CHAPTER 62
It was all too much. That was the short form, but the longer story was far worse. Kirst was there, my statement was taken, and all the time I felt like a piece of rubbish chucked out on the roadside. Who was I bloody kidding? I had splashed around in the happy little pond of my friends’ approval, and now I was out in the real world, and it had teeth.

“Jill?”

It was another fucking copper, some butch dyke with dark hair and oddly pale skin. Butch dyke–oh you hypocrite. But, then again, how can you be a dyke when you have a cock?

“Aye? What now?”

“Kirsty gave me a call, Said I might be able to help. I will tell you now, me and ‘im indoors were planning an evening in before she rang, aye? I’m Sergeant Johnson, Annie to friends”

Welsh, for fuck’s sake. What the hell was she doing in Shit City? “Look, I have given my statement, my partner here” (I squeezed Larinda’s hand)” is with me, OK? What can you do?”

Larinda squeezed my hand. “Lover, calm down a bit, yeah? Jill, look, I may be wrong, yeah, but…Annie, was it?”

“It is”

“Annie, can I guess that you are one of the friends the other sergeant, the short one, spoke about?”

“I suppose, yes, knowing Ruthie, yes I am”

“Jill, bloody well wake up, Annie here is…on the same journey you are”

Oh. All at once it was obvious. “Sorry, I got a bit…I just didn’t expect it to get so personal, like. So right in my fucking face”

Annie sat in one of the other chairs. “They’ve brought you tea, aye? I wouldn’t touch the Inspector’s coffee, it’s a bit potent. Look…I can’t and won’t sugar any pills, that wouldn’t be helpful. Who is your therapist?”

“Alec Devereaux. He’s one of the witnesses”

“And you had the McDuffs out with you as well. That was fortunate, aye? Stewie’s a bit…competent. Now, Ruthie has taken your statement, Nev and her are working through the others, so that’s the investigation in hand, and Doc Khan has done the business here, aye? That’s not what I am here for. Your man is a bit stressed himself, so all I am here for is as a sympathetic ear”

A civilian support worker came in, and she just nodded as he asked “Tea, Sarge?” and I looked at her; I could see what she was, but it was no more than a relaxed woman sitting by me, and I could suddenly see why she was there. This was what life could be; this was the other side of the Jordan. I had to ask.

“How? How did you get…shit, the word I want to use is ‘accepted’, but that sounds rude. They just seem to take you as, well, you know”

She smiled, and at that was almost pretty, a flush in her pale cheeks. “Just never gave them a choice, butt. Take me or leave me, aye? And round here, there’s a sort of history with girls like us”

Larinda nodded. “Alec was talking about some girl what died. Friend of Sally’s, yeah?”

There was a look in the sergeant’s eyes that was as old as sin. “That she was, and she didn’t die, she was killed”

“You knew her?”

“No, not really. Just…just recovered her body. Not the best day in my life, aye? Now, that is why we take these things so seriously, and why I am here. Neither Sally nor your man are out of the loop, so I am here to sort of fill in. After rape we offer a counselling service, so if you want we can look for someone else for you, or I can listen. I do a lot of that”

I looked round the suite, ate the soft colours and gentle textures of the walls and furnishings.

“But I haven’t been raped”

Larinda squeezed my hand. “Oh yes you have, love, as good as. Annie, true, yeah? Take away her humanity, make her a thing rather than a person, yeah. Jill, I got me a book the other day, and it’s a bit poncey, but he uses a word, ‘repudiation’, right, and it covers all this shit, all the hate, the violence. She’s bloody well right, it is rape”

Every now and again my lover could still surprise me, and each surprise simply brought into clearer view the depth of her love. The copper was nodding.

“Aye, indeed, that’s what it is, making someone less than a person. Jill, you are feeling that now, aye? Worthless, not real?”

I have felt that all my life. Back to the stages I had planned out? No, not with Larinda in my life. Circular thoughts span round me, memories of waiting for Siobhan to move away so I could leave the whole thing behind, and all that time Larinda’s hand in mine. That was the difference between my old days, the days of Rob looking through the bottom of a glass every night, and this person sitting in a skirt in a rape suite. An image came to me, that of a small boat in big seas, paying out a sea anchor to keep its head to the waves, so as not to broach, founder, sink…

Annie just sat in silence as I thought it through. “I can’t tell you what to do, Jill, all I can do is let you see that the world is not as shitty as it seems. People are better than you realise, and I think from the way you are dressed, and where you were, that you were starting to discover that, aye?”

John Forster. John Wilkins. Terry. I had hated them all, at one point, and the first for over forty years, and yet there they were, not just in my camp but actually fighting my battles. I noticed she had a set of rings.

“Your wife, she accepted you?”

That brought a complete change in her mood, and she laughed happily. “I’m definitely straight, girl! Hubby’s at home with the boy”

The laughter came back, and then she stopped, cocking her head to one side and grinning. “I was about to say ‘but some of my best friends are etc’, and in my case that would be absolutely true, so take it as read, aye? Look, this is a crossroads, watershed, whatever bloody metaphor you want, aye, and I can talk, listen, whatever, but the next bit is up to you. You can roll over, give up, die as the woman all of us can see here, or you can live. If you roll over, then turds like the ones who attacked you win, and that is not fair on you, aye? And there’s more”

She paused, serious once more. “Aye, there is more. You’ve given us a statement, and I am assuming–no, I am hoping, trusting, that you will be willing to go to court over this. Because the other side of things is that if you give up your chance at life, or don’t go through with the prosecution, either or both, then those people have won, and they will feel bolder, more willing to make someone else an unperson, aye? The last time they won, a girl died. Not again, not on my watch”

Larinda leant into me. “No. It don’t happen like that. She does what she needs to, but I go to court, Stewie, John, Sal, all the others, they go with me, and we put those fuckers away. By the way, did they get hurt much?”

Annie smiled tightly. “The one your Geordie mate hit lost a tooth. Apparently, looking at the CCTV, it was his boyfriend who stopped him putting the boot in. I think he might have tried to kill him, otherwise. Stewie’s, well, he has a broken nose and cheekbone”

Larinda nodded. “Good, and good that Alec stopped him, save him from stupid lawyers, yeah? Boyfriend, you said? It’s that obvious?”

Annie smiled. “Holding hands; bit of a clue, that. Jill, I am not going to ask you to decide now, but I think your partner here has said what I think. Ah, tea…thanks, Ted”

Larinda looked a little nervous. “Annie, can I ask a personal question?”

“He’s straight”

For the first time ever I saw Larinda truly embarrassed. Annie smiled again. “Look, everyone assumes, aye? Can I guess that you are straight too?”

Larinda sighed. “Yeah. I am, she’s not. Bit of a hurdle thingy, that. How did yours cope?”

“Eric? Slowly. We had a few hiccups at the start, but bless the man, he just kept his eyes on who we were and not what, aye? And then of course, we had the option of getting it sorted. You’re in a bit of a situation, aye?”

“Aye. Er, yeah. Just, look, Jill, lover…this is all hard work, yeah? But, well, I know we don’t really know this woman, but I think she’s kosher as, so….oh fuck. Look, what I am trying to say is that you have done things for me, things no man ever did, and I don’t mean the shagging, yeah, I mean treating me as real, and that’s what all this is about, innit? Those twats, they tried to make you unreal, and you ain’t, and it’s never been clearer to me than it is now, and I love you, and I don’t give a shit what you keep in your knickers. Well, I do, but that’s not the point”

She turned on her seat, moving slightly away from me.

“Gillian Carter, what I am trying to say is, shit, will you marry me?”