Wait for Me

Do you believe it’s possible that dreams are the gray area where reality and something other than reality, I can’t think of anything better to call it than that, meet, mix and meld? Do you believe that dreams can be where someone’s fiction and someone else’s non-fiction intersect?(1) A few years ago I would have answered those questions with a blank look because anyone who would ask such questions had to have at least one wheel going in the wrong direction. Now I’m not at all sure what I believe, but I do believe if such weird things could be true they could make you extremely happy and maybe, just maybe, the universe could have enough of a sense of justice to repay torment with joy. So I’ll tell you about events that I don’t fully understand even though they happened to me and are still happening, or at least the consequences of them are, because after an initial eighteen years of torment now I live a life of joy, and I’m not the only beneficiary.

I am now Benjamin Thomlinson. Last year I married Ruth Thomlinson after I finished my five year apprenticeship to Isaac Thomlinson, Ruth’s uncle. When we married I took not Ruth’s name but Isaac’s because when I completed my apprenticeship as a coach builder and wheelwright he adopted me and made me a partner in the company changing its name to, ‘Thomlinson and Son Coach Builders and Wheelwrights’. Ruth and I live over the workshop with Isaac because the place is huge and Jacob Ruth’s dad said there was little point in us spending a fortune buying somewhere and paying another to maintain the workshop building. Jacob and Isaac bought the mill building a few years before I came on the scene as an investment with a view to converting it into rental apartments.

However, as a result of Jacob’s researches their ideas were modified and Jacob, Isaac and I have been converting part of the building into large, upmarket apartments available to artisans and craftsmen who require workshop – studio – gallery facilities too. A hand loom weaver called Glynis took the first one, and even though her studio wasn’t finished she wanted to move in as soon as possible. Once we had the rent from Glynis coming in we proceeded much faster with the rest because we didn’t have to do as much of the work ourselves. The builders have recently finished Glynis’ studio and have done so good a job that Jacob has suggested that when part of the ground floor [US first floor] is eventually turned into a gallery where all tenants may display their work gratis and any other for a fee we use the same builders. He thinks if the gallery has restaurante facilities for patrons it could pay for itself within a year. Isaac is not too keen on Jacob’s idea of having a glass wall on one side of our workshop so patrons can watch us work, but he’s becoming used to the idea. A working museum, Jacob called it.

The prospect for us all is looking up. Jacob has had a serious romantic interest for eighteen months, a widow of twenty-eight called Leah who lost her husband in a car accident, and has recently said they want an apartment in the building. Leah made him blush when she added that it had to have enough room for a family. Ruth and her sister Sarah, aided and abetted by Leah, are working on Isaac to find a wife, and he admitted to me whilst we were working that he is not against the idea, but after being a widower for so long he’s not quite sure how to go about it. When I told him it was probably best to leave it to the women he just sighed and said, “You’re probably right, Son.” Life is good and we’re all doing well.

However, it wasn’t always thus for any of us. I was born Imsanda Afallure, or so my original birth certificate said. My mother never admitted to knowing my father before she died within twenty-four hours of giving birth to me in a London hospital A&E department [Accident & Emergency department. US E.R.]. I have no idea where she nor my name came from other than that I was told years later by a woman who was a nurse on duty that night that she spoke English with an accent that could have been Eastern European or possibly Middle Eastern. As far as I am aware there are no photographs of my mother, so I have no idea what she looked like. I look like a typical Western European, vaguely Celtic looking if anything. I spent hundreds, possibly thousands, of fruitless hours seeking any one else with either of my names, and even Jacob’s contacts couldn’t find out whence my names originated. Jacob believes my mother made my names up to protect me, but from what even he can’t guess.

