CHAPTER 27
Cunningham was gone, and I was technically free, but what the tramp had made clear to me was that it would never be real. Cunningham, the Allisons, Alf, they would all lurk just beyond that wall of sleep waiting to smile at me at night.

We had a series of meetings with the SS, and the profile of the case did us no harm. I had worried that the sackings and arrests that had slashed through the local council might have closed the ranks of the remaining employees, but while that had been the case at the start the details that emerged had been so shocking that they were almost falling over each other in their attempts to distance themselves from the horrors of Castle Keep. What was a problem, however, was the disappearance of so many relevant documents, particularly in connection with Mitchell and his ‘guardianship’ of me.

Life went on, though, and after a few weeks the police withdrew their operation from our house, though they left us a panic button, just as Brian and Karen were submitting their application for adoption. Kieran and Audrey had already successfully adopted Iain, and it was an odd little family we were assembling. And then….the long Summer holidays were upon us, and Brian gave in to my request for some time at Boot, where I could perhaps convince myself that I did have my freedom. Iain was off with his new family to Majorca, and Em’s parents were taking her to some campsite in Brittany, so it would be five of us for Boot, as Karen insisted that Sid come with us. Tom asked a favour.

“Bri, oh wonderful boss man and fount of all generosity?”

“What are you after, Skinner, oh miserable lackey?”

“Would it be possible for me to bring a friend?”

We all laughed at that, and it was Karen who asked the obvious question. “Would she happen to be blonde, a teacher, and called Sally?”

He grinned. “Ah, you can see why the security services let me go, I show out too easily”

Karen kept prodding, and Tom kept blushingly confirming how accurate she was being, and it felt good, to me, that two people who had helped bring my life back were getting something out of it themselves.

So, one day in August we joined the slow moving queue of cars that wound up Eskdale, and Arthur greeted us as old friends and showed the two couples to their rooms as I moved back in to my old, familiar place in Nana’s and Sid took the other room. She showed me that she had moved on to the Mail for sanitary purposes, as the News of the World had, in her opinion, done so much to get me back to her, and it would be bad manners. Two days after we arrived, eating a pub dinner after a there-and-back crossing of the two passes to show people the Langdale Pikes, there was a shout of “Darlings! Uncork the bubbly, here we are!”

Simon and Roger, looking fit and happy, with another man hovering behind looking uncertain. He was a small man, in his thirties, with some slight facial resemblance to Roger: the same prominent nose and cleft chin, but darker and with longer hair.

Roger brought him forward. “This is my cousin Timothy, we dragged him out of some pathetic excuse of a Summer’s break in London to get some of the soot out of his lungs, and stop him spending all day on the Heath and all night on the Common”

Timothy started at that. “You really are far too open about those things, dear cuz”

“Nonsense, my dear, they all know us up here, and almost nobody cares. Timmy, these lovely people are Karen, Brian, Stevie, Ada, Sid, Tom, and…sorry, my love, but who is this ravishing beauty? Tommy, my dear, have you been playing lights and bushels?”

Sally was looking very confused, and ‘Tommy’, like the rest of us, was trying not to laugh, as Roger went into full queen mode in an obvious attempt to embarrass his cousin. Tom revealed all.

“Roger, Simon, Timothy, this is Sally, my girlfriend”

Simon took her hand. “Charmed, my dear, and what do you do? Roger, white wine please, leave the champers for later”

Sally looked pink. “I’m a teacher”

Roger howled with laughter. “Priceless! Extra-curricular activity at young Steven’s school, no doubt?”

Yet again I saw that flicker in someone’s eyes as two and two made seven, and Timothy suddenly realised who exactly I was, but he made no comment and just carried on as if he had always known. I was slowly getting used to it, as I knew I would have to. Roger and Simon carried on with the deliberately over-the-top camping, and beer and wine flowed, and the evening was a very much better celebration of the end of hell than anything in London could have been, for I was on home ground here. Timothy just sat quietly, and every now and then I caught him looking at me, and there was something in his eye. Sid was also looking a little sharply at him, and when the new friend went to the Gents’ he had a quiet word with me.

