CHAPTER 31
I was getting used to it. The feel of a warm presence next to me in the morning, the knowledge that I was no longer alone. I slipped as quietly as I could from the bed, and made my way via the bathroom to the kitchen.

Rachel was already up, a coffee beside her as she sat at the kitchen table, and she raised an eyebrow as I came in.

“You don’t mind?”

“Don’t be so daft, Rach. That’s what it’s there for. You itching to be off or something?”

“No, Jill, just thinking. I didn’t sleep that well last night. No, wasn’t the bed, I just have a lot to process right now”

“Such as?”

“Well, you, for a start. You’ve made quite a few waves in my thinking, you know. New life for you, new woman, and fuck me she’s a keeper, that one, and then here I am, same shit, so many days of it. That’s the phrase, yeah, SSDD, but it’s not, it’s SSSD, same shit, same day. We talked quite a bit, last night, me and your girl. You do know how stuck on you she is?”

I nodded. “I am not exactly, you know, unhappy with her. She said you’d spoken”

Rachel took a gulp of her coffee. “She has a way of getting at things, but you know that, don’t you? Told her more than I meant to… What do I do, Jill? I mean, there’s those friends of yours, joined at the hip, there’s you two, and then there’s the fucking maiden aunt here”

“Rach, you don’t know half of any of our stories. Took me a bloody long time before I could accept Terry, like. He’s…”

I took a quick look in the living room, just to check, and lowered my voice.

“He’s got a foot on two different buses, like”

Her eyes widened. “Bi? Bloody hell! And Karen is OK with that?”

“Karen loves him to bits, and to be honest as far as she is concerned his sexuality is irrelevant. I mean, if he were to sleep around, it would be the act rather than the recipient, aye? Oh, and apparently he has a HUGE you know what!”

Rachel laughed out loud. “Every now and again, you say something that just screams ‘girl’. Sometimes you manage to achieve ‘bitch’! I see what you meant last night about lessons, but here’s one for you”

She put on a mock-stern expression. “Length is something men obsess about, and while they are telling you it’s what you do rather than what you have, they still want to be hung like an Arab stallion. And, as usual with men, they have no idea at all. Length is irrelevant. It’s girth, my girl, thickness…as long as he’s not hung like a tin of tuna…”

She couldn’t keep it up, and the giggles came. “That was a rite of passage, Jill. Sitting with a girlfriend and talking about men’s bits, yeah?”

I smiled at her as I busied myself with kettle and teapot. “Not really relevant to me, is it? I fully intend to limit my experiences of them to one”

“Not even a test drive, you know, afterwards?”

“Nope”

Her face tightened a little. “Yeah, and who am I to advise anyone about men, with my history, yeah?”

“Plenty out there, plenty good ones, pet”

“Yeah, and look at my judgement, wonderful, ain’t it?”

She cradled her coffee before her mouth, almost hiding her expression, her face.

“I wasn’t always the ravishing wet dream that sits before you, Jill. A lot of this was hard work, saying ‘fuck you’ to the bastard, yeah? Make him regret what he did. This is what you could have had if you treated me right. Thing is, it sort of turned into a full-time job, suit of armour business. Lonely pretty girl, like those stupid press stories”

I remembered my thoughts the evening before, about isolation, beauty and arrogance, and knew without a doubt that she was the exception.

“Rach…look, I’m not looking to be a matchmaker, or anything stupid like that, aye? But, well, you have friends here, real friends. I’m not saying we’ve got some special bloke stored up, cause we haven’t, but, well, sometimes it’s easier to meet new people if you are in a group already?”

She laughed, and started to sing softly. “Has he got a friend, has he got a friend, fooooooor me…”

“Pardon?”

“Old song I like, Richard and Linda Thompson. He’s a miserable fucker, but good way with words. Look, I wasn’t looking for a trawl around your single mates. If I ever find one, it’ll be on my own terms, yeah, but yes, if you have room in your busy social whirl for a gooseberry, I’m in”

I grinned. “Got a bike and a tent?”

She raised an eyebrow. “The first, yes, actually. Use it to go down the gym”

“Eh?”

“I have to work to keep this vision of loveliness intact. I used to drive down there, get on the stationary bike, pedal away, and then one day I thought, you know, all that energy wasted. Save myself some petrol, I do, and ride down. Means I spend less time in the gym, but still keep the body looking right”

“You don’t like the gym?”
“Fuck me no. Women’s changing rooms are full of soppy tarts doing their make-up before they do their work-out. I mean, how fucking stupid is that. Oh, for fuck’s sake, Jill. Look at me. REALLY look at me. How much slap do you see on me, normally? Very little. That’s what I have to teach you, your girl lesson that you said you didn’t need. Karen’s got a taste for lippy, but I think that’s more of a two fingers to the world thing, and Larinda’s like me. Some of us find what suits us, some of us don’t, and some of us go our own way entirely”

She took another mouthful of her coffee. “What I’m trying to say, girl, is that it struck me last night that all of you lot, you have all found your own way, and I am jealous. So, if you let me hang around with you, as you offered, well, perhaps some of that might rub off on me. So thank you, and if you have a bike thing some time, I might join you”

A hug came from behind me. “Supposed to bring it me in bed”

Rachel laughed. “I thought I heard him do just that, last night”

“Tea, not nooky, you dirty-minded strumpet! What’s this about bikes?”

“Thinking of a ride out, take Rachel along. Could find you a bike too, if you want. At least one of mine would fit you”

“Where to?”

I had the answer immediately. “Just thought…what about Arundel? Take the train down, ride up to the WWT place, have a look at the castle and the cathedral, oh, aye, and there are some ace book shops there”

Rachel was puzzled. “WWT?”

“Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust”

Larinda was nodding. “Like that place at Barnes? Yeah, I’d be up for that, as long as it’s flat and you carry everything. No, not like that, not saying it as a man’s job, yeah, just as the expert cyclist’s duty to us lesser mortals”

Karen and Terry were coming down the stairs, and I poured them a tea each before starting the breakfast rituals. Larinda broached the subject.

“Jill’s talking about a bird-watching cycle out. You up for that?”

Terry looked slightly off. “Bit busy for a newbie in London, I think”

“Nah, down Arundel, she says”

Karen perked up immediately.

“Ooh, they have a boating lake, with proper rowing boats! You can row me around, and I shall wear a floaty hat and carry a parasol!”

He laughed. “No, James can do that”

“Wear a hat?”

“No, silly, the rowing. Jill, this reserve, is it the same lay=out as the other one?”

“Aye, but I think there’s more of everything. James should like it, and then there’s the town”

Karen was nodding. “Tell you what, I think me and Larinda here are the same size…”

“I am not wearing no shiny shorts!”

“No, I was thinking more of a skort, or some mountain bike shorts. I don’t wear that stuff, neither of us do”

Rachel raised a hand. “Please miss, I do!”

The ironically-raised eyebrows from the rest of us set her off in a fit of giggles that seemed at last to break the dark mood that had hovered around her, and breakfast was one of those moments of friendship that should be bottled and kept for darker days. We arranged to meet at the station the following Saturday, and eventually I was left with a house empty, save for my new partner, and it felt absolutely right that she was there.

I spent the week, apart from work, sorting out an old mountain bike for Larinda, fitting it with road tyres rather than knobblies, and the labour left me feeling happier than I had for a very long time. All those thoughts, the simple plans I had drawn up, the exit strategy, all floated away like morning mist. I was wanted, I was needed, and here I was doing something material for the woman I now knew I loved. Life was good, far better than I had dreamt it could be, even allowing for my issues. I could almost face keeping my ‘bits’ as they were, as long as I could move out of hiding and be myself.

Almost.

That Saturday morning, I peeled the duvet from her body, ignoring her shrieks, and smugly accepting her cries of “Bitch!”, and we rode together down to the station. A parcel had arrived midweek for her, holding a baggy pair of MTB shorts from Karen, and she had been spot-on with the sizing. Panniers loaded, we found our way into the cycle space, such as it was, where we found Rachel, and after a quick hug Larinda settled into me on our double seat and promptly went back to sleep. I shook her awake, once more.

“I have to tell you something about James, love”

“About his problem? Terry told me”

“He’s a good boy, love”

She kissed the end of my nose. “How could he be anything else? Now, let me sleep, tiger”

Past the airport, through Crawley and Horsham, and finally down the Arun Valley to our station. The castle loomed grandly to one side, but it was overshadowed by the trio awaiting us. Once more I saw James switching his focus as his mind and parents prompted his eyes. Indeed, Karen may have been his stepmother, but she was very much his Mum. So gently she steered him…

“Hello, you’re Rob, aren’t you? I have a bird book”

Just for a second or three, Larinda didn’t exist for him, but then he turned.

“Larinda. That’s your name. Not Von. Von is gone”

She smiled. “You are James, and you like birds”

His smile broke my heart, for at once he was handsome, a teenaged boy to make young girls swoon, and then it was gone. “Yes. I have a book. I made a book”

Terry was gentle. “James, we need to ride our bikes now, to see the birds, OK?”

“OK. To see the birds”

He was still in lockdown, just a little, not even noticing Rachel, , and as we sorted out our own bikes Rachel quietly asked “Is he OK, you know, in traffic?”

“He’s brilliant, actually. When he was very young he couldn’t balance, but something in his nature just clicked with road riding. Odd, that”

“Sort of like an idiot savant, yeah, but he’s no idiot, is he?”

“Not at all, love. I want to see his bird book. Come on, tea at the reserve, aye?”

The car park was packed, and to my astonishment more cars were parked all down the lane. I used one of my group discount vouchers to get us in, and as I paid I asked the cashier what the crowd was all about.

“You not looked on Birdline?”

“We are birdwatchers, pet, not twitchers”

She dropped her voice to a whisper. “Ah, sorry. Just, there’s an American coot in, so all the trainspotter weirdos are here. And it’s decided to park its arse on the water right in front of the visitor centre.”

I sighed. “You aren’t impressed then?”

She shook her head. “Look, I started here as a volunteer, yeah? Gorgeous place, and all the birds are fun, and I mean, who can ever be bored by something like a kingfisher? And this lot, they turn up, they take loads of pictures, and they’re gone, half an hour tops. They come in, they tick off one bird, and they ignore everything else, the saddos. Don’t like ‘em”

I smiled. “Don’t worry, we’re here for a few hours at least. No ticking, I promise”

Except for James, and he had an excuse. We made our way towards the café, and it was packed with a crowd consisting almost entirely of men, in a sort of slow Brownian motion as they took their pictures and pulled back, not so much in some charitable act to allow another bird-collector his tick, but more to get out and back to their cars, to hare off to whatever other rarity their message service had announced. I turned to Larinda.

“No chance of that tea, love”

Karen grinned. “Flasks in the panniers, Ji---Rob”

We turned away from the throng, to head out into a more peaceful area, and Rachel grabbed my elbow.

“Rob, look, in the camouflage jacket”

“They all have camouflage tops, Rach”

“No, there, on the left, right at the window!”

“Fuck me…”

It was MAC.