Life in care for me was grim. As a child I was small and withdrawn, but to live life in an environment tailor made for bullies with a name they misspoke as I’m Sandra a Failure was not pleasant. My face has always been on the feminine side of androgynous and I’ve always hated sport, which meant I spent a lot of time in the orphanage hospital wing. The bullying wasn’t quite as bad in the hospital wing, but there wasn’t a lot of difference. School was no better than the orphanage. No one even considered me for adoption or fostering and I left the orphanage at sixteen for a life on the streets with neither education nor qualifications. That was because I hadn’t managed to stay out of the hospital wing long enough to be in school long enough to acquire either. By that time I was a slender young man of five feet ten with feminine looks and a voice at the high end of the male tenor range. A lot of women had deeper voices than I. I tried to join the armed forces, all of them one after the other, but none were interested, and neither the police nor the fire brigade ever replied to my repeated applications. I presumed that was after they’d looked at the photo I’d had to enclose with the application forms.

I went for hundreds of interviews for apprenticeships and placements, but even the ones requiring no academic qualifications seemed to think I lacked whatever it was they were looking for. Not even the ambulance service were interested in me. I got by rather than lived on an endless succession of Mac jobs, none of which lasted long, and I lived on the street. My last such job was working as a night cashier in a twenty-four hour petrol station where I’d had casual work a few times before. One evening, one of my frequent customers who drove a new Bentley and had chatted briefly with me before saw the book I’d been reading: ‘Build Your Own Metal Working Shop from Scrap - Bound Volume of the Entire Series by Dave Gingery’. He said, “A bit of a change from your usual classics isn’t it?”

“Yes,” I replied, “but you’ve got to have some dreams that could possibly come true. The librarian recommended it to me. It’s heavy going but interesting.”

“Coming from some one who reads Shakespeare, Solzhenitsyn and Joyce that description sounds a bit odd. If you dream about building your own workshop you are obviously cut out for more than selling petrol when most decent folk are in bed asleep, Son. Are you not interested in a proper job with a future?”

It was in the middle of the night, he was the only customer I’d served for over an hour and no one else was filling up, so there was time to talk. “Yes, but I’ve applied for hundreds of apprenticeships and jobs. I’m reasonably clever, honest and prepared to work hard, but seemingly it isn’t enough. I don’t know what they all want, but they say I’m not forceful enough. I grew up in an orphanage and I met enough ‘forceful’ idiots in there to last me several lifetimes. I get by, but it would be nice to be able to afford to sleep in a bed with a roof over my head. That’s the best thing about this job, it keeps me warm at night. Even the armed forces, the police and the fire brigade aren’t desperate enough to want to have to deal with the possible problems I suspect they think anyone as unmasculine looking as me could cause them.”

The man took a long look at my face, and what I thought was an expression of revulsion and contempt passed across his face. Briefly I was glad there was armoured, bullet proof, glass and polycarbonate laminate between us. However, to my surprise he almost spat the word, “Idiots,” and pulled a business card out of his wallet saying, “This is my card, but I’ll write my brother’s name and phone number on the back. Give him a ring and say Jacob recommended you. He’s a wheelwright and looking for an apprentice. He’s interviewed dozens, but couldn’t find anyone suitable. I think you’ll get on. If you do he’ll put you up. He lives over the shop.”

I looked at the card. Jacob Thomlinson, solicitor at law, with a London business address and contact details as well as an out of London phone number. On the back he’d written Isaac Thomlinson, wheelwright, with a Shropshire address and a telephone number. I wasn’t too sure exactly where Shropshire was. “Thanks, I’ll follow it up as soon as I finish my shift,” I said. “What does a wheelwright do?”

“Makes wheels for horse drawn vehicles, though Zack fixes and builds anything to do with horses too including some coach work on modern horse boxes, both trailers and ones built on to lorry chassis. Give me a ring sometime if you do get on and I’ll sort a few things out for you. What’s your name, Son?”

“Imsanda Afallure, I don’t know where the name originates. I was born in A&E and my mother died before I was a day old. She’d arrived in labour and by the time she’d died the staff had found out nothing about her, not even her name. All I know is she sounded foreign. East European or Middle Eastern I was told a few years ago, but the nurse who told me that said she wasn’t good with accents so my mother could have been from anywhere.”

