It was a couple of weeks before I managed to find the right moment to talk with Neil, and I could feel the nerves wrapping themselves into tangles as I did the usual brew in the bunkhouse before his arrival, turning the kettle on as I heard the burble of his big German bike. The weather was not great, so we had the place to ourselves, and I left him to get out of his voluminous waterproofs before opening a pack of back bacon and lighting the hob.

“Alys is on her way, Neil. We’re both off tomorrow, so it’s the Cow tonight, assuming you want a beer, that is”

“Popes and bears, Enfys! And their friends”

“Of the popes or the bears? These friends?”

“Of the first couple of pints, love. Eat there?”

“Indeed, but a few things to do here first—Hiya, love!”

I greeted my wife properly before returning to complete the bacon sandwiches, Neil musing as he ate.

“When I was at University, I used to eat some things over and over again. I would have months when I did cheese on toast, other times egg baps. I just got more and more extravagant. The toast ended up more like a pizza; the eggs more like a Spanish omelette sandwich. Sort of goes with my, you know. Way I think”

I looked across to my lover, and she nodded. I took the plunge.

“Neil?”

“Yes?”

“We need… Uncle Mike spoke to us. He’s worried about you”

I could see the first signs of him closing down, so took his hands in mine, fixing his gaze.

“Before you say anything, Alys knows, but she loves you just as much as the rest of us, possibly more, but you know that. That’s all this is: concern. We’re looking to see if we can help, nothing more”

“You’re talking about… This is about Maddy, isn’t it?”

“More about how we deal with that man, Neil. Mike’s really, really worried about you, worried you’ll get hurt”

He started to say something about who would end up hurt, but Alys set a hand to his arm, saying so, so gently, “And you know, we all know, that you could never hurt anyone. Mike spoke to us both, Neil”

She looked across to me and smiled.

“We talk, Neil and I. I knew his wife was like me, and that she’s gone. I know there was some nastiness, but that’s about all I knew until Mike filled in some of the blanks. Neil?”

“Yes?”

“Mike said that the local police weren’t interested”

His shakes started slowly, worsened quickly and turned into gulping sobs, so we simply held his hands and gave him the human contact he needed so much. As his breathing came back from the edge of his clear need to scream, Alys spoke again.

“Enfys has had a very good idea, love. It’s a way of sorting this out, but doing it properly, using some friends we have. Enfys would just apologise, so I’ll say it straight: because we love you, and ONLY because we love you, my darling has spoken to one of these friends. She would like to speak with you, and she won’t speak to anyone else unless you are happy. We want you to be safe, love, but we don’t think you can be with this hanging round your neck, so…”

She sat up straighter, and picked up her cooling sandwich.

“Plan for this evening: you say ‘yes’, we collect the oldies, we hit the pub, and then probably Colin’s, and then Enfys and I put in ear plugs”

“Ear plugs?”

“You. Plus beer. Snoring. And… and we arrange a meeting between you and our friend”

We left him to clean his face in the little private room and then called in at our family houses in succession, collecting the geriatric forebears, and had a standard Cow evening of mild silliness and slight inebriation among friends. Looking around the place, I found myself yet again feeling blessed by my mother’s strength. I could have been forced to grow up in That Place, as she still called it, and I couldn’t even begin to imagine what sort of person it would have produced. She would never have been me, despite my parents; I knew that, as much as I knew I would never have met the woman I sat beside, the one who gave me so many extra reasons to wake each day.

That thought made me look at Neil again, wondering how it had been for him. The alcohol seemed to be making me a little maudlin, and that saying went through my soul like a razor cut, better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. That awful moment when the police had knocked at the door would never leave me, so I had some insight into the question, but in the end my own loss had been a nightmare from which we had all woken, while Neil’s was there every time the sun rose.

We did indeed pay Colin a visit, but that was entirely for the purpose of confirming the details of the upcoming christening of his and Sali’s new daughter, and how did those bags of chips end up in our hands?

We ate them on the way up the hill, before washing the grease off our faces and fingers and settling into our bags, which in our own case were simply two duvets with proper pillows. I was out like a light almost as soon as I lay down, but my bladder spoke to me at about three in the morning. As I walked to the loo, I caught a sound from Neil’s room. It wasn’t a snore, though: it was weeping.

