CHAPTER 33
The papers were full of interest, as it turned out, and Dave and Aidan were more than happy for a little more income from me. Aidan was still so self-effacing I could have forgotten he was there, if it wasn’t for his military style commands.

We started with some beach pictures, our lovelies smiling in what seemed like three square inches each of whatever the hell the material is, and Aidan had enough empathy that he never suggested I join them. I must admit, though, I did enjoy that session. My beautiful Em in a string bikini. My gorgeous stepmother-to-be in even less. And my bloody teacher as well; I mean, surely it is every teenaged boy’s fantasy to mentally undress their favourite woman teacher, and there she was. I could have sold tickets to half my class, and it would do my reputation with them absolutely no harm.

Nana and I took him along to one of the smaller outcrops, and got the necessary square-jawed mountain sort-of-man pictures, and in the end we made a day of it and walked up to the buttress itself so that Aidan could get some dramatic shots of the place. As he bustled about with light meter and a collection of lenses, Dave sat by me.

“You’re looking good, Steve. I still have problems…..shit, look, you still give me sleepless nights. When you came out of that hole…I look at you now, and it’s like you’re real now, not some ghost.”

I’d bridled a little at his first words, and he saw. “Look, mate, I know what you thought I meant. Yes, you do look good that way, but there’s fuck all you can do about that, and I get the impression you are almost happy just to tell the world to kiss your arse, am I right?”

I had to laugh at that. “Yeah, so I can out-tit Nicki Debuse. Not high on the ambition list for a teenaged boy, is it?”

Dave grinned. “That is what I meant. You’re not just alive, you’re full of life now. That’s what I want for the book, FTW, and that irreverence”

“FTW?”

“A yank thing, fuck the world. I watched you in court, and you were trying to show what you had, saying ‘look at what they did to me’, and I could see you were struggling, but you did it. You’re still doing it”

“Dave, I haven’t got any fucking alternative. I don’t have the guts to let them try and sort me out. I was going to say I don’t have the balls, but…”

“That’s exactly the attitude I want to get down, kid. I want them to cry over you, puke over you, and laugh with you. Think you can get that out? If you can, I’ll slip a plug or six into the article. I’ve got another proposal, too…could you speak about it? On radio? I would like to get you on One and Four, so we get both the teeny crowd and their parents, the ones with the money. Oh, and any old photos of you? Before, I mean?”

That one hurt, for apart from a few Nana might have, all the old pictures had disappeared with Mam and her bottled friends. Then, a thought.

“I might have one or two very specific ones. I was in a race just before that cow got her hands on me, and there were two lads there who were hot stuff. If the locals didn’t cover it, Mr Robson might have some snaps. My sports master, he was always pushing me to run”

“That would be useful indeed. Now, what I want to do is sit down with you and set out the pitch markings. Just set the boundaries that we can work within, that won’t cause you pain”

I sighed. “You really think I can do this without pain? Let’s get the fucker written, printed, and delivered free to whichever prisons the cunts are in and let our ‘dear readers’ do what they can”

“Whatever happened to Christian charity?”

“It locked me up and fucked me in the arse for three years, that’s what happened to it.”

I was getting too wound up. Perhaps this book wasn’t such a good idea. I reined my emotions back in, it wasn’t fair on one of the people who had saved my life.

“Look, Dave, you know I will never be over this. There are two things driving me here. The first is that the country, the world, has to know what those bastards did. It’s a faint hope, but if I shout loud enough, perhaps some other kid won’t end up in shit. Just one would be good.

“And there’s another thing I want. Just to be able to point at them, show faces, names, let people know what they are. I want them looking over their fucking shoulders till they day they die. Yes, oh yes, we’re writing that book.”

Dave laughed out loud, shaking his head. “When that poor bugger called you an angel, I didn’t think he meant the one with the flaming sword”

I grinned back. “It’s my turn now. And my turn to ask you what you asked me: are you up to this?”

He held out his hand, and we shook. “Oh, yes, Steve, they are about to get fucked up the arse themselves. As ye sow”

Aidan found us howling with laughter, and even though we tried to explain, I don’t think he quite got it.

Dave was right. Fuck the world; I was healthy, and happy, and loved, and free. I had more than most people had, and I definitely had more than my abusers now possessed.

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Summer finally came to an end, or at least the holiday part of it, and I fell into a maelstrom of work. School was relentless, and in between were the hours talking to Dave over a tape recorder. My only breaks in term time were sessions with Mr Robson, where he would try to draw every last drop of energy from me, and then grinningly tell me how much up or down I was on my personal best.

I was actually enjoying my studies, as there was such an emphasis on thinking rather than remembering. Mr Calvert still tore into preconceptions and prejudice, forever quoting the aphorism ‘history is written by the winners’, and to my astonishment and gratification he started giving us SF as reading assignments.

Well, when I say SF, it was one book, Keith Roberts’ ‘Pavane’, the story of England and the world if the Armada, in effect, had won. It was his way of making us look at events and their causes rather than just accept what we were told. Where do these people come from, these educators? ‘Teachers’ is too small a word for them, for that year they took me out of a small Cumbrian town and showed me a world of thought. They didn’t just tell me to remember things, they taught me how to think, and I am still grateful for that. I spread my wings under Mr Robson, and Sally, Mr Calvert and the rest set my mind free.

I could spend so much time recounting my studies, but perhaps I would lose you. The more detailed analysis of writing, which showed me simultaneously how poor some of my Ace Double authors were, and at the same time how exceptional the rest. The early days of computer programming, so far from the talking machines of Star Trek that I almost despaired. Chaucer. If ever there was an author who better embodied life and living, I haven’t come across him.

All the time I was expanding, Cunningham and the rest were shrinking. One day, I came home and Karen said something to me which I half heard, and Brian just said “Are you listening to your mother?” and grinned, and that was it, the process was done, and without any fanfares, but with a lot of grins, I had new parents.

That night my hormones must have been particularly girly, because whilst I was over the moon with joy at the adoption I spent the night sobbing my heart out in memory of my poor, dead mother. In the small hours, Karen must have heard, for she came in and crawled into bed with me to hold me as I wept.

Control came back slowly, and I settled into her warmth. A thought struck me, and I had to ask it, as teenagers do.

“Karen…..why no kids with Bri?”

She stiffened slightly, then:

“Because we can’t, Stevie. I can’t. I know I am the most beautiful woman the gods ever sent down to earth, but, well, I’m a bit sort of stuffed in the baby department. I just can’t. We tried, and then he had some tests, and then me, and…

“You know, I wondered whether he would get someone else, you know, a baby factory, and he just stayed, and that’s when I realised he does love me, and I’m not just some arse and tits from the local night club, I’m his, and he’s mine….can you see why he is so passionate about you?

“I set out to catch someone with money, and I got a real man, a man with a soul, and if I could have given him what he wants…shit, pet, we’re still looking at ways, but just now he has you.

“You’ve given him a reason to go on, someone to fight for. So do us all a favour, and keep fighting for yourself”

That was a real kick up the arse, a timely reminder that others suffered, and when the Express article came out I made a point of involving Brian in the celebrations. Em scored huge cool points, and a lot of admirers that I had to warn off, from the article, but poor Sally….

I just basked in my fame. Fuck the world,