“Spell it for me.” I did, and he wrote it down before saying, “I’ll have someone look into finding out for you where it comes from.” I thanked Jacob, and he left.

As soon as my shift ended I rang Isaac. “I’m Imsanda Afallure. I’d like to speak to Mr. Thomlinson please,” I said.

“You’d be Imsanda that my brother spoke to last night would you?”

“Yes that’s right. Is the apprenticeship still available, Sir, because if it is I would like to apply.”

“It’s available to the right person, Imsanda, and you can come down to the shop as soon as it’s convenient so we can look each other over. Do you know the area at all. I’m not far from Shrewsbury.”

“Not at all, Sir. I don’t think I’ve ever been within a hundred miles of Shrewsbury. I only know where it is because I looked for it on a road map at work. I can’t tell you when I can arrive because I haven’t got enough money for even a bus ticket, so I’ll have to hitch hike. I’m sorry I can’t do better, but what little money I can earn I spend on food. I live on the streets and was mugged three days ago. They took my money and my clothes. A local charity shop let me have what I’m wearing, but I still have to pay for them when I get paid. I’ve been eating at the Salvation Army soup kitchen.”

There was a long silence, “I see. You working at that service station tonight?”

“Yes, Sir. I do seven nights a week, but I don’t know how long the job will last for.”

“What time do you finish your shift?”

“I do ten at night to eight in the morning, Sir.”

“I’ll have Jacob pick you up at eight, and the name’s Isaac, not sir. Every one calls me Isaac. Only Jacob calls me Zack.”

We chatted for a few minutes and that was that.

I wondered if it were all real, but just as I handed over to the woman doing the morning shift, Jacob pulled up in his Bentley. The look on the day woman’s face was a picture as I opened the front passenger door. Jacob was an interesting man to talk to, but he was mostly interested in me and answering my questions about his brother. Orphans, Isaac was his elder brother who had done the hard work necessary to pay for Jacob’s education. The brothers were close and Jacob told me Isaac was a widower of fifty two who had never had any children. His wife had died from breast cancer before she was thirty when he was thirty three, and he had never really got over losing her. Jacob was forty-six, divorced with two teenage daughters who lived with him all the time and didn’t see their mother from choice. According to Jacob the divorce had been ‘messy’ for him and traumatic for the girls. I gathered his elder daughter had ongoing medical problems. He volunteered no more and I didn’t ask. The journey passed quickly and I soon met Isaac. Isaac was a big and powerful looking man with a youthful smile, and his handshake was not the bone crushing affair I’d expected. As his brother had predicted we got on well. Jacob left us saying he had to take his daughter to a hospital appointment in Shrewsbury but would be back when Isaac rang to take me back to London.

Isaac shewed me his work shop and explained about the work he did. After a couple of hours he said, “You look worried, Imsanda, what’s the problem?”

“Some of the equipment and the things you work with are more than I could ever lift, never mind manhandle. I don’t think I’d be up to the job no matter how hard I tried or wanted to be.”

“So we have to figure out how to handle stuff with out just using man power. That’s what hoists are for. That’ll help me too as I’m already feeling the effects of age. I take it you want to learn the trade then?”

“Yes I do. Jacob said you’d put me up. Is that still possible?”

“No problem. This place is huge. It’s an eight storey building and there are six floors above my living quarters which are on the next floor up. It used to be a mill, and we bought the place as an investment with a view to turning it into apartments. That’s still the plan. There’s a room upstairs you can have and as much space as you want above that, but for the moment you’d have to share it with the pigeons.” Isaac was laughing at his last remark, but then suddenly serious he asked, “Would you like to start tomorrow?”

“Yes, but I can’t. I have to give a week’s notice and I don’t want to break my word.”

