CHAPTER 1
“Jill, you up yet? Busy day today, get that arse out of the bed!”

“Such sweetness in the morning!”

I buried my head back in the pillow, and noticed the marks. I really, really had to get used to cleaning my face before bed. I didn’t use much, just a bit of stuff round the eyes, mostly, but I could just about guarantee that I would be seeing a raccoon in the mirror.

My head needed a shave again. I had decided that if I was going to have holes in my hair, then I might as well go the whole hog. Wigs are hot things, and another layer of hair just made them hotter. A few passes with the razor, and I was left with enough stubble to stop it sliding off. I stumbled to the bathroom as the smell of bacon hit my nostrils, and yes, I was looking at a bald raccoon with a gold stud in each ear. Arse. I started the clean-up just as the doorbell went. There was a bit of muttering, and then the door slammed as Larinda called out again. “Jill, it’s here! Want me to bring it in?”

“Aye, please, pet”

Finally. I had never bothered with wigs much in the past, in the same way as I avoided bras. I had had nothing to put in a bra, and as I never went out I had had no need for anything to cover up my baldness. That had changed with Larinda’s arrival into my life, and I had used two different artificial wigs for the necessary finishing touch. This was different; this was her engagement gift to me, a lace-cap wig in human hair. I tried my best to avoid thinking about the circumstances that lead girls to sell their hair, and lifted it clear of the box.

Light brown, slightly wavy, and just about long enough to hit my shoulder blades. And expensive. I found myself doing a quick inventory of my appearance, with some winces at the memories.

Leg wax. Ouch.
Arm wax. Ouch
Back wax. Very ouch.
Chest wax…we should really have considered what six months on oestrogen would do to the sensitivity of my nipples before starting that particular game. Then again…

Larinda had shaken her hand afterwards, to get the blood flowing where I had squeezed it, and then smiled, leant down and whispered “Want me to kiss them better later?”

Now that memory, that was definitely a pleasant one. Now, when did I have my next appointment with the needle woman? Three days’ time…I needed to shave. Give her two days’ worth of stubble to work on, even though there was so much less of it now. Another happy memory: compensation from the court case had gone a little way towards paying that particular bill, so my nasty little bigot had ended up contributing to my electrolysis. Only fair, to be truthful; he had started things. Let him help with ending them. I wandered down for breakfast with my new hair, and my fiancée was just dishing it up, wrapped in her oversized dressing gown.

“Tuck in, lover, but don’t get used to this. Still got to slim you down, got to see about dresses, yeah?”

“Love, I have told you: there is no way on Earth I am going to get into some bloody meringue. Smart suit, that’s my bit, just with, you know, a skirt to it, aye?”

“Yeah, yeah, I know, and don’t expect me to be dressing up. Lady in red, that’ll be me. Always wanted to do the full Kate Bush thing, yeah?”

“What?”

“So bloody eloquent as well as lacking in taste! ‘The Wedding List’, what else?”

She laughed. “I’ll go with the colour; don’t need the extras. Want my spouse alive!”

She turned serious. “I know this ain’t exactly a conventional do, right, what with two rings, and two skirts and stuff, but at least this way it’s bloody legal. While you still have your bits we can make sure they can’t take nothing away from us if it turns to ratshit, yeah?”

She mellowed a bit. “What you got today, anyway?”

“Couple of restaurants, one Indian, one Nepalese”

“Well, take some cheap hair, don’t want it all stinky. Remember, the boys are down tonight, and we’re cooking, so it’s busy busy. Good job I get the staff discount”

That had been something I had taken great pride and joy in. My lover had been so tied up in her inferiority that she had never looked beyond the horizons she had imposed on herself, and personal assistant/receptionist was about the highest she had ever thought she could achieve, where ‘PA’ actually meant office dogsbody. The pride came from the fact that she had simply gone out and done something without seeking approval first. The joy came from the fact that she had understood me well enough that she knew she did not need my approval, and she was thus doing very well as a trainee manager for a branch of a national chain of supermarkets. To some people, that may sound like a rather low level of ambition, but it was a start, and there was a new sparkle to her eyes and bite to her conversation. She was no longer a conduit, someone to be told what to do, but a decision-maker in her own right. I pitied her ex-husband; was he somehow mentally or visually impaired not to have seen what he had? Never mind: his loss, my gain.

