I was the classic baby dumped on the orphanage steps, and being unwanted rubbish does not give you a good start in life or much self esteem. As far back as I can remember life was difficult. I wasn’t into dolls and girls’ activities. I wanted to play with the boys. I was quite happy to wear frocks and girls clothes. I even liked pretty undies and I was proud of my long, dark brunette hair which made me look unmistakably like a girl. I liked being a girl and certainly didn’t want to be a boy. I just wanted to play their games and with their toys.

~o~O~o~

I was always slender, pretty even, and when eventually the boob and bottom faery visited me, and she must have called on me several times more than she did on most girls, I eventually became a busty, well hipped young woman of five foot eight who walked with a pronounced bounce and sway even in ballet flats. But if life in the orphanage was difficult it was even worse at school where I was tormented by the boys for being a dyke and by the girls for being a clever dyke. I wasn’t in the least bit interested in girls that way, and I’d suffered from my first crush, and that was on a boy, at the age of eight. I became a woman at twelve and after that I was definitely interested in make up and boys.

~o~O~o~

No one was interested in adopting a girl who wouldn’t behave like a girl, so I didn’t leave the orphanage till I was sixteen. My lucky break was at a careers talk in my final year at school where there was a Mrs. Wright from the Careers Services talking about careers for girls in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. I said I was clever, well I was clever enough to be offered an interview for apprenticeship as a machinist for COA Engineering, a big company with many years of work on its order books, a lot of which involved defence contracts.

I was excited by that as I’d read endless amounts without understanding one part in ten about lathes, milling machines, surface grinders and much more. I’d even managed to acquire a full set of dog eared second hand copies of the ‘Workshop Practice Series’ which I’d read the print off. My particular favourites were the ones written by Harold Hall. I’d yearnt for a few years to have my own lathe and milling machine in a small workshop so I could try some of Mr. Hall’s designs for beginners.

I’d also obtained equally dog eared copies of two books based on work by G. H. Thomas. One was about building the Universal Pillar Tool but I only understood a fraction of of it. Professor D. H. Chaddock’s work on building the Quorn tool and cutter grinder he had designed fascinated me, but it is true to say I understood virtually nothing of it. However, I was desperate to be able to read them all with understanding.

In spite of only having a cheap and somewhat wobbly vice and a few hand tools I had made some simple things I was proud of. I took what I had made to my interview. I’d thought things were going well till another man came in who was introduced as our senior tooling expert Mr. Templeton. Mr. Templeton was asked his opinion of my samples. He took a magnifying glass, a vernier caliper and an expensive looking Moore and Wright micrometer out of his pockets and applied them to my work. He sniffed derisively and I started to cry. I couldn’t help it, for I’d tried so hard with so little to make them. I’d been incredibly careful, and I’d truly believed they would help me at the interview. In an effort to reduce his embarrassment rather than my distress, he asked, “What tooling did you use to produce these with?”

“A suction vice with cardboard soft jaws and a file, Sir,” I replied.

“Impossible, girl! How did you dimension and mark them out? And how did you check your work?”

“I used a felt pen for marking out blue and a modified kitchen knife to mark them out. I dimensioned and checked them with my steel rule which is engraved at one end in one hundred and twenty-eighths, Sir,” I replied.

“An engraved, not a printed rule?”

“Yes, Sir. It’s a Moore and Wright. I paid twenty pence for it from a market stall selling second hand stuff.”

“One of those second hand in good condition costs twice as much as a new one now. How are you looking after it?”

“It has a light film of sewing machine oil on it, and I keep it in a felt cover inside a wooden box, with the oil, Sir.”

“What did you use to produce the finish?”

“Abrasive papers going up the grits to two thousand four hundred, and finishing with Brasso and a soft cloth, and finally Duraglit, Sir.”

“Hmm! Impressive. Stephanie, isn’t it?” He didn’t need an answer, but at least I wasn’t girl! any more. He turned to the other two men and said, “I want this one. If she can produce those with next to nothing I want to see what she can produce with some real tools and a bit of instruction.” He turned to me and said, “Thank you for shewing me your work, Stephanie. Never lose them and keep them safe. Never go back to improve them, if need be make another better one, but keep those as a permanent reminder of how good, and how poor, you were when you started. When you are my age they will be beyond value to you. Here, keep this as a somewhat trivial apology for me upsetting you, and use it. It’s not something to be put on a mantle shelf like a trophy, but kept within ready reach at all times.”

