CHAPTER 5
We were still naked when Ken came back in, his figure shadowy through the shower curtain.

“Got you this, duck. Clean clothes are on the table. Pair of flip-flops in her size as well, as long as those were her shoes”

He handed a safety razor and a pair of scissors over the top of the curtain rail, then blurred again as he moved away, calling back, “I can change the filter tomorrow, so don’t worry unless it clogs”

Lorraine lifted my chin to smile into my eyes.

“You OK with this, kid? Not much down there yet, but I will have to do your head as well. Find you a scarf, we will. Personal question, now. Very personal, so understand why I ask. Do you know how to clean… that extra bit? I can turn my back”

I knew what she meant, so I did the necessary, and then she started on my hair, the dark curls piling up over the grid covering the shower’s drain. Once the scissors had done their job, she took the razor and efficiently cleaned my groin before the much longer job of shaving my head, which included my eyebrows. The Parsons had always followed a cheap barber routine, which involved the shortest cut possible left for as long as they could get away with, so apart from my brows I ended up looking little different to the way I had ended up on ‘barber days’.

“Get you dried off now, love. Then I am afraid it will be the nasty bit. Do you mind if Ken gives a hand?”

All the way through this, from our first meeting to showering with me, she had simply accepted my Debbie declaration. No argument, no questions, no hesitation. As we stepped out of the tray, as she wrapped me in an old but clean bath sheet, I saw the clothes set aside on a solid but obviously foldable bench or table. There was a dove grey T-shirt, with the slogan “When I Grow Up I’ll Be A Biker Like My Mum”, a pair of blue flip-flops and a long patchwork skirt. She gathered the clothes, placing them onto a camping chair, and laid out another bath sheet, folded lengthwise in half.

“Can you lie down up here, love? Ken? Got the lights?”

I will gloss over the details, but it involved Lorraine putting on some sort of headlight while Ken held a bigger torch, moving around at her direction. Things started with a gentle wipe of my rear with some sort of cold liquid, and then the sting of a needle as she gave me what she called the ‘local’.

It sent my pain away from me, but it slowly came back, along with the sting of another needle, gradually increasing in severity. Pain. Gentleness, and muttered swearing from Loz, while Ken talked endlessly about everything and nothing, motorbikes and their life, silly jokes and random anecdotes, only twice having to step round and pin my legs to the table.

Part way through the ordeal, I felt a soft patter on my back

“Ken, love? Could you wipe my eyes please?”

At last, it was done, and Lorraine was kneeling at the head of the table, both of my hands in hers.

“Best I can do, love. I have some penicillin. Taken it before?”

“Don’t think so”

“Well, some folks are allergic to it, so we’ll have to watch you. I need to calculate the dose, nut if it works for you, it’ll clear up the infection. Going to be off solid food for a while, though. Now, I have a dressing on it. Ready for another sort of dressing”

Ken coughed for attention.

“Think we can best leave that for tonight, duck. Time’s flown right off. Got a bigger shirt here, should do for a nighty for the kid”

They had a bed that filled most of the width of the van. Ken stripped down to some shorts, Lorraine pulling on another old T-shirt and lying on the bed so her back was to the side of the Commer. Ken turned to me, his voice as soft as if he was gentling a frightened puppy.

“There’s enough room, kid, but if you prefer, I can use a bag out in the tent”

Sometimes we are offered choices, and they come with risks. That risk is the choice: will it bite me? Can I put the fear behind me? Do I have the courage to step through that doorway?

Three of us lay spooned on the bed. I don’t know if the other two managed to sleep, but as I felt my body’s knots untying themselves, the weight of my life pulled me under. The next thing I knew was the sound of a whistling kettle.

Sunlight bright on the grass outside, seen through the half-open sliding door. Ken was bustling round outside, singing some silly song or other about an old man clad in leather, and Loz was laughing.

“You’re no Maddy, love, and never will be!”

“Fucking hope not, duck! She’s got that one covered herself. You awake yet, Deb?”

“Yeah. Sort of…”

Lorraine looked into the van.

“OK, love?”

I fought back some of the dreams that were still fighting the daylight. No. No need.

“Sorry. Just habits, yeah? I want to run…”

I don’t know how and when, nor why, but somehow she was holding me as I sobbed, clinging to a double handful of her dark hair. She was whispering in my ears. Soft words about safety, things I understood, but the fear, claustrophobic in its intensity, still lay beneath it all.

I wound down in the end, as crying children always do, and sought my voice and sanity once more. As seemed to be her habit, she held me a little way from her so I could see her eyes.

“I think you’re working out if you need to run just now. Am I right?”

I nodded, uncertain of my ability to speak sensibly, and she smiled.

“Here’s the proposal, then. I am guessing you are running from somewhere up towards Scouseland, from your accent, so I will tell you that we are heading down towards Bristol right now, then along to a place in Wales we know. All away, further and further away, from that place you got out of. So we’ll be running together, love”

Ken’s head appeared next to hers, his eyes, I could now see, just as blue.

“She’s right, littl’un. Just got to get the tent and stall sorted, and we’re off. Got a couple of pitches lined up, including a couple of midweek markets, then we’ve got a rally near Swansea”

I found my sense of humour at last, broken though it was.

“You mean Abertawe?”

“Oh, piss off, kid!”

That last came with a grin and a mock slap at my head that, strangely, didn’t trigger a leap away in my half-healed body. Running together. Not running away, but running alongside.

