CHAPTER 42
He was gone again, home to catch up on his job, Von driving, and I had to ask myself how in hell he was managing to keep it together over there. No girls, no family, nothing to look forward to but another session of poisoning. I asked Von how he was doing it, and she simply looked away, blushing. Ah.

“It’s not sex, see? We don’t… he can’t, can he? All chewed up. Just, look, felt right to give him some comfort, innit?”

I kissed her forehead. “Thank you, love”

“Well, just my luck! Find someone I care for, and turns out she’s, well, not for me, and then along comes another, who is right, and, aye?”

The words weren’t there for her, but the emotion was written throughout her face and voice.

“Von, I know the answer, like, but look after him, aye? Best you can?”

“Yes. Best I can it will be. Got to go, Jill. Can’t drive with tears, see?”

And gone. They had timed their departure for school hours to spare the girls. It had been a fraught time, and complicated by our rapidly approaching date with Simon. To be honest, I found him a little distracted at times, as his own wedding was to be only two months later, and from what I could gather about their two families it promised to be a huge event. Larinda and I had been working hard, nonetheless, to try and get as much cleared away as we could, and I had finally had to succumb to her suggestion that marrying in white was a non-starter.

Red. That would be our theme. Scarlet women, harlots of Babylon, all the things that a certain type of newspaper held in abomination.

“I want them to remember this, lover. See us waving two wotsits at them all, yeah? Oh, and read this Got it off the net from that Jerry”

It was a summary of the Gender Recognition Act, something I had been digging into for years, and bits had been highlighted in yellow.

“Pet, you’re leaving it to me, aren’t you?”

Her face was composed, but she swallowed a couple of times.

“Leaving what, lover?”

“How I finish up…”

She reached out for my hands. “Never ‘I’, my darling, always ‘we’, yeah? Never alone, not no more. Just reminding you we got choices. I was talking to him, yeah, cause he’s got it all lined up neat and stuff”

I knew what she was saying. We could still, legally, get married as man and woman, and at the same time I could apply for my new certificate without the surgery. I had, after all, been living full-time as a woman for long enough, and that might be easier for her, in a physical sense, but if I did that the marriage would be null and void unless the law changed. There was more, though.

It was Ian, I suppose, Ian trying his best to put his life right just as it seemed to be in the process of being torn from him. I watched my brother, I watched Will blushing round his mother, all my other friends who seemed to be finding those bits of life they had missed for so long, and my doubts, my confusion, were washed from my eyes. I was a woman, no doubt in my mind ever on that point, and now I was certain. I wanted it gone. I wanted completion. There was a sacrifice ahead for one of us, and I suddenly realised that it came down in the end to how selfish we were. Larinda raised my hands to kiss their backs.

“Not a hint, lover, not a shove, yeah? Just a reminder we got choices”

Something twitched in my face, and there was the saddest of smiles rising in hers.

“So no choices, then… Look at me, lover. No tears, yeah? Told you, whatever you do, whatever road, I’m on it. I sort of feel I knew this one was coming before you did. S’why I got this lot printed off as well”

Another pile of A4 sheets, and this time they were all reviews, of surgeons in several countries, mostly Thailand, but also London, Leeds, Geneva…

She squeezed my hands tighter. “Together, lover. Always together. Now, I got an idea about the wedding…”

A small, bright segment of a brutal time in our lives. Three days later, Bethany followed me into the kitchen as I came home from work and went to start some potatoes boiling for tea.

“Aunty Jill?”

“Yes, pet?”

I turned to her with a smile only to see her face crumple as tears welled in her eyes. She all but flung herself at me, and I held her close as her fingers crumpled the shoulders of my blouse.

“Daddy… he’s dying, isn’t he? It’s all over!”

I thought for a few seconds of silence, broken only by the whine that her distress brought.

“Aye, pet. I’m sorry. There are some things they want to try, but, well, yes.”

Her whole body was shuddering now, and I knew I would have bruises where her fingers clutched my flesh. Twice she tried to speak, but nothing came out but strangled nonsense, until she palpably hauled her emotions back under control. When she spoke again, her voice was flat, monotone.

“I want to like shout, yeah, like it’s not fair, but it’s not like that, is it? He’s… we’re just unlucky, yeah?”

“You’re not unlucky, pet. I can’t think of how you could have had a better father”

“Will we have to go back with Mum?”

I felt my face tense. Over my dead body, I thought, but held those awful words back. “Not if me and your Dad have anything to say”

She looked up at me, panda-eyed. “You said they want to try some things?”

“Aye, but it’s all very new, like. Don’t know if it will do the trick, so… look, I don’t like to do this, but this is really the time when you have to make your Dad proud, aye? Be strong for him, for Hays. We…”

My own tears were there, and I saw my lover coming in the back door as I spoke.

“We make sure we are strong for him, all of us, and if the dice land wrong, we make him proud. And if we get some luck, well, bugger, either way we let him know how much we love him, aye?”

Larinda joined us in our hug. “What brought this on, lovie?”

Bethy set her jaw. “Daddy rang me. He said he was making the final thingy with the divorce, and that I wasn’t to listen to anything Mum said, and I knew…”

The tears were back. In the end, all I could do was lead her up to her room and tuck her into bed for a while. She would come back to us when she could; some wounds are not in our gift to heal.

The following Monday was another of those mad nights at Steph’s local, and of course we took the girls to let a bit of light into their lives. Hays sang away, of course, much to the delight of the other musicians, and I caught one exchange where someone questioned her about one of the Swedish songs that she had picked up from, of all people, Annie, and in response to a quite detailed question about the structure, she just replied “I like it cause it’s pretty!”

That was an answer that covered everything, it seemed. Karen was down, with James, and Bethy spent most of her time smiling at him, and he in turn seemed phenomenally open all evening. Around nine o’clock, as Darren sat with his eyes locked on Steph’s right hand, I realised they were both missing. Karen caught my look.

“They are sitting outside for a bit, Jill. Just talking”

“James? Talking?”

She smiled. “Yes, he is. He does with her, more than he ever does with me. A step-mum could get jealous”

I gave her back her smile, and more. “When did you ever hear him say ‘step’, mmm?”

“Point conceded. Definitely a bloody woman, you; you see the important stuff so clearly”

I slipped out into the car park cum patio area, and saw the two of them sat at a picnic table in the dim light of the pub windows. Bethy was leaning against James, who had an arm round her shoulders. I felt my heart leap. So, so often he had raised his hands only to hide behind them. Close physical approaches could terrify him, or send him spiralling into his own private world. I caught their voices.

“Thanks, James, is nice, cuddles, yeah?”

“Mum cuddles Dad, and me too, and it’s very nice because it is Mum and she is nice and a wall for all the scares”

“You like it?”

“Mum is real and I know her and she doesn’t scare and…”

He paused, and I could almost hear the cogs spinning in his mind.

“Dad… Dad likes… Dad needs a people, a person, a close one… a …”

As I watched, Bethy just turned her head and quickly kissed him on the mouth. He sat rigidly upright, and all he said was “Oh”

I started forward, but then he started to speak again.

“Mum does that with Dad and he is her friend and they are more than friends and I know I have friends now and you are one but Mum is more than a friend to Dad and that is nice and it must be very nice because they always smile and smiles are nicer than crying”

“So was it nice?”

“It was nice because it was from you”

“Thank you, but it can be nicer”

“How?”

“If I give you a kiss, it is nice if you give me a kiss, because it is from you, and you are James and you are very nice”

He kissed her. I went back into the pub.