CHAPTER 37
I watched Cathy carefully for a few weeks after that incident, her comments about the need for control still fresh in my mind, but for once it was Nell who stepped up to the mark, engaging her attention with almost obsessively detailed queries about UCCA or whatever it was called, as she planned both girls’ future university careers.

It took my mind off my worries for the two, which allowed me to steer Maisie into the same A-level college Nell and Cathy would leave the following Summer, and that in turn gave them someone else to look after.

That seemed to be the running theme of the House, that those most in need of support seemed to get most of it from looking after others. Whatever the reason, however it worked, all I cared about was the fact that it did work, and their mutual support left me free to worry about the outliers and prepare for any new guests.

I kept my own habits going, although my birdwatching had been forced to adapt to the flooding of ‘Cardiff Bay’, just before the century slipped away to let a new one in. There was a little bit of reedbed and mudflat left, rather than the vast expanses of open silt I had grown used to, and if I say that Bert was unhappy with the destruction of his favourite place for standing behind a stupidly-large telescope I will be understating things more than a little.

For me, it was another matter that annoyed me, and that was what came to be called ‘gentrification’. The people on the biker scene, the regulars up the road at Harry’s pub, the lads who unloaded part-baked bread from my wagon and wheeled it into Tesco’s back doors, they were all real people. They shopped in real shops, drank in real pubs (except for those who preferred the lager factories), and they ate in greasy spoons, back street curry houses, kebab shops and the like.

The new face of what came to be called the Waterfront, down by the new Assembly building, rapidly became a wasteland of chain shops that seemed to lack all character. The plague of the expensive coffee hit the place like the Black Death, and all character was packed up and shipped out.

Someone like Harry, or Marlene, made their places their own, in the way they interacted with their customers, even in how they chose those customers they were willing to serve. Something like Starbucks, or Costa, simply reflected a corporate image, and there were times when the massive companies that ran them tried to be quirky, or whimsical, and it was a close run thing between my distaste for their product and my nausea at their twee games as to which one left me retching.

A couple of places hung on, one or two pubs, but the rest went plastic. Even the end of Tyndall Street got a plastic makeover at what was known as the Magic Roundabout.

As the Autumn started to cool down, I had more time to myself. Cathy and Nell were slogging away for their A-levels, the former keeping an eye on what powers the Assembly might be able to bring into play about recognising their status, while at the same time watching Maisie’s back. Kim was just Kim, utterly dependable in every way, as Ruth never hesitated in telling me. Doc Thomas, Heidi and Nita were there every so often to check that we were on a safe course, and properly trimmed, and the nights slowly drew in.

I knew what was coming, as Paul chafed and winced at every rain squall and colder evening.

“When are you next out on the tea run, Debbie?”

“When it starts getting colder. What’s niggling?”

We were in the living room with the girls, another armchair squeezed in for his sake, and all the girls were settled in their own way. The two older ones were in the ’study’ working away on whatever assignment they had, Kim was slumped with her eyes closed and headphones on, and Maisie was pretending to read a book while clearly earwigging like mad. She was still a little nervous of Paul, as a man, but seemed to be willing to work with him, at least for the time being.

He took a long sip of his tea before replying.

“It’s a few things, Debbie. There’s a few dates, a few triggers, for runaways. One of them is the end of the long school holidays. If they’ve been getting crap at school, they see the return coming up, and they’re off. The other big date coming up is Christmas”

“Long way to go till then, butt!”

“I know, but it’s always a bad time for anyone that’s on their own, or think they are. We get a lot of the kids, the new ones, ending up on the streets around then. And then it’s the heavy time for the working girls”

“Ah. Darker evenings?”

“Yeah. Mr Randypants likes to do his kerb-crawling when he stands least chance of being seen and recognised. Darker evenings indeed. Means the girls are out more, and they don’t exactly dig out the winter woollies any more than they do in July. And it’s drunks, groups of them”

“Eh?”

“Some lads think it’s funny to pretend to be potential customers. Especially around office party season, get pissed, drive around and waste the girls’ time. Someone like Mo then gives them a kicking for not meeting their quota, or whatever he calls it. And some of the drunks simply cut out the middleman and do the kicking themselves”

“Beat up the girls?”

“Yup. That’s how Moira lost her teeth. Too many blokes, they get drunk, and suddenly they find the need to be good and virtuous citizens. I spend a lot of time in Casualty over Christmas and New Year”

Maisie was hanging on his words, her book forgotten.

“Like that man who beat me up, Paul?”

He sighed, and nodded.

“Sort of, or rather sometimes. It’s a mix, really. There’s the customer who doesn’t get what he wants, or doesn’t want to pay. Then there are the ones who want to teach a girl a lesson about what a piece of shit they are”

I winced at that one, remembering what I had read about Sarah Powell.

“Piece of shit? Them or the girls?”

“Both, Debbie. Either. What really makes me squirm are the ones who come out to deliver a lesson in morality, then decide they’ll take a free sample, and that is a bloody nightmare to get it taken seriously by my bosses. They can’t seem to agree that a tom can be raped. I don’t think some of my bosses actually see a sex worker as actually having any rights at all”

Maisie was hanging onto his words, mouth slightly open. She shuddered, then looked at me.