I didn’t know the name of his Maddy’s ‘friend’, but I knew it would end up on the same mental list as Ifor Watkins.
I wasn’t as quick falling asleep that second time.

Calendars worked out well for all of us, after a few to and fro calls and a little bit of horse trading with colleagues and friends, especially friends who were colleagues. The day came, along with sunshine, and my beloved was off in a world of recipes and tips, many of them e-mailed from friends on the other side of the planet.

I settled our first two guests into the second bedroom as Alys did the ‘hot drinks’ part of the greeting ritual, and Lisa surprised me, which was another surprise in itself, as I should have expected nothing less from that crew.

“We’ve brought a load of stuff for the barbie, Enfys, so, well… This one’s told me you have some work to discuss, so if it’s okay with you, I’ll get the cooking started while you talk”

I gave her another hug before leading the way downstairs, where she repeated her offer to Alys. I left the two of them to get the charcoal lit and the posher electric flat thing to heat up, and as I was sitting down in the living room, I heard our door bell.

Neil, a hard case in either hand. Not getting a lot of lead time, then.

“Come in, mate! Alys is out the back with one of our guests getting the barbie lit. Is that more food?”

“Er, yes. And drink. I’ve… Can you put these down in the kitchen? I need to get the top box. That’s got…”

He was starting to shake again, so I pushed him back towards his bike.

“Grab that box, and we’ll take it all in together, okay?”

He nodded, still uncertain, but I think he felt the Voice of Command, or something, and when I shut the front door, it was behind both of us and three large rigid boxes. We picked up a box each for the kitchen, the other remaining in the hallway.

Alys was in for a hug, as fervent as ever, and a quick introduction to Lisa, before we returned for the third box. Neil was breathing heavily as he gathered it, but it wasn’t the panting of exertion, but the slow and deep breaths of someone trying to control severe nervousness. I squeezed his shoulder.

“This is the right way, Neil, the proper way to deal with things. We can’t let this fester any longer, and that is ‘we’. Me, Alys, Uncle Mike, we are all with you. It has to be your call, though, but not alone. Never that, okay?”

He took a few more huge, slow breaths before nodding.

“Got to be done. Yes”

“Come on, then”

I opened the door.

“Neil, meet Lexie. She’s a friend of Debbie’s, and she’s with the police”

The woman laughed.

“That’s Enfys for you, sorting her priorities clearly, and that is exactly how things should be. Friendship first”

She rose and put out her hand.

“Formally, I’m Detective Constable Doyle. The lady out the back—Enfys? Something funny?”

“Sorry?”

“That expression on your face when I called Lisa a lady? Not nice!”

I knew full well that my expression hadn’t changed, but her purpose was plain. Pick it up and run with it, woman.

“Well, what I remember of evenings in a pub, it wasn’t a word I’d have chosen!”

I heard a snort from Neil: job done, She waved at the sofa.

“Shall we settle ourselves for a chat? Lisa is staying out the back to start the cooking, just to give us some privacy. You choose who hears this, Neil. Enfys will join Lisa if you would prefer, because everything we do is your choice. I won’t tell you which way to jump; I will simply listen to you and explain what is possible. What we then do is, as I keep saying, entirely in your hands. Understood?”

This was Lexie as I had never seen her, utterly professional. Neil was staring a little too obviously, though, for she gave him a little smile and waved at the side of her head.

“I got shot, that’s all. Hell of a headache, and an interesting scar, but wounds, bodily ones, they can heal. Wounds to the soul, they can be far worse. I have friends, some of them are friends of Enfys, who have been badly hurt that way. What we do, as a team, my job team, is try and do our best to help them heal, or just cope better. Enfys here, she did that for my team”

Neil flicked a glance my way, but Lexie had his attention.

“We had a particularly heavy year, Neil, including my shooting. A lot of wounded souls. We came up here, and Enfys was one of those who picked us up. I’m not the only one of us that likes to repay what they owe”

I couldn’t let that one lie.

“Friends don’t count debts, Lexie”

“We weren’t friends back then, love. You were helping strangers, purely out of humanity”

“Well, I knew what you’d been through! How could I not? Good place to start a friendship, though”

“Yup. So that’s where I sit, Neil. Do you feel up to talking me through things?”

He thought for a few seconds, then sighed and clicked open the latches on his top box, drawing out several cardboard folders, some boxes and a framed photograph.

“This was on our wedding day. My wife was called Maddy”