CHAPTER 6
The music ran down, and we gathered together for the drive back. I collared Karen as she started shovelling things into her usual huge bag.

“You heading straight home, lass?”

“Yeah, work tomorrow, and school, usual life-goes-on stuff. Jill, this was good, good for James, too, yeah?”

She paused, and looked at me with a sharpness that suggested she needed to clear the air about something important, and it came to me.

“Karen…Terry, aye? That’s not a problem, the tears, like. I understand, and it takes a big man to be so caring, a real man to love his son that way, so no biggy, like”

Her mouth worked a couple of times, and then she shook her head and grinned. “What the hell do you know about how men think, woman?”

A hug, a kiss, and she was away with her family, and I saw that James was still in our world as opposed to his own. Darren had done so well with him; I went to find him, but all I could see were Annie and her husband, Eric.

“I was looking for Darren, to say ta for what he did with James. Is he about?”

Eric grinned. “Just popped out to show Chantelle some of the night sky”

“But it’s overcast…ah. Teenagers, aye?”

Another grin. “Oh yes indeed, and that flame burns ever so hot. Me and the missus here, we’re a bit past that stage”

Annie raised an eyebrow. “Really? I could always swap you for a younger model, aye?”

“Who’d put up with your shoe fetish, AYE?”

“Banjos, Johnson. Banjos. Game, set and match”

They were all mad, obviously so. Annie turned back to me. “That was all new to you, wasn’t it, what your girlfriend called you?”

I nodded. “Set me thinking, like. I mean, aye, she’s spot on–“

“She’s behind you” came Larinda’s voice.

I took her hand and drew her to me. “No, seriously, pet. It’s a decision we will have to make before things get too complicated”

I couldn’t help it, and the laughter came. “Complicated, bloody hell aye! Look, lass, the lad is supposed to ask the lass to marry him, but neither of us is, well, I am legally, but, shite, I think we’ve already said that bit. Just, aye, at the moment we can still marry properly. Well, as properly as two sets of skirts can, that is. But if we wait until after, then it’s a Civil Partnership, which isn’t the same thing, and anyway, if we do it before, does it get cancelled when we get to after, and are they going to change the law, and, arse, there’s so much going round my mind right now. Just that one word from you, love”

“Well, I am not marrying you just to have it turned off when you get it sliced off, yeah?”

Eric winced. “I don’t care how deeply I am involved with things like that, it still makes me clench. Look, all I really know in terms of law like that is from a position after any changes, and the wife’s legal expertise is a bit criminal rather than civil”

Annie nodded.” But I do believe we know someone who knows someone in the trade”

Eric looked blank, and then the lights came on. “Of course! I’ll give Sar a shout, see what she can find out”

Larinda cuddled into me. “So that was a sort of proposal, then?”

I squeezed her. “Nope. Just a Star Trek moment, realising I have been assimilated. Anyway, you already asked me, like, so I thought I should return the favour, just in case you'd forgotten. Annie, that would be helpful, but who?”

“Solicitor we know, aye? Bit familiar with girls like us. Leave us your number and we will do what we can. Now, time to collect love’s young dreams”

Larinda smiled at her. “You don’t worry they’ll get a bit too frisky, left on their own?”

Annie’s face went hard, just for an instant, and Eric looked away, but all Annie said was “No. Not at all. It’s a trust issue, and believe me they’ve earned it. You back in two weeks?”

I thought for a few seconds. The music, itself, wasn’t what I would cross the road to hear, but it had done things for James, and perhaps…

“We’ll let you know, like. See what Karen and James are up to”

We took our leave, and as we moved towards the car Larinda whispered “Assimilated? I’ll do some of that as soon as we have the bedroom door shut, lover, and trust me, there’s no Borg in me. Though I do fancy a bit of Carter…”

Thank god she was doing the driving; I corpsed all the way home. There was no way I was going to explain the joke to the other three, though. I did let them in on one secret.

