CHAPTER 81
She stood there, framed by the two and clinging to Polly’s hand, flinching every so often as a couple came near. I brought the tune to an end as quickly as I could without it seeming rushed, and then had a quick word with Steph, who understood immediately. A quick decision:

“Darren, I need your help. Can you get Jim and the other three, and meet me over by the door to the Woods’ conservatory? Five minutes, aye?”

He nodded, I gave him some more instructions and then swayed off on my silly shoes to say hello.

She was still drawn in the face, and her eyes wouldn’t stay on one spot for any length of time, but I caught the flash of recognition at my approach.

“You’re that copper, from the court, the tranny, yeah?”

“Hello, Chantelle. Yes, that’s me. Hi Polly, shall we go somewhere less noisy?”

Jan was just firing up some CDs as we went, and I suspected Sarah had had an input to the choice as the first thing I heard was an Angus Young riff. I led them to the edge of the hard surface of the marquee and quite deliberately started across the lawn in my heels, making a meal of their sinking into the damp turf.

“Silly shoes…”

Polly was trying hard not to corpse, and there was a perceptible twist to Chantelle’s mouth as I floundered the few yards to the small patio. Across the drive to the other house, and into the conservatory, where someone had thoughtfully left out some cans of soft drink as well as a few chocolate treats. I nodded to Polly, and she waved the girl forward as I sank into a seat, kicking off my shoes.

“Chantelle, I do love the shoes, but after a while it is so nice to get them off. Who’d be a woman, aye?”

She looked up from a plate of cake, and there was another little flicker of amusement. “Well, you wanna be one, lahk…”

“I am one, love, they just got things a little wrong when I was born. I have someone here who wants to meet you”

Her eyes went wide, and she dove into Polly’s arms, just as I realised what that phrase might have meant coming from the mouth of her grandmother. Polly soothed her.

“No, Shan, no, not like that, never ever like that again. Only friends here, only friends”

A dirty-blonde head looked out from her arms, and I called out “Want to come in?”

Darren came in, followed by Steve, Suzy and Ali, the kids whose names I had almost forgot, along with Jim. Her eyes widened again.

“Daz?”

“Hiya, Shan, the lady’s right, yeah, it’s only friends here. Annie is my friend, my best friend, you trust her and she’ll do you right, and these is my friends as well. This my home now”

I caught a glimpse of Albert standing just outside the conservatory, making sure his boy was OK, and slipped him a wink. He nodded, and withdrew.

“Daz, aye? Why have I always had to call you Darren if I am your best mate?”

Chantelle looked at me. “You talk funny!”

Darren took over. “She Welsh, yeah, all sheepshaggers and funny words, and Annie, you call me Darren cause I ain’t no kid now, but, lahk, if you want to do Daz, yeah, as a mate, it’s cool. Shan, we got games and stuff, my granddad is all into the latest things, he really cool”

“Your granddad?”

“Well, iss what I call him, lahk, him an’ my nan, they look after me now. Don’t got to go back to no home no more”

I realised how deliberately he was letting the old speech patterns come out, the skill he was showing, and my respect for him grew even more than before.

“Jim, how many controllers are there?”

“Four, Miss Price”

“What are the girls doing? I assume you boys are doing the shoot-em-up thing?”

He gave me a withering look. I could read his thoughts…’girls, pah’

“They’ve got dolls and stuff and paint things for their feet”

Kelly, diving under the picnic table at Shrewsbury. All of the things I had missed out on, my father taking Jessica, the original Jessica…I turned to the frightened girl.

“Chantelle, want to go and play with that lot? I need a talk with Miss Armitage here, we’ll be just outside the door if you need us”

She looked up at her guardian, who nodded, and I looked at Darren for the next phase. He didn’t disappoint.

“Halo or nail painting?”

Ali laughed. “Or silly computer games and we take your shoes and socks off…”

Chantelle smiled, and her whole face changed. “Will it tickle?”

“Only if you want us to”

Suddenly, the room was empty save for me and Polly, who smiled softly and stepped forward for a hug. In my heels, I was several inches taller than her, and she rested her head on my chest.

“Those are real, aren’t they?”