No. Our gain. I knew better than to do myself down, for what had improved in our lives was driven by both of us, not just the one. We worked well together, that was the truth. One of those moments, then, when I hated the hormones I was taking, because the mood swings, and the tears, were too frequent, and I was glad I had done nothing thus far beyond cleaning my face.

“What’s the plan, love?”

“Alec’s picking them up from the airport; be in about five thirty. Round here for seven, drinkies, and I’ve got a pork joint in. If I start it when I get home, should be ready for seven thirty. Can’t be arsed with doing a proper pud, though. Want me to pick up some frozen crap for afters? Posh ice cream or something?”

I had a thought. “No, tell you what, pet. Just get enough pear halves, extra big ones, for two each, aye, and some chocolate sauce, oh, and if they have any some fresh raspberries, and a bag of grapes, small as you can, not the big ones, aye?”

That morning was typical of my life just then. I got into a trouser suit and onto the hybrid, trouser legs rolled up just enough, and cycling shoes with SPD cleats over my knee-high stockings. Moderate heels in the pannier along with work kit, and out into the town. A few stares as I passed the general public, but then again I was no longer a mystery. The trial had seen to that, and we had adopted the blindingly obvious strategy of going to the press before they came to us. Front page of the local paper, inside page in a few nationals, the odd imagined comment of “Oh, I think I know him/her/it” and the excitement died down remarkably quickly. So, I pedalled away, straight to the Indian, avoiding seeing the kitchen, and down to it.

Three hours later, trying not to rub my eyes, and I was out the door. Not much, just a few private claims, and a suspicion that the declared take might be just a tad too small, but then after the slapping MAC had given to Khan a year and a bit ago word had got round and there was almost a deluge of honest restaurateurs. There was a thought.

“Larinda Simmons”

“Hiya, pet, just had a thought: could we squeeze the other John in? Don’t want him feeling a bit left out, like”

“Don’t see why not, lover. Want me to give him a bell? Then I can pick up the necessaries. Joint’s plenty big enough”

“That’ll be great, pet. Just getting a bite and then on to Reigate. I’ll hop the train back, assuming no problems with the visit. Oh, and get some vanilla ice cream as well”

“Laters, then!”

Sod diet, I had fish and chips sitting under the Reigate tunnel out of the rain which had just started, and then whizzed through the Gurkha place, which was being a little too naughty. I noted down as much of the menu split as I could find, and then the drinks purchase, ready for a drinks/food exercise back at the office, and then found my way through heavier rain to the station, soaking my hair and trousers. The only good thing about a wig.

Home and change from the wet stuff, and this time into a dress, what there was of my breasts pushed up with a couple of chicken fillets, and the cleavage was quite adequate, thank you, as my earlier heaviness had translated into saggy bits on my chest which were slowly filling out once more. How could I have thought, ever imagined, that this couldn’t work? Friends, support, it was all there.

I set the pork going as instructed by the woman I loved and sometimes feared, and at half past five she was home, checking her watch as she entered the house.

“Roast on?”

“Aye”

“Potatoes, carrots, parsnips?”

“All peeled”

“We have about forty-five minutes, then, before we need to change”

“Pardon?”

“You are dense sometimes. Forty five minutes before we have to dress don’t mean we can’t undress early. Upstairs, you!”

Afterwards…afterwards we showered together. I was first downstairs, with a touch of panic as I remembered I had asked for ice cream, and slammed it into the freezer just in time. Parboil the potatoes…I caught sight of my left hand, ring in place, and smiled. Larinda had justified it on the basis that, firstly, it made my hand definitely, feminine, then that it would keep random (blind?) men from pestering me, and finally that she had bleedin’ asked me so it was her job to do so. How could I refuse such trainee managerial logic?

