CHAPTER 18
It was Neil who drove me to the airport in the end, Mam eased into the front seat of his car, and it was an emotional farewell in the car park as I insisted she didn’t walk into the terminal building. I wanted to be in control, and tears were not something I wanted photographed at the security gate.

I walked away from the car after a last hug from both of them, Mam’s last admonition not to do anything stupid ringing in my ears. The flight was uneventful, the plane coming into Gatwick over the Mormon Tabernacle and rocking slightly on landing. Once I was out, I gave Larinda a call.

“Hiya, lover, speaking English again yet?”

“Better than mockney!”

“I do NOT talk like that! I’m a Penge girl, South London, innit?”

“Penge…explains a lot. Always thought that place sounded like some sort of animal disease. Anyway, train goes in ten minutes”

“You got my breakfast with you?”

“Bloody hell, woman! You are incorrigible”

“Well, I haven’t had a good corridge for nearly a week, and I want to make the most of it before you slice and dice, yeah? Want me to bring a curry round?”

“Aye, would be nice. See you at?”

“About six? How do you want me?”

“Smiling will do”

“Jill...can you do me a favour?”

There was a catch in her voice.

“What?”

“Just…dress for me, yeah? Look, I know I didn’t ask, that time, but, just once, yeah? Let me see who I’m dealing with?”

I held that thought all the way home, and once in I set the water to heating as I stripped off. I looked at my chest…

Larinda came clattering in the unlocked door, skirt tight and heels high, obviously making the best effort she knew to catch my interest. She went straight to the kitchen, calling out a hello as she went, while I sat in the lounge shitting myself.

“There’s wine in the fridge, kid! Pour some for us?”

“Pour it yourself if you want, but I’ve got a couple of bottles of Kingfisher for the curry, so come and pour that instead, yeah?”

I got to my feet, heart pounding, and walked into the kitchen, my heels ticking on the tiled floor. She pointedly kept her back to me as I walked in, skirt swishing across my nylons, and I turned my own back on her as I brought out some beer glasses.

I nearly dropped them when she squeezed my arse.

“Not stockings then, eh? Thought you’d be making an effort”

“Larinda, this is how I dress. Stockings, shit like that, they aren’t what it’s about, aye? It’s not about sex”

She turned my head and kissed me.

“You are standing there in three-inch stilettos even more fuck-me than what I’ve got on, and you say it’s not about sex?”

“Look, I like shoes, OK, and they are totally feminine, and…”

“Oh sod it, Jill, I am NOT going to work around a pair of bloody passionkillers. Brought these for you, they’re hold-ups, so don’t have to worry about waistline, yeah? Chop-chop, get ‘em on. No bra neither…same reason?”

“Yeah, what do I need one for?”

“I’m dishing up now, so get changed and get back, right?”

We sat in the dining room eating properly, as if I had been transported back to my mother’s, and I noticed that Larinda was also doing some noticing.

“How much hair have you got rid of, Jill?”

“Er, just about all of it”

“Well…look, here’s some tips, yeah, just not meant nasty like. You don’t suit green, and that dress is very green. Avoid hooped patterns, yeah, make a girl look fat”

“I am fat…”

“Cuddly. And I will warn you, I want cuddles tonight, not just shagging, OK?”

“Well, I have had a long day, so don’t mind”

That grin was back. “Didn’t say I don’t want no shagging, did I? Want to be corridged properly and go home sore again!”

It was a nice curry, and she’d brought some films along as well as the beers, and so we settled onto the sofa as some chickflick or other started, till her hand ended up just there, and my skirt went up, and she went down, and, well, stockings are much handier than tights. Partway through, as she knelt before me, she lifted off long enough to say a few words, while I could still think.

“This must be the kinkiest thing I have ever done…”

“That’s the problem, I don’t want to be kinky, I just want to be normal, like”

She stopped my thought processes a minute after that, and then snuggled into me after straightening my skirt.

“You OK with this?” she whispered.

“Why did you ask for this, why now?”

“Shit, Carter, it’s just…I told you, I want to hang onto you, whatever you do with yourself, to yourself. There’s more to me than sex. I just wanted…wanted to see what you were, what I should expect, yeah? And no, I wasn’t sure, but no, this isn’t a turn-on. So why don’t we get comfy, out of this stuff, yeah?”

