CHAPTER 96
It felt odd to be home, as always, partly because after weeks sleeping on a campong mat any bed felt as if it would swallow me in softness. There was also the simple fact that I was now arranging my calendar around things other than the girls and my delivery roster.

Those ‘things’ were a real novelty, because they meant spending nights away from the House, because I kept to my rule about overnighting men. Sharing space with another person was another steep and worrying set of lessons.

As a child, my accommodation had moved from being entirely determined by other people, such as Mr and Mrs May-You-Rot Parsons, or my parents. Mam and Dad had always found their own way of doing things, and while each stop may have been different, there were always strategies and techniques to cope with particular needs. We slept in a locked industrial unit’s yard, or camped on the edge of a wood; took a spare bed in a pub or set up our frame tent at a rally site; parked up in a remote spot by the Wall and shared our breakfast with former strangers.

The exception to that had always been our Winter bolt-hole in Cannock, and I remembered that first time I hosted guests, Sam and Rosie, and Gandalf’s insistence that it was my room, my space, and he would always seek my permission before entering. Autonomy, personal space and respect; things I had never been given before.

Now, I was in another’s space, at his invitation, and there would always be a hint of another woman’s presence there, even though she had lived with him in another house. Clothes she had chosen for him, pieces of furniture he had taken from the marital home, and above all it was his place, not mine. I looked at the sagging wardrobe, and wanted to go shopping for a new one. I woke to the old-fashioned polystyrene tiles of the ceiling, and wanted to get a plasterer in. The only thing I loved was the walk-in shower, possibly because of the memories of another shower, built by a man whose heart lived for engineering and ingenuity, as well as for two women.

Frank caught me muttering one morning as I tried to close the wardrobe door, and grinned at me.

“I’ll make a deal, love”

“Eh?”

“We can sort some new sticks out, get some new storage space, as long as you leave some of the contents alone”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, a certain other woman, she insisted I wear her styles”

I snorted, and it took him a second or two before he laughed.

“No, not like that! Not her clothes, just her ideas of how a proper man should dress. Always wanted me in suits and that, proper shirts. Where we’ve been, she wouldn’t have gone anywhere near that. Catch germs, yeah? Be scruffy? Not my way. Being clean is a virtue, not a performance. Goes with my job, but I choose my own styles”

“Agreed, Frank! Given what some of my friends wear, well! Oh; what did you mean by ‘some of the contents’? Stuff I can bin?”

He smiled, taking my hand.

“Na. Just be nice if you wanted to leave enough of your own stuff to let us get by”

There was a little more hiding behind the smile, and the understanding hit me suddenly.

“You want me to set anchor, don’t you? Have enough of my life here so that I can’t just vanish?”

His eyes dropped, and once more, he nodded.

“Not exactly had the best experience of commitment, have I?”

“Not something I can really advise on, is it, with my history?”

I tugged him to the kitchen, where I tied myself down in making a pot of tea rather than face him as I spoke.

“Frank, you know why I didn’t come out after that first time”

“Cooper”

“Yes. That bastard. He has lived in my mind for all of my life. Everything I ever tried to do, every time I tried to live a normal life, he was there. You know how I found out where this place was, don’t you?”

“Aye. Him from the corner, wasn’t it?”

“Yup. Thing is, when I stopped by his place, I hadn’t intended to, Bad day, things building up, needed a release. Come and sit with me, love”

We took our mugs to the settee, and I settled into its lumpiness, thinking about a new one---slow down, Petrie.

“Shit day it was indeed. I went out on the bike, down past Bridgend, silly fast I was, and then I was on a roundabout by Cornelly, just off the motorway, and some silly bitch nearly hit the bike. Shocked me, completely woke me up. Rode back a lot slower, and it was autopilot, and I ended up at your old shop, and it was gone, and that was nearly it for me. One little ray of sunshine against all that shit from mu childhood, and you were gone. Hard day indeed”

“One night out, Debbie? That was all we had”

“Frank… Oh, sod it. Apart from Mam and Dad, only one other person had ever held me like that, with real affection, I mean. I think… Frank, you don’t need to tie me to you by letting me camp here, by taking a deposit in bits of my clothing, a toothbrush. What I am trying to get out is simple. I think I have always loved you. That’s said. We’ve shared the important stuff, and everyone else can see, so can we just settle your worries? And yes: that wardrobe is a shit one, and fitted stuff would be nice, but that all depends on whether we intend to keep this place or not. Oh, and this sofa really needs to go to the tip”

He sat for a moment, then turned that smile onto me.