He gave me his tool steel scribe from his overall coat top pocket and left. I knew a top quality one like his could be bought for less than a fiver, but I didn’t have one, or a fiver, and it was a gift from a real engineer who’d come to think well enough of me to offer me the chance to learn from him. My smile must have made me look ridiculous, but I couldn’t help myself. I was offered the apprenticeship starting the day after my last exam.

I explained my situation to Mrs. Wright over the phone and that I would probably be homeless soon as I could only live at the orphanage till I left school. She told me, “We can sort something out for you, Dear.” It didn’t happen quickly, but she got me a tiny room on the local University campus and access to their library too.

~o~O~o~

The next three years were a blur as I soaked up what was to be my craft. I studied on a block release scheme at technical college, three blocks of seven weeks at college the rest of the year at work. I won the student of my year award, which gave me access to further education and training and numerous competition prizes for submitting samples of my work. The prizes were all precision tools. Tools that I had no way of paying for. I spent most of my spare time at work making further tools for my expanding collection. The only boys I met were at work, and they resented my success, but I’d not have been interested in them even had they been interested in me, because they just didn't try hard enough.

~o~O~o~

All good things come to an end and when my apprenticeship finished I was offered a secure job with COA in the test shop. Straight from apprentice to the test shop! I could hardly believe it. However, I no longer had anywhere to live. Eventually I managed to find and rent a run down static caravan [friends from the States read trailer] on a local caravan site not too far from work or town. It was filthy. Most of the caravans on the site looked new, or at least in good condition, but mine was an eyesore and lowered the tone of the neighbourhood. When I moved a friend with a car took everything I owned in one trip, and she was upset that I was actually proposing to live in it. After she left, I took my possessions inside and had a better look at my new home, and it was as sordidly depressing as I remembered. I dumped the bedding from my bed of choice outside, scrubbed the bed down and went out to buy some new bedding, or at least a sleeping bag.

I’d heard caravans could get really cold in winter, so I bought a high quality ‘Arctic’ brand sleeping bag from a camping supplies shop. I was on my way to get some takeaway food when I saw her. A bag lady collecting cardboard to keep warm with that night. It was late summer, but I wouldn’t have wanted to sleep outside wrapped in cardboard. I don’t know why, but I approached her and asked, “Would you like to come home with me? I’ve just moved into a squalid old caravan on the Greenmoore site. It’s all I could afford, but you are welcome to get out of the cold and the rain if you help me clean it up.”

I regretted asking her as soon as I had, she could have been a psycho, a crazy druggy or a maniac wino. She smiled and replied in rather a well spoken voice, “That’s very kind of you, my dear. Thank you. You won’t regret it.” I insisted we went back for another sleeping bag like mine before we went for the food. To my surprise she’d paid for the food before I could get my purse out of my handbag.

Back at the caravan she smiled and said, “Squalid doesn’t even nick the edge of it does it, Stephanie?” We cleared and cleaned places to sit and the table and ate. I emptied the sink, cleared the drainer, bagged the rubbish and threw the bags outside to deal with tomorrow. Then I washed our dishes. Meanwhile Dorothy had cleared and cleaned a bed for herself and set her sleeping bag up. “Is there anywhere I can get a wash, Dear?”

“There is a wash block with several showers and a single bathroom. It also has two washing machines, or so I’m told. I’ve not seen it for myself yet, so it may well be as squalid as this place. It’s over by the park entrance.” I was amazed when she came back. The bag lady was gone to be replaced by a late forties looking substantially built, attractive woman with auburn hair that had a trace of gray, smartly dressed in a box pleated, checked, tweed skirt, a matching dark gray blouse and a natural coloured, pure wool, Arran knit cardigan.

“That showering and washing facility is quite good really. The water runs really hot and the washers are free. The dryers are coin operated. There’s a dozen or so spin dizzy washing lines outside. You want to do a bit more cleaning, Steph? We could at least bag the rubbish and threw the bags outside till tomorrow.” By the time we’d done that and I’d explained I had to go to work the following day, it was time for bed.