“Chaps, we have an announcement. We aren’t really in the ways of being conventional, like, as should be bloody obvious, so here’s the deal: we’ve sort of agreed to get wed. God knows how and where, but, well, the principle’s the thing, aye?”

Alec laughed. I turned in my seat to see him happily holding John’s hand.

“Jill, what do you intend to do?”

“I just said, like”

“No, silly woman: are you going to share them or fight over them?”

“Fight over what?”

“The bridesmaids!”

A very valid point. We discussed it later, after I had been comprehensively assimilated and was waiting for my heart rate to descend. Larinda was pensive.

“Do you ever think, lover, where you were a little while ago, in your life? I mean, when I met you, and then when we met all those coppers?”

“What do you mean?”

“I was thinking, Jill. It’s like one of them graph things when a company’s in profit, yeah? All wiggly, up and down, but where it’s going is up, and up again. And this was never what I planned, or imagined, or had any idea ever bloody happened, but that graph thing, that’s both of us, yeah? Together. Onwards and upwards”

She was right. The days of fat Rob were gone, and that night at the pub, with Stewie and the queerbashers, that was just a dip. I had thought, right then, that I was broken, and it hadn’t been true. I had just slipped in some clarts and there, reaching down for me, had been hands to lift me up and bring me forward. I am sure I fell asleep smiling.

Larinda woke me for her breakfast, the cheeky cow.

Work was getting so much easier. Now and again we had a little change or two in the staffing, and there was the obligatory trembling approach to check that I was real, or to look for the join on my wig. I had adopted the tactic, before a visit, of explaining to the trader exactly what I was, and while I still had a few who tried to shield their children from the paedophile, they were indeed very small in number.

I mentioned that to Annie one day, when I drove John in to collect the uniform his new job supplied, because he was far too Diverse for the Super (I had been listening) to miss out on.

“Annie, what is it with people when they hear that someone’s gay? What’s it got to do with kids? I get off on tits and bums and---well, you know what I mean. Just wears me down a bit, like”

She smiled, and told me a story about another girl, who had ‘corrected’ the graffiti, and written a cheeky letter to the local press, but had then died.

“The girl on the bridge, Annie? Alec mentioned her, said that Sally, you know…”

She looked at me, and her eyes were dead pools for an instant, till she shuddered and tried a smile.

“Sorry, Jill, I…I recovered the body. Afterwards. On the road.”

A few seconds of pause, and then the smile flashed back on. “She never had an Eric, aye, not a Geoff, nor a Larinda. Look, I’ve given Sar a ring, talking of your affianced Borg clone person, and she’s spoken to Bev. We have a dance thing coming up at the church; they should be there, it’s a big thing for us. How about we introduce you then? That actually ties in with…what we were talking about, so it would be good. Your mate’s lad up for a bit of music? Darren was asking about him. We…look, our boy has confidence issues. It sort of comes from his early life, aye? When he finds something that works for him, he goes all out, and…James, was it? James clicks with him. It would be good, Jill, and there’s a pub next door if you don’t like the music. About three weeks’ time, aye?”

“Sounds good to me, lass. Well, you know what I mean. Look, I’ll leave you to sort out the arrangement, but aye, I think Terry and Karen will be up for that”

I was absolutely sure Terry would, after the way he had reacted at the Sun. I took my leave, and after dropping into the supermarket to let Larinda know, and to pick up a few odds and sods with her discount, I pulled out my mobile to ring Karen, only to find the bastard battery was flat. Do it at home, Jill, tea to brew.

I was just about to pour before putting the phone on charge, when the doorbell rang. I clattered through the hall, and opened the door to see none other than Von’s dad. The first punch went straight into my guts, and as I fell I heard the snarl, that Valleys voice.

“What do you fucking look like! Perverting little boys, is it? Well, no more of that for you, cunt”

I lay on the doorstep, trying to make my body breathe, that air gone from me and my lungs refusing to bring it back, and he dragged the hem of my skirt up.

“Let the fucking dog see the rabbit, aye?”

I passed out somewhere around the third kick to my testicles.