CHAPTER 28
The pattern of my life started so often with light through the fabric of a tent. This was a little different, because the tent was Carl’s and the light was that of the first hints of dawn. I was lying on my left side, Carl’s left arm under my head, his right arm across my waist as his hand cupped my right breast. It could have felt sordid, as if he was sneakily groping me, but it wasn’t like that.

I felt protected, that was all. Just, please, Carl: don’t kiss my neck when you wake.

He stirred, perhaps in response to my shudder of memory, and simply pulled the open sleeping bag we were using as a quilt up around our necks.

“You OK, kid?”

“Sorry…”

“Told you, girl. Stop that. Are you able to talk? Would it help?”

I thought it through, and it did feel easier, in the light, with his arms around me.

“Children’s home, Carl. Couple of men worked there, and they liked… They saw us as fringe benefits. I used to…”

I forced back the tears, and tried to keep at least some distance from my memories as I found the words.

“Old hotel, I think, and each room was split into two with partitions, plasterboard, drylining I heard it called once. Had a boy called Benny in what had been the other half of my room. He was the only one I really spoke to. Nobody else seemed… I don’t think anyone else had any strength. The stairs creaked…”

Make the memories clinical, girl. Use the detail for distance.

“There were two men, Charlie and Don, and Don was, Don had hygiene issues”

“You mean he was dirty”

“Fucking stank, Carl. I think it was….”

Deep breaths.

“Don gave me crabs. Charlie wasn’t as dirty, but he was sweaty, fatter. You could hear the difference when they came up the stairs, and sometimes, when it was Don, and he had been… When he had gone to a different room, you could smell him as he went past on his way downstairs. He was always quicker at it than Charlie…”

I stalled there, but when Carl pulled me closer, I somehow felt better about the things that still haunted my sleep. I felt safe, and while he had clearly picked up what a kiss to my neck now meant, Carl’s tears were still hot there. We lay in silence for a long while, his arms around me, their muscles rigid with tension. At last, he whispered into my ear.

“Where are the cunts now, Deb?”

“No idea, Carl. I know that the people who ran the place are dead, suicide I think, but Don, Charlie, fuck knows. Why?”

“No reason, love. None at all. Now, I think we should get moving. Breakfast, then get packing. I need to get up to the North; got some business there, and it’s a twisty road, so won’t be a quick ride”

I remembered him throwing his bike around on the bends on the way back to the campsite.

“A twisty road, but someone’s got to ride it, aye?”

I could feel him laugh.

“Aye, girl. I will just have to suffer all those bends and mountain roads on my own”

One more squeeze, and then I was looking for my bra, and when he kissed a nipple, I nearly lay down again, but the moment was gone, soiled by the memories of Charlie fucking Cooper. Two hours later, and Carl was also gone.

Mam and Dad didn’t ask, but I could see the understanding flash between them, and after Rosie and I watched what was so clearly ‘our’ man ride off, her eyes were hard on mine.

“You didn’t, did you, Debbie? You and Carl?”

I dropped my head, shame filling me, and murmured the confirmation of her guess. Once again, I felt arms around me.

“Too many memories, girl?”

All I could do was nod, and she pulled me closer.

“I think somebody needs to die”

She left it at that, but the memory lingered. It was the first time I really saw how hard a case Rosie actually was, but I recognised a lot of Carl in her voice.

We were packed at last, Dad insisting I hitch up and drive the Commer and trailer to the edge of the site as part of what he called my advanced lessons, and then we were away from one “chilled weekend” and back onto the road. I didn’t want to talk, so I simply found Pink Floyd’s ‘Meddle’ and lost myself in ‘Echoes’ for a while.

Damn you all the way to hell, Cooper.

Our lives went back to normal after that, or at least what passed for normal in our nomadic ways, and Scotland was visited once more, Beattock struggled past, the tourists of Gretna fleeced, various bits of Northumberland inhaled as deep draughts of fresh and cleansing air. My world was one of self-sufficiency, or at least sufficiency within and for my family. By the time we looped back around to the Farmyard Fumble, I had my own harder edges coming through, those I had already found in that straights’ school had been honed to a cutting edge that sometimes brought raised eyebrows from Dad and a fond smile from Mam. The day I hit a gobby youth in the face with the remains of the apple I had been eating was the day Dad suggested I left my blade in the van when I was working.

