CHAPTER 103
I found my sleep a little broken for a few days, as more news reports came in and people were charged. The most disturbing part wasn’t the parade of blank expressions on the faces of people who took their entertainment in perverted ways, but the images that were broadcast over the BBC television news a few days later. They had a few talking heads from the Customs people, standing next to pallets of booze that had clearly been arranged to look as imposing as possible, but they also had Sammy, talking over footage taken from inside a warehouse that had been the centre of everything. Scaffolding with planks lashed across it formed tiered ranks of seating around a large circular space surrounded by wire fencing, the space itself floored with what looked like sand or sawdust.

There were dark stains. That was when I turned the television off and went for a ride. Enough was enough. A little while later, I got a text from Di as her team set off to spend a week at Plas Y Brenin, and I prayed for their recovery. All I had seen, after all, had been stains. She and her people had been there when they were being made.

She was so much more relaxed on her return, unlike Charlie, who was building up a real set of nerves as her hospital appointment drew closer, and she handed me a present of the finest when we caught up.

Her friend Annie had offered, without prompting or need for any return of the ob, to put up Charlie before and after the surgery, until she was fit enough to travel back To Cardiff. I spent a while gathering everything I could think of for her, and then, far too soon, before I could be ready, which I never would be, one child who had really broken into my heart was standing outside Di’s car as every girl said their piece. I could see envy on their faces, as well as concern, but underneath so many of the worried faces there was evident joy. Charlie was like Cathy and Nell, showing her friends what could be, what should be in their own futures. She was trembling when I hugged her, and there were tears, but I could feel the eagerness in her as she broke free and opened the passenger door.

“Ring me, love!”

Di nodded, hugging me in her turn.

“She’ll be with good people, Debbie. No long fare wells, okay? We’re off”

I fretted all day as I waited for the call, Frank being at work and the House empty, and in the end simply went round and stole space in Ruth’s place, where she let me log into her wifi as I surfed and read, played games and dozed, until my mobile rang.

“Nana?”

“Charlie! How was the drive?”

“Long, but, well, lots to tell. That friend of Di’s, Annie? One putting us up for recovery? We’re at another friend’s now, a Mrs Woodruff, got a bigger house, so we’re staying there till Di heads back”

I shook my head: more obs from strangers. Charlie was still speaking, though.

“Annie took me round a big Tesco, and we did shopping, and… She’s like us, Nana, and she really know what I needed. Need a backpack to carry it all, I will”

She sighed, her voice sounding a little lost.

“So many people looking after us, Nana! Like being in the House, it is, and they all care! How do I pay them back?”

That was one I did have an answer for.

“Pay it forward, love. That’s what the Yanks call it. If you can’t pay Annie back, or that Mrs Woodruff, you do something for someone else in need”

“Yeah. Makes sense… We’re staying here until I’ve been done, then Di has to go home, and I move in with Annie and Eric and their son. Di says she’ll come and get me when it’s all healed”

She started to laugh, and it was a happy sound.

“That Mrs Woodruff, Steph, she’s the one little Rhod called ‘barking’, and they had a load of photos of Diane up in the mountains, where we go. I think Di needs a lot more practice at her skiing!”

More waffle, more filler, and even less sleep for me. The next day I had another call.

“That Di?”

The laughter down the phone was certainly not from a woman.

“You not look at caller ID, woman?”

“Oh! Sorry, Paul! What do you need?”

He chuckled, in the happiest of ways.

“Just you and some girls, love. At the registry office in a couple of months2

I almost forgot Charlie as I worked it out.

“You and Paula?”

“Yup! Not going for a big do, just make it formal, but we may need about a dozen bridesmaids. Any idea where we could find some?”

I called into the kitchen, where Emma was working on some attempt at emulating Gemma, and handed her the phone. Once again, the girls gathered in a drift of giggles around it as PC Welby plotted his nuptials, and I fidgeted with impatience. Keep the line free… It took a little while for the news to sink in fully, and when it did, I found myself weeping on Frank’s shoulder as we lay in bed.