We both went to the wash block and Dorothy changed into a nightie over there. To my surprise she produced a toothbrush and proceeded to clean her teeth as I did mine. She had her coat over her nightie to return to the van. Dorothy made some cocoa from my meagre supplies and said, “I’ll do some shopping and cleaning tomorrow, Steph.”

~o~O~o~

I was up early, but Dorothy was gone. I must admit my first thought was ‘ What has the bitch stolen?’ But I did her an injustice, and my precious tools were exactly as I’d left them. She returned a few minutes later with a jar of coffee, a box of tea bags, a pint of milk, a bag of sugar, half a pound of butter, a loaf of bread, six eggs and a vacuum pack of bacon. “Breakfast?” she asked with a smile. “I got some cleaning stuff as well.” We ate and after she’d cleared the dishes she hesitantly asked, “Have you any money? I’m nearly out. I only need enough to buy something for dinner.”

“I’m not too flush myself till payday on the twenty-first,” I replied. “Will a fiver do?”

“Goodness yes. I can feed us for days on that as long as you like rice, potatoes and pasta.” I gave her the fiver and left for work.

~o~O~o~

When I returned that evening I couldn’t believe my eyes. Dorothy wasn’t there, but the rubbish bags had gone, the caravan interior was spotless, and there was a welcoming smell coming from a pan on the now gleaming stove. When Dorothy came back she was wearing a plain, white, pinafore apron over her skirt and blouse. She dropped a newspaper on the table and said, “I’ll be back in a moment, Dear. I’ve to return this washing basket I borrowed. Edith from four doors up the way gave us the paper. She said in future we can have hers when they’ve read them.”

Dorothy was back soon and as she entered said, “Substantial chicken soup for dinner, the butcher gave me two chicken carcases and some stock bones when I bought the minced beef for the Chile con Carne we’re having with rice tomorrow and the Spaghetti Bolognese with pasta the day after. The bulk of the soup is potatoes, but there’s a mixed veg soup pack on its sell by date I got for ten pence in it too. It’s more a stew than a soup really, and it may need a bit more salt. The apron I was given at Needles and Pins because the seams had gone, but it only took me quarter of an hour to repair. The needles and thread were a pound twenty out of your fiver though. How was your day, Dear?”

“Better for coming home to this, and probably not as busy as yours. What were you washing?”

“Anything and everything I could remove, cushions, covers, flooring, you name it and the bedding we threw out yesterday. Most will be drying on the washing lines till tomorrow, so I’m hoping it doesn’t rain overnight. Some may not survive the washing and drying, but at least what does will be clean. When we have some money I’ll get an algicidal wash to clean the out side of the van with, but it can wait. Edith’s husband, Stan, said he’d lend me a pair of step ladders and the long handled brush he does theirs with. We’re nearly out of propane, so I ordered a forty-seven kilo [103 pounds] cylinder from the site office. It’s been delivered and Stan connected it for me. Best if we have a spanner of our own though, so I’ll get one from the site shop tomorrow. There’re connections for two cylinders. Stan told me when one runs out you turn it off and turn the other on and disconnect and replace the empty one. The site collects the empties when they deliver the full ones. The site office said they send the bills out at the end of the month on the rent invoice. I’ll be able to pay for the gas and the spanner by then.”

~o~O~o~

After my first month’s pay we weren’t exactly living in a palace, but it was better than anywhere I’d ever lived before. Dorothy was an amazing cook and could do it on a shoe string too. I asked her one day, “Dorothy, can I call you Mum?”

“Well seeing as I’m nearer seventy than sixty it’d probably be better if you called me Granny. That’s where my money comes from, my pension.” I’d had no idea. She looked at least twenty years younger than that and nowhere near pension age, especially after I’d done her hair with the touch up colour.

~o~O~o~

Life continued for a couple of years, I was doing well at work and gradually acquiring more of my own tools with a view to having my own workshop one day, and in spite of me calling her Granny, Dorothy became the mum I’d never had.

