CHAPTER 43
As Alicia disappeared, I turned back to Kim.

“Spill them, then. All those beans I can hear rattling around. Late?”

She turned back to the stove, trying to appear intent on her cooking.

“Nothing really. Just going to the pictures”

“With?”

She set the wooden spatula down into the large pot of lamb mince she had been stirring, then leant forward, hands spread wide on the worktop and her back still to me.

“Like Oily said, isn’t it? He’s OK”

“Oily?”

“No. Philip. Phil”

“Kim, if you don’t want to tell me, that’s your business, but please understand why I am asking. Just trying to keep you safe, isn’t it?”

She nodded, and I caught a slight tremor in her left hand, so I stepped forward to hold her, as my instincts took over. She stood up straighter, wrapping her arms over my own, a matching tremor in her voice.

“I know, Debbie. I know it all too well. I think it’s the same with the other girls, at least Nell and Cathy. This place… it’s like when we’ve been out with pat, and in some big hill, where there’s a little bit of flat, yeah, and you stand up straighter, catch your breath, but there’s another steep bit ahead”

“Very deep, love”

“No. Not really. Just that I know I can’t stay here forever, got to move on, leave space for new girls and stuff”

“Not unless you want to, Kim. Never without it being your choice”

“No, not really that. But living here, it’s been that resting space, flat bit, but I need a life outside, need to be real. Need to---no, I was going to say I need to move on, but I don’t mean I need to leave here. I just need to start a real life, be someone real”

She turned in my arms, setting her hands on my shoulders.

“I know I can’t shag Phil, but it’s not about shagging, though it is, sort of. Just having a few moments as a girl, just a girl, like any other girl. We’re off to the pictures tonight. Going to the new Lord of the Rings one. Means I’ll be home late, so I’ll take my keys. Phil can see me home. Am… Am I being silly, Debbie?”

I hauled her closer to me, wrapping her in as much reassurance as I could.

“No, Kim. Trust me, I understand”

She whispered into my ear, “I know you do”

A few seconds of comfort, then a ‘huff’ of breath from her.

“Come on, let me go. Hungry girls, meal to make. New one’s not fussy, is she? Not a veggie or anything stupid like that?”

“Nope. I asked. We’ll set the table in the big room, I think. Eat as a family for once, and not off our knees”

“I won’t have time to…”

“Then we delegate, my girl. Get someone else off their arse. I’ll sort it”

Our meal was a mix of chaotic conversation, as older hands bounced off each other’s words before remembering to try and include the new resident in their play, but she was still unsure of her ground, still in the hoody and tracksuit bottoms, still keeping her inner girl exactly that. I was watching the double act of Rachel and Emma, and every time they made a bad joke with Maisie that wasn’t too obscure, too reliant on inside knowledge, I would catch a little flicker of a smile from Alicia. There was hope for her, it seemed.

Once the food was gone, Kim disappeared with it, and I managed a few seconds with her in the kitchen after she had changed into tighter jeans than normal, along with a T-shirt and her well-worn leather jacket. I looked her up and down, and she shrugged.

“I’m taller than him, so no heels, and if I went in a skirt, well, I don’t know whether he gets WHT or not”

She picked up on my confused expression.

“Wandering Hands Trouble. Got three pairs of knickers on under these jeans. Yes, I have my phone, and yes I have my keys, and no I won’t be LATE late. And yes, I have thought about Nicky, and Maisie. Got a bus to catch. Don’t wait up!”

She was gone, and my worrying was only just beginning. I prayed Oily and Elf had got it right about the boy.

Alicia had been drummed into setting the table, so its clearance and dish duty was down to the others. Washing up wasn’t that much of a chore, as Sparky had plumbed in a dishwasher for us, so we were soon back in the living room, where I found Alicia looking through my bookshelves; when she caught me watching her, she visibly cringed. I had some very uncharitable thoughts about her mother, but once again I put my thoughts somewhere safe and brought out as smooth a mile as I could manage.

“See anything you like? Anything interest you?”

She turned back to the shelves.

“You’ve got a lot of books about Snowdonia, Debbie”

To my surprise it was Patricia who answered that one.

“Debbie has a friend that goes up there, Alicia. Pat, she’s called. Knows everything and everywhere in the mountains. We went up there before the Summer, and we stayed on a campsite, on a farm. There were new lambs, and there were climbers, and it was gorgeous”

She looked towards me for a second, before turning back to Alicia.

“I had a few problems before I ended up here. The other girls just looked after me, made me feel welcome. Gave me my life back, is what it is. Good place, this is. You know the mountains?”

“Um, yeah. We went up there a few times, just me and Dad. Stayed in a youth hostel there. Dad showed me a secret bridge”

Patricia sat bolt upright, a grin splitting her face.

