CHAPTER 54
There was a week to go, and Siá¢n, Elaine and our parents were over for the final preparations. The two girls looked edgy, for some reason I couldn’t fathom, but Mam and Dad slotted straight in, especially with Pie duties. Dad walked him so much I swear the dog’s legs got shorter.

One day, while they were doing the Bamps-grandson bit, and Mam was doing some baking, I collared sis and sis-in-law.

“What is up with you two? I am the one who is supposed to be nervous, but you two are twitching every time I get anywhere near you! Talk, or I cut off the chocolate supply”

They looked at each other, Siá¢n with her eyes slightly screwed up, almost a wince. Elaine took her hand, and started off.

“It is not the easiest subject in the world, chwaer fychan. You do know, I mean you joked about it years ago, that neither of us is really in line to give them grandkids. Yes, I know they have taken Jim to their hearts, but…shit, we’ve been talking, the two of us, and well, we might be dykes, but we are still women. We don’t go all bloke just because we prefer someone a bit less hairy.”

“So?” I asked, though I was beginning to suspect what was on their minds. Ticking biological clocks.

“I think you’ve sort of guessed….”

“You want a kid. I can’t see why you are so nervous, it’s a great idea”

“Actually, we were sort of hoping for a matched pair”

I smiled. “You will make two old people very happy if you do, girls. What are you going to do? Sperm donor?”

“Sort of….the turkey baster route and a friend suits us better. We get to pick the genes, sort of thing”

There was something not being said here. Then the elephant in the room tapped me on the shoulder with its trunk, trumpeted and stood on my foot.

“You are fucking joking!”

“No, Sar, we aren’t. I can’t think of a better man, in so many ways. Obviously, there would be no financial cost to him, and any child would be a Powell”

I wondered why not Siá¢n’s name, but I was rather more concerned about Tony’s thoughts on what was a rather disturbing request. I could see their point; they knew his background, they knew he was healthy, and it kept things literally in the family. But, the ramifications…any children would still be Tony’s and, if things went wrong, there could be all sorts of fallout.

“Girls, I’ll run it past him, but, really, I don’t know what the answer will be. I find it odd enough, and it’s not my precious bodily fluids you are after”

Mam came in at that point, so we dropped it, but Jesus wept, that was a weird one. How the hell do you break that to someone nearly your husband? “Darling, could you just fill these two pots for your sisters-in-law. Want a hand?”

One thing it did do, though, was to take my mind off my forthcoming ordeal. Four days and counting.

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Arwel had sourced a twelve-seater minibus, and the next day he was outside our door asking for the directions to the ‘bed and breakfast’ we had arranged. By B and B, of course, I meant the network of safe houses that had been offered. I had ended up keeping Mam and Dad in our place, leaving space for Steve and Arris’ family, while Elaine, Sian and the two girls went to stay with Alice and Enid. Janet took Aunty Gwen and Uncle Gethin, while Arwel, Hywel and Ellie’s boyfriend Jon took up the spare room and floor space at Andy’s. Pat had opened his own door for Tony, just to keep alive that pretence that we were moving into a shared bed only on marriage.

That left two things to sort….and while I have only a vague idea of what the boys got up to, I do know that my hen night involved a very large volume of ingested alcohol, starting at Wetherspoon’s above the Old High Street in Folkestone, pausing at the eat-all-you-can oriental buffet just down the road from it, and finally finishing off in a sleazy rock club on Grace Hill that I knew stayed open till bloody stupid o’clock.

Enid, Gwen and Mam volunteered to baby sit the four young’uns, and we made quite a crowd, and I am going to strain my memory here to list who was there.

Me.

Janet.

Arris, of course.

Alice, in truly silly shoes.

Anne (yes, really! And she drank alcohol!).

Elaine.

Siá¢n.

Bev.

Suzy, who was definitely on a mission to trap, as was Karen.

Chelsea and Alicia, as they might have been with parents who could spell.

Ellie, in the lowest cut top I have ever seen worn without the benefit of tit tape.

Stephanie, who had arrived just in time to meet us at the first pub, and who was rather astonishing in her dedication to real beer and curry.

Now, I think some colleagues of Tony joined us part way through, but my memory is impaired for some reason. I know we ended up in the rock club, and there was a band, and we danced, or at least some of us did, and I can remember a sort of deep and partially meaningful discussion about great bass players with some spotty kid trying to get into my knickers. Sorry, sonny, it took me eighteen years before I got into them myself.

We drank various liquids, danced ourselves sweaty to the band and the disco, and ate profoundly unhealthy substances, even Bev the diet queen.

“I thought you were into rabbit food?”

“For him, Sar, for him. I want him fit”

“For the badminton?”

“Well, for one sort of shuttlecock….”

What is it about women dancing that makes men think they want their company? I like to dance with a nice man, when the mood takes me and, of course, when said man is Tony, but most of the time, when we dance, it is purely for the joy of the dancing. Good music should make you feel, make you burn to get into it, either to play along or to get up and move, and that is what good rock is all about, the urgency, the passion, the ENERGY that grabs you and pulls you out onto the dance floor to become part of the sound.

That doesn’t mean you are looking for some bloke to stick his body into your thang-shaking space. Guys, take a hint. Many of us get round in a little circle and dance over our handbags because, yes, we DO want to keep you out.

Just the music, and the movement, and the moment.

There were idiosyncrasies in the group. Steph astonished me with her passion, hair going everywhere; Alice and Janet were suitably sedate, and I think sensibly and alliteratively sober; Suzy and Karen were on the pull, while Elaine and Siá¢n were brushing them off by the half-dozen. Chelsey and Aleishya were in full ‘look but don’t touch, little boys’ strut, while Bev and Arris were just looking after me and enjoying the night. Ellie spent the latter part of the evening trying NOT to shake her thang, because the thang in question kept trying to climb out of her top. Silly girl.

Anne was, in the end, crying drunk. I don’t mean depressed, but that ‘I love you, you’re my best mate’ kind of maudlin silliness that makes for dreadful hangovers, of both types. Eventually, at the rock club, she fell asleep in a corner seat, and as the night came to an end, Bev undertook to see her home by taxi.

That was when I realised that the girls had been quite clever. Despite the hours of drinking, and the silliness, and the fact that I was pissed, I wasn’t really that bad. Steering me from dance to dance, from oriental buffet to burger van, had allowed me to get rather drunk, but not absolutely smashed. In a moment of clear thought, like a break in the clouds before the rain rushes in, I suspected that things might be rather different with my beloved.

Why do you think we planned our hen and stag nights for a couple of days before the actual wedding, rather than its eve?

I remember some very old-fashioned looks from the trio of old ladies when we returned, and they weren’t all directed at me. Alice did her usual thing of looking innocent and going “What?”, but Enid simply gave her a hug and asked if she wanted to use the electric foot-spa when they got home.