CHAPTER 10
It was the first night in a long time that had passed the right way and I was awake with Ginny as she slathered her toast with some repulsive brown sludge.

She even wore a ‘Marmite’ cycle top, for fuck’s sake. I managed to get past that particular horror, though, as I felt rested, for once, rather than as I usually did, glad the night was over for another few hours. I had another couple of days before my first official session with Sally, and I hoped I would have a night like that beforehand, as it made my dance so much smoother.

My exit strategy was getting complicated. Ginny had touched on my dilemma with her comment about fucking up the railways for a day and a driver for life, and I could see all too clearly the effect on a train or tube driver, being given free membership of my club, the society of the daily waking nightmare. I couldn’t do that, not even to the worst of my customers. I knew all too well what it entailed. No, I had friends, close friends who seemed to love me in their odd way, and I couldn’t do that to them, nor to some anonymous hotel worker. I needed to find a way that affected nobody else, that let me out of purgatory without extra tickets being sold for the horror show.

Sod it. I decided to give Ginny at least a little support, on the old line of de young, leave a pretty corpse.

Pretty…I got changed into the lycra, thanking the gods that it stretches, and set out for a none-too-quick fifteen miles. It hurt, but then I was pushing hard enough to make it do so. A quick shower back at home, and then I opened the bread bin for some peanut butter on toast. The next note was there: ‘Leave the bread alone. Your lunch is in the fridge’

So it was, a few strips of blackened herb chicken on a mixed leaf salad, with a bigger version for taking to work. That knocked me back a bit; Ginny was doing so much to make me healthier, and I spent my time trying to undo it all.

Pretty corpse. Sod it. Get back on the bike, off to work, and hope it isn’t too dramatic.

This is where I do the jump-fade-slide bit, where the screen goes all wavy as ‘time passes’. I was getting used to her presence, and every couple of days she would swap Tabby’s outfit. I was looking for socks one day when I found the place she was using, one of my bedside drawers. All of the outfits were in there, plus some thread and needles, scissors and so forth. Ginny was obviously either making new dresses from scratch, or adapting shop-bought ones. I suspected the latter, as broderie anglaise isn’t simple to do. I had tried, and all I ended up with were badly-hemmed holes. The temptation was there, though, and if there had been enough material I might have spent the morning before work being creative. As it was, I dug out the flute, and spent an hour running through some old favourites.

I hadn’t intended it to be an hour, but when I looked at my watch I had lost the morning. There are worse ways to do so, and I felt no loss as I rode to work. The next day was Sally’s.

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There was something in her that left me nervous, even out of her presence. I mean, she was pleasant enough, good company at dinner, and I could see why Ginny liked her, but I could also see why it was that Kate thought so highly of her. She listened, and she watched. That was where the risk lay; she had already picked up on the way I prepared what I said, so I would be flying by feel in there.

No couch, no framed diplomas, nothing for a cartoonist to get his teeth into, apart from a simply framed photograph of a younger Stewart, in uniform, on her desk. Sal walked me over to a couple of armchairs in a corner away from the window, and after sorting some coffees we began.

“I hate to say this, as it is so bloody predictable, but tell me about your childhood.”

“What’s to tell? Pretty typical upbringing for that area, season ticket to the All-Blacks, that sort of thing”

“All-Blacks?”

“Neath rugby club. All black strip with a cross on the breast. Nice supporter’s chant, just the club name repeated over and over again. Not the same round there with all this regional team stuff”

“Adam”

“Aye?”

“You can’t avoid things by overloading me with trivia. Were you an only child?”

“No, I had a brother, quite a bit older than me”

“Had?”

Typical of Sally, as I was to find out, was her terseness. She would often ask a question with one word, or with a simple statement, no clue as to her thoughts on the answer.

“Had. Greg was killed in the first Gulf War. mean, it wasn’t the first, cause there was that thing earlier–“

“Adam, I know about the Iran-Iraq War. Concise version, please”

“Greg was killed by what they call ‘friendly fire’, though it always seems a bit bloody unfriendly when someone shoots at you”

“Have you been shot at, Adam?”

Oh yes, just before he did the family. “Yes., a suicidal farmer with a shotgun. Concentrates the mind”

“What did you tell yourself just before that answer?”

“Just remembering…”

“What?”

Dead children. “A very messy suicide, Sally, sorry”

She changed tack. “Your brother…how did the family take it?”

“Badly. Nearly broke Dad, Greg was his boy, and Mam never recovered. She came down with a kidney cancer three years later”

“Those are normally treatable.”

“Aye, they are if you go to a doctor when you need to. By the time she admitted she was ill, it was in her liver, pancreas and both kidneys. Nothing to be done, tucked up tidy she was.”

“Dad?”

“Would it surprise you to learn it was cirrhosis of the liver?”

“When did you decide on the Police?”

I didn’t. “Dad was a copper, it was sort of expected. Greg was going to do his time, then change uniforms. And then some trigger-happy A10 pilot blew him to shit. Sorry”

“What was your first answer, Adam?”

I sighed. “It was going to be that I didn’t decide on the Force, Dad sort of did it for me”

“And you hate it?”

“No, you know I don’t”

“What changed that?”

“It sort of grew on me. I could see how it worked, not just the fighting and the macho stuff. They keep coming out with this bullshit about ‘service’, when what they mean is control, but at my level it is service, it is protection. It’s a job that gives a lot back”

“So you are now Greg”

Dangerous woman. “Yes, as far as Dad was concerned”

But never quite Greg.

“What would you have chosen as a career?”

“You’ll laugh”

“I never laugh, unless I need to”

“Can you see me as a nurse?”

She thought for a while, looking straight at me.

“Why did you get rid of all of Tabby’s clothes?”

She was like a skilled boxer, changing direction without warning.

“What do you mean?”

“You know the answer. So tell.”

“I got married. It wouldn’t have been received very well”

“Like the idea of you becoming a nurse?”

Fuck. “Yes, like the idea of me taking up nursing. It didn’t sit well, but you already know that, don’t you?”

Sally just looked at me, face composed. I knew exactly what she was doing; leave the punter in silence and they will want to fill the space with words, some of which they would love to be able to take back. I waited, and so did Sally. Then she submitted.

“It wasn’t just the nursing, then”

I couldn’t make her out. She assured me of her ability to keep confidences, but could I give them?

“The door is shut, Adam. All that leaves here does so with your express permission. Not Kate, not Ginny, not your bosses, not even Stewart. Now, if you wish to talk, talk. If you want to take your time, there is plenty. Your call, Adam. When you want to tell me the rest, I will listen. I do not judge, though I may advise”

I thought for a while, in silence, looking up at Sally a couple of times. She just sat there, calm, quiet. It was so tempting, such a lure. I had nearly slipped a few times in my life, once or twice with Ginny, once with Maria, and thank fuck I hadn’t made THAT mistake. The attraction was there; I had seen it in prisoners at interview, the need to unburden, to explain, and perhaps….perhaps if did let some of it out I might be able to order my mind properly. Sod it.

It all started when I was born. “It all started when Dad caught me with Jessica”