I could see his point, and he was right. Until I was legally adult, I was at risk. So clamp down on the rage, find less lethal ways to cut the bastards down to size, and cling to the family and friends that were always there for me. I despised straight society; what on Earth did they have that could ever match our own joys? Fuck them.

The Fumble was on us, though, my first ever proper do, my first friends as Debbie, and it never faded on me. The same stops on the way, even though there were new dogs at Nigel’s, but just as untouchable. I was driving a lot of the time now, especially on the back roads, and it was me who drove the Commer past Gandalf and over to our pitch, me who reversed the trailer into position. It hadn’t been me who had driven it into Runcorn, though, nor me who had parked it in an unlit side street half a mile from the cemetery, but it had been me who had stood by the headstone of Marie Fucking Parsons and managed to pull out the tiny nubbin of my shrunken cock and piss on her grave while Mam kept watch.

There was something odd about the writing, and I risked a flick of the little torch I was carrying to have a closer look. Someone had taken a power tool of some kind, and added words to the stone, reading ‘kiddy fiddler and evil bitch’. It wasn’t a sentiment I could fault.

Our final touch had been Mam’s idea, with some input from Dad, and the bouquet we left was made of nettles and garnished with a liberal dressing of dogshit. We got back to the van without incident, and I resolved never to visit that town ever again. Job done.

I parked the van weeks later at the Fumble, feeling more and more like my old self, which thought actually made me chuckle. Dad looked up at that point, as he sat beside me in the cab with a watching eye on my driving.

“That the sound of our girl coming back, duck?”

I laughed again, a little more loudly.

“How do you do that, Dad? Bloody mind-reader!”

“Eh?”

“I was just thinking about feeling more like my old self, being back here, and then thought that my old self didn’t really exist until we first came here, to this rally. Sort of a birthplace for me, this field”

He hugged me.

“Don’t care either way, darling girl. Just happy seeing you smile again. That Rosie over there? And Carl? Get this set up, and you can get a brew going for them. Have a catch-up and shit”

“Why do I need to get the brew going?”

“Because Loz and me need to give you some room to sort out your friendship, duck. Those two are sort of holding hands. You might want to clear the air a little”

Another little bit of me died with his words, but I sat down hard on my jealousy. What had either of them ever done to hurt me? If I couldn’t deal with men, then why should I begrudge Rosie, et cetera, et cetera. As Mam and Dad hauled the trailer into its final position, I climbed out of the driving seat and slid the side door open, setting up our little stove. Kettle filled and set on the grass, I stepped back round the van, waving at my two friends.

“Hiya! I’ve done all the hard work getting us here, so those two can set up the stand. Cuppa?”

The pair walked slowly over to me, Rosie’s eyes flat and challenging up to the moment I gave them a smile and said “You two can’t be a couple! You’re two well-suited! Come here!”

The hugs were hard and fierce, in contrast to Rosie’s stammered apology, her hardness evaporated in our reunion.

“We weren’t sure, Deb. Me and Carl. How you would take it, aye?”

I hugged her even more tightly.

“Two of my best friends ever getting on with each other, with life, yeah? Being happy? How else would I take it?”

Carl hugged me, with a soft whisper, just for my ears, of “Thanks, love”, and we were into gossip and catch-up, Mam and Dad joining us as the tea was brewed, the stand almost complete. The mood was warm, as warm as it ever was, up until the moment when Carl’s smile drained away.

“I have to remember sometimes. You don’t watch telly, do you?”

Mam laughed out loud.

“My darling man here may be a whiz with our plumbing, but no, we don’t have one. Not that easy with a van, love”

There was something in Carl’s expression, just at that moment, that frightened me deeply.

“You got that paper, Rose?”

“Now, Goat?”

“Now. Get it out of the way and let the weekend be a good one”

Rosie handed me a copy of the ‘Sun’, and I could just see the words at the top of the page, ‘Exclusive to the Sun and News of the World’. She unfolded it, and I screamed, I couldn’t help it, because there were photos on the front page, and while I didn’t recognise them all, two of them were of Don Hamilton and Charlie Cooper.