CHAPTER 83
In the end I walked back with Polly and the Woods to their place, for a quick check as the kids settled down.

There was a true nest laid out for them, plus a smaller version for the Armitages, and Suzy and Ali were already asleep, Jim and Stevie whispering to each other under the quilts. Josh, Polly’s husband, turned up with the last two in tow, and after they had done their teeth and changed they burrowed into the middle of the pile. I wished them a good night and slipped out of the room as I turned the light off, making my way back over to Steph’s where Eric was waiting in bed for me.

I don’t have to spell things out, but they involved me getting undressed, up to the point where Eric stopped me, which seemed to involve leaving most of my underwear on. Things then happened which were rather nice for both of us, and actually quite messy, and that is all I intend to say. But I was still smiling when we went off to sleep, him spooned around me. It was also rather more comfortable at that point, because he let me finish undressing.

It was still grey and miserable outside when we woke, or rather when I did, because he was in full male sprawl, leg out from under the duvet and dribbling. I wondered, just for an instant, if that had been how I slept, and then remembered that until recently my sleep had usually been within a gnat’s whisker of lying in my own piss. Old ghosts, indeed. So much had already changed, but it would never really go away, it couldn’t.

I slipped out to the toilet, sitting as I always did, and realising that I was sinking into one of the little episodes of self-hate that bit me every so often, and I realised with a start what was setting me off. Sally, of all people, had stuck a knife in, without malice, which was perhaps worse than if she had meant to hurt me.

“Adult consenting”. “Almost legal”.

I couldn’t consent, in that way, because I had nothing to consent with except a revolting deformity that did nothing for either of us. Without going into details, Eric and I enjoyed each other very much, but things still had to come to a halt at a certain point, and Sally’s comments, sitting on a toilet on a grey winter’s morning, stang. I knew it was irrational, and in my head I knew that there was every possibility that it was something that could be rectified, but at that moment some combination of hangover and memory, and perhaps of hormones, left me sobbing.

Eric must have heard, because he came in, naked and beautiful, and simply held me until I had run out of tears.

“I know, love, I know. Just understand that I am not leaving, regardless of what happens. OK? I think it is time for you to clean your face, and then we see what breakfast there is, and who wants it. You are still the hostess, aye?”

That actually made me laugh. “You are taking the piss, Johnson”

He kissed my nose. “Would I ever not do the same, aye?”

I don’t think that I had ever loved him more than I did right then. Everything he was doing, everything he was saying, confirmed who I really was. I pulled him to me, my hands digging into his bare back, and rested my cheek against his stomach.

My man.

Dressed, in a long gypsy skirt and loose paisley top, I went barefoot to the kitchen and started sorting out teapot and mugs, plates and pans. I could hear stirring elsewhere in the house, and there were figures moving in the garden as the happy campers roused, and Steph came into the kitchen, wrapped in a stupidly fluffy dressing gown. As I sorted the kettle out, she looked hard at my eyes.

“It’s hard, isn’t it? You want to do so much, and so little, just be normal, but life has fucked you over. I can’t make it better, Annie, I can’t make things go away, but I can tell you how it was for me”

I smiled ruefully. “Probably much the same as me, aye? We are both so lucky, with our friends and our family, I just have to keep remembering the ones without our luck, like poor Melanie, and Amy”

“Amy?”

“Oh, just another who lost out in life, someone I should remember to let me see my blessings, how many I have, aye?”

Steph put a hand to my cheek. “Yeah, always my way, try and remember those without our luck. Perspective, yeah? One day, we shall sit down and swap stories, but right now, Kell has just walked in behind you, so it is pot and pan rattling time”

Her voice became that little bit louder.

“Morning, beloved niece! Now, has he sent you out to get his brekky, or will Mark actually come for it himself? Important to break them in properly at an early stage, don’t let the bad habits develop”

Kelly was yawning, and when Steph cracked a pointed remark about lack of sleep she turned absolutely crimson. Young love…

Gradually people drifted in, and we girls filled plates and mugs, and refilled the latter, and I got hugs and little kisses from several of my friends as they filed in, and when Eric arrived it became ‘our’ rather than ‘my’, and in the wash of affection and love the morning’s terrors receded to the point where I could look at them more rationally,

Was it all part of my damaged soul, this fear, this uncertainty? I had taken the big step, the frightening one, and thrown my identity away, done it in public. Surely, if I could face down barristers I could face down one small piece of flesh?

Well, three, to be precise. Then Eric came over for a quick snog before helping strike some of the tents, and it all became academic. My man.

Polly and Josh were in next, with a posse of teenish children looking for parents and bacon sandwiches, in no particular order. I noticed with a real lump in my throat that my other man had hold of someone else’s hand, and that someone was smiling, and for an instant I wanted to hide in that bathroom again and let the tears out. Polly looked like I felt, and hugged me with a whisper of “Miracles, love, miracles”

And so it went, and young girls cuddled up with their pipers and drummers, and bigger girls with their partners when they weren’t cracking eggs or stirring beans. There were the usual bright and funny moments, such as Ginny describing how her wife’s fleece balaclava had twisted in the night, and “When I fancied a bit of nookie, and I leant over in the dark for a snog, and I got a mouthful of bloody Polartec! I tell you, she had to make up for that one!”

By Kate’s wistful smile, I gathered that amends had been made to the satisfaction of both. I also gathered the impression that just about every couple there, with the exception of those gathered together with Polly, had been consenting in some very adult ways. That was an odd feeling, knowing that the celebration of our engagement had continued well after bedtime.

No, I did not want details. After the breakfast rush was over, I joined a newly-dressed Steph in her living room, where she was restringing her fiddle.

“One way to tell us we’d played enough, aye?”

“Yeah, can’t snap bits of a flute, can you? So, feeling better?”

“Aye. Just a black morning, feeling a bit of a fraud for a while. I suppose we all do, girls like us. Thoughts…can I ever be real? Sounds stupid, but I got out of bed, all warm and worn out from…well, you know, and then I suddenly realised I could still pee standing up.”

She was nodding. “Yeah, I used to wear knickers in the shower, just in case he came in. Got through a lot of wet knickers…”

That got me laughing. “Yeah, I keep mine on as well, keeps the illusion, aye?”

Steph was serious. “Don’t ever think of it as an illusion, Annie. You are a woman, it’s there in everything you do and say. Unless you suspect Eric is gay, that’s what he sees. What do you call it? A growth? A deformity? A tumour?”

I sighed. “Deformity, normally”

“Well, that deformity got Sarah put into hospital when she went with the wrong guy. You haven’t got the wrong guy, have you? Neither have I. Here’s my advice: you have time, there is a hospital bed with your name on it some time in the future. You have blessings; count them, and be grateful. So many don’t. And by the way, your little black dress last night, you are most definitely starting to fill things like that in the right way. Even Albert was watching your legs, until Naomi slapped his arse”

“Ah, I know what you are saying, but it still hurts, it still isn’t right, aye?”

She came over and hugged me. “Patience, love, patience. It will come. We have Spring on the way, then Summer, and it will be a time for lying together in the sun and knowing how it is no illusion at all.”

Count my blessings. Yes indeed.