CHAPTER 2
I hadn’t always lived in the rain, though. Mam and Dad were originally from Luton, of all places, and Dad was particularly scathing about the place.

“Enfys, love, if any god ever wanted to give this world an enema, that place is where he would stick the tube. Absolute shithole, it is. Only good thing about it is the M1 northbound slip road”

I had, in my younger days, asked why we were living in a quarry village in North Wales, and as I grew through and past my childhood, so did the story. As a junior school girl, it had been a simple tale.

“Well, your Mum and me, we love the outdoors”

“I know that, Dad!”

“Yeah, but the thing about Luton is that it is technically in the hills, the Chilterns, but boring ones. Me and your Mum met at a climbing club there”

“Oh, what sort of rock?”

He burst out laughing.

“Brick climbing wall in the Stopsley sports centre, that’s all. Really boring; we got told off once for quietly sneaking some of the mortar out of the brickwork to make it more fingery. Anyway, we could just about manage a day trip to The Peak on my old Suzuki, and then we got our first little van, an Astra, of course”

“Why ‘of course’, Dad?”

“Vauxhall and Bedford were based in Luton. About the biggest local employer, they were. Easiest make to get hold of round that way, so we got an old works van. That’s what brought us up this way. That and the weekend weather forecast”

“Uh?”

“We’d set off up the M1, and whoever wasn’t driving would check the forecast. If it was set fine, we’d stay on the motorway to Chesterfield, pitch up at North Lees and spend two days doing hard routes on grit. If it was looking like rain, we’d turn off after Watford Gap and whiz through Brum”

He burst out laughing every time he said that bit.

“Whiz through Brum. Yeah, right… anyway, through Telford and Shrewsbury, A5 all the way to Roger’s field or more often Gwern y Gof Uchaf. Tell you what, love: we used the hostels and the bunkhouses when we were doing it on the bike. Too much kit, both camping and climbing, which is why we got the van. Anyway, getting to the point, we got fed up with Luton, and your Mum found a place up here, and there you have it”

That story always came with a smile, and a few comments about never going back to Bedfordshire, and how glad they both were to have had me, and so on. It got to be a regular bedtime story, especially after he had explained what an enema actually consisted of, and each time he told his little bit of history, he would add a little extra treat, embellish it in some amusing way. I was treated to accounts of Mam falling asleep on the back of the bike, of having to launder panniers after finding a carton of milk had leaked everywhere, of hearing the gusts of storm-force winds as they roared through the Valley, seconds before they hit the tent.

It wasn’t until I was thirteen that Mam told me the truth, when I asked how they had picked the house we lived in. That brought a long sigh, and a study of the photos I had arranged on a shelf by my books.

“Your Dad’s told you some of it, hasn’t he?”

“Yeah, about deciding at Watford Gap and stuff? Weather forecast?”

“What has he said about Luton?”

“Um, he told me about enemas. Being the place god would stick the tube, if he wanted to give the world one, that is”

“Ha! That is him all over! Sort of says it all, really… Look, love, there’s a bit more to it, and I think you’re old enough to understand. You’re old enough to have started looking at boys differently, anyway. Enfys, there is only one person I love more than your father, and that is you, and it’s almost a dead heat, to be honest. I can’t imagine life without him, which is why I left him before you were born”

She stood up and tapped my shoulder.

“Budge over, love. This is best told with a cuddle”

I moved across the bed until I was hard against the wall, and Mam slipped onto it beside me, laying an arm over my shoulder, her smell as familiar as breathing, as comforting as daybreak.

“Your Dad worked in an office, love. Up in one of the streets behind the Town Hall, grim place. Tax office”

“Tax office? But you and Dad, you’re…”

“Gerlan hippies? Yeah, sort of, but he’d ended up there after the dole people had made him one of those offers you can’t turn down. He was okay, sort of, and that’s where he was when we met, jobwise. Still himself inside, though, and he could never hide that very well. Different person in the climbing club, at least I assume so. I only saw some of his colleagues, Christmas parties, that sort of thing”

She laughed, all of a sudden.

“Different to the other climbers as well, love! So much willy-waving---er, sorry. Perhaps not the best choice of words, but your Dad, he said to me, only ever do anything if you get something from it, like a job, or because you enjoy it. Doing it to beat someone down is wrong”

I felt her arms tighten for a second, so smiled up at her.

“That when you fell for him, Mam?”