Roasting pan out, decant some of the pork fat into it and roll the part-cooked potatoes around in it together with the parsnips, and into the top of the oven. Water on for carrots. Shit!

“How, pet? We’ve forgotten apple sauce!”

“No, you have forgotten it, I haven’t. Jar in the bottom of my bag”

Ah. “Just going to start preparing the dessert, aye? Needs to be in the fridge a bit”

I filled each half-pear with alternate layers of ice cream and crushed raspberries, then set them open-side-up in the fridge. Time…oh shit, people would be there soon.

“How you doing, love?”

“Just about done. You?”

“Need to get dressed, if you can do my face”

“You’ll have to do your own; John Wilkins is here”

“Eh?”

“I can see him from the window, leaning against a wall over the road”

Once more he had slipped, it seems. So anxious to be on time he was achingly early. I passed her on the stairs as she went for the door.

“I switched the kettle on, pet”

“Clothes laid out for you on the bed, yeah? I’ll go and collect our little man”

I heard the door bang as I entered the bedroom, her heels ticking down the path, and I looked at what was left for my delectation. A dark blue dress, size 18, with a cross-over front that allowed it all to hang in folds and pleats to cover my shape. Underwear, functional and comfortable, as were the tights and the kitten-heeled court shoes. Plain, elegant; nothing like that disaster of ‘sexy dressing’ she had tried so long ago.

A basic face. One simple necklace of gold chain to match the studs, which still caught my eye weeks after I had finally gone for it. The new wig. My public.

He was in the living room, clutching a glass of wine and looking embarrassed again.

“I didn’t want to be late, Jill, after the two of you were so kind to invite me”

I smiled, and took a glass of my own. “John, look at what you just said. Who rang you?”

“Larinda”

“But you still thought to say ‘the two of you’, aye?”

I started to laugh, and at my fiancée’s enquiring eyebrow I added, “I could wonder if you are trying to make up for all our previous time together, if I didn’t understand you had---nope, welcome to our home, John, and cheers!”

“Have you heard from James?”

“They are away camping again, should be back in a week. Riding down to Bordeaux and getting the bus back”

He nodded. “Good birding there. He will be busy”

“Worry not, mate, he’ll be back soon and we’ll fit in a trip to your place, aye?”

That brought a very, very clear memory, of saying to myself that he would never, ever be my mate, and then I thought of how wrong I had been about so many other things, such as my entire life, and then Larinda was rising to answer the doorbell. Noise, laughter, a particularly deep voice, and then the living room was full. I had a hug from Rachel and a kiss from each of the boys, and there were things to put in the kitchen and more importantly in the fridge.

Fossy, in particular, held up a supermarket carrier bag with a grin. “Four stotties and a tub of pease pudding, with some good ham to go with them”

Rachel pushed past him with a sneer. “Sod that northern crap, been chilling this at home, so get it in the fridge first. Want Bucks Fizz for starters, yeah? Hiya, John!”

I did as told, and it struck me that I seemed to be falling slowly into the housewife role, almost by default. That was no complaint; it was simply that once Larinda spread her wings, once she realised her own value and worth, her personality emerged like a butterfly and took wing. No odd fantasy of female dominance there, just a far more equal partnership than her ex-husband could ever have expected. That brought another smile, which became broader, as first I remembered interminable stories about feminised men and strident women, and then seized on the fact that now, almost always, I understood that I was myself female, and always had been.

Alec noticed, and came over to me. “Going well?”

“You should know, pal. I could ask you the same, but it’s a bit obvious, aye?”

“Ah, Gillian, just a cliché, same as always, but that’s because there are certain commonplaces, certain truths. We both broke a bit, and our wounds sort of fit together, if that’s not a bit of a gory analogy”

He seemed distracted a little. “Problems?”