~o~O~o~

Nothing much happened till I met the kids. I was shopping when a girl and a boy came up to me begging. I can’t help myself, but having had it bad I want to help anyone who has it worse, especially kids. There were six of them, six runaways from horrendous homes, two from an orphanage, four from foster homes. We talked, and I took them all home. Granny didn’t even blink. We fed them and that night they slept on rugs under blankets on the floor.

The day after Granny negotiated the loan of an empty caravan as an act of charity, but it was strictly on the understanding that it was only available till a tenant turned up who put a month’s deposit down. “We need better accommodation than this and the kids need to be in school, Steph,” Granny announced before asking, “You want to help more kids?”

“If I could why?”

“I did a lot of thinking last night. I know a man who would give us one of those Victorian redbrick warehouses on Empire Street for a few favours. I think he owns most if not all of them. Vincent’s twelve year old daughter Dianne ended up in the wrong crowd and on the streets. She over dosed before he could find her. He’s got a thing about helping kids, but doesn’t like publicity or the authorities. He’d help us.”

“One of those derelict, colossal eight or ten story buildings‽”

“Yeah. One of those, and he’d have it renovated for us too.”

“Why? That’s serious money you’re talking, Granny. What kind of favours would he want in return for all that?”

“Ones that I can repay, and if you don’t ask me any questions I won’t have to tell you any lies. Ok?”

Granny had a stubborn look, and I knew I wasn’t going to get any more out of her. “Ok.”

“And I want to start a year round soup kitchen for the homeless at the warehouse. I was glad of the one on George street, but it only runs in the winter. I know where I can get the stuff I’d need.”

“Ok. I’ll leave you to get on with it. I’ll see about getting the kids back into school.” Granny sounded so confident about it all. I thought it sounded like a faery tale, but till then she’d always delivered what she said she would, but this! This must be millions she was talking about, so I decided to wait on events, but I wasn’t hopeful.

~o~O~o~

The kids were very unhappy about going back to school, but it seemed to me they were mostly unhappy on Jenny’s behalf. Jenny was six. “Why don’t you want to go back to school, Jenny Love? Don’t you want to learn things?” I asked.

Jenny was stone faced and had tears in her eyes. Dolan who was nine said, “We all want to learn things, but the other kids are always mean to Jenny, and she hates PE and games.”

Granny who was listening came over and asked, “Is it that you don’t like getting undressed with the other children, Jenny?”

Jenny nodded and stammered out, “They say I’m a boy because—“

Granny stopped her mid sentence, and to say she floored me would be a gross understatement, “They are wrong, Jenny. I had one once too, and I was never a boy. Being a girl is because your brain and your heart tell you you are a girl. I lived on the streets too till Steph brought me home. That was because of what people said. They burnt my house down when I was in it. I was lucky to get out alive. You can’t be a granny and be a man. Men are granddads. I’m your granny and you are a little girl. We’ll find you a nice school where you won’t get bullied. Ok?”

To Granny it seemed nothing was impossible, and as usual she spoke with total confidence, and Jenny smiling replied, “Ok, Granny.”

Hell! I hadn’t been expecting that, but I wasn’t bothered. I wasn’t exactly normal, whatever that was supposed to be. Granny was still Granny, and the kids were happier about going to school. I thought it may have made it harder to find a school, but I wasn’t taking them anywhere where they’d get bullied. They’d already had enough grimness in their lives, and they weren’t going to be separated. They may not have been related, but they’d been looking out for each other on the streets which made them a sibling group by choice. Their choice, and they were my kids.

~o~O~o~

Granny never said where she got the rent money from for the other caravan, but she did, and time went quietly on. The kids called me Mum, and they were happy and thriving in the school I’d found where Jenny could change in privacy. Jenny was enjoying ballet with the other girls and was good enough to get a little status from it. Social Services were a pain, but the kids threatened to run away, and things settled down whilst investigations and the paperwork for six adoptions were in progress. Granny was her usual loving self and was teaching the kids, all the kids boys and girls, how to cook, and they were already better than me. The kids enjoyed putting their own lunch boxes up for school the following day and took it in turn to do mine too.