Isaac wasn’t happy about that saying, “You’re earning so little you have to sleep rough, dress out of charity shops and eat at a Salvation Army soup kitchen and you’re bothered about walking out on people who are offering you no job security and just exploiting you.”

Just then Jacob returned. He’d obviously heard the last bit of our conversation because he said, “Zack, leave well alone. The boy has a sense of honour. Would you truly wish to take that off him when he has so little? I’ll pay for a week in a bed and breakfast for him and his train fare and he’ll be back when he can. He’s not keeping faith with his employers but with himself, and that’s one of the reasons you didn’t wish to work with any of those other kids. They had no sense of right and wrong.”

Isaac nodded in acceptance of the situation and said, “The local technical college does some courses that would be useful to you. Are you happy to attend because I wish I’d been able do it that way instead of reading books it took me years to understand?”

I replied, “Of course. But how would I pay for the courses? And how many would I be able to attend?”

“You don’t. I pay for your education, and you attend as many as we can find of any relevance. A friend of mine has a garage that deals with heavy goods vehicles and buses as well as cars. I do the coach work for him on horse boxes that he works on, and he does the mechanical stuff for me on any that come in here, so his apprentices spend some time with me. I’ll look into what you could usefully learn with him and his mechanics. You got a driving licence, Imsanda?”

I was a little ashamed as I shook my head and quietly said, “No.”

“That is top of your educational requirements, because you’ll need to able to drive the pick up and trailer and tow horse boxes too. I’ll look into getting you a course of lessons.”

“Leave that to me, Zack. Penny who is teaching Ruth would probably suit Imsanda too. You may have to learn in the evenings, Imsanda. She’s a popular driving instructor with a high pass rate, so doesn’t have a lot of time slots available. She owes me a professional favour or two, so I don’t think there will be a problem.”

“Thank you. Both of you. I don’t know what to say,” I stuttered out.

“Just accept that some good things do happen too, Son. Zack needs help, decent help. I don’t like him doing all the heavy work he does on his own with no one around to even ring for help if something were to happen. He worked damned hard to put me where I am, and I owe him. Finding you for him is me paying a little of that debt back. We’re both happy to have you.”

Things were happening very quickly, and after saying goodbye to Isaac and shaking his hand Jacob drove me back. We were mostly silent on the journey back. Jacob paid for a week’s accommodation in an upmarket bed and breakfast hotel and took me to a supermarket for some new clothes to replace what I was dressed in which had been all I could afford from charity shops after I’d been mugged. He bought me a top of the range smart phone with an unlimited contract paid via his bank and said, “We don’t want to lose contact with you, so ring me and I’ll add your number to my contacts. Ring Isaac tomorrow some time and tell him I told you to so he can add you to his contacts too. Isaac describes his work as the UK equivalent of the Engels Coach Shop, so look up a few videos on Youtube and you’ll get an even better idea of what he does.”

The last thing we did before Jacob took me back to the hotel was visit the train station where Jacob bought my ticket to Shrewsbury and gave me five hundred pounds. I protested at the amount but he said, “It’s for the taxi and anything else you need or even want in the meanwhile. Call it an advance on your pay if you like.” He grinned and added, “I’ll make sure Zack takes it out of you in sweat. Now remember, if anything goes amiss, ring me straight away. Don’t wait hoping for the situation to get better, for invariably the opposite happens and things get worse. Ring me so I can fix things whilst they are still easy to fix.”

The manageress of the hotel asked me if I would like an evening meal before I left for work. I said please and I have no recollection of what I ate. She told me she’d appreciate it if I could give her a couple of hours warning when I wanted to eat before going to work. She was a nice lady who had no problems with me being a night worker and said if I wanted she could provide a breakfast before I left for work, a packed lunch for me to take to work and an evening meal when I came in from work, and all for what I considered to be a very reasonable price, much cheaper than I could buy food for. I agreed and paid her for the entire week’s meals on the spot.