“In a sense. Jobs, really. Look, I might as well let you know: he wants to move down here. Just got to find him a job that’ll let him feel he’s not living off me”

“Hell, I don’t know what there is. I’m a bit institutionalised; been in the same job most of my life. I can ask about, but it might be a bit naughty”

“Something will come up, Jill, and you know what? That’s the great thing about him: he has me thinking of next week, next month, rather than last year. Come on, booze and food, yeah?”

Not only John Forster, it seemed, but his brother too. Rachel was as forthright as ever.

“This one don’t get away, not ever, yeah? But there is no sodding way I am ever going to live in some bleeding northern ice cave, yeah?”

There was a cough from John. “If I may…I once read that it isn’t that bad around Newcastle. Only for four months of the year is it cold, wet and windy; the rest of the year it’s Winter”

A moment of silence, and then the laughter began, and I saw Alec make an obvious mental note. John Wilkins, with no planning, no stage notes, had just cracked a joke.

I cracked the bubbly.

CHAPTER 2
The evening finished with my pudding, of course, which brought giggles and snorts. Each bowl bore two pear halves, round side up, filled with the raspberry and ice cream mix, and perched on top of each upturned bit of roundness was half a grape, the whole slathered in chocolate sauce. I feigned puzzlement at the laughter.

“What? It’s something I first had in France; they call it ‘Josephine’s tits’, I just added the filling”

In the end, they ate them, so they served their purpose. Apparently, it seemed, and after all our guests had gone, they also gave Larinda ideas, and very new and nice ideas they were. Afterwards, we lay tangled together, and she was still playing with my ever-so-sensitive nipples.

“How do you feel about that sort of stuff, pet?”

“Put my hand out…or my tongue…”

“No, love. Look, we’ve been through this sort of thing, and you, you’re straight, aye? I mean…”

I indicated the puffiness that was starting to show itself on my chest. She sighed, and cuddled closer to me.

“Lover, it’s hard to explain. Those bits, they are part of you, yeah, the…person I love, and they obviously make you feel nice, and that’s nice for me, yeah? Just…look, I know you have to do it, I’ve known that for ages, that you have to get rid of this bit”

“Ooh”

“Yeah, and I have no idea what I will feel like when I get presented with a fanny rather than my fave pink oboe, but I do know one thing. Even if we end up without any shagging, of any kind, it’ll still mean we end up together, yeah? I just can’t see me without you. Ever”

So, she moved her hand, and then she did something else, and things were very good indeed.

I was trying to keep my eyes open for anything that would work for Jim’s brother, and in the end it was Stewie who came up with the goods. That crew were incredibly tightly-knit, and I got the impression that there was an awful lot more to their mutual history than I had yet heard. He called me one morning.

“Jill Carter”

“Hi Jill, Stewie. Alec was having a word with her indoors the other day, about that evil little sod from up your way. That was a compliment, by the way, not a complaint”

“Ah. You wouldn’t be looking at an offer of gainful employment for John, would you?”

“Not me, love. I am as manned-up as I can cope with. Not got the work for more staff, otherwise I would. It’s Annie, Annie Johnson. Sal had a word, and it seems as if Sussex are recruiting for the PCSOs”

That made a lot of sense. John was too old for the police, and perhaps too damned by his army scandal. A Police Community Support Officer, though, that might actually appeal to the sense of fair play I had finally come to appreciate he held to so tightly in his maturity. I remembered his comments about warzones: big men, bullies, shame.

“I can see him going for that, Stewie. If he got Crawley nick, or even Horsham, it would be a straight forward commute from Alec’s place. All we have to do now is find some pub that needs a landlord and isn’t going down the toilet already, and they’ll both be sorted”

He laughed. “Don’t ask me, I only know pubs from this side of the bar! He’s going to have to do his own research. They’re serious, those two, aren’t they?”

“Pal, I have never seen Rach happier. She was so scared at first, like, that he would end up all fists and gob, and he never was, not even as a kid, aye? Christ knows what it’s costing him in relief managers and fares, but he’s down as often as he can manage. Problem is, it’s his pub, and I don’t know if he’d settle to be a manager rather than, you know, master and commander”

“Ah, look. I have a number of friends who like pubs–stop laughing! We’ll see what we can do. Got to be something about. You want Annie’s number?”

