MADDY
I realised he might not immediately get the point, so asked again, before he could answer.

“Do you want to get used to it, Mr Strachan?”

He actually laughed, and I could see his grin in my imagination, shining out of his helmet,

Stop it! Bad mind!

Neil’s next words set me laughing with him.

“What is it you say, Maddy? The answer is ‘Oh my yes!’, of course”

Over the bridge and onto the road to Hexham, until it was time to peel off (I said stop it) for Heddon and the open countryside. There was a little vibration coming through the saddle, and I could still feel where Neil had been, and where he was was right in front of me, and I really couldn’t remember a time I had been happier, except when I had woken from surgery and knew that it was finally bloody gone.

It was almost a dead heat, though. That was how happy he was making me.

NEIL
Maddy’s weight affected the handling a little, but she knew how to ride a bike, and as she was fastened onto me rather than the Kwak’s grab handles, things went very smoothly. I couldn’t stop remembering how she had felt that morning, and when she joked about my getting used to it, I almost lost control of the bike. Only the slightest of wobbles, but still.

I had spent a while on the internet on my first night in the hotel, looking up details of the wall, especially the place Mrs Milburn had suggested. Part of my condition is a very acute memory for detail, which has often been a similarly acute source of pain, but it means I can look at a map, for example, and then follow the memory of it. I rarely get lost. The turn off for Heddon was peculiar, for the road went left from the major route before turning to head straight back at it on the original line of the Military Road. The major road cut straight through it, so I had to turn right, left over a bridge and then right back onto the line of the Wall again. It looked fascinating on the map, and let me swing the bike a little.

The day was beautiful, with a light breeze from the South West sending small clouds across the blue. There were so many attractions pulling me along the road that I had to force myself to slow down and narrate the earlier ones for Maddy’s benefit.

“Can you see that gully on our left?”

“Is that what’s left of the Wall?”

“Sort of. It’s called the Vallum, and what you have is a ditch to the North, the Vallum, the ridge of the Wall, then behind it a road called the Stanegate”

We passed a cluster of reservoirs and a pub, as Maddy asked questions I suspected were designed to break my flow of verbal diarrhoea; they worked. Her presence was becoming a comfort rather than something that aroused me, and I was enjoying the long, straight road as it allowed me to enjoy the wide skies and far horizon.

I spotted a few flagstones in the grass by a recess in a field wall as I slowed for a tractor, so at a T-junction I turned and rode back to them.

“What’s up, Neil?”

“I think this looks an interesting spot, Maddy. Short walk to see if we can get a worthwhile image?”

A five barred gate let us into the pasture, a few sheep staring at us as I led the way to the Vallum, incredibly clear in the ground, and we walked along it for a little way, until I found the old quarries by a wood that I had spotted on the map. We were hand in hand, of course.

MADDY
I was still obsessively counting my blessings as we got back onto the bike, because Neil wasn’t just rushing us to the Big Ticket sites, as I thought of them, but finding surprising detail. The Vallum made a sharply defined change in its line at that spot, and I actually sat down to get the best angle. Bugger monochrome; the colours of the grass and sky simply screamed at me to include them. Perhaps I should drag Neil down beside me, I had thought, and bugger what passing strangers might think. Oh my, as he had said.

We set off again, and the next stop was to snap a small section of exposed Wall, before dropping steeply down to a river crossed by a very old-looking stone bridge, upstream from a weir.. Neil turned left after the crossing, then left again to a car park at somewhere called Chesters. I was steadily realising how much research he must have put in, but when had he had the time? After I had removed my helmet, I asked him.

“Oh. On the internet my first evening at the hotel. They had a table in a store room, and let me sit in there while I waited. Used my laptop”

“Which explains why I didn’t see you till the morning. Very detailed planning, Neil”

He smiled yet again, and yet again it was ‘oh my’, but I really needed to sort his hair out, and…

“Sorry? Miles away”

“I said that sometimes my condition is, can be, useful. This is one of them. This is a Roman camp, museum and the remains of a Roman bridge, and…”

I simply let him speak, but kept hold of his hand, and despite the temptation to back into him for a cuddle by the river, I stayed to his side. Keep that game for later, Miss Gibson.

Back onto the bike, and a change in scenery as we continued, the road undulating a little through a few worrying blind summits, sometimes shaded by small copses, so that there was an added dazzle risk. I realised I was starting to fret a little, as this was by far the furthest I had ever ridden on a motorbike. Neil’s riding, however, remained as steady as ever, as we followed the ever-clearer Vallum, various other lumps and bumps showing in fields which were now more open moor than paddock, while the sky somehow seemed to be expanding. It was gorgeous, and I realised that if I had been driving that proposed hire car, I would have missed almost all of it.