“Over some waterfalls? Under the main road, by a big lake?”

They were off, laughing at shared trivia and separate but common memories. Alicia’s shell seemed to be cracking open, and it gaped even further when Serena called in from the kitchen, where some of my brood were clearing the dishwasher.

“Girls? We’re doing hot chocolate. Any takers?”

Unanimous response, which tickled me, until I turned back to Alicia and the book she had found, ‘Running Out of Hell’.

“What’s this one about, Debbie? I like running”

“It’s not really about running, love. I think the title was meant as a sort of joke”

Just not a funny one, not at all.

“The author was a man called Steven Elliott. I believe he’s a serious runner, but the book’s actually about a children’s home”

“Oh. When you say ‘children’s home’, do you mean somewhere like Bryn Estyn?”

Oh Alicia: much, much worse.

“You could say that, love. Not a pleasant story, that part of the book. Was that what you were thinking about when we were with the social services ladies?”

She nodded, then gave me another smile.

“Not like this place, though. That’s the important thing. Can I read this?”

“It would probably give you nightmares, love. Best not, at least not right now”

That book hadn’t given me any more nightmares than I already had, and I realised how close my experiences had been to Elliott’s. Patricia and Alicia shared stories of a hidden bridge, and Steven Elliott and I shared memories of Charlie fucking Cooper and that filthy bastard Don Hamilton.

Keep the smile on, Deb, and take the mug of chocolate from Serena to cover the twist to your face.

“Patricia’s right, love. We seem to have a sort of, I dunno, a set of traditions building here. We do Christmas at a friendly pub, New Year’s Eve with some biker friends, and as this one said, we try and get a few weeks in the mountains in August. And when it’s cold, we do a sort of charity work with hot drinks for the homeless. A friend of ours helps us out, and he does the maintenance and that for the house. Not many men get to come in here, inside the House, that is”

Maisie chipped in her thoughts.

“Yeah, Sparky, that’s him. I got into a lot of trouble, being stupid, and he got Deb out to pick me up. Then there’s Paul, he was there as well. He’s our own copper, the one we call if there’s a problem”

I thanked her with a nod.

“And we’ve got our biker friends, and then there’s a couple of my friends from Northumberland, and they are an actual couple, of men that is. They do Christmas with us, and that, really, is all the men we let in”

I gave Patricia and Maisie a look each, then finished the chat.

“One or two of the people who stay here have had problems with men, so we keep most of them out. If we have a girl who has a problem with them, they can stay next door. Nice chocolate, Serena. Reminds me: Paul is due round in a couple of days. Anyone who wants to stay out of the way, let me know beforehand”

In the end, Alicia slipped Steven Elliott’s horror story back into place on the bookshelf, and selected one of the older books, one of Poucher’s combined black-and-white photography and route guides to our mountains.

“Alicia?”

“Yeah?”

“If you’re going to read that one, there’s one of the bigger books there to go with it, his photos in colour. Read them together”

“This one?”

“Yes. When Kim gets back, she can show you the ones we’ve done. Oh, and on the next shelf, there’s a photo album of us, and there, on the mantlepiece? That’s us and Pat, on Y Garn”

In the end, she took both of the Poucher books with her when she retired to Nell’s room, her exhaustion plain. One by one, the others drifted away to their own beds, and I sat worrying until, at a quarter to eleven, there was a bang from the kitchen as Kim returned home, thank god. I listened as she locked everything back up before entering the living room, dumping her bag on the settee.

“Oh! You sitting here in the dark, Deb? Waiting for me?”

“My job to look after you, love”

Before she could manage to slip in a comment about not needing me, I spoke again.

“How’d it go?”

“Picture was a goo one, but nobody warned me it was a gay one”

“Pardon?”

“Sam and Frodo, well, course they are, aren’t they? But you don’t care about the film, do you?”

“Caught out, love. Got me!”

“Well, he was good as gold, and no, we didn’t go off to some park for afters. His Dad picked us up, dropped me outside Ruth’s. Phil already knows I work there, so I didn’t have to let him see where we live, did I? Anyway, his Dad was nice”

“And?”

She looked at her knees, so typical of her.

“Yeah, we had some proper snogging, and he made a move on my tits, but he stopped when he was told. When is Doctor Thomas due again?”

“A couple of weeks, I think. Why?”

“Do you think I might persuade him to help me move things along? I mean, I wasn’t complaining when I said Phil wanted to, you know, but if I actually had some tits, well”

She rose, collecting her bag as prepared to head to her room.

“It was great tonight, Debbie. Made me feel real. Just, would’ve been nice to have had something real for Phil”

She was off, and I was left in the dark living room, mind full of memories of a night with a young man in a rally field, bis arms around me.

Perhaps I shouldn’t have bought that Elliott book.