CHAPTER 11
That was all I needed from that weekend, but not all I wanted. Ideas came thick and fast, promises followed behind, and Arwel astonished me by promising to sort out the flowers. It was only later that I discovered the sly old bugger had relatives with a flower shop.

Our second night was spent in the pub, as is only natural, but this time Merry had gone home, and it was a much more sedate evening. Alice had her foot firmly on the brakes with her husband and stepson, and I suspect the hangover hadn’t been forgotten by Eric.

We sat outside for a while, watching the dark-red grooves in the mountains deepen in hue as the sun left them, and as it grew dark Jim, the sly little bugger, slipped his fleece around Ali’s shoulders. Eric had sprung for a chicken Kiev, and so I had to have a wodge of cheesy garlic bread that would have had Ginny nailing my hands to the table, and it was all just about perfect.

“Just a thought, Eric, love…what about kilts?”

“Pardon?”

“For the boys, you know, next September, that day in church, aye?”

He was suddenly a lot more serious in his expression. “I have something to tell you on that one…”

What the hell? “Go ahead…”

“A confession, really. Just, I wasn’t sure whether things…medical procedures would be cleared in time, and so I had words with Simon, and we sort of agreed a fall-back plan. He is willing to sort out a civil partnership thing instead, if it all goes wrong”

“Why is that a confession?”

“Well, it’s the sort of ceremony that gay couples have, and I didn’t want you to think…that I thought…shit, I am screwing this up, aren’t I?”

“Eric Johnson, you sorted out an emergency plan, and you kept it quiet because of concerns that it might upset me? How, exactly, is that screwing up?”

I had to snog him for that, of course, which brought a round of disapproving noises from the infants. I delivered a Paddington to their table.

“At some point you will find out why people snog, if you are lucky, aye?”

Alison just smiled happily, and both Jim and Darren actually blushed. Oh. I wondered whether the latter had been doing it with Shan, or if that was the reason for Ali’s earlier glare at him. Adolescence is wasted on the young.

We spent the next day high on the ridge, revelling in the blast of air over the northern edge, and the only people not hand in hand were young Suzy, Stevie and Darren. Arwel’s fitness surprised me, and I envied the way he and Alice fitted together so seamlessly. If my marriage, or civil partnership, or sinful cohabitation, worked half as well I would be content. All the time, I was thinking back to old Adam, his pain and daily sense of loss and failure, sloughed off like old skin. I started to laugh, and Eric asked why.

“Just a stupid thought, love. I was thinking of me as a bit like a snake, aye, shedding my old life like a skin, sort of peeling Adam off me”

Eric laughed at that. “And you thought, not so much skin as several tons of blubber?”

“Exactly! Like flensing a bloody whale, aye? You know, I am getting closer to that twelve dress size every week. Trouble is the width of my shoulders…”

He turned me for a quick kiss. “They work very well for me, love, especially for hanging things off their front”

The kiss included a quick squeeze of one of the things he liked, and I had to fight the urge to throw him down on the turf and ravish him under the scudding white clouds. He noticed.

“Keep that thought warm for later, love”

I did, and that night he left me sweaty, and sticky in ways I thought had gone, and hoped would actually soon be gone forever, as long as the feelings stayed, the passion I had discovered for every aspect of my man, every inch of his body, and not just THAT bit. The frustration remained, of course, my need to be as real as I could be, to take him into me, to fit ourselves together as we had our lives. Soon, Annie, soon, be patient.

We left the others the next day in stages, the Powells first at the campsite and then Arris’ brood as they turned off for Reading, and finally the Halls at the M23 junction. There was a bath with my name on it waiting to be filled, but firstly I would have to leave Darren at his new grandparents’. Naomi was waiting, kettle boiling as we entered the kitchen, and I realised she must have sat there with it ready-heated just waiting for the sound of tyres in the driveway.

“Nan, can I give her a ring?”

“Of course, Darren, but unload your stuff from the car first.”

He was off like a shot for his bags, and Naomi fixed me with her own patent stare.

“Two young girls in the party, am I correct?”

I grinned, and gave her the story.

“Ah, he has the makings of a fine and honourable chap, Annie, and you of a first-class mother”

“But…oh, you know what I mean, and I think I know what you do, aye?”

She just smiled. “Drink your tea, dear, you will need to be at home soon and unwinding. The real world awaits you tomorrow Biscuit?”

There was a small pile of mail against the inside of our front door, and as Eric sorted the laundry, I sorted the post.

“One from Doc Raj, love!”

“What’s he say?”

“Er…wants to see me Thursday, just me, no strange men”

“Then I better be elsewhere. I have work that day anyway, but let me know as soon as, yeah?”

I do not know what it was, even to this day, but that weekend left me in a state of need that I had never before experienced, and our clean bedclothes were in need of changing shortly after we got between them. Well, not that shortly, but soon enough. It was almost as if I was trying to turn physically female by sympathetic magic, in which the act and acts of our lovemaking might transform me without having to trouble the surgeon. All I can guess is that my mind had been somehow released after the weekend with my family, and was trying to show me how utterly female I was. Either that, or Eric was just too gorgeous to be left untouched.

Both were true, of course.

I duly turned up for my appointment with the sleek man, and his gaze travelled over me from cycle shoes to ponytail.

“Yes.”

“Yes what, Raj?”

He slid a piece of paper across to me. “Just, ‘yes’, Annie. My work is done, Sally’s is finished, you are now fuelled and ready for takeoff. This is a revised letter, to whom it may concern, etc, declaring your status. All I need from you now is a simple answer to one question”

“Yes.”

“Yes to what, Annie?”

“Yes, I want the surgery”

He laughed, and opened a folder, indicating another sheet of paper. “Already signed, woman!”

I looked hard at him. “You knew all along, didn’t you?”

He smiled, and there was true happiness there. “Of course, my dear, as did Sally, as would anybody. But, be aware, this is only one aspect of your treatment. Tell me, do you still collapse at the smell of roast meat? Here, take some water and a tissue. That answers my question.”

He leant back in his chair. “Annie, you have been under treatment for two separate things here, but Sally and I , we are efficient, yes? We treat the person, or try to, not the symptoms. I will be blunt…”

“You always are, aye?”

“Oh yes indeed. The PTSD is not something that is cured, not like your physical problem. What we can do is ameliorate it, which in this case involves removing a major stress source. The rest…the rest is just that you try to live a good life. I believe your masters have recognised that in changing your duties, yes? The schools business? That is all to the good. What I am driving at, in my pedantic and slow way, is that I am as finished with you as I can be. What I would like to do is to discharge you, but as I have explained you will always have an issue that does not depart even at the sound of wedding bells”

“What are you suggesting, Raj?”

“Simple, Annie. You do not come to see me by appointment, I do not have you here every so many weeks, but you retain the right to call me if your issues rise up again. Is that acceptable?”

“More than acceptable, Raj; I am touched by your concern”

“As I am touched by how pretty you have become, Miss Price. May I presume an invitation to the wedding?”

I grinned. “Oh yes, but I am afraid all places on the honeymoon are taken!”