“Something off there, Steve, something skewed”

I thought of Tom’s dictum: “What’s wrong with this picture?”

“Is he gay, do you think?”

“Not the feeling I’m getting, kid, not quite right. Simon and Rog are up to something. Did you see him staring at Karen’s legs?”

“Yeah, I caught that, but he wasn’t drooling, if you see what I mean”

“Steve…be careful, he’s not right.”

“Would Roger and Simon bring him up if he were…you know?”

“I don’t know. I thought at first they might be looking to do some matchmaking with me…but no, that’s not what I feel”

“Well, Sid, I’m not going to worry, I’m going to put my size fives in it and ask him, because I feel like living tonight, and I can’t be bothered with silly games”

“Yeah, but carefully, OK?”

I waited till Karen got up again, for the ladies’, and watched his eyes follow her out.

“She’s a looker, our Karen, isn’t she?”

“She’s absolutely beautiful, Stephen”

“I always did fancy her, ever since I was a kid, and it seems odd that she’ll be legally my mam in a few weeks. You got a girl back in London?”

“Er, I don’t actually go for women….”

His voice was trailing off as he spoke, and he was blushing, and I realised he wasn’t as up front about it as the others. I dropped my own voice.

“Look, it’s OK here, Arthur is cool with everything, and they all know about the boys and Sid and it’s still OK”

“Sid’s gay too? I thought he might be. He’s a nice guy”

“So you go for men, then?”

“Well, yes, but Sid’s gay, so…”

I was obviously being remarkably dense. “So, who would you go for then?”

“Well, Brian’s rather sweet, and Tom is very dishy…”

“But they aren’t gay”

“Neither am I, love”

Bang. My stupidity evaporated and I understood, and the off-kilter impression I was getting from her vanished, because she was just like me. I was a square mind in a round body, while her mind was the round part in her case. “Oh, I see. You are like me, then. Wrong body”

“You have it. Please understand me when I say I am jealous of you in a way. If I could have had what you had….oh, god, I would feel so much happier”

I was about to explode at that when she put her hand on my arm. “No, love, I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. And I know that you didn’t want, don’t want, any of it, but…just to look like Karen, or you, it would have been so much more RIGHT for me, and….well, look”

She rolled up her left sleeve, and I saw scars. “As you can see, I’m right handed. I’ve done some reading since, and apparently it works better if you cut along rather than across, opens the arteries better”

I sat open-mouthed, and she continued. “Rog thought we might be able to help each other, that we might be able to walk some of our road together. I am waiting for the day when I have enough saved, and then, well, it will be Casablanca, or maybe Thailand.”

“You know I had no choice in this, don’t you? You know what price they made me pay?”

“Yes, I know, but I hope you can forgive my envy”

Sid was listening in at this point. “You are doubly screwed, aren’t you? By the way, I’m Sid. Who might you be?”

She ducked her head, and softly, so softly, murmured “Tessa”

“Well, Tessa, both this young man and this old puff are pleased to meet you”

He reached over, and shook her hand, and I noticed Simon and Roger exchange a glance. I muttered “Excuse me a minute” to Tessa and slid over to the Toffs.

“A bit of warning would be nice next time”

Simon looked a little contrite, but Roger was unabashed. “You need to start seeing the wider world, Steve. You have had nothing but that shithole, in one way or another, for years. We just thought, well, both of you are in shit state, pardon my French, and sometimes two hurt souls can heal each other.

“Steve, Timmy, Tess, she needs that same outlet, that same escape route. Sometimes, darling, the only one who can understand is the one who has been in the same place. We thought, just perhaps, you might sort of, you know, oh bugger, you know exactly what I mean. A shrink is fine, but they don’t KNOW, and I do not want to spend another minute riding in an ambulance, for that is what I have had to do with the silly creature, so yes, I am scheming. Sorry”

I couldn’t hold that against him, I couldn’t actually hold anything against him after everything, so I hugged him, and he hugged me back and sniffed up a few tears, and then changed the subject.

“So, are we taking you somewhere steeper then, my boy?”

He reached under his seat and brought out a carrier bag, and in it were a pair of French rubber-soled climbing boots.

“Time to rise above, Stephen!”