“That was an important word, love. ‘We’, I mean”

I grinned at him.

“Yup! Nice one to be able to use, as well. Oh, sod it! Are you still young enough?”

“For?”

We left the tea to cool and headed back to the other room, where his body answered my question satisfactorily.

Love that shower.

Back in the rest of my life, I found a number of people more than happy to pass comment on my mood, including Bert, who collared me as I waited for another local load to be signed off for the run out.

“Who are they, Debbie?”

“Pardon?”

“Who’s got you smiling again?”

I laughed.

“That obvious, is it?”

He grimaced.

“Not the only one here who followed that trial, woman. I can’t really know how all that affected you, but I can see you breathing a lot easier now. Almost like that time when you first arrived, with that baker from Tesco’s”

I looked at him in surprise.

“How close an eye do you keep on people, Bert?”

“A very, very close one on those I value, Debbie. Part of being a good manager; let’s me see problems before they arrive”

“Right. Anyway, yes, Same man. Long story, messy bits, but sorted now”

I hugged him.

“Really, really sorted, Bert. So thanks for caring”

“Um, wagon’s ready to roll, Debbie. See you when you’re back, okay?”

Poor man was a little embarrassed! Once more, I counted my blessings, so many of them in people I had met by the purest of luck, in both senses of that word. Once I had finished that day’s deliveries, I took the bike around a couple of the warehouse-style retail units, looking for offers on sofas that didn’t have bits of broken spring in them. If Frank wanted mw to drop an anchor, then it was going to be a comfortable one with three seats. We would need to return and make a joint decision, of course.

I did pick up some new towels, though.

We rattled on through the tag end of Summer into and through Autumn, and it would have been without incident if I hadn’t picked up on Rosie’s warning about Diane. Little Rhod was getting more and more to be a little boy rather than a demanding lump, although those two were far from being mutually exclusive. Lexie had emerged from hospital, and things seemed back to normal, or as normal as their job could ever be, but those of my girls who offered what ‘childcare’ they could manage were getting their own suspicions. What crystallised it all was actually Jon, who had become another regular visitor to the House. It was never what he said, more the mood he increasingly brought with him. In the end, Rosie was the one who confirmed things for me.

“Got an idea now, Sis. Not going to spell it out until I have to, but your copper has a shit job going on. Been watching her and her mates, we have”

“And?”

“No. Not now. Give it time, and I might need you to do some, er, liaison stuff. Stuff going on I really, really hate. Subject closed for now, but I will let you know”

What else was being dumped on the woman? After all that shit with the Smugglers, and Cooper, and… My mind derailed for a moment. That stuff with Carl.

Think of the good times, Petrie, the best of times. You have set anchor now.

All I could do was watch her back, and that was derailed when Heidi and Nita found us another young woman to house, this one called Naomi, and to my surprise, she was from Newtown, almost in Snowdonia. Yet another internet bullying case, this one, which seemed to be the current fashion, and yet another whose parents had decided that she was old enough, at sixteen, to be kicked out onto the streets.

Naomi had been lucky enough to be put in touch with a group called the Albert Kennedy Trust, who had made some calls, and someone in North Wales had known someone in South Wales who had known about Anita, and so on, and we went through all the usual dances of disbelief, fear and then understanding and delight, and I had one more name to discuss with the local sixth form college.

The girls, as ever, pulled together in sharing spare clothing and advice, and her welcome was so efficient I felt like retiring. And then it was Christmas. As I aged, time disappeared.

“What we doing then?”