“What do you do, Debbie?”

I shrugged.

“Take the van out, with a load of plastic mugs, the urn and a couple of jerry cans of water, and let them have some hot drinks, that’s all, really. You up for that?”

“Would I be safe?”

“You can stay in the van. All the rest of us need is a hand filling up mugs, topping up the urn, that sort of thing. Paul?”

“Yes?”

“Can we have a word, short one, in the kitchen?”

“Um, OK”

“Maisie, you up for it, then?”

“The others come along?”

“Team effort in this house, always”

“Okay…”

I stood up with a nod to her, then moved towards the kitchen.

“Bring your mug, butt. Either a top up or a wash up, depending”

He closed the door after he had followed me in, and I settled myself against a cupboard, toning down any threat signals as best I could.

“What is up, Paul? There’s more behind this than just ‘it’s always a shit time of year’, I think”

He was staring into a corner, trying to find words he didn’t feel safe in giving me. Suddenly, I understood.

“Who is it, Paul?”

His gaze flicked straight to mine, before rebounding to the toes of his boots.

“How did you know?”

“I was just guessing, love, but I am right, aren’t I? One of the working girls? Bit of a cliché, isn’t it? Whore with a heart of gold?”

He almost whispered, and I immediately felt like a shit. Show some class, woman.

“Sorry, mate. Slipped out. Please talk to me”

“Got more tea?”

“Can make some. Mates, aye? Friends? I promise not to judge. I really shouldn’t have said that, so sorry, yeah?”

I turned to put the kettle on, taking the weight of my eyes from him as I did so, and he began to speak.

“Some of it comes from something you said, Debbie. About Moira, when you guessed her age so wrong”

I kept my back to him as I did the business with two mugs and the hot water.

“I don’t think it’s her, is it?”

“No. It’s Paula?”

“Who?”

“Posh, they call her. Name was a bit of a joke when we first met, like that song, ‘Hey hey Paul, hey hey Paula’, isn’t it? Anyway, took a while to get talking to her. She’s off her face a lot of the time, on stuff Mo gives her to keep her in line. A slap regularly, a fix every so often. Sometimes, I catch her when she’s on the up. Not wasted, not strung out. We get to talk. Had her in my car a few times, and… It started as a bit of humint stuff”

“In English?”

“Sorry. Human intelligence. The word on the street and all that shit. Trouble is, once I got to know her, well, there’s a woman behind that slap. A mind, a bit of history. She…”

I took the risk and turned round, and his eyes were damp.

“That was the thing with Maisie, you know. Paula was kicked out by her family, still a teenager. Ended up, well, you know where”

“But she’s, well, she’s not a woman the same way my girls are, is she?”

“No. She’s a woman the same way that kid out to Southerndown was, and about the same age when it happened to her”

“Oh fuck!”

“Yup. Oh fuck. Big man, big car, somewhere dark, and once he was done, he punched her lights out and pissed on her. Her parents kicked her out for shaming them, all that rubbish. Put her in a new light for me, entirely new light. The more I got to know her, well. Remember what I said to you about that Mo? Well, if ever I get the chance to put him inside, don’t get in my way”

I waited as he studied his tea, and then he smiled, sadly.

“Not got a clue what I can do about things, but yeah, I am getting a bit stuck on her. I just wish I could meet her more than I do, rather than what the smack makes her. You must think I am a complete and utter fuckwit”

Poor, poor man. Something snapped in me just then, and I saw Frank in front of me instead of Paul, another decent human being, someone else whose part in my life was overshadowed by a bastard. Mo for Paul, Cooper for Frank, for me, for my whole bloody life.

“Paul?”

“Yeah?”

“How much do you know about my background?”

“Not that much. I know you came down from Cannock, but that’s about it. Nita hinted she met you when you were young”

“I was a runaway, mate. I escaped from a children’s home”

“What? Sixteen or seventeen or so?”

“I was twelve when I got out. I went in when I was around nine. I was raped just about every day till I got out a window”

“Fucking hell!”

“Exactly what it was. I might just have some idea about where Paula is coming from, so I think it’s about time I stopped judging. When do you want us to go out again, love?”

He put down his tea and opened his arms, and as I hugged and was hugged, I had a moment of jealousy for Posh/Paula, and that brought a chuckle. He pulled back, so that he could see my face, not so that he could let go.

“What’s funny, Debbie?”

“Ah, Paul. Just me thinking what a good man you are, and then realising, shit, did I just call a copper a good man?”

That brought a laugh from him, thank god, and then a much firmer hug. We were smiling as we returned to the living room, and three weeks later, we started the tea runs again, with Maisie at the urn. A fortnight later, a newly-confident Maisie went with me in the Transit to Swansea, where we collected Emma and Rachel from a homeless shelter, just in time to upset our Christmas planning. We picked up a basic set of bunk beds on the way back, the first of a few more.