there was nothing I could meaningfully add. I was still undecided about Joe Evans but after all I had been given sight of his witness statement. I had seen Steve in a very different light after that, and I knew that I was never going to dig any deeper. Leave that particular case deep frozen, Lainey.

Siân was off at the weekend, which chimed with my own self-planned working roster, and she was insistent.

“Got to be done, Lainey. We have to get it out of the way, and if we go up on the Saturday we’ll still have the next day to recover if it turns to rubbish”

“Aye, cariad, but she’s still a cow, aye? I know she’s your Mam…”

“And you know that all I ever wanted was to have her at our wedding, have her accept you, aye? Love you, now, that’s flying pigs territory---what?”

“Am I THAT unlovable?”

“No, I meant---oh, you sod! Come here!”

I like it when she tries to apologise. It’s very nice…

We set off on a reasonably dry Saturday morning, the snow blinding on the hills, and made our way on wet rather than frosty roads to Kevin and Vicky’s house up by Aberteifi. The main routes around there tend to follow the coast, and the back roads are twisty and narrow. The forecast was set fair, so I didn’t worry about the weather and anyway, my wife spent her working life driving the same roads. I still put a shovel into the boot, just in case, as well as a flask of hot chocolate, which somehow got drunk before we were halfway there. Little Taz was first out of the door when we pulled into their driveway, and to my surprise was followed by Angharad Roberts, who took hold of the back of Tara’s coat. As I stepped out of the passenger seat, I heard her murmuring something about running in front of cars.

“Mrs Roberts…”

That was a moment I will never, ever forget. The same flat gaze, the same opinion clearly sitting in her eyes and burning to leave her tongue, but this time she held it back.

“Miss Powell. The little one has been sitting by the door awaiting your arrival with some impatience. Victoria has similarly had the kettle hot for at least an hour so as to be able to offer a warming drink. Siân. Ah. O see you have already had a warming drink”

Mt wife looked at me, puzzlement clear on her face, and I saw, and laughed.

“Choccy moustache, cariad”

Mrs Roberts winced at that. Live with it, it isn’t going away any time soon or any time at all.

“Tea then, Mrs Powell?”

“Indeed, Mrs Powell!”

We entered to a flurry of hugs, Tara wanting to tell us all about some girl at school while Siân did the listening-to-excited child duties, and I mentioned that we had some bits and pieces in the car. Kev winced.

“Wrapping paper?”

“Wrth gwrs!”

“Vicky, love! Got a bin liner?”

He turned back to us. “Tara gets a bit excited with presents, it goes everywhere”

I squeezed his knee. “And you would be without her in a shot, aye?”

That soppy grin once more. “Never, and you know that. Funny how one simple night out can change a life, innit?”

I smiled over at my wife. “Aye, you are not wrong there, bachgen”

Her mother rose. Obviously suffering in silence, and turned towards the kitchen.

“I will see how Victoria is coming along with the tea”

As soon as she was out of the room, Kevin shot me a whispered “She doesn’t know what to do, Lainey! Hasn’t changed her mind, is it, just worked out which side has the butter on”

Oh really? Keeping her mouth shut would be a good start. Vicky returned with the pot and cups, and I called over to the little girl.

“Taz? Want to help Aunty Siân get some stuff out of the car?”

As soon as they were out of the door, I turned to the old witch. “Right, a few pointers for you. This is not our house. This is the house of people who have been generous to you beyond belief. You will not insult us. You will not criticise us. You will not so much as sniff at any display of affection, because I am with people I love and I will show them that I do. You will comply with those conditions or two of us will leave”

I stared at her, watching for any tells, any signs that she was about to treat us to one of her opinions, and then it clicked. She was the title of that Spanish film, Alma Dover or whoever: she was that woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown. So many years of certainty, almost of power, lost when Carwyn ran off with some other godbothering hypocrite, all those certainties evaporating.

Stop being a cow, Lainey. Deep breath.

“Exactly how much cow poo DID you pump through her letter box, Angharad?”

Kevin sprayed his tea when she produced a tight little smile and the words “Nowhere nearly sufficient, eh?”

I looked over to Vicky. “And there’s you two worried about a bit of paper, aye?”