I was slumped against him in our new settee, so of course I gave that as an answer, and he slapped my thigh, gently.

“No, silly woman! Christmas!”

“Ah! Might be a problem for you, love. We have a sort of tradition in the House, for Christmas Eve and New Year”

“And?”

“New Year, we used to go up to Carl’s and Rosie’s place, the Clubhouse? Debauch, basically. Rock out, get wrecked, crash in their bunkhouse. Don’t know if this year, well, after all that crap they had. So, nothing firm for New Year. Christmas, though, well. Gay bar”

“Most of your girls are straight, though. Aren’t they?”

I turned to look at him.

“They are all trans, though. Safe space, it is. Bit important for them, that bit”

“And you were worried I might not like that idea?”

“I never presume”

“Well, presume all you like, for now”

“There’s more, and that ‘s the coppers. They will be having their own party there”

He started to laugh.

“Who’s the bloke here, the one who is supposed to be doing the protecting?”

“Who’s the hard biker bitch, Frank?”

“Not you, for one, love! Anyway, count me in. I will try not to perve”

“Promise?”

“Cross my bits and hope to die!”

He started to laugh out loud, and so I asked him what had set him off.

“Oh, when you said ‘hard biker bitch’, and I thought ‘No’, and then remembered all those stories about how many black eyes you gave away to lads with wandering hands. ‘Better watch yourself, Frank!’, I thought!”

Things got nicely silly after that, but I had managed to broach the subject, and he hadn’t shown any disgust at the thought of spending an evening surrounded by fairies, so the omens seemed fair. I didn’t mention that it was going to involve Lexie’s doctor and one of Di’s male friends announcing their engagement. Enough info to get his feelings, enough to warn him, and the rest we could deal with on the day.

We actually emptied the House that evening, for the first time since I had started taking in more than a couple of girls. I had received another surprise only two days beforehand, which was almost an early Christmas present. Charlie and Tiff came to see me, and it was like some sort of delegation.

“Nana…”

“Yes, Charlie?”

“We doing the usual on Chrimbo Eve?”

“Smugglers?”

“Yes. With taxis and that there and back?”

“believe so. Want to stay at home, or something? Problems?”

“Not sure, Nana”

Tiff put her hand on Charlie’s arm.

“What it is, Nana, is that we might not need a lift home afterwards”

I found my alarms warming up, ready to start.

“And why would that be?”

Tiff looked at Charlie, who nodded at her to continue.

“Been seeing these boys, we have. From college”

“Oh. And?”

“They asked us both to stop with them overnight”

Oh shit.

“Where? Where are they suggesting you spend the night?”

“With their families”

“What do they mean by families? Mam, Dad, that sort of thing?”

Both nodded.

“Names?”

“Seb and Jake”

“Do they both know? About you, that is?”

Another pair of nods. I thought of the other lads I had met; Phil, Marty, Scott, Leo…an image of Marty holding Gemma’s hand like a shield against that harpist girl in Bethesda.

“Will they be coming with us for the evening?”

Two more nods, so I smiled.

“Gives us a chance to vet them, then. If they stand up to Kim’s interrogation, then they’ll do for me”

And so it was that we set out in a couple of large minibuses, Nell and Cathy booked into a local hotel with their men and meeting us at the Smugglers, the rest catered for by the existing beds at the House together with a few camping mats and sleeping bags for the overflow.

Were all these girls mine? Seemed so. Off we went, Frank also due to meet us at the pub, and everything was just as expected, even down to the name check at the door by a couple of bears. I had warned Marlene I would be bringing a male friend, and while she had been intrigued, she hadn’t pressed her questions, and I was amused to see that her entry for him on the list was “Bloke with Debbie. Let him in as long as he doesn’t look shifty’.

The police group was in, their own refuelling clearly well-advanced, and I watched my girls simply take Naomi in hand and drag her to the dance floor. All as abnormal a normality as ever.

I dumped my coat at one of the reserved tables before heading to the bar, and Marlene grinned and waved on seeing me, just before her mouth dropped open.

“What the FUCK are you doing here, Frank?”