PC Welby, the first copper I had ever warmed to, was repaying my faith in him.

Diane herself was on the phone a couple of days later, as Charlie came out of theatre.

“Deb?”

“Di? How is she? Any problems? Is it all done? Is she out of theatre—”

“DEB! Pause. Breathe. Everything is fine. She’s awake, and a friend is with her, and Charlie asked me to ring you. I was going to do it anyway, but she asked me to, which shows she’s awake, she’s fine, and she has her priorities sorted. OK?”

Breathe, Petrie.

“Ok… Di?”

“Yeah?”

“Sorry. Just been so worried, all of us. What’s the plan now?”

“I have to come home, Deb, but I’ll stay with her till she’s out of dock. You got my friends’ address? Where they’ll be putting her up?”

“Yeah. It’s pinned up in the main room, so the girls know where she is. You’ve got very, very generous friends, Di”

“Not the right words, Deb. Just got very good friends, in both senses, isn’t it? Good friends to me, good people to have as friends. I have been very lucky in life”

I thought about that one for a few seconds, as it fitted so well with my own replies to Charlie.

“Yeah. You have that. Got a question, OK? Would they welcome a visitor or two?”

“I’ll ask, love, but to be honest I think we both know what the answer will be. Now, I am heading back in. Any messages?”

“Ah, just tell her we all send our love”

“She knows that already, Deb”

“Then tell her no dancing till next month, and we will all see her at the wedding. Oh, and Paul and Paula have set a date. This May. She’s a bridesmaid, if she wants”

She waited a couple of seconds before answering.

“That fits so well, Debbie. Just like the people we are staying with. Real love here, and then there was that murder, which made a lot of people around here think about stuff. To be honest, no different to you and what you do. Just people being the way they should”

Another pause.

“The vicar down here, Simon…. No! Not gone all religious. He’s married Eric and Annie, and he’s married to Annie’s cousin, and so on, so it’s all tied together, and when we went to Plas y Brenin, it was my old boss Elaine who sorted the transport out, her cousin Hywel’s bus, yeah? I heard what Charlie said about paying stuff back, and there is no way I can. Makes… makes me appreciate how important my own job is. My way of doing what you said to Charlie. Anyway, going to go back into the ward, and we’ll let you know when we are ready to head back, or rather for me to come back and grab her”

I couldn’t argue, and over the next few weeks, as Di settled back into her own life, Charlie kept me up to speed with a daily phone call, often shared over the speaker with a crowd of other girls, all of them wanting details of what the surgery felt like, as well as talking obsessively about what they would be wearing when Paul and Paula tied the knot. Girls being girls, happy ones, or, in the case of Gemma, bloody smug ones.

I was watching her snuggled up to Marty one evening as we had a ‘friends and lovers’ night, Paul and Paula surrounded by the other girls as they worked out who and what and how, and I took Frank by the hand and led him out into the darkness and mild drizzle.

“Having a thought, love”

“About?”

“What we said that night at the Welsh Coast do. About positions, and no, not in that sense”

He had his jacket open, and I was half inside it, my arms around his back, his chin resting on top of my head.

“What are you thinking, Debbie?”

“That we are getting on a bit. That we each have a lot of baggage. That we could do with losing some of it”

“And?”

“Talking to Diane. There’s a vicar she knows, runs a music weekend in late June, where a friend of Sparky’s was killed. I’d like to go over there this time, take Sparky. See if we can give him a bit of peace. It’s sort of run by the people who are putting Charlie up”

“Let me know the details, love. What else? I can tell when you are dancing around things, aye?”

“Um… That vicar. He’s switched on. That Annie, Di’s trans friend? He did the wedding for her and her man”

“Ah. I see. Paul and Paula getting you thinking?”

“Well…”

He put a finger to my lips.

“Sshh. Yes”

“Yes?”

“Yes. Give that vicar a ring, and I’ll sort out the other sort”