“Oh yes. That fairly caught my attention. That and the tight shorts he was wearing”

“Mam!”

“You did ask, love! Anyway… Anyway, we had a couple of good friends in his office, and by ‘a couple’, I actually mean one. We bought a house on the edge of town, place called Sundon Park, and Mike, that was his name, another folkie, he would pop out at a weekend, sleep on the settee, and we would walk out to Sundon village, where there were a couple of proper pubs, rather than the lager factory near our house, or we would go out to Mike’s with some Karrimats and walk the field paths to the pubs in Cockernhoe, or just have a night in the folk club, and I would get to see the man I married again”

Another squeeze.

“Rest of his colleagues, they were of a kind, and the managers, dear god. I met them a couple of times, before we stopped going to their Christmas dinners. All of their conversation was the same, that willy-waving I mentioned. Who’s the top dog, who’s been the hardest this, the toughest that, and that has never been your Dad, never been my Pete. That’s why I left him”

She took a couple of slow breaths before continuing, and I wondered what the story was costing her in its telling.

“He had a new manager, or rather an old one that had come back from another place on promotion. Derek was his name, middle name Simon, and he was bipolar”

“What’s that?”

“Ah, it’s a mental health condition, love. Sometimes called manic-depressive. He’d be up and active one day, down and miserable the other. Dad’s colleagues called him ‘Doctor Derek and Mister Simes’. Thing is, both sides of his personality were vile. Fitted in sooooo well in that office, he did”

Another series of calming breaths.

“Feedback loop, love. The more that man beat down his staff, the more they ate each other, and I watched your Dad starting to crumble. Tried talking him into moving on, but he was so paranoid about mortgage and risk, well, I ended up without a choice. So I left him. I said I was going to find somewhere to live, somewhere better, somewhere that we could grow in, and once I was settled, he could either sell up and join me, or that would be it”

“You’d have dumped Dad?”

“If he had stayed there any longer, he would have ceased being the man I had married”

“It was that bad?”

I felt the first touch of her tears.

“Yes, love. That bad, I knew this place, we knew it. I started out doing TEFL at the University—No. I started out working a till at the big Asda in Bangor, till I managed to get the TEFL post. Teaching English as a Foreign Language. In Wales, yeah right. Started learning Welsh properly then. Got some digs, and once I was settled, and that took six months, I wrote to your Dad and reminded him of the choices he had”

Obviously, I knew the answer she had been given, as we were all together, but she suddenly started to giggle.

“He came back, did my man! Cheeky, sneaky sod that he can be. He put the house in Luton on the market, and he told absolutely nobody except Mike, and yes, that is your Uncle Mike in Sheffield, He ended up doing what we did, but solo. Anyway, there’s your Dad, and he finally gets the house sold, and once he’s cleared the place and exchanged contracts, and the sale is absolutely final, he’s been building up his TOIL— er, time off in lieu, love, extra hours worked -- he walks into Doctor Derek’s Office and puts his resignation letter down on the desk at a really, REALLY busy time of the year. ‘I quit’, he says, before pointing out that when he adds together his annual holiday allowance and that TOIL, it’s more than the required period of notice, so ‘Bye!’, he says, hands over all his work stuff, passes and so on, and just walks out”

My Dad? The gentlest man I had ever known?

“How did the boss take it?”

“That’s the point, love: Dad has never, ever been in touch with them again, apart from things like his P45, the official end-of-a-job paperwork, and old pay slips for the bank. This place came up, and cost us less than we got for the Luton house, so here we are. Bit of breathing room before your Dad got the bunkhouse running, and…”

She paused once more, then shook her head before standing up and moving toward my bedroom door.

“My darling, your Dad and me, we knew we wanted a child, and we got you, and that is something beyond any price, but we could never have done that to you, brought you into the world by way of that town. Anyway, living here, learning the language, has really improved my Sindarin and Quenya”

“Your what?”

“What on Earth do they teach at that school of yours? Elvish languages, of course. Now, I am going to make a cuppa. Want one?”

“Please”

“And I noticed you flinch when I spoke about looking at boys. Big thing, love, so I am not going to push. Just remember that I have actually been there, been a girl, so if you ever need to talk, I’m not so old I can’t remember what it was like. Now, fancy making some scones, or maybe melting moments?”

“Yes!”

“See you downstairs, then”

I left it for a minute or two before following her, as tried to work out how she would really react to a discussion about how I was looking at boys, for the simple reason that it wasn’t boys that my eyes were following.