“Yes, and getting realer. Thank you for bringing her, Darren has been worried”

“He has a crush on her, doesn’t he? We’ll need to be very careful; her ideas of how people show affection are rather distorted. That was inspired, leaving her to the kids”

“I was watching her with the adults, and there was a cringe every so often. Just thought, better with the younger ones, aye?”

“Yes, there are some frighteningly big men there tonight, and she doesn’t deal well with men just now. You sure you didn’t go into nursing without telling me?”

“Ah, Polly, I just do what I can, aye?”

“Just keep doing it then, Annie Price. Now, I intend to relax here for a bit, just in case. You sod off back to your party, you have duties, and it will look less like we are guarding her. Nice touch with the heels on the lawn, by the way, she almost laughed out loud, I could feel her shaking. Shit, girl, she is so screwed up she is scared to say anything at all most of the time, make any noise at all. See you in a few, yeah?”

Making a noise is what prey avoid if they can, it brings the predator onto them. Just then I would have gutted Harber, but the rest, they were still alive…No. Party. My ring, my man, my future. I made my way carefully over the grass and stopped to wipe the mud off my heels before going over to Eric, where he was chatting with Arwel and Alice. I turned him bodily round and grabbed the back of his head for a kiss that was intended to make his toes curl, and in the end made my breasts ache. The other two stood politely till I released his mouth, and I got a little squeeze on my bum as compensation for my sudden loss of contact.

Alice was smiling. “He never kisses me like that. “

“Ych, who would want to kiss an old trout like you?”

“You do, just never like that. I ought to file for divorce, hurt feelings”

“Aye, and who’d rub your feet when you take your silly shoes off?”

They were clearly as much of a double act as any of the couples that were shaking their stuff to Sarah’s choice of music, so I had to ask.

“Alice, how the hell does someone so English end up with this wannabe Gog?”

He mock-growled. “No Gog, me, I speak the proper one, aye, not their odd scouse rubbish. She was Sar’s boss, aye, over in Kent. Sar brought her over our way, with the boy, and we sort of clicked, aye?”

Shit, that was a wig. A good one, granted, but nevertheless a wig. Alice caught my look.

“Yes, male pattern baldness is a curse, isn’t it?”

Something in the water indeed. She smiled. “We have another girl like us, but we thought that it would be overkill, throw you completely, and besides her husband needs her this weekend. Don’t worry, the kids know all about me, this is a strong family. They close ranks, yeah?”

Oh, all the questions I wanted to ask, all the pain I could offload, and I knew immediately that she had plenty of her own, but not tonight, tonight was our party, and it was getting moving properly now. I spotted Kirsty getting down and dirty with her own man, and for a while I just stared at the way her tits moved. It wasn’t that I had some odd urge to join Ginny and Kate on that famous Other Bus, it was just a mixture of awe and respect for the engineering that had gone into her underwear. There were fighter aircraft and suspension bridges with less structural integrity, and Den seemed to be mesmerised by the movement. Kelly was smiling dreamily at her boy, and I realised that I hadn’t seen them for a little while, and two and two went together with a crunch, as I saw exactly how dreamy her smile was, and understood why. There were couples everywhere, dancing, or chatting, or just merged together on the seats around the edge of the tent, and with a jar I realised that I seemed to have no friends who weren’t paired up.

Others had arrived as I had been away with Polly, and I got more congratulations as they passed, Sam, and Jim, of course, and Richard, with a stunning brunette whose name I didn’t catch, and so I had another beer as the Brownian motion of the tent bounced me from friend to friend.

I ended up off to one side with Kate and Sally, as Ginny went off with a pair of half-naked Wilsons to play with fire poi and flaming whips in the garden. The two women were cuddled up, and Sally pulled me to her with her spare arm. The music was loud, but thankfully not too loud.

“Amy would have loved this, Annie”

Kate hugged her tighter. “We all move on, Sal, otherwise we die. Like swimming sharks, yeah?”

“Who are you calling a shark?”

Kate grinned. “Old ghosts. We try and let them go, but they stay with us.”

She shook herself. “Annie, old ghosts. Some fat bloke we thought we knew, now he’s the ghost, and we have this vision in heels, turning heads, making her life right”

Sally suddenly grinned, the mood breaking. “Oh fuck, it’s traditional at times like this, girl, I have to ask the question.”

She leant forward, brow furrowed, and flicked her eyes from side to side, conspiratorially.

“How big’s his cock?”