That week was the strangest time of my life. I was well fed three meals a day which was a change for the better, warm, sleeping in a bed and I watched the TV in the hotel lounge in my spare time, or more exactly I stared at the screen deep in thought with no idea what was on it. Life was a huge puzzle. I don’t remember having many dreams, nightmares yes, dreams no. What few dreams I had had over the years I usually struggled to remember any details from and because of the nightmares I never tried too hard, just in case it turned out to be yet another nightmare in disguise. I’d worked my last shift over Wednesday night going into Thursday, eaten and gone to bed. I slept all day Thursday, ate and slept Thursday night too. I was going to Shrewsbury on Saturday.

The dream I had on Thursday night was vivid and I could remember every detail. It was the scene from the beginning of Harry Potter and the Half-blood Prince where he’d been chatting to the waitress in the railway station café.(2) Only it was I not Harry Potter, and the waitress looked nothing like Elarica Johnson, the waitress in the film. My waitress too, to quote Albus Dumbledore, was truthfully very pretty, but to me she seemed even sadder than she was pretty. As in the film she’d told me when her shift finished, then that part of the dream just faded. It was not Albus Dumbledore I saw via the moving train windows for a brief time before he disappeared, but I don’t know why I could say that with any certainty because I could not make out any features of the man only that it was a man not a woman. Then in an instant shift in point of view, I was on the platform on the far side of the tracks from the café and through the moving train windows the waitress was looking at me, not for me like in the film. I mouthed to her, “Wait for me?” And she smiled and nodded.

I awoke on Friday feeling disturbed and unhappy concerning the dream. It was only after I awoke that I realised the man I’d seen through the moving train windows had been Isaac Thomlinson. I’d never had any dealings with girls, but this had felt so real because somehow I knew so much about her. Awake I knew far more of her past than I’d known in the dream, and though I now understood the reasons for the haunting sadness on her face I felt like I imagined people felt when they lost someone they loved to someone else. I was still dwelling on the imaginary girl whose deepest secrets I knew all about right back as far as she could remember when I paid my debts in the charity shops and was shopping for the boots Isaac had told me to get. I told the shop assistant what Isaac had specified. They were made by Timberland, full leather boots that protected the ankles with steel toecaps and a steel plate in the sole to prevent things like nails going through your foot. Apparently not all safety boots had the plate in the sole. They were water proof, oil proof, acid proof and according to the shop assistant just about bomb proof too. Like a lot of safety boots they were bright yellow. I was a bit shaken to learn they cost just shy of two hundred quid, which was more than I’d spent on clothes in my life. All of a sudden Jacob’s five hundred didn’t seem quite so excessive.

Eventually Friday dragged to an end, and after eating I went to bed hoping to meet the girl again having packed my entire life into my new rucksack ready to leave London in the morning for County Salop.(3) The boots didn’t fit in my rucksack, so I packed my trainers and was going to wear the boots. I awoke disappointed that I’d had a dreamless night. The Saturday morning train was almost empty, so I spent the journey watching Engels Coach Shop videos. It was quarter to twelve when my train pulled in at Shrewsbury, and I was hungry so I went for lunch in the station café before finding a taxi to take me to Isaac’s.

That was when things became stranger than strange. I sat down and a female voice I recognised said, “I’ve been waiting every day for a week for you.” It was her, the girl in my dream, only she was a real waitress in a real café at a real railway station, and she knew about our conversation in my dream. How could she be aware of what happened in my dream? And even if she were aware of it, how could she have been waiting every day for a week when I only had the dream the night before last?

I turned to face her, but, despite the instant mutual attraction that took my breath away I managed to recover and reply “How can that be. I only dreamt of you two nights ago?”

