CHAPTER 9
That was really not a complete surprise. I knew some of the background of her death, of course. I had been aware of our odd resident, as I had sent a couple of lads past her place a few times after the graffiti, and I remembered that she had something to do with the local security scene, but I had never dug into her background.

By the time she became a nine-days-wonder, with her death, I was in my own little world of night terrors and light duties. Stewie looked hard at me once again.

“Adam, I am not going to discuss her, simple as that. Sally will talk to you, that’s her job, not mine. If you fancy a chat at any time, I’m here, but not things like that, OK? I have my own issues, and they aren’t for you to worry about”

It was an odd mixture. He was closing down channels of communication, while at the same time showing me that he was still there, still aware of my terrors and the form they took. Ginny was there, now, and she slipped an arm around my shoulders from behind.

“It’s ten o’clock, mate, these good people should be off. Come on”

Sally was already holding their coats and her bag as we went into the living room.

“I shall be in touch, Adam, and we can set up a more formal series of sessions. I already had an idea what was going on with you, to an extent, but I want to do a bit more poking around, if that’s OK with you”

Whatever. I’d rather talk to Stewie, find out what he had hiding there. “OK by me. Want me to let you know my roster?”

“Yes, that would help, and stop those internal chats, OK?”

They were off, and Ginny was looking sharply at me.

“Internal chats? Does she mean the way you never answer a bloody question straight away?”

“Sort of, I suppose”

I realised that from now on, she would be looking for my censorship as closely as Sally.

We cleared up and I started to sort out the bed before we settled down, and Tabby was sitting there in a new cotton night dress, pale blue and white with little touches of broderie anglaise. I picked her up…

“Tabby, somebody has adopted you….but I’m still here”

Ginny came up behind me, putting her hands on my shoulders and kneading the tense muscles there. “I just thought she should dress properly. You can’t sleep in your day clothes, can you?”

She sniggered. “Well, you can, but you have to be a bit pissed to do so”

Yes, I know, usually in the armchair with a video playing. “She is more used to handmade clothes, she’s particular in her tastes.”

“So, who made her dress, and why no more outfits?”

I did, and I burned them. “I told you, a friend made that one, and that’s all I ever had”

Ginny dug her fingers deeper into my tension, and her lips, close to my ears, murmured “You are such a shitty liar, Adam Price. I can feel it in your shoulders. Sal is right, internal bloody dialogue before each answer.”

Her chin settled on my left shoulder as she continued her gentle whisper.

“Talk to Sally, talk to me if you want, just promise me you will do your best to let us do our bit. OK?”

I lay that night, one of her arms over me and her snoring rattling against my ear plugs, sleepless from lack of alcohol. What could I do? At least with their discovery of THE house, dungeon and all, I had a chance of escaping Ginny, but Sally was already locked on and tracking. Why could I never just tell people to fuck off and leave me alone? Why did I spend my time trying to avoid upset when it was all so academic?
It took a while before I was able to get off to sleep, without my liquid cosh, and when I did the Honda was waiting to power me through the outskirts of Swansea. Ginny woke me as usual, and I lay in her arms for a little while as the world came back to the present tense, sweat cooling to a chill on my chest.

“You remember your nightmares, don’t you, Adam?”

I have them waking and sleeping, Ginny, sleeping and waking. I could feel the need for a drink, a need I only felt at bed times, and remembered a lecture on addiction, the differences between the physical need and the emotional dependency, the crutch. How the latter could be harder to come off than the former. I had a momentary flicker of hope that my need for the grape was emotional, rather than as a result of my body’s chemistry being permanently fucked, but as sleep took me again I thought how irrelevant it was in either case. It wouldn’t matter in the long run, because there wouldn’t be one.

Back on late turn again, and for once a quiet day. Ginny had slipped out before I woke, and Tabby was sat by the kettle in a new dress with a note: “Those were your last bloody chips for the next month, Price!”

I was out and riding home before the first of the seriously drunk were due in, which suited me, as there is a fundamental difference between having a decent work ethic and being a masochist.. ‘Nev’ Chamberlain had brought in another domestic, though, and that was the usual pain in the arse, how he loved her and it was all a misunderstanding, babe, as the wife lay in Redhill hospital with a broken cheek bone and fuck knew what else. I mused on that one for the twenty minutes or so it took me to thread the traffic and lock the bike in the shed.

I had married, on arrival from Wales, as I had been corresponding with the girl for a few months. One of my more complicated attempts at a purge, finding a girl in one of the newspaper personal sections. They were so busy, those things, and so expensive. Each call to a premium rate line cost an arm and a leg, but I tried.

Maria had been sweet, a series of nice messages that showed a sense of humour hiding behind what should in all hindsight have frightened me off, a deep neediness. I was making my break from the ground trodden night and day by my corrosive memories, and she was taken with the idea of a policeman with a big truncheon; one too many conversations, and within six months of our first contact we were engaged.

She had no family beyond a sister, and the wedding was quick and simple at the Leatherhead registry office, finally leaving my days of confusion behind me. I was a married, heterosexual, normal man, with the ring to prove it and a wife to take around garden centres and drink cappuccino with.

I climbed the stairs to my bedroom, Ginny already snoring, as the memories paraded themselves. The careful vetting and filtering of all my possessions, followed by a couple of small bonfires. All of Tabby’s clothes, a lot of my books and videos, those other odds and sods I could never have explained, and then we were set up till death us do part, cleaving only to each other. Of course. I had kept Tabby hidden all that time; there are some things you don’t do.

There were the broken plates, then, and the accusations, and then she was gone and I was out. I dropped my bags in the living room and looked at my whiskies, and realised that Ginny would smell it as soon as I got in with her. She didn’t scare me–well, she did----but I still felt a loyalty to her. She was doing her best for a friend, and as long as she was here I owed her at least the semblance of gratitude. I stripped, did my teeth and wriggled under the duvet as I gathered Tabitha to me. Her new night dress was on, the cotton crisp to the touch and fresh to my nose, and for once I was able to get off without an immediate visit.

I took the simpler route to my comforting fantasy this time, the one without the magic or the alien science, where things just happened. Jim waiting by my hospital bed as I woke up, assuring me he was still a mate and my job would go on. Shopping with Ruth. The Critical Mass ride where I teased them all by telling them that they knew me already, and showing that I knew them. A blurred mess as I started to drift off, where I couldn’t decide whether I was at a music festival or a cycle rally, but it involved music, and dancing, and camping, and riding. Laughter, and more dancing, and kisses and kids….