He gave me a landline number, and then the website address for the PCSO recruiting drive, and of course it ended up with us arranging another curry night; the proper courtesies must be observed. I rang Jim’s pub that evening, and there was the usual noise of a busy bar. Whatever it took to keep a pub lively, Jim had it, and I wondered if he would ever be able to transfer that flair down South. He’d have to learn to speak English for starters.

“Hi Jim, your kid about?”

“Aye Jill, Ah’ll just shout him ower. How, John lad, Jill for thee”

There was some banging, and then John came on the line. “How, Jill. What can I do for thee?”

“More like what I might have for you, marra. Would your Alec fancy a man in uniform?”

“Go on”

I explained the PCSO scheme, and if it were possible I could almost feel his nodding.

“It’s not the best-paid job in the world, like, but it’s down here, and there are three or four nicks that are close enough for a commute. Even the airport, come to think of it”

“I thought that was in Surrey”

“No, just south of the border. That spur road from the motorway, that’s the split. About ten minutes by train from Redhill, quarter hour or so if you were to get a post in Crawley”

He kept silent for a moment, and when he spoke he was careful in his words. “Aye, lass, it sounds a good’un, just…look, I know wor lad told you why I had to leave the army. That’s dishonourable, aye? Will they let me in with that on me record? If it’s a problem, there’s no point in even speaking to them”

“Well, Stewie’s given us Annie’s home number. You could speak to her, like”

More silence. “I’d rather you did that, if you don’t mind, Jill. Just…”

He tailed off again. “John, is there more to the story than you’ve let on?”

A deep sigh. “No, that’s just it. A lad in another section, bit of eye contact in the netty, like, two lads having a slash and not putting percy away that quickly, and we’d both had a bit to drink, and he was actually paired up in a room, not open barracks, aye? And his roommate was off on a weekend pass, except he came home early, and we were a bit busy, and that’s it. No pervy stuff, no weird shit, just two lads a bit drunk and needing a bit of company. It’s just, well, I can say all that to you, but someone else, well, please; you call her?”

“Aye, John, I will. Odd, this: you’re not the lad I knew at school, are you?”

“Oh yes I am, lass, just the way you are the same lad I used to kick the shit out of. Just, like, neither of us had worked out why back then. Both of us, stupid little sods back then. So let’s promise ourselves we’ll try and be a bit more sensible before we die, right?”

I had to laugh. “Sitting where I am, marra, it all makes perfect sense now. I’ll ring you back, OK?”

“Aye, OK. Oh, meant to tell you. Wor lad’s off to an interview. He’s looking at a manager’s job with one or two of the big chains, sell this place, aye, move in with that Essex slapper you fixed him up with. Look, I’ll let you know how it goes, so…so I will wait and see what your copper says, aye? Speak to you soon”

I rang the number that evening, and she was in. That was my first reaction; I had assumed she was welded to her police station.

“Stewie told me, aye? Your mate, he’s a squaddie, should be a shoo-in”

“That’s the problem, Annie. Him and the army weren’t on the best of terms when he left”

“Ah, any dishonesty?”

“No, just, well, he got caught shagging”

“But he’s---oh! Who?”

“Another soldier. Didn’t lock the door properly”

She started to laugh. “Oh, Jill, I’m not being nasty, it’s just, well, you know what I am, aye? What we both are? I crapped myself with worry about the bosses, and the boss here, the Super, he thought it was bloody Christmas, aye? He’s one of these fast-stream types, all ethics and diversity, and there was me, aye, about as diverse as he had ever dreamt of. I can see him now: oh goody, that’s my gay box ticked, as well as my victims of homophobia one”

“You make him sound like a right tosser”

“No, he’s not that, just a bit earnest and a bit too obsessed with his little pie charts. I think he was a bit disappointed I wasn’t gay as well. No, leave it with me and I’ll find out where they are looking to staff up. If it’s Crawley or Gatwick it will work well. Both places we have someone who can watch his back. Anyway, how are you feeling now? No hangover from that nastiness?”