“Dreams are funny like that. You dreamt like in Harry Potter?” she asked. I nodded and she said, “The answer is about now.” I looked blank and she said, “I told you before when I finish work. I started at six and get off work at twelve. I only work here during the college holidays. Dad would give me the money, but I don’t want to scrounge everything off him. I’ll go and get changed and take you somewhere where the food is considerably better than here and only costs the same. Okay?” When she came back she was wearing a skirt that though it was a lot longer than her uniform skirt was considerably more revealing because it was a much closer fit and I was pole axed all over again. “Come on, let’s go.” To my amazement she grabbed my hand as we left. It is a little strange to be holding hands with a girl as she is introducing herself. “I’m Ruth, Ruth Thomlinson, and you?”

“Imsanda, Imsanda Afallure.”

“Wow! You’re Uncle Isaac’s new assistant aren’t you? There can’t be two people with that name round here. You must be someone special, cos Dad’s well impressed by you, and Uncle Isaac said you were the most decent kid he’d ever met.”

“Are you one of Jacob Thomlinson’s daughters?”

“Yeah. I’m seventeen and Sarah is sixteen. You’re eighteen right?”

“Yes. In my dream you looked really sad. What was that about? You don’t seem like a sad person.”

“Probably to do with Mum, she’s enough to make anyone depressed. She’s got seriously debilitating religion, is always difficult and makes a drama out of everything. Sis and I try to avoid her. Dad got custody of us both when we were little cos Mum kept hitting us. Being hit is all I can remember about her when we lived together before the divorce. We used to have to spend time with her because she was given limited supervised access, but after we stopped talking to her the court said it was not in our interests and reduced her access. I could have stopped seeing her at fourteen, but I went because Sarah still had to go. Once Sarah reached fourteen the court said since we didn’t want to spend time with her she no longer had any access rights. There’s a court injunction against her that says she’s not allowed to approach within a hundred metres of the house or us wherever we are. Which is great in theory, but she lives not far away so we meet her by accident from time to time in shops and other places which is always a nightmare.” She stopped outside a small restaurante and said, “This is the place, ‘The Salopian Eatery’.(4) If you’re having lunch I’ll join you. The chicken and ham quiche is superb, but everything is good here. Even the vegetarian stuff is actually edible. Can you believe it? They make a vegetarian black pudding(5) that is actually worth eating, though as a rule I’m carnivorous.”

“I’ll go for the quiche if you recommend it. How about you?”

“The same, with camomile and raspberry tea.” We ordered, I tried the camomile and raspberry tea too, and we spent lunch telling each other about each other, mostly me telling Ruth about me. “Shit! And I thought I had it bad with Mum.” Ruth went quiet before saying, “In my dreams I’ve been going out with you for over a year, Imsanda. I feel that I know you well even though I actually know little about you. I would like to turn the dream into reality. How do you feel about that. If I’m pushing too hard tell me and I’ll back off and give you as much time to think about it as you want, but now at least you know what I want.”

I was amazed that I wasn’t in the least embarrassed and said, “That’s cool, but how will your dad and uncle react?”

“They’ll probably try to warn you off and tell you you could do much better than me, but if we go out together we’ll probably end up spending a lot of time with Sis and David. She’s been going out with him since before last term started. They’re fun people. Seriously, Dad and Uncle Isaac will be fine. Dad booked you back to back driving lessons with me. Penny the driving instructor rearranged things and said it actually would make her life a bit easier. We get picked up and we have an hour each. Usually Peter drives the car to my house at the end of his lesson and I drive him home. At the end of my lesson I drive the car to Suzie’s house and she drives me home. I know them both from college. Penny has to do it that way, cos she’s so busy. You going to the workshop now or have we got some time to spend going round the shops?”

“Your uncle isn’t expecting me till about six, so we’ve got some time. I don’t want to be late because I need to be there in time for dinner at seven.”

“Great. Dad, Sis and I are dining with Uncle Isaac too. I need some black tights(6) for work, but other than that it’s just window shopping and shewing you round.”