Neil turned into another, smaller car park right next to the road, after explaining that it was somewhere recommended by his landlady in Garrigill. There was a van selling snacks and hot drinks, as well as quite a few other motorbikes

“It’s a short walk, Maddy. Shall we get a cuppa before we set out? I’m a bit dry”

There were some folding chairs and two camping tables by the van, so I dug out the bag of sandwiches as Neil ordered our drinks, then I automatically produced my purse to pay. Meil’s hand clamped firmly, not painfully, on my wrist, and the coffee man laughed.

“How, man! If ye divvent want a lass who’s happy to pay, leave her with me!”

Neil paid, smiling, then released me.

“Sorry, my friend, but this woman’s mine”

Oh my.

Mister Coffee laughed again.

“Aye, Ah can see! Lucky man: thought o’ playing the Lottery?”

“No need. As you can see, I’ve already won”

We walked over to the little cluster of furniture, and I whispered to Neil.

“Keep talking like that and you’ll still not get into my knickers”

“Oh…”

“They won’t fit. I’m teasing, Neil, but I do have a serious question”

“Go ahead”

“You seem to be more, I don’t know, fluid? Fluent? I really don’t want to say ‘Normal’, because that would imply, you know”

“Abnormal?”

I shuddered, but nodded, and he took my hand once more.

“It’s you, Maddy. Sometimes, I don’t see what other people are thinking. Sometimes I think I do, but it turns out that I’m wrong”

“Like that time at school? That girl?”

“Exactly that. And so I worry about what others might think, and with you…”

“You got it all wrong, and beat yourself up about an imaginary offence?”

He nodded, as ever in that simple, sharp way.

“I know you’re with me. I know that you are looking after me. That makes a big difference. The man doing the coffee, what I said, well, I spent some time trying to work out who you are. Please don’t joke just now. It was something you said, about that man, about the word ‘lover’. I don’t think that’s the right word. ‘Girlfriend’ sounds silly”

“What did you choose, then?”

He looked at me, and it was clear he was slightly worried, but he still found his voice.

“My woman, Maddy. I hope that’s all right”

NEIL
Her face moved through several expressions, but settled finally on something that tried to mix shame and joy, as if she had been caught doing one of those ‘naughty but nice’ things they spoke of in telly ads, then squeezed my knee.

“Not snogging you in a car park, Mister Strachan, but yes. In more ways… It is more right than you can know, right now. You…”

She trailed off, with a last squeeze of my leg.

“Get this lot down our necks, then, and off on our walk. What do you have to show me here?”

“Mrs Milburn, my landlady, she described it, what she thought of it. She surprised me”

“How so?”

“It was the way she gave me a real picture of it, as it must have been when it was sort of new. My blindness, Maddy. I just assumed she wasn’t that sensitive, but it was almost poetic, the way she put it”

My woman smiled happily.

“My word, aren’t you doing Venus on the half shell!”

“Sorry?”

“Emerging fully formed and…”

She was suddenly bright pink.

“Sorry, but, well, Botticelli, and then a memory of you walking into the bathroom to get that towel, and, oh my”

“Botticelli?”

“A very, very famous painting, my man. I’ll show you it later. You know, it throws me a little when I realise how many gaps there are in your general knowledge”

I started to apologise, but once again she gave me the hand wave.

“So much sharing to do with you, Neil. I am looking forward to it, really”

I found my next words hard to get out, and she noticed.

“Safe, Neil. Remember? What do you need to say?”

It felt like I’d swallowed a stone, but it would choke me if I didn’t get it out.

“That sort of name thing. I never had a girlfriend, not once”

“Not a problem, Neil. You’re with me now, and now is where we are, not the past”

“Maddy”

“Neil?”

“I’ve… That word. You thought I was going to be like that Nigel, didn’t you?”

She winced, looking away.

“With my history, well, it was sort of a worry. Please don’t get upset if I say you frightened me, because you didn’t. My own paranoia frightened me, that’s all”

I reached for her hand, the need to speak too powerful to resist, even through the fear.

“That word again, Maddy. I’ve… I’ve never had a lover”

She did her hard stare thing once again.

“But you are hoping?”

I nodded.

“Neil?”

“Yes?”

“Bugger what people may think”

Her kiss was so passionate I thought I might faint. Oh most definitely my.

She pulled back eventually, eyes moist.

“Come on, Strachan. Places to go, photos to take. Hands to hold”

We gathered up our debris, and as we put it into the bin next to the coffee van, the man called out to us. As one, we said “Yes?”, and he smiled, rather than grinned.

“just wanted to say thanks to you two. It’s a canny place to work, here, aye? Watching you two, the day’s even brighter. There’s a couple of freebies for you when you come back, if you like”

We both thanked him, and as we walked through the kissing gate, he called after us, “And buy that lotto ticket!”