~o~O~o~

We moved into a spacious penthouse apartment created for us in the warehouse, while the rest was being turned in to a kids refuge. The plan was, as well as accommodation, it would offer play facilities, a library, a resource area and a school, and all facilities would be for any child who wanted them. The school they could attend whenever they could. We dealt with the Salvation Army on the understanding the kids’ anonymity would be sacrosanct, and we refused to provide Social Services with any information whatsoever. If we’d done so the kids would have run back to the streets where they were vulnerable to every kind of predator. It was all completely chaotic to start with, but it all quickly settled down to being a well oiled machine.

The Refuge, as we'd named the place, had fail safe security, based incongruously on the combination of state of the art CCTV and the huge Victorian wrought iron gates. When social workers tried to gain entrance with the police in attendance the kids could get out quickly via the hidden and unknown exits in the lower basement to adjacent buildings where if it were night they could continue to sleep undisturbed in the waiting beds before anyone had had the time to let the invaders in. Their visits followed the pattern of the first one. The senior social worker started by asking, “Where are the children?”

I’d have at least given away that there had been children there, but that first time Granny indicated she’d deal with the matter and I was to say nothing. She certainly knew how to handle them. “Which children would that be?” She asked. The social worker delivered threats and all sorts of abuse to which Granny said to the senior police officer, “I hope you are taking note of this because a complaint will be going in about social services ineptitude and abuse and if your documentation and body cam evidence does not concur with our video recordings a complaint will be going in about you too.”

After that the social worker started to play by the rules, reiterating, “Where are the children?”

To be met with Granny’s, “Which children would that be. Tell me, whom are you looking for? You’re the one with the warrant. Surely you know?” After finding the beds the social worker asked, “Whose beds are these?”

Granny replied, “Officer, this is not a setting for a production of Goldilocks and the three bears. That warrant is vague, but it does specify a search for homeless children. It does not include my private residence where if I allowed you entrance you would find my great grandchildren who are not homeless. They like I and my granddaughter live here. The council tax records and their school records bear evidence to that effect. Neither does it say I have to answer questions about anything else, and that includes, chairs, porridge and beds, and I’m not going to. I suggest this lame brain gets on with what the law allows and nothing else on my property. When that has been done I should be very obliged if you escort him and his rabble of half wits off the premises or I shall call for a policeman who understands his job and the limitations of a search warrant.”

After searching the premises the senior police officer advised the social worker that it was time to go and if he and his team remained after the police had left the warrant would no longer be in force and they would be trespassing giving us the right to evict them with the minimum of force that required. They all left with the social worker hurling threats and imprecations at us all.

On their next visit the search warrant include the penthouse, but we’d anticipated that and my children had left too. The social worker asked, “Where are your children?”

I replied, “That is not an appropriate question given the specifics of your warrant. There are clearly no homeless children here, so get out of my home. Officer?” The police virtually dragged the social worker out. Other than that it was a repeat performance of the previous visit.

Granny told me, “You’re learning, Dear.” The next two visits were repeats of the second one.

After four complaints concerning four separate attempts to remove unnamed children that were not there, with video evidence to support them, which we contended was nothing but harassment, Social Services were refused further search warrants by the courts unless they could demonstrate in advance there was a high probability specifically named children were on the premises. Since they didn’t know the names of any of the street children or anything about them including what they looked like, and only had the sketchiest of rumours and hearsay to go on their visits stopped. Copies of the videos were given to the media and Social Services’ behaviour became both quieter and more circumspect, but we were aware they were still investigating and gunning for us.

~o~O~o~

Granny had her soup kitchen set up on the ground floor and had dozens of volunteers helping. She was using steam cleaned half oil drums for soup kettles which were never off the boil on the biggest gas rings I’d ever seen. They ran off propane cylinders, and I believe roofers used them for melting tar. Any number of the homeless were using the ground floor behind the soup station as a sheltered place to spend the night, so Granny bought a couple of hundred heavy, army style blankets, the kind that used to be referred to as horse blankets.

Granny was still getting scraps, chicken carcases, soup bones and the odd bit of meat from the butchers and free vegetables nearing their useful end from the market and the grocers. They knew what she was doing and were in the main generous, so she had a sign put outside so the public could read who this week’s kind benefactors were. As fast as soup was dipped out of one kettle something was going into another one.

