CHAPTER 30
We hit the road again once we were packed up, Dad insisting I drive the van along the back lanes until we hit the A4069, where he took the wheel and, to my surprise, turned north.

“Trying a bit of a different circuit, duck. Seeing as you have paid your respects to the Parsons, and those two men are in it up to their eyeballs, I thought we’d see a bit more of your own country than we normally do. You up for it?”

“Not if you mean going to where I used to live”

He picked up on my wording immediately, as Loz took my hand. Mam. Not that woman I used to give that name too, oh no, but my real one, the one who had loved me from the moment we had met in a Shrewsbury horsebox. Dad nodded, mouth tightening for an instant.

“Wasn’t what I meant, duck. Don’t think those people have any connection with your life any more, not if I know you. Am I right?”

“Dead right, Dad. So why the north?”

“Well, weather’s set fair. Set bloody hot, to be honest. Papers are talking of a drought, so it’s a chance to see some real mountains without it pissing down”

“We’ve seen real mountains, in Scotland!”

Mam laughed until she coughed at that, and when she had her breath back, she gave her opinion in typically caustic terms.

“You haven’t seen them, love, just a million gallons of pissing rain running off their bottoms! Remember that first time at the Red Moss?”

“Oh hell! I get what you mean. What are we doing, then?”

She held up some handwritten sheets.

“Gandalf got these for us, love. Market dates up the coast to Pwllheli and then we cut down to Caernarfon, then along to Bangor. Cut back through the mountains and take the back road from Betws to the coast and Conwy, then it’s the Scousers’ Riviera”

“Why those places?”

“Well, there’s towns like Aberystwyth and Bangor, full of students. They’ll buy any old crap. Out by Pwllheli there’s a Butlin’s, so more people with no taste, and it’s surfers round there too. Win-win. Same shit from Llandudno to Prestatyn. Then we can work our way up the Lakes coast, and…”

She tailed off, but Dad picked up her flow, almost seamlessly, which told me how long they had been discussing and plotting our travels.

“Thought we’d have a look at a river for you, duck. Got the Stotty to do, and there’s the Midgesummer near Ennerdale, so we’ve got a couple of weekends for a bit of a boogie. I think we also need some time away from towns and tourists”

“You thinking of Graham’s, aren’t you?”

He just nodded, Mam cutting back in with the words.

“Those graves, Deb. I know you needed to do it, but with all the rest of it, with that Carlisle thing, I think you need time, sea, sky. Take this the right way, but we will lose money for a while, or rather not be earning it, but I think we need the family time. You OK with that?”

She drew some deeper breaths, then almost rushed into speech again.

“Not too long before you are eighteen, Deb. We need to work out how to deal with that when it comes”

“Why?”

Dad tag-teamed her again.

“Citizen of this country is what you are, duck. We might live on the edges, but if you get sick, or something worse, you have rights. Not having you lose them because you hid in the cracks. You need a licence to drive, for starters”

Mam, once more.

“We need to speak to the legal people, local government pen-pushers. We need to make your name legal. We need to make you space in the straight world. Your choice whether you want to stay there, but you need the option”

Dad laughed out loud at that.

“I am actually looking forward to it, duck! Walking up to the straights, ‘Found this girl, your worshipfulness, no idea where she’s been all these years, so sort her files out sharpish!’ Need a cine camera, I will. Can’t watch something like that just the once, can we?”

Mum raised a hand.

“Nearly forgot! Sam left this for you, though I think his Dad did the actual shopping. Sam himself, love, he said he didn’t know when your birthday is, and he never sees you at Christmas, so he thought you needed a present”

It turned out to be a little Kodak Instamatic camera, with a pack of spare films, so I looked over at Dad again.

“This is mine, Dad1 Not swapping this for a cine camera, am I?”

The laughter set the mood for the day’s drive, and even though each day brought another edition of that newspaper, and further astonishment at how lucky I had been, we were back into our routine life in those cracks Dad had spoken of.

That story, though…

The boy was called Steven Elliott, and he was about the same age as I was, which brought further wobbles to my thinking. The friend who had spotted him was the wife of a famous footballer, which meant money, and money meant so many other things, including access to the justice I had never encountered. The police were in a digging frenzy at several properties connected to Mr and Mrs Cunningham, the couple who had run the care home, Castle Keep, and what the paper called ‘human remains’ had been found, those of far more than one person.

‘Remains’. I hadn’t ‘remained’, but Benny had, and that Bowles kid, and several others. Where were they now? Passed on to yet another hell disguised as a shelter for the vulnerable?

“Deb!”

I came back to the there and then of Fairbourne, rather than the what-if or could-have-been.

“Yes, Mam?”

“Can you pass us some more of those bandannas, love? Going like things that go quickly, they are”

“What are we doing for stock?”

“Ah, Goat found us found somewhere just outside Bangor. We can make do through Pwllheli and Caernarfon, then stock up there”

Goat had found us something? Really? I remembered him talking of business he had in North Wales, and it fitted. I had no idea of how he had managed to pass word back down to Dad, but it was just one more reminder of how those of us on the edges found ways to look after each other, and I realised how much Carl actually cared for me.

Burn in hell, Cooper. Burn long and hot.