“No. Well, yes. Positive things, really, understanding that there aren’t that many arseholes about compared to the bulk of the population”

She laughed. “Trust me: do my job and you’ll realise there are a lot more than most people see, aye, but they are still a small minority. Just very vocal”

We said our goodbyes, and John put his application in that night.

CHAPTER 3
A month later and John’s interview was weighing on his mind, and Alec was leaving mine well alone.

“I am worse than bloody Sally, Jill. She always gets close to her patients, and she’s got me doing it now. No, that’s unfair. Blame where blame is due: it’s your fault”

“You make it sound like a failing, Alec. Nothing to do with my amazing charm?”

“No, she did it with Annie, and Steph, and poor Melanie, of course. Oh, right: you haven’t met Steph yet. Customs Officer down at the airport, another of our merry band. Mad as a mad thing”

“Er, isn’t that a given in our situation?”

“You know what I mean! Or…perhaps, in her case, you don’t. I don’t know her at all well, but Sally tells me things and, well, you are rather mundane by comparison. No offence”

“None taken. I’ll just have a quiet word with your prospective brother-in-law. Anyway, what are you suggesting?”

“Well, Sal and I have a fall-back chap for this sort of thing. I am not going to try and pronounce or spell his name, so just call him Doctor Raj. Good chap, Raj. I have your endocrinology stuff from your GP, by the way”

“Bit odd it’s come to you?”

He laughed, and it was a happy one that highlighted my memory of the drab and shabby man I had first met. “Trust me, Jill, we have had such a little flurry of new women here that it makes sense for us to talk to each other. Short answer: I, or rather Raj, will be looking to sign you off at some point, and then you are looking at Charing Cross and if they see the same person I do you have no idea what the waiting list will be like, so keeping everything in hand makes life easier for all of us”

He paused. “Jill, this is heading towards surgery. You know that. There are risks, especially at your age, and especially after so much alcohol. There are two things to look at. Firstly, what happens if they don’t accept you for surgery? Secondly, where does surgery leave you and your partner? I don’t mean all that bollocks from the Gender Recognition Act, the partnerships, annulled weddings, so on. I mean…

“I mean, her in bed with a woman who is entirely that. No extras. Let me talk, just for a little while, please. Everyone has their limit, everyone has a certain level of flexibility before they snap. This is an important decision. You need to be very certain in your own mind whether you can live without being ‘complete’ for her sake, or whether you can be certain that she can live with it. My original…”

He trailed off for an instant, sniffing and shuffling his notes. “My original diagnosis was that you would be dead in the near future without the opportunity of, without the hope of eventual surgery down there. I have heard all sorts of terms, from ‘it’ to ‘cancerous growth’ and ‘tumour’. I saw a real suicide risk there, either conventionally or the slow way you were steadily killing yourself. That changed, as soon as you became involved with Larinda, and that is my problem”

He shook his head, and once more I saw a hint of tears. “My own life is changed, now, changed beyond any hope I once had, and that is down to you and to her, so as far as I am concerned I love you both as family, and this is now no longer a professional relationship. I cannot in all conscience be sure that I am giving the best advice when I am so worried about both of you. So…can you please ask Larinda to speak to Raj as well? Hmmm? This sort of thing gets prescriptive, and Charing Cross can be a bit…consistent in their advice. You are human beings, each of you unique, and your relationship is your own. Don’t assume that what is good for one transwoman must be the path you take”

Another pause, and a dab of the eyes as I just sat silent. This was Alec in the raw, all his wounds open. Sod a professional relationship; I went over to hug him.

“Holistic medicine…” he muttered. “Supposed to mean treating the whole patient, not her entire circle of friends”

“Cuts both ways, pet. Now, here’s a deal: let me know when John has his day, and I will try and stop by for him. Give him a bit moral support, like”

Alec burst out laughing. “Interpret is what you mean. Bloody good job it’s not his brother going for the interview!”