The path led us around two and a half sides of one of those playing card shaped Roman forts, now reduced to a set of turf banks, the rest of the meadow, field, expanse of green swept by waves as the wind made the grass into a sea of green, and just as we came in sight of the temple we walked into a small crowd, clearly the owners of the other bikes. I woke up sharply, as several of them were wearing backpatches, which was most definitely not something I wanted in my world.

One small group of around eight people were standing by a trio, two women and a man, while what we had come up against was clearly some sort of security cordon. One very big man stared at me for a moment, before relaxing slightly. He was Welsh, from his accent, which was a little out of place.

“If you’re here to visit the temple, give it some respect, butt. But you won’t be going any closer until they’re done”

Maddy squeezed my hand, and stepped between me and the biker.

“Sorry, we didn’t know, Can we ask?”

He nodded.

“Girl there, the taller one. She’s just setting her parents free. What’s your interest in the temple?”

I started to repeat what Mrs Milburn had told me, about soldiers behind a closed door, a little piece of home and comfort, and the bearded man smiled.

“Proper respect, aye? I thank you, and so do the spirits of this place. Ah---see? Flying free, just as they lived!”

The taller girl had thrown what I knew must be ashes into the wind, and was being embraced by another woman and a massive man. I looked over at our own new friend, and he was crying. He muttered something in what I assumed was Welsh, sounding like ‘down shook ar uh gwint’, and then effectively, but without touching us, made sure we were standing to one side as the ‘ashes’ party walked back towards the car park.

Maddy was clenching my hand until they were out of sight.

“Where are your parents, Neil?”

“They retired to Spain years ago. They don’t… Mum says I am too much hard work for her”

“Your father?”

“Er, he just does as he’s told. I just don’t… I haven’t spoken to them for years”

“Oh”

“Yours?”

“They live in Warwick, as far as I know. When I came out, they threw me that way”

“To Warwick?”

“No, Neil. Out”

She barked out a laugh, one of those I was learning to recognise as showing she was trying to make a joke out of something painful.

“I’m your actual self-made woman, Neil, though I did have a bit of help from a surgeon”

It was my turn to take the lead, because she needed me, so I turned her to face me and did my best to recreate the passion with which she had kissed me in the car park.

It seemed to work.

MADDY
The bikers were long gone by the time we arrived back at the car park, but the temple had been fascinating, and a rewarding place to shoot. I tried to time my shots so as to catch it both in cloud shadow and in full sunlight, as Neil told me more of what his Mrs Milburn had said, and he was absolutely right in that she clearly had the vision of a poet. I remembered a line from a Richard Thompson song about ‘a soldier’s small comfort’. Once I understood its purpose, the tiny temple carried an impact far beyond its size.

“Neil?”

“Yes?”

“Can we come back here some day? Bring all of our kit, and do a really thorough session? I can see so much of this as worthy of another show… Neil?”

He was only bloody weeping, but the reason slapped me hard in the face.

“Neil?”

“Yes?”

“What you said about that word. It is a long term thing, so please forgive me if I start thinking beyond tonight. Now, we have free drinks to claim, and still plenty of daylight, and I am sure you still have a lot to show me. Where are we eating tonight?”

“Where would you like?”

“Would you be okay with the hotel? I really don’t want to be slip-sliding in heels on those cobbles again”

“Don’t wear them then”

I tried to do my purry sex-kitten thing, which was actually crap.

“Don’t you want me to look nice?”

He simply said, “You always look nice to me”, and that was me told.

Yes, we saw more things, and I was amazed at the way the land tilted up in stacked, slanted slabs. There was so much to capture, and my man must, had to, bring me back.

I insisted we stop in the city centre so that I could buy some Needful Things, which meant that I was able to re-enact that scene with Nigel, in that dress, unloading its freight, with an ending adjusted towards the fucking wonderful, which, to be honest, it was. The fucking, that is.

I lay in Neil’s arms afterward, and puzzled over two questions: could my life get any better, and how long it had to be before I could safely use the word ‘lover’.

Or would I fail in that, yet again?

NEIL
We did spend some time at the Angel, which left both of us in silence for quite a while, simply because there were so many surprising details to record, but our time was running out. Maddy was going home on the train, so I had to ride back alone, which was a wrench. I was starting to get used to sleeping as a couple, but it was so much more than the sex, which was what it was: amazing. It wasn’t the thing that had me rapt, though, which was simply her existence. It looked at my loneliness, and denied its existence; my sense of worthlessness was laughed at.

‘This woman has chosen you. Yes, you. You, that one that thinks he’s worthless. Are you some new sort of stupid?’

I was buzzing with happiness even in the town traffic, and once I had the bike locked away, I texted the single word ‘back’. My phone chirped almost immediately.

‘Train failure ahead of ours. Where we eating assuming I get back at all?’