Ruth bought her tights and suggested we looked over the town centre. I didn’t know the town so went along with whatever she suggested. It was when we came out of the Edinburgh Woollen Mill shop that it happened. A woman going in accosted the pair of us and started screaming abuse and obscenities along with bible quotations at us. Unnatural perverts, child molesters, pederasts, you name it it was all there including a whole lot of accusations of going against the expressly stated will of God. The woman went on and on without seeming to pause to draw breath. Ruth clung to me as tears ran down her cheeks. She seemed frozen, unable to move. Eventually a couple of police officers ran up and tried to calm the woman down, but she started lashing out at them. It was at that point that the female officer put the handcuffs on her. A van turned up and the woman was pushed into the back. The two officers nodded to Ruth and the man said, “She’ll be charged this time for breaking the terms of her bond, Miss Thomlinson, possibly resisting arrest too. Next time I imagine she’ll do time. The CCTV footage will be all the evidence the court needs, but I’ll take your friend’s name and address if you don’t mind, er … Sir.”

The officer had been looking at my boots when I think he decided to call me Sir rather than Miss, because my skinny jeans and baggy tee shirt wouldn’t have provided any clues. Well he got it right, and it was a first, me being called Sir! Even if he had decided on the basis of my footwear. After I’d given him my details the police officer smiled and said, “Good afternoon,” and that was that.

When Ruth stopped shaking she said, “Well, as I expect you already worked out you just met Mum. Sorry about what she shouted at you. Like I said she’s a nightmare. Sis reckons she’ll end up being banged up(7) as a psycho. Come on, I’ve lost interest in this. Let’s go to Uncle Isaac’s and you can settle in, and I’ll introduce you to Sarah later when she arrives with Dad.”

“Usually I’ve been accused of being a boy masquerading as a girl, so it was a bit of a surprise when your mum accused me of being a girl masquerading as a boy, but you don’t have to apologise for her. It’s not your fault. Funny isn’t it? I think that officer wasn’t sure whether to call me Miss or Sir and it was my boots that made his mind up. On the other hand your mum assumed I was a girl and my boots made her mind up that I was trans. I wonder if I could buy boots in pale pink and pastel blue? Then I could alternate, or wear one of each. Just for laughs.”

We were still laughing as we got into the taxi. In the taxi, Ruth said, “I don’t have to explain do I because you already knew about Mum and me from the dream didn’t you?”

“Not exactly. I didn’t know during the dream, but when I awoke load’s of stuff about your life just appeared in my head. It was like I’d known forever since as far back as you could remember. It was only when I awoke that I realised I knew when I asked you to wait for me that she’d made the lives of you, your sister and your dad hell because you all protected each other from her.”

I knew that Ruth had as little experience of boys as I had of girls, but kissing was a good place to start, and it seemed to be an easy thing for both of us to learn. The driver had to cough several times to tell us we had arrived, and a broadly smiling Isaac had already opened the car door before we were aware of anything but each other. As we went in holding hands that was when I realised why Jacob had reacted the way he had when I’d said, “Even the services aren’t desperate enough to want to have to deal with the possible problems they think anyone as unmasculine looking as me could cause them.” He was angry for me not at me because Ruth had started life named Reuben.

Notes
1 Are you old enough to be a fan of and to believe in ‘The Twilight Zone’ the subject of the 1959-1964 TV series shot entirely in black and white with that weird music? I hesitated to ask in the body of the text because such a reference is anachronistic with regard to my protagonist, but I had to ask, hence this footnote.
2 Watch from 2:50 in this clip https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KU4Dtflwd2E
3 County Salop, old name still used for the county of Shropshire. Shrewsbury is the county town of Salop. Shrew in Shrewsbury is pronounced shrow as in throw, to hurl or sling, and not as in shrew, the small mammal.
4 Salopian is the adjectival form of Salop. Also a Salopian is a native of the county.
5 Black pudding, blood sausage.
6 Tights, pantyhose.
7. Banged up, locked up, sent to gaol or in this context a psychiatric unit.