CHAPTER 103
I woke up yet again with an arm pinning me to the bed and a full bladder, and heard Kirsty copy me to the downstairs toilet as I found bliss upstairs. She joined me a few minutes later as I worked the kettle in the kitchen. I got a hug.

“Thanks, Annie, that was what we needed. Den’s been really down since, you know…”

“Has he given you any idea why?”

She looked down, and her voice was suddenly very small.

“Yes…”

I sat her down at the kitchen table, tea in front of her.

“And? Not just the bomb, is it?”

There was strain in her eyes as she looked up.

“No, it isn’t, you’re right, Annie, as bloody usual. Look, has Den ever said much to you about what happened to him up home?”

“No, not really, but I know it was a bit of whistleblowing about bent coppers, aye? The Cuthbert family?”

She nodded. “So many on the take, there, so deep, yeah? They almost owned some of the towns. Worse than Poulson, yeah?”

“Who?”

“Den mentioned them, I looked it up. Council building contracts in return for bribes, big thing up there a few decades ago. This was different, though. The way he describes it, it was more ‘Get Carter’. People disappeared. Certain coppers got new cars, or bigger houses, or their kids went to private schools, and Den was too stupid to be pulled into it”

“What do you mean?”

Kirsty smiled, a weary one, but there was a twinkle back in her eye.

“My Den, yeah, he’s not stupid, but he’s not that sharp, Annie. I mean, he’s learnt, yeah? But back then, some mate says he had a win on the horses, or the pools, or his uncle died…”

She drifted away again, sipping her tea. When she spoke again, her gaze was distant, her voice distracted.

“Then he met Helen. Young man, full of idealism, even though he’s already looking at his sergeant’s exams, he’s still Mister Pollyanna, yeah? Good-looking woman, a bit older; what is it the Yanks call them? Cougars? Yeah, so there’s this fucking milf picks up her big, strong, soppy boy and screws his brains out whenever he’s up for it, and believe you me…”

There was a grin, then, a flash of the old Ruth.

“When my Den’s up for it, well, fuck me, he’s UP, yeah? Oh….well, fuck me, yeah, well, of course he does. Want a tissue? Where was I?”

“In bed with hubby, aye?”

A dreamy smile. “Yeah…no. This woman, this Helen Dodd, yeah, she gets what she wants from my boy, and he’s getting what he thinks he wants, and he’s head over, yeah? Absolutely smitten. So she gets careless, and one day she’s realising she’s late, and there’s already problems there. I mean, he looks anywhere near another woman, and she’s got the claws out, but they always make up the nice way…and she’s a dirty, dirty bitch”

Kirsty cocked her head. “Annie, what do you think of me? Really? I mean, I know I have a bit of a reputation, yeah, station bike, yeah? But that’s not how I am, really, I just never found the right bloke…”

I thought she was near tears, just then, but she suddenly perked up.

“Found him now though, and I did get a few test drives in before, yeah? I don’t fuck around when I’m with someone, Annie, I just never saw the point of keeping something going if it didn’t work, and then I met him, and I can’t…I don’t want to have to imagine being without him, yeah?”

She busied herself with tissues and tea for a moment.

“This woman, she’s already got a steady second income, yeah? And my Den, he’s so sweet, he takes everything she says, swallows it up, and then he comes in one day, and there’s the test kit in the bin in the bathroom, and she’s up the duff, and he is such a kid, he does what he sees as the decent thing, and he gets the ring, does the bended knee, and that bitch says yea, and all the time she’s got her date at the clinic, and four weeks after my Den gets down on his knee she flushes his kid down the fucking sewer, and she doesn’t say a fucking word, yeah?”

A glare, not at me, and a pause.

“He’s soft, is my Den, he wants kids, and I didn’t realise I did till I got caught, and what I want is kids with him, with my Den”

Another pause, and this time the glare was at me, not nastily, but very, very direct.

“He’s our Den, though, isn’t he? I mean, I thought you were a bender when I saw how you looked at him, I didn’t realise…”

“You can’t have Eric, aye? Got my man, keeping him”

She picked up my hand, kissed the palm.

“And he makes you very happy, yeah? I can’t say how happy I am for you, love, you found yourself, and you found him, and it’s all just so RIGHT, yeah? And I got my man…but she was taking the piss, as well as the pay from those arsehole Cuthberts, and when my Den, he starts to realise how rotten things are…just hints, yeah? The pissed driver who walks out of custody, the beatings in public places with no witnesses, all that shit. And he’s not stupid, yeah? Just innocent…so he talks to someone from outside the Force, and one thing leads to another, and of course Helen fucking Dodd is owned freehold by the cunts, and there’s…”

She was crying now.

“So he goes to the trial, and at the end of it she shouts at him, and she tells him how it was no miscarriage, it was a fucking abortion, why would any woman want a kid off such a loser…and he’s out of there, out of the North-East, home lost, kid dead…”

There was a cough at the door, and my beloved man was there.

“Kirsty, love, from what I’ve seen, he is as smitten with you as you clearly are with him. There tea in that pot, love?”

Eric sat with us. “We have all had our false starts, and me worse than most. Took me a lot of mistakes before I could see what was in front of me, yeah? You, Kirsty, you never had that problem. You saw exactly what was there, and you picked him up and did all the right things, so what has your past got to do with anything? If you had been a bloke, they’d have called you a hero. Den can see you as you are, and all your kids will see is ‘Mum’, so work from there. Now, what are we going to do with him?”

There was a rumble of wheels as the man himself appeared.

“I don’t know what you want to do with me, but tea and a decent breakfast will be a good start. Annie, that was good last night. Put a few things straight in my head, seeing you with your family. I think I need a bit of a boot up the arse here…Listen, my pet, you are the best thing in my life, but you do have to learn to lower your voice at times.”

He picked himself out of his wheelchair and staggered across to the table.

“Fuck that thing, I’m a man, not a bag of groceries. Johnson, tea, my man, and make it snappy”

“One croc of tea coming up!”

Den groaned as he settled himself into a chair. “So, now you know, Annie”

I blushed slightly. “I already did know a bit, but just a hint of it, aye? As in, who was arrested?”

“Yeah, well, stupid bitch could never take rejection. I kicked her out when I realised she was on the take with the rest of the scum.”

“She hurt you, though, aye?”

I didn’t want to be too specific, but he knew what I meant. His child. He smiled, gently, distractedly.

“You know, pet, I could hear you sometimes. It was odd, I wasn’t there, I wasn’t on the planet, but I could hear you talking to me as I was lying there, and you kept saying ‘You gotta be a dad’…”

Kirsty was crying again, just as the next wave of people came into the kitchen, Ginny, and Kate and Shan, and once more I realised there had been eavesdropping, and as Den stumbled through his speech about how being a father was all he ever wanted, apart, of course, from the woman he loved, a small blonde girl pushed her way in and just wrapped her arms round him in comfort.