That was a question I couldn’t answer immediately, so I started setting out my rolls of film, each canister labelled with date, place and whether colour or monochrome. Once they were stacked in the dark room, I pulled my memory card from the DSLR and started my laptop for the download. As soon as that was running properly, I sent Maddy my answer.

‘Without an ETA I can’t book anywhere. Come here and order a delivery when you arrive?’

Her reply was once again a quick one. I could never seem to learn that two-thumbed phone typing; I just ended up with a screen full of typos mixed with the wrong ‘predictive text’.

‘Would be nice. Would be nicer if I had an address to give the taxi driver’

Before I could reply, I received another.

‘You got shower, bath or both?’

I sent back my address, adding that I had a bath with a shower over it, a high-pressure electric one.

‘THX. Washing m/c?’

I confirmed that yes, I had one.

‘How big a bed?’

That threw me more than a little, and I wondered if she had assumed I lived some sort of single man monastic existence.

‘Big enough’

A longer pause. Another chirp.

‘What are we doing tomorrow’

I pulled out my desk diary, just to be sure, although I already knew the answer. Once confirmed, I sent my answer.

‘I have a class to deliver at three o’clock. Nothing else’

This time, my phone rang.

“Hello?”

“You didn’t tell me you’re a teacher, Strachan”

“I’m not”

“Delivering a class?”

“I do occasional stuff at the local tech college. Photography stuff course. It’s not really teaching”

“Close enough as makes no difference, Neil. You free in the morning, then? Have you time now to do a breakfast shop? Got bread for toast, eggs, that sort of thing?”

“Will do. I need milk, anyway”

“Right. Our train’s moving at long bloody last. See you soon”

She hung up, but a text arrived a few seconds later.

‘Not saying this on a crowded train but at least I know you’ve already got my sausage ready. Crumpet?’

MADDY
It turned out not to have been a failed train so much as one that had failed the rest of us, by damaging the overhead power cable in some way, which meant two things, the first being that all the train power went off, including the lights.

The bigger issue was that while they were sending a diesel loco to pull stranded trains onto the opposite running line, which still had power, by definition, on a stretch of track that actually only had those two lines, we were in a huge game of contraflow. By the time I arrived at my final station, I felt like shit, and really felt I must stink, of armpits and sweaty crotch. I was regretting taking a suitcase, because without it I might have been able to squeeze most of my stuff into Neil’s cases.

Of course, I couldn’t actually have done that, but it was still a nice thought, and I will confess to spending a lot of my forced waiting time running through daydreams. He needed that haircut soon, as well as a tweak to his wardrobe, and perhaps I better slow down.

That had always been one of my failings, a tendency to dream two quickly. Post transition, especially post-surgery, I had felt whole, transformed, me at last, a real woman, entire and complete, and so on and on and on in all its naïve splendour. Nigel had merely been the last dreadful choice in the series. Hugh had split my lip and blacked one of my eyes, while Drew had literally whipped me out of bed with his belt so that I had had to lock myself in the bathroom while he ripped the bedding apart, as if to somehow erase what we had been doing.

I still went off with fucking Nigel, though. Once a fool…

Wherever I was going with Neil, though, seemed to be completely different. When we had first met, all I had seen were the lacunae in his behaviour, the things that ‘normal’ did or didn’t do being mirrored in him. Once I had managed to tunnel past his shame, then see him in what he thought of as familiar ground, I could see the man behind the condition. And while he was incredibly inexperienced at, well, IT, whether it was by great good fortune or some incredible instinct, he pressed all the right buttons. I hadn’t felt anything so intense since fucking Nigel.

Then again, Nigel had most definitely fucked me.

I suspected I was being stupid, still dreaming through rose-tinted hope, but I was definitely going to stick with it. Pandora’s bloody curse, maybe, or, just perhaps, a final chance at a life.

It was getting late when the cabby set my bag on its side in his boot before checking Neil’s address in his road atlas.

“Yup. I know that street, love. Not that far, really”

“I know, mate. I’m just absolutely shattered, and this case is heavy”

He grinned back at me, before pulling away.

“Don’t I know it! You been buying bricks?”

“Camera kit. My work”

“Where you been?”

“The City of Durham”

“Supposed to be lovely there!”

“It is. I’m just glad to be home. Bath, then bed for me”

“Need someone to wash your back?”

“Cheeky man! No, I don’t, because that job’s already filled”

“Lucky man. This is you, and that’s six pounds, please. Now, I’ll help you out with your bag, and I will wait till I’m sure you’re safely in”

“Thank you”

“No problems. Here’s our card, and have a nice soak”

He did indeed wait until I was at the door, and it was open, and Neil was there to take my case and camera bag into his hall, and my cares and me into his arms. I was home.

And my man had bought crumpets. Oh my.