So, in the end, it was winding roads out to the holiday camp, the trailer set up in a layby for Mam to fleece the Butlin’s idiots while Dad and me took the van into the town itself to target the surfers, an altogether different market. We found a dirt track near a village called Bryncir that night, where we parked up, sleeping together in the van like our first days together, which brought a problem about three in the morning, when Charlie came into my room at Runcorn, but my parents were there, with me and for me, and after a little while I was able to settle down between them, with Dad’s mutter that we might just ‘stop reading that fucking paper’.

Caernarfon was amazing, the castle huge and imposing, but I had preferred Harlech’s on its rock platform. Caernarfon’s was right by the sea, so its walls seemed higher, its towers more formidable, but I was an old hand now as far as castles went. I still took a load of photos, though. As each reel was used up, Mam posted it off in an envelope to be developed, then sent back to the Cannock House. Sam had been right, in the end, for while he wouldn’t see me at Christmas, the pictures would be there for us.

The only problem, of course, is that without seeing them, I would have no idea of how well I worked as a photographer. The strategy was obvious: take loads of pictures, and let chance sort me some good ones by accident.

Bangor was busy for sales, especially to the students, but we went in by way of the wholesaler Carl had identified, and when we left the town, we visited them again, our cashbox almost bursting when Dad took it into a bank to pay half of it into our account. That was one benefit of maintaining a ‘fixed’ address, even though we were hardly ever there. Our reserves would be safe, even if we were robbed on the road. Once again, I was shown how shrewd and utterly practical the Petries were.

We set off at last for a few days of relaxation, Mam giving directions from a road atlas that seemed as old as the van.

“Lad said there were a couple of campsites up here, Deb. See how we get on, OK?”

The mountains were there before us, and once we hit a village called Bethesda, they were over us. The road ground up a hell of a long way, with warning signs for falling rocks as well as for a youth hostel, and when we arrived at the summit, I was astonished.

A blue sky sat over an equally blue lake, an immense slope of stones and shattered rock to our left. In front of us was a mountain that looked like a cross between one of those dinosaurs with the plates up its back and a buzz saw, other mountains to both sides. People were everywhere, cars parked on the verges and footpaths, and as I spotted what looked like a café, Dad just kept the van rolling as Mam held her finger to the map.

“First place is behind that big bugger in front of us, love. To the right. About a mile, looks like from this”

We crept along the road, which would its way between the foot of the dinosaur and the lake, and I could see the valley opening out before us. I could also see lots of people on that foot, seemingly halfway up vertical cliffs, the idiots. The ground looked sere and burnt, either side of a long straight in the road, cars parked both sides, and then I spotted the little sign with a picture of a tent.

“To the right, Dad! After that red car!”

Ince the oncoming traffic left us a gap, we turned into what looked like a farm, with a sign by the gate and cattle grid that made it very clear in English, Welsh and a picture that dogs were extremely unwelcome.

“Dad?”

“Yes, duck?”

“Why aren’t we just pitching somewhere quiet?”

“National Park, duck. Lot busier here than in Northumberland, so we have to play by their rules”

We rattled over the grid and Dad pulled us up on the side of the stone track leading to the farmhouse.

“Think that’s the farmer coming, duck”

He was in dark trousers, an ordinary jacket, a flat cap and wellies, and couldn’t have been more than five foot six inches tall. Dad climbed down from the cab as he approached.

“Afternoon! Do you have room for us for a couple of nights?”

“You gypsies, ah?”

“Traders. Work the markets round the UK”

“How many men in there?”

“Just me, my wife and our daughter”

Dad gestured at us to step out, and we walked round the bonnet of the van to join him. The farmer hadn’t finished, though.

“Any dogs, ah?”

We all shook our heads, and I smiled at him.

“I like dogs, mister, but we spend so much time on the road it wouldn’t be fair on one”

“Aye? What about sheep?”

I smiled. Do your best, Debbie Petrie.

“We’ve got a friend, in Northumberland. He has sheep. He lets me feed the lambs, sometimes. Ones he calls kebbed, where they’ve lost their mams. I like doing that!”

His face cracked into a real smile.

“Polite girl you have there, mister!”

Dad held out his hand.

“Ken. This is Lorraine, and you’ve met Debbie”

The farmer held out his own hand, walnut-coloured, and they shook.

“Emlyn Williams I am, and this is my land. No fires, not in this weather, and we have no hot water for you, but there are toilets in that shed there, and a sink. People who stay here, they are climbers, walkers, ah? Like their sleep. Debbie, is it?”

“Yes, Mr Williams?”

“Would you like to meet my Dylan?”

I don’t know what expression hit my face, but Mr Williams burst into laughter.

“No, girl! Pet wether lamb, he is! Come and say hello”

I looked across to Dad and grinned, just in time to see him uncross the fingers of the hand he was holding behind his back. The farmer waved at the expanse of rough grassland edged with reeds that made up the campsite.

“Park up near the edge over there. Not boggy, not to worry there, ah? What are you pitching?”

Mam took over.

“Frame tent. Van’s set up for sleeping, but it’s nice to be able to breathe”

“Well, pitch it with the door facing west. Views are wonderful in the morning”

The lamb was a delight, and the farmer’s advice was perfect. We sorted the tent, made our evening meal, and watched the colours change around us, before settling into our beds.

What a beautiful sunrise.