~o~O~o~

The building was acquiring a reputation and was referred to by many including the local media simply as ‘The Refuge’ on Empire Street. We played up the soup kitchen and the adult homeless sleeping there and played down anything to do with the kids. Besides Vincent, we had numerous financial sponsors many of who preferred to remain anonymous. Granny had been right about Vincent, he had a thing about helping kids. He thought nothing of taking a coach load out to a theme park, ice skating or even just to play in the park. As a result our precautions against Social Services became more elaborate. Fortunately the entire length of Empire Street, all three-quarters of a mile of it was connected by underground corridors and roads, and every building had numerous exits, front, back and both sides. Most were pedestrian accesses, but some could accommodate even modern eighteen wheelers.

It was possible to drive an eighteen wheeler in at one end of the street and out at the other or to exit from any of the warehouses in between either from the front or from the rear. Since the first stage demolition men had deliveries to all of the buildings that could arrive at any time day or night as well as loads taking architectural features away for refurbishment and copying it was easy to take large numbers of children in or out whenever desired. The buildings were also linked by aerial covered walkways at several levels. We used the lot, and it worked to keep the kids safe till it was no longer necessary.

Vincent would typically arrive on a weekend day with a dozen helpers and ask, “Who wants to go to Alten Towers? Because there’s a curtain-sider in the basement ready to go if you do.” The eighteen wheeler would take the kids to a convenient place where a coach driven by one of his employees would be waiting for them. The kids knew the risks we and they were taking and none ever said anything to anyone outside, for in their eyes nothing was worse than being taken into the official care system, and they loved the excitement of it all. Vincent would take fifty odd kids to an ice cream shop and tell the assistant, “Just keep them coming till you run out of kids and tell me how much you want.” The kids thought he was better than Father Christmas because he only arrived once a year, though many of them hadn’t yet worked out that most of the presents he arrived with came from Vincent.

~o~O~o~

I’d still never had a relationship. I wasn’t interested in anyone at work, and I was too busy outside work for a social life. But then wonder of wonders, I was asked out for a drink by Bradley, a bloke from a different department at work whom I’d never come across before. He was tall, easy on the eye and seemed pleasant. He picked me up at home outside the Refuge, and I asked him in when he took me home. That was when Granny met him and she wasn’t happy. After Bradley left she told me, “You be careful with him, Steph. He’s not a good man. If you anger him he’ll hurt you.” I didn’t take her seriously.

~o~O~o~

I went out with Bradley maybe twice a week for about three months before it happened. Brad and I were out for a drink one night in a pub not too far away from home, maybe three miles, when Jim with his girl friend stopped at our table to say hello. When they’d gone Brad demanded, “Who was that?”

“I work with Jim, but I’ve never met Stella before. They’re getting married next year.” Bradley was sullen for the rest of the evening. I’d never seen him like that before, and it was almost like he’d become somebody else.

I couldn’t believe it. In the car on the way home it was accusation after accusation about Jim and I, and Brad ordered me to never see Jim again. I explained, or I tried to that that was impossible as we worked together on the same projects. Bradley punched me so hard he broke my jaw and knocked me out. I came to in the infirmary aching all over with a throbbing head, a wired jaw and Granny and the kids at the side of my bed.

Apparently Bradley had dragged me out of the car, dumped me on the pavement and after kicking me several times had driven off. A passerby who’d seen the incident had noted the registration number of the car and rang for an ambulance. The police had rung Granny using my mobile phone which was in my handbag that the ambulance men had found underneath me. Granny had identified Brad and he was in custody.

The police had said they would oppose bail because he’d made all kinds of threats to ‘that two timing whore’, and though he’d never been found guilty of anything serious he was well known to them as a petty criminal and a violent gangland enforcer. It was only then that I realised I didn’t know what he did at COA, and I wondered why he worked there if the police knew all that about him. It certainly couldn’t have been a cover. Granny never said anything, she didn’t have to.

~o~O~o~

The police opposed bail, but Bradley was granted bail anyway. I was seriously frightened, but he’d not been free twenty-four hours when he was found face down in the harbour. He’d been stabbed through the heart. When I told Granny she had a funny look on her face. I started putting things together that I should have put together a long time before and asked, “Granny, what exactly does Vincent do for a living?”

