CHAPTER 4
Ginny was holding me as I woke, shushing me like a child until I could stop the shakes.

“Talk to me, Adam?”

“No”

It was flat, but not meant as rudeness. I just couldn’t talk to anyone about the ramming, or the child in the road, or the bonnet on the back seat, or any of the others. If I tried to explain why I couldn’t talk, the flashbacks took over, and then I really couldn’t talk about anything coherent. Tongue-tied is one way to describe it, but it was a sort of tic, a stammer. I can’t talk is literally true. Ginny wouldn’t drop it, though.

“What the hell happened to give you nightmares this bad?”

I had to laugh at that. “Silly question, girl. Bad things happened.”

Too bloody right they were bad. Drip, drip, drip, like water on stone, the job had taken my life and worn it away. I knew what the terms were, but it took a war memoir by a Canadian to show me how it worked. He had been right through from Normandy to Germany as a forward observation officer, until he found himself being personally hunted by a German anti-tank gun picking a wall apart brick by brick, shot by shot. That was when it all came together. They can call it what they like, combat fatigue, post-traumatic stress, whatever the current fashion is, but it never changes. You pride yourself on your strength of character. You are a copper, or a soldier, or a paramedic, whatever, and you can deal with the first few, have a drink, share a dreadful joke, but it drips. The next one adds some more drips, and the next, and there is always a next, and if you have any humanity to you they pop in to say hello, remember me? So, sorry Ginny, but ‘no’.

“Ginny, all I can say is that I have a shit job, and things don’t get left in the office”

“Yeah, that’s facile, and doesn’t help me. If I am going to be sleeping next to some fat farting man, I don’t want him kicking me all night”

“You don’t have to–“

“Yes I fucking well do. I won’t have a choice when I die, so I’m not letting you have one. Now roll over so I can spoon”

She does snore quite badly, but she was gone when I awoke. There was a note in the kitchen: “Meal in the fridge and packed one with it. No pies. Ever again. Meat may be murder, but that isn’t even meat! And I can smell chips on you from a mile away. xxx G”

It was another shift, with more trade, just like all the others before or after, but at least Kirsty kept her legs dry. Two cautions for possession of cannabis followed a Customs charge-and-remand-back for a swallower at the airport, and a charge-and-bail for a cigarette smuggler. One affray, three thefts, one drink/drive, and then a domestic.

I really, really hate domestics. They always go the same way, always, like lemmings over a cliff. “Yeah, I know he/she hit/stabbed me, but I don’t want to press charges because she/he only does it coz they lurve me”

And the CPS drop it, and we let the punter go, and some day, if we are lucky, the woman goes to a refuge, or the man leaves everything behind for his own safety, or we get the batterer on some other charge and they go inside and everyone gets a rest. If we are unlucky…

If we are unlucky, it’s an inquest. If we are really unlucky, it’s an IPCC check on why we didn’t persuade the victim to send the person they once loved to prison before they ended up dead at their hands. Ginny…perhaps that might answer a few of your questions.

She was in bed when I got home, and I realised that, never slow in coming forward, she had rearranged a couple of my drawers for her needs, and I stood for a while staring at the bed, where Tabitha lay on my pillow. My pillow; she had already staked a claim to one side of the bed, my bed. And she had found Tabitha. I realised I had to get Ginny out, and had a quick flurry of stratagems and tricks run through my mind.

Ginny turned out to be awake, lying quietly under my stare.

“She’s pretty, Adam. She shouldn’t live behind your shoes in the dark. Do your teeth and get in, I’m knackered”

Oh. I did as ordered, and Ginny cuddled up to me with a murmur of “How’s the military-industrial complex doing today?”

“Had a domestic”

“And?”

“No.”

“No, you aren’t talking about it, or no, the silly cow wouldn’t press charges?”

“Neither. No, the silly bloke wouldn’t. She stabbed him for looking the wrong way at her sister, and he now says he tripped and fell onto the blade.”

“Pissed?”

“Oddly, not, and not off their face on anything more exciting. Just that sort of family, really.”

“Not kids as well?”

“Oh, yes, six of them, over in Tilgate”

I must digress, here. Crawley is a town in rural West Sussex, not far from the border with Leafy Surrey, but there the attraction ends, It was built as a new town, largely to house Eastenders from London that Hitler’s boys bombed out of their homes, and the cheery values and culture of that place had been transplanted whole and healthy. What do you say to an Eastend woman with two black eyes? Nothing; she’s been told twice already. Tilgate is not the nicest part of the town. Enough said.

Ginny sighed. “It’s a shitty world, all right. None so blind…I had one myself today, wanted to build muscle, get a shape. Told him he should start with the diet first, and he got arsey. I do believe it was a case of the roids. What is it with people, every bugger thinks a pill will sort out everything, no matter what. I mean, they probably think you took a pill to learn the fucking flute”

“Yeah, aspirin for the headaches”

“Don’t put yourself down, kiddo. Now, do you want to tell me about your girlfriend? Look, she’s not inflatable, so you’ve nothing to be ashamed of.”

I lay for a while and considered my options. Ginny prodded me. “Just answer the question, Price. Don’t lie there trying to work out a tactical withdrawal”

“She’s called Tabitha”

Ginny held her up and gave her a little kiss. ”Pleased to meet you, Tabitha”

“She used to help me sleep, but that sort of faded. I’ve had her a long, long time”

“It shows…who made her dress?”

I did, and her other outfits, the ones I burned. “A friend I lost years ago”

“Do I know this friend?”

Yes. “No”

“Adam, talk to me when you can, mate. I need some sleep, but I might have someone who can help. Talk tomorrow, OK? And plan the ride to escape the undead”

And she was off, into sleep seamlessly, like an otter into a river. I took Tabitha to me, and whispered to her, be with me tonight.

Once more Ginny was gone when I awoke, and it was a few moments of disorientation before I realised that I had had no visitors beyond the two girls in the night. That tore at me, as I knew that while I had to get Ginny back out, it would mean more pain