So the day came, and Alec fussed over his partner before I hopped on the train with him down to Crawley. Why is the Horsham train ALWAYS late? Never mind; twenty minutes later we were walking past the County Mall and the park to the local nick where the interview was to be held., and as we came up to the door I had a sudden attack of memories that had lain dormant under my drunken haze and self-pity. How the hell could I have forgotten Crawley’s very own sort-of-IRA bombing? Annie Price, that had been her name. Gong from the Queen, crap in the press. I thought once more of Alec, and knew how easy I was having it. He was right: Larinda was going to come first in this, and as I thought the words ‘even if it kills me’ I just had to laugh at how appropriate they were.

“What’s funny, Jill?”

“Life, John, just life. We think we have it sussed, that we know what it’s about, aye? And then it all changes, and sometimes, just occasionally, like, it’s actually for the better. We see better with eyes open”

“Aye, lass. I learnt that one in Bosnia. Howay in, and I’ll buy you a pint or a coffee after, depending”

Up to the desk. “John Forster; here for an interview about PCSO?”

The frighteningly young copper at the desk checked a list. “Ah. First one in today; that’ll look good. Your wife going to wait for you?”

We stopped laughing, eventually, but it showed how much strain he was feeling that such a lame comment tickled him so much.

“Son…no offence, like, but as we are both gay it sort of started us off. She’s here as a bit of support. Any chance she can come and wait inside?”

The young PC turned to me. “Got any ID?”

“As a matter of fact I have”

“Revenue and Customs? That’s good enough for me. I’ll just call the Sarge to let you in and sign for you, OK?”

Our small world got even smaller right then.

“Fuck me backwards, John Forster! What the hell are you doing here?”

“Do I know you?”

“I picked up the pieces enough times after you, marra, just couldn’t catch you at it. Dennis Armstrong, and that’s Sergeant Armstrong to you. For the benefit of the tape…”

John blinked. “Shit, aye! That big corruption shite, you were the grass, aye? Bugger, I didn’t mean it like that, I meant, well…”

Dennis was grinning at John’s verbal gymnastics. “Look, I know why you are here, obviously. Mr Davenport will be doing that bit. It’s just, well, what the hell are you doing so far from home?”

“Ah, SERGEANT, for the benefit of the tape, Jill here was up hyem and she sort of introduced me to them, and one thing led to another, and here I am”

“She a canny lass?”

There was a snort from the youngster once he worked out what the older man meant, and another memory lit up my mind. This was the man blown up. How much life, how many opportunities, had simply walked past me in my wasted years? John’s wry smile was back.

“I don’t go that way, pal. Dennis. Sarge”

“Shite! You’re the ones…Stewie, the queerbashers. You’ve met the missus, then. Kirsty. Hell, you do realise that extreme violence isn’t exactly part of the PCSO job description?”

John’s grin was wider. “Fringe benefit, perhaps?”

The sergeant stuck his hand out for a shake. “You haven’t changed at all, have you? Still up for a ruck!”

John’s smile faded. “Trust me, Sarge, I have changed in ways you really don’t want to see, or at least not the reasons. Saw some things…”

“Not here, aye? Wayne, buzz us in, and we’ll get him round to the Super. Coffee first, aye?”

We ended up in a tiny room with the thickest, strongest coffee I have ever tried to force my body to absorb. Den (“Sod formality back here”) looked at me closely as I sipped.

“You like Annie? Thought so. Kirst told me about that bit of trouble up the town centre. I heard Stewie was restrained. Now, Jill, was it? This lad and I go back quite a while, back when I was fresh new kid on the block, aye? Always around when there was a fight, never any witness to say he was involved in any way we could do him for, and when he pissed off to the Army, we thought, thank god, one less worry of a Saturday night. Thing is, I never had you down as, well, that way, John. What the hell happened?”