Vicky grinned. “It’s rather less smelly, love! Anyway, what’s this Kev tells me about you breaking a big case?”

“Ah, not me, aye? Had a team, they did the work, and a very brave young man to work with us”

Mrs Roberts raised an eyebrow. Sod it. “There was a series of rapes. He helped us catch the rapists”

“How did he do that?”

“By acting as bait”

I sat and awaited the ‘rape is of women’ bullshit, but she surprised me.

“This young man, was he also a pervert? I mean, a homosexual?”

“Yes. And?”

“Was he hurt for his courage?”

My mouth dropped open, and she saw.

“It is for the Lord to punish sin, not man. I will not consort with perverts…homosexuals…but chastisement is for the Lord. Kevin has explained to me the violence done to young men, and even in their own sin and fornication they are not for mere mortals to punish”

“So you would not throw their perversion, their sin in their faces if you met them?”

“I would explain their error to them, yes”

Was she mental, unhinged, or simply inhabiting some other planet? I imagined her meeting Chris: you are a very brave man, I hope you weren’t hurt too badly, but you’ll be burning in Hell after you die. Kev saved me from opening my mouth and slipping both feet in.

“Got word you have a tasty back-hand, Lainey! She broke nose and cheekbone on one of them”

I snorted. “Joke’s all around the nick, aye? Don’t knock any teeth out, we need them for bite comparisons, and…. Kev, five of them, they’d already beaten nine colours out of Chris, they had him in the back of the van, aye? One of them comes at me as we try and get in, and, well, I missed his mouth. And you know who two of them were, I am sure of it. Aye?”

He gave me a show of his teeth that certainly wasn’t a smile. “I know who three of them were, Lainey, and so does Angharad. I explained it to her”

Vicky mouthed the words “No he didn’t” at me, which confused me until I realised what she meant, which was that he had kept Sarah’s secret safe. I looked at my---my mother in law.

“One was the man who beat my sister badly. Two others were ex policemen who abused her in hospital and then lied about it. The investigation is not only ongoing, as they say, but we may actually get someone for another rape, one from some years back. It is now out of my hands because of Sarah”

Angharad Roberts looked at me, long and hard. “I can see now why my daughter chose you as her companion in sin. If she is to continue her unnatural behaviour, it is best she does so with an honourable accomplice”

Bloody hell, my head hurt. I was saved by the return of the other two girls, and I realised that Siân must have deliberately stretched the time for collection of the bag of presents. She had said it so many times before, about Vicky, about me: how could anyone not love us? This had been her chance to give me the start of an opportunity to get her mother moving in the right direction. No, I didn’t see her coming on side, but at least I had been able to try.

“Mam! Mam!”

“Yes, Tara Elaine?”

“Look what Aunty Elaine got me!”

Kevin snorted as Tara pulled out the ‘junior policewoman’ costume Siân had found somewhere in the city, and I fixed him with an accusatory raised eyebrow. “Well? You always say you love a woman in uniform, and now you’ve got four of us! Here, catch this!”

“What’s in it?”

“Open it and see”

I kept my mouth shut as he started to leaf through his new copy of ‘The Good Beer Guide’, as any mention of it being a man’s bible would surely not have gone down well. Matching fleece jackets for all three of them, and a joking subscription to The Guardian for Vicky, and we were left with one square parcel, which Angharad Roberts was definitely not looking at. Siân looked down at her feet for a few seconds.

“Mam, Elaine and I are a couple. That will not change. I know, I am sure that we will never receive your blessing, or even your approval, but then we do not seek that. What we would have is an end to open hostility. I see you have managed to learn at least a few things from these lovely friends of ours, from your own family, eh? But we, Elaine and I, my wife and I—no! That is who she is and will ever be. No, we would offer more, if you would unbend. This is for you, from both of us”

Both sets of hands were trembling as her mother took and opened the parcel, and I saw the old woman’s jaw drop slightly before she drew once more on her self-control.

“I already have an older edition of Strong’s Concordance, but the other book…”

It was an odd religious book Siân had suggested, ‘Englishman’s Greek Concordance and Lexicon’.

The old cow was almost smiling. “There was not an edition in Welsh?”