I helped as much as I could with the packing, the skirt whipping round my knees in a sharp breeze and a scarf wrapped round my baldness, Lorraine policing my boundaries carefully. No lifting of anything heavier than a bundle of T-shirts of cardboard box of sunglasses, and in a couple of hours the van was loaded, along with a solid four-wheeled trailer that looked like it had cost more than the van. I took the middle seat in the front of the van as we joined a queue of other vehicles making their way out of the showground, and after a long, slow parade of vehicles right through the middle of the city, we were finally out into the country on a straight road that ducked under an old bridge at one point, the name ‘Thos Telford’ inscribed on the arch. A short while later, we were navigating a different junction, onto what I saw was the M6 motorway south, Ken wrestling the wheel.

“Still easier than a bloody Scammell, Loz! Good caff over that way, Deb. Hollies. Proper feed when you need one, and not at daylight robbery prices. Bit past there is our gaff. Cannock”

I was finding it easier to talk to him with every mile that passed.

“We not going there?”

“Nope. Got the market to do by Kidderminster, then that one by Bristol. Got enough stock on board; the horse show was pretty shit for us. We’ll top up at a place in Gloucester. Two things we did get through were sunglasses and folding stools”

The next few days were a little frantic, as we pulled into a couple of different towns where the ‘stand’ was quickly erected and a variety of stuff laid out, mostly T-shirts of various lurid patterns, including an awful lot of tie-dyed stuff. There were folding knives, folding chairs, folding sunglasses, leather items that seemed to have no purpose I could work out, and an awful lot of boxes of extra-large cigarette papers. Business was brisk, especially for the wallets on a length of chain and the chunky rings shaped like skulls. Not at all what I wanted.

That came later, during the second market outside Bristol, after a night spent huddled up in the van with all the floor space piled high with the stock we had gathered from an industrial unit on the edge of Gloucester. There was barely room for the three of us on the bed, but I felt safer with each day. The lack of space pushed us together, and I was starting to relish the warmth beside me, the feeling of safety that would emerge from the fog of a bad dream as I heard Ken’s soft snore or felt Lorraine’s breath on the back of my neck.

The stall was up, my little bit of assistance dispensed with, and Lorraine took my hand.

“Off shopping, love”

“OK, duck! How long?”

“Couple of hours, I would think. Pick up some stuff for soup, and get this one dressed”

That was a surprise, and I had a flashback to those days in Chester, seeing the posters of the happy, smiling, always whiter than white families. Woolworths was the main shop, for knickers and vests, blouses, two skirts, a couple of pairs of jeans and some shorts. C and A did some shoes as well as a raincoat. All of them from the girls’ aisles, no argument or discussion needed nor held.

The end of that day saw us grinding over the Severn Bridge after paying a stupidly large toll, with me sitting on Loz’s lap for the best views as the old van rocked and swayed just a little in the side wind that I would come to know so well in later years. It was Thursday evening, and after the bridge the traffic stood still more often than it flowed. Ken drove most of the way, Lorraine taking over after a couple of hours as the old vehicle laboured along the mixture of motorway and A-road we were following, until we came to a pub called the Three Feathers, somewhere near Bridgend according to the road signs. Lorraine drove us around the building to the rear, where she brought the van and trailer to a halt parallel to a long concrete wall. The engine ticked and popped as it cooled, and she turned to me.

“Who is she, Ken?”

The question was addressed to her husband, but her eyes were on me. Ken sat silently for a few seconds.

“My sister Brenda’s. been in hospital. Getting better by having an adventure”

“You haven’t got a sister, love”

“They don’t know that. And she’s not well, which is why we have Deb. Deb’s getting better, mum’s fading”

“Her dad?”

“Fucked off years ago. Or never knew him. Lorry driver. Knee-trembler in a car park in Coalville”

He turned to me, grinning.

“Got that, Deb?”

I started giggling, which was getting easier in their company.

“Yes, Uncle Ken!”

His smile faded.

“Don’t embroider, duck. Keep it simple. Keep the details vague. You don’t know what’s wrong with your mum, OK? And you’re just out of hospital. No details there, either, except that you are sick a lot and your hair’s gone. Let them make up their own stories. Now, this is someone we trust a bit, so we will be parked up overnight. Tomorrow is going to be a much more relaxed place”

We stepped down from the cab, Lorraine leading me by the hand and making me feel much younger than my real years. The inside of the pub was full of cigarette smoke, ten or fifteen mostly male customers clustered at one end watching a darts match, a fat man behind the bar wiping down some glasses. He looked up at our arrival, his face breaking into what seemed a genuine smile of welcome.

“Hiya, you two! Who’s this, then?”

Ken hugged me one-armed.

“My niece Debbie. She’s not been very well, and, well…”

I caught his gesture out of the corner of my eye as he put finger to lips.

“Her Mam is a bit, um, big seas, mate. Giving her a break, and this one an adventure. If. You. Take. My. Point”

“Oh. Um. Right. You’ll be off to the Farmyard Fumble, then?”

“Indeed! Got a load of new stock loaded up, so we’ll be glad of Sooty and Sweep”

Ken looked down at me, once again treating me as far younger than I was.

“Uncle Nigel here has a spare room upstairs, so we will sleep there. Sooty and Sweep will look after the van”

“Who’re they, Uncle Ken?”

“Dobermann Pinschers, duck. We sleep in here, Uncle Nigel shuts the gate, and the dogs look after all those boxes you helped me load”

“Can I stroke the dogs?”

Nigel laughed.

“Not the best idea, my girl! You eaten, you three? I could do you pie and peas”

Ken squeezed me, just a little. Avoid details.

“Still delicate in the stomach, Nigel. Got any soup for her?”

“Not a problem, poor mite. Want to get your stuff in while I sort the dogs? Would you mind, Loz?”

Lorraine nodded and slipped behind the bar, clearly used to the work, while Ken gathered our sleeping kit as Nigel prepared the food. I would rather have eaten the pie, but I remembered the stitching, and that was enough to put me off such temptations. Scotch broth was my meal that night, and a proper bed the place I rested, safe between two loving people.