CHAPTER 84
We stayed long enough to give both couples a hand tidying house and garden and then made our way back to our own place after seeing everybody else off.

A drawback of being a host at someone else’s place, having to be the last to leave and then having to go all the way to your own place.

Elaine was quite emotional, which surprised me, till she explained.

“We try and keep tabs, Annie, keep a check on our boys who move away. Girls. I should know this by now, what with the old and young trouts”

“You call your sister a young trout?”

She grinned. “Aye, why not? No, Annie, when you went, we all knew you were on the edge, and seeing you like this, well, it’s good, aye? Promise me you’ll come over our way some time. A girl has to go home, especially if it’s her first trip”

God. I still had cousins and other odd relatives out West; no close family, not like Sarah, but there were still people that deserved to know. I would indeed have to make the trek one day. Not yet, though, not until I could slay my dragons.

We saw the last ones off, and they were the ones I had the most hope for, now, after the miraculous night. Chantelle had spent quite a lot of post-breakfast energy squealing with the girls, and making calf’s eyes at ‘Daz’, and when she was about to leave with Polly she came up to me, with an excess of politeness, to ask if she could come and see Darren again.

“It’s not me you should be asking, Shan, it’s Mr and Mrs Woods, and Mizz Armitage here”

She looked round at Polly, who nodded, and then ran into the kitchen to collar Albert. Polly sighed.

“Look at that, Annie, voluntarily approaching a man. Bloody miracles”

“You have our new address, Poll?”

I wrote it down for her on a spare paper napkin. “As long as I am not on the wrong shifts, feel free, Shan as well.”

Polly laughed. “She already has invitations to Reading and Dover. I wonder if the other lads aren’t jealous of Darren”

“Well, he seems happy today. I just hope she can take the goodness from last night out into the real world, aye? We may be mad, but we seem to be a bit less threatening”

She was nodding. “I think that was a lot of what we had last night, all those big men, all being so gentle. Where is she staying at the moment?”

“We have a hostel, a shelter really, for abused women and girls. I don’t see her as suitable for fostering, and I wouldn’t trust her relatives as far as I could shit them. Enough said? At some point, I’d like her to get settled into a more normal home, proper domesticity stuff, like the Woods seem to be giving Darren”

“Oh, the weasel words of the social worker! ‘Seem to be’, you cheeky cow!”

Polly laughed. “All right then, ARE giving him. Look, we get training in equivocation and talking bollocks!”

She was more serious then. “What we need is somewhere with people we can trust, people who will pass a CRB check, people a magistrate will accept as suitable. More than that, if her relatives get arsey, we need people with balls to stand their ground. There are judges who will argue that family comes first, no matter how shitty they are. As long as she is in the shelter, she’s comparatively safe.”

“Given their history of due care and attention to her welfare, why would they want her?”

“Oh Annie, for someone who has seen so much crap you are remarkably naíve at times. Look, if they take her in, they get social security payments. Money, that’s why they would want her, and then one or two of them might have other interests, like teaching her a lesson about being a grass.”

Ah, the old honour among thieves rubbish. Someone who talks to the police being seen as worth less than someone who rapes children. Lovely. I thought for a while, and the obvious answers weren’t really answers, as both Steph and I worked shifts, so a settled lifestyle couldn’t be there. Polly was clearly reading my mind.

“Yeah, tempting, yeah? But your shifts would make it a non-starter, and to be honest, she has to re-learn a lot of her behaviour. Her childhood’s been raped as well as her body, and she needs to learn how to be with normal people. I have an offer, just need to get it past the vetting. Look, Annie, get yourself off home and have a gentle afternoon, and I will call when I know more, OK?”

So a little later we set off as described, and found our home slightly cold and dark. Eric set the heating running while I drew curtains and then brewed tea. He set some Sibelius going on the stereo as I sorted a couple of potatoes to bake for lunch later, and then we simply did what couples do after late night parties: curled up on the sofa together and dozed.

Life went on a bit more sedately after that, the weather finally turning more agreeable as February guttered out, and I found myself working harder to fulfil Steph’s prophecy of filling the LBD properly. Diet, exercise, regular long rides out with Eric and the Woodruffs or rides down to see the girls, it was all working on my body. I think the moment of truth was at work one day, when Kirsty hissed in my ear.

“Try not to bend over, you slapper, or at least not in front of my Den, your arse is getting a bit too shaggable!”

“Oh aye, Ruthie? Didn’t know you swang that way!”

She grinned, and gave me a squeeze of the shoulder. “You know bloody well what I mean. I know you had the hots for him, it’s a bit naughty getting him lusting after you!”

“Sorry, love, I didn’t realise”

That brought a full-throated bellow of laughter.

“Annie, darling, you have almost made it to womanhood! Almost, but not quite”

“What do you mean?”

“Almost, in that while you have now got grown men losing their train of thought when you run too fast, or bend over in front of them, you still haven’t realised you can do it deliberately and for the sheer hell of it, yeah?”

I had to laugh at that. “Ruthie, you can be a right teasing bitch at times, aye?”

Another roar. “By George, she’s got it! Tease them, but only please the ones you really like. Tell me, how does your Eric like your new figure----oh, you dirty cow!”

When she had stopped laughing, she stepped forward to hug me. “You know, I can hardly remember Adam. This is you, it’s so much you, so RIGHT you, the rest, it’s like a bad dream, yeah?”

“Yeah, I know what you mean, love, but what you have to remember is that this is who I always was, who I always have been. I just never got the chance to let folk see, aye?”

She was looking serious now. “Well, they can see now, and even that fat cow who didn’t want you in the bogs can understand who you are. This is the hard bit now, isn’t it? Getting it all matched up”

“Kirsty, I assume by that you mean any operations and stuff, aye? Well, you are wrong there. I have done the hard bit, getting out of my shell. That has taken me over thirty years, and a quick bit of cosmetic nip and tuck is nothing compared to that. I have broken free, and if you want I can spend all day describing that, but just think: what did you think of my little black dress?”

“It suited you. Present from Eric, I suppose, he seemed to like it”

“It suited me. Not ‘it helped make you look female’, or ‘you really looked like a woman’, but a simple ‘suited you’. All sorts of odd people put on all sorts of odd clothes, and men dress up as women for all sorts of reasons, but all you saw was a girlfriend who was in a nice and flattering dress, aye? That’s the hard bit done, that’s getting the acceptance. I just need to do some trimming and I’m done.”

She was nodding. “Yeah, I see what you mean. Turning up here with a fanny is going to be a bit of an anti-climax, yeah?”

She started to laugh again, and I had obviously missed the joke.

“What’s the funny bit there, Kirsty? What’s got you pissing your knickers?”

She dragged herself back to near-sobriety.

“Obvious, innit? You come back with a new fanny, and show it to Eric…”

She was off again, and finally she managed to blurt out:

“Annie climax!”