“Aye, come on”

I helped her up, and we kissed again, and then there was a sort of stumbling collapse into the bedroom, as skirts and stockings, blouses and shoes, and a solitary bra fell by the wayside, and I had another twinge of guilt about Von before realising that this, this was the right thing, far sweeter and more natural than things had ever been between me and Siobhan. As we lay in our sweat, hours later, she murmured into my ear as we held each other.

“I tried, Jill. I don’t know what I am going to do when you start changing over, but I gave it my best shot, and it’s weirding me out. I don’t know. I just don’t know…but I don’t want you lost”

She paused for a while as she caressed my chest.

“Shaving don’t work, yeah. Can still feel stubble. We shall have to get you waxed”

Up and down, just like my moods, and I wondered exactly how hard she was finding it to deal with my needs. The dressing up had felt awkward, for it had never been for sexual purposes, just for comfort, for a semblance of feeling right about myself, and I knew full well how bad I looked. Dressing in front of another person had been a first for me, and it had left me nervous and awkward. That wasn’t what I wanted; when a lover next lifted my skirt, I wanted it to reveal me whole.

“How quickly will you change, Jill?”

I laughed, softly. “I don’t even know if I will, kid; the quacks have to decide if I am, what’s that phrase? A suitable case for treatment, like. They might say no”

“What happens if they do?”

Stage five happens, Larinda, and all debts are paid. I couldn’t tell her that, though. Some things are just not to be shared.

She was up, as usual, before the alarm, so then I was up, and then down, and tea was drunk, and we walked hand in hand, but dressed differently, to the station, where I saw her off with a kiss that made me so glad she had cleaned her teeth.

“Can’t come down tonight, lover, got to sort out a few things at home, yeah…”

And she was off through the ticket barrier, leaving me wondering whether the things she had to sort out were in her house or in her head. I rode the short distance to the office, and picked up the day’s folders. One pub, one farmer, and I knew the latter would be a pile of ill-structured and mismanaged shite that would keep me there for an hour or two of unpaid overtime. Bollocks.

Neither MAC nor Rachel were about, and so I set off for the pub, where they insisted on feeding me bacon and egg sandwiches as I shuddered over how close the place was sailing to insolvency as the tenant was fleeced of almost all of his income by the management chain that actually owned the place. She was trying everything, from decent food to poker and video racing nights, but as the company raised the rent, she was forced to put up her prices, and the drinkers were falling away to the cheaper supplies in the supermarkets.

That was one of the less obvious parts of my job: I got to see business from the inside out, observed the way the big fish used their muscle to screw everyone else over. If a bill was unpaid, or just late, it would be one to a major company, not a one-man-band, and they did it because they could. Bastards.

I found her some extras on ‘use of home as office’ and told her to claim them on her next return, before setting off to the farmer, the sandwiches seeing me through the need for a lunch break, and it was everything I had expected. Not even a cup of tea, as the man ate his tea at the same table I was working at, and I was left in a mood that was only slightly worsened when his cat pissed in the cardboard box of purchase invoices. I was so, so tempted to disallow the lot, just BECAUSE, but I held my temper and disallowed his car.

“What do you mean? It’s an agricultural vehicle!”

“It’s a car. They are non-deductible, and always have been”

“It’s not a car, it’s a farm vehicle!”

“It’s a Porsche Cayenne. The fact that it’s a four by four doesn’t make it an agricultural vehicle. It’s got four wheels and seats behind the driver and carries less than twelve people, and it is designed as a people carrier”

“I use it for work!”

“Mr Bowen, I looked in the window as I walked past it. It has leather seats, and a ‘Baby on Board’ sticker to go with the child seat in the back. I shall be sending you a notice of assessment once I’ have written the visit up. Good day, Mr Bowen”

“How do you fucking sleep at night?”

“Wonderfully, Mr Bowen, due to my purity of spirit”

“Don’t you be cheeky! I pay your fucking wages!”

I sighed. “Mr Bowen, you were told in writing that it was not allowed when you claimed your first car back, and again the second time. This is the third time you have made the same so-called mistake, and this time I will be speaking to my boss to see if we can add a nice little surcharge for your recklessness. That do you, Mr Bowen? Next time, it might be the Magistrates’ Court, aye?”

I smiled nicely and made my exit, and some miles further on found myself in front of an off-licence. I looked through the window at the bottles, and heard Mam. Don’t do anything stupid.

It wasn’t stupid at all. Two bottles were just enough to answer Bowen’s question.