“I knew one day you’d start asking questions, Steph, you’re too clever by half. Vincent has investments and interests in all sorts of things. He’s been strictly legal and mostly involved in property development for a long time. I told you he has plans to turn Empire street into prestigious apartments with shops on the ground and first floors. We’ll have neighbours. He told me he was glad we asked for help when we did before it was too late. He gave us the best building, but he has plans for a hostel for the homeless in the corner building which fronts onto West Street. He is a philanthropist, but gets embarrassed by it being brought to anyone’s attention, so he doesn’t get the opportunity to be generous as often as he’d like.”

“You’re telling me he was looking for us? Or someone like us?”

“That’s certainly one way of looking at it, yes. He wants us to be self financing so, my soup kitchen will eventually move to the hostel building, and our ground floor, and probably the first floor too, will be shops the rents from which will help to finance the Refuge. When it was pointed out to him that we and the hostel would undermine the price of the apartments he just laught and pointed out he was developing Empire Street with his own money, he had no partners and no need to borrow to complete the project. He also said that it was time those with money were made to be aware of the unfortunate and he was making sure they couldn’t just sweep them under the carpet. If they didn’t like that they could live elsewhere.”

“Just how wealthy is he?”

“I’ve no idea. I’ve never asked and it’s entirely possible even he doesn’t know. I do know he’s in the final stages of buying the last building, the old Oriental Tea Trading Company’s head offices in the middle of the street. The deal’s gone through and he’s paid for it. It’s only the paperwork that has to be finalised. It should be completed in a matter of days. The negotiations took months because the vendors insisted on a share in the venture. They only backed down after he took his offer off the table and told them they could have a hundred percent share. All they had to do was develop the site themselves, but when they went to the wall he’d be there to buy at a fire salvage price. The architects have been working on the entire street for three years and as soon as the demolition men have finished the builders will be moving in, next month probably. He didn’t want to start doing anything constructive before he’d bought the last building because he said as soon as he started major development that would put the prices of the remaining buildings up.”

“How come you ended up on the streets? Why didn’t he look after you?”

“No one has ever managed to make me do anything I didn’t want to since I became myself. I’d given too much of myself away before that to even consider going there again. I wasn’t quite right in the head for a while after being made homeless and I was dangerous. That was when I took to the streets. Vincent knew he couldn’t force me to do anything, so he did what he could. I didn’t realise it, but he had people watching me and making sure I had what I needed to survive. People who I thought were strangers would give me a cup of tea, a packet of sandwiches or a coat that I'd find a couple of quid in one of the pockets of, that sort of thing. I was more or less ready to sort myself out and rejoin the world when you took me in. If you hadn’t I’d have gone to Vincent. Vincent will always look after me, you and the kids.”

“But why?”

“He’s my other grandchild. He’s dyslexic and his mum, my daughter, died when he was two. His dad gave him a hard time and school was even worse for him. He’s intelligent and just had a specific problem. I was patient and taught him to read and write from comics, so we’re close. He’s the only one of my family who treated me like a human being when I finally stopped living the great lie, and he’s always said even as a little boy he knew I was his granny not his granddad in spite of me wearing trousers and not frocks.

“How would he know that?”

“Who knows. Kids don’t think the way adults do. Some things they just know and they don’t think it needs discussion because it’s not up for debate. They know it is, so it is. His wife was a selfish bigot who made his life hell because he wouldn’t cast me off when I came out. She was worried about what people would say about her, and she divorced him when I had the surgery. The laugh is she divorced him when he had nothing, married a small time building contractor who she said was at least respectable and gave him three kids.”

“So she’s out of Vincent’s life? Does he not have to pay maintenance?

“Well and truly out, and she’d been sleeping with her so respectable friend for a couple of years, so Vincent went for a clean break settlement and she bought it. The house was sold and they split the proceeds which wasn’t much because most of the money went to repay the mortgage. Not long after that Vincent’s hard work started to pay off, and she’s regretted leaving him ever since. Vincent blames her for driving Dianne to drugs and the streets and himself for spending so much time at work that he didn’t notice what was happening. You know what he’s like with the kids. Dianne was his pride and joy and something in him died when she did. Any one I regard as family he does, so you and yours are family to him.”

“How does this connect with Bradley, Granny?”

“I don’t know that it does. However, some of his contacts and associates from his early days are pretty dodgy. When I was burnt out of my home for being trans, he took it personally and bad things happened to the arsonists.”

It was a moment before I took it all in. Out there was a gangster with a legitimate financial empire who regarded me as his sister. “You mean he had Bradley killed as some kind of a favour?”

“Certainly not! Vincent has far more manners than that. You remember what I told you when you asked what I did before I transitioned?”

“Yes. You said you were a contractor. I assumed you meant in the building trade.”

“I know, and I let you think that. Actually I dealt with different kinds of contracts, and I took what Bradley did personally. So I took a contract out on him and dealt with the matter myself. As I said, Vincent wouldn’t dream of interfering in a personal matter. I taught him better than that.

“Now changing the subject. Social Services are going to get really difficult in a few years, Steph. You can see the way things are going now, and it’ll get worse not better. They’re itching to destroy us, but you’re clever enough to take them on on behalf of the children on their terms. However, you’ll need to be suitably qualified. I suggest you go back to school and get a degree in social work from the Open University. You can do it and still work and have time to relax in your workshop.”

“Granny, you’ve got to be joking!”

“No I’m not. Then you can play the game with Social Services on an equal footing. You’ll have paper qualifications and the vast experience gained from the Refuge by then. I suggest as soon as possible you start writing about the Refuge and submitting articles to the press and professional journals. You don’t need to refer to anything that Social Services can use against us. It would be a good idea to see about some research based on your unique experiences here, so they can’t question your authority to speak on such issues. Get the kids to tell you about their experiences on the streets. They’ll talk to you in a way they’d never talk to anyone else. Talk to the adults too. Start cutting the ground out from under Social Service’s feet long before it all starts. Undermine their position and elevate yours, so any attack on the Refuge looks like jealous spite.”

“Granny, this is insane. There’s too much to be done here, and I have to work as well or we don’t eat. No, it’s all too much.”

“Stop being childish, Stephanie. I can help by doing whatever needs doing here, including, managing all the finances. In the meantime, Vincent will help, he’ll want to help. If necessary he’ll put a team together just to help us run the place. This is exactly what he likes to do, good things that nobody knows about. This fight is for the kids, and you have to win this one. You can work, study and play with your machines too, and still have time to read bedtime stories.”

“Granny, stop trying to change the subject and divert me. Are you telling me you killed Bradley?”

“Don’t be silly, Dear. I’d never admit to something like that. The police told you he was an enforcer?”

“Yes.”

“Well just as you’ll have to beat the social workers with superior social work, I dealt with Bradley by out enforcing him. To win at anything you have to know the rules and out play the opposition using the same rules. Though cheating from time to time can pay dividends. Now, there’re little ones needing bedtime stories. Off you go. I’ll bring you a mug of cocoa. And one more thing, Stephanie.”

“What’s that, Granny?

“Next time you want to go looking for a man don’t. Let me find you a nice one. You could do a lot worse than Vincent you know.”

~o~O~o~

I went back to school for a B.A. in social work and I got a first, subsequently followed by an M.A. and a Ph.D. on the basis of the dozens of papers and articles I’d written concerning the homeless, mostly homeless children, but not exclusively so. I’ve become the go to person for an opinion on such matters, much to the irritation of Social Services who have no option but to cooperate with the foundation for homeless and abused children I’ve set up. I don’t work in engineering any more, but, as Granny would put it, I still play with my machines in my now considerably enhanced workshop, and I still read bedtime stories. And it was all masterminded by a bag lady I invited to share a squalid caravan with me.

Now years later when I look around me and I think of the wonderful home I live in, my loving husband, my oldest six happy children, all now in education of some sort or out in the world with a good job, Jenny readying herself for her final surgery before going to university, our four younger children in nursery school, playgroups or primary school and the daughter on the way and finally the Refuge I’ve established for kids off the streets that’s now safely beyond the touch of Social Services, I can’t help but smile in gratitude at Granny who made it all possible and who lived long enough to see me married to the man of her choice.