John went a little distant. “I’ve always been this way, Den. That’s why the fights, the Army, kicking the shite out of Jill here at school, aye? Just went to the wrong place…fuck that, I went to the RIGHT fucking place. I got to see myself, like, in one of those shows mirrors, the ones that make you look bigger, and that’s all they were out there. I was the school bully, aye, the local hard fucker, and this lot, shite, it didn’t matter what magic book they used, they were all school bullies, just with AK47s”

He looked away again, and his voice was soft. “Guard duty, Den. Guard duty for three days on a mass grave that wasn’t anything more than a pile of dirt pushed over more bodies than I want to think about, and I looked at them, and I saw myself. Not as one of the dead, like, but as one of the fuckers in the funny hats with the guns and the grins, and I thought, is that me? Is that what I fucking am? And that’s when it gets you, aye? You see what you are so clearly, and you want to slit your own throat rather than live with it, but you have to, and if you are at least partly human you make yourself a promise. Not me, not my club. Not good, Den, not good in any fucking way at all”

Den took his hand. “No, John, you’re wrong there. Look at you now, aye? What you’ve done, most people cannot do that, facing up to their faults and making amends. Too easy to blame someone else, excuse themselves. You show that side to Mr Davenport, he’ll snap you up. Me…here’s my hand on it, aye? I know you, John Forster, just not as well as I thought I did. Now, off to the netty, clean your face”

“What for?”

I reached over to him. “You were crying, John. Didn’t you know?”

CHAPTER 4
I get lost with police ranks above Inspector, and the man we eventually went to see was a Superintendent. I sat outside with Den for a while as John was put through the mill. The Sergeant seemed keen to talk.

“So you knew him at school? Small world”

“I didn’t know him at school, that’s just the point, aye? I knew his fists and feet, like, but then I sort of knew a lot of lads’ extremities, if you see what I mean”

“Aye, not the softest part of the world, lass. You seem to be holding up, though”

I looked across at him. “Friends, Den, friends. Wouldn’t be here without them”

He sighed. “Aye, that’s one thing I do know”

“It’s, like, you don’t realise you’re not the only one. You get so wrapped up in your own shit you can’t see that others around you have got a great big bowl of it set in front of them. I mean, look at John there, he’s not the only broken toy I know, but he’s like the rest. He cares, aye?”

Den laughed. “I never, ever thought I would be sitting here discussing the generosity of spirit of John fucking Forster. Look, I have to get on, aye? I should be with you, escorted visitor and all that shite, but I think you are more than a bit trustworthy, aye? Just call back at the desk when he comes back out and I’ll sign you back out. Annie’ll be sorry she missed you”

“Aye, something Sally and Alec were saying. Meet someone like me, show me I’m not that odd, I suppose. How did she do it?”

Den laughed again. “Being a bit of a bloody angel, as far as I can see. That, and scary friends and a fucking good husband. That’s another thing, like; she had a few like her to look at as well, show her she wasn’t what you said, odd. And Sally, of course. Bit good, that one. Look, here’s my mobile number. If he gets the job, gie’s a ring and me and Kirst can talk him through where the shit’s deepest around here”

“We’re grabbing either a pint or a coffee after, Den”

“Sorry, got a kid to pick up. Got a session on next Monday, though”

“I meant a pint, not a piss-up, mate!”

“Music session, pet. Annie’s a bit partial to that, and there’s beer and curry. Over in Charlwood, seven o’clock, the Sun, aye?”

“I’ll think on. Might bring some friends if we come. What do you play?”

He laughed again. “A supping and supporting role! The others are good, though”

It struck me, just as he took his leave, that he had called me ‘pet’. Bloody hell…

John was out quite quickly, smiling as he zipped his jacket up and we went back to Den’s empire to be signed out. The Sergeant took our passes with a raised eyebrow, and John grinned.

“He’s a bit fond of diversity, thy boss!”

“Oh aye, and you should have seen him around Annie. She says it looked as if all his Christmases had arrived on the same day. Anyway, I’ve made Jill an offer–no, not like that! She’ll explain, I’m sure. Right, off you go, I’m expecting trade”

John looked at me sharply as we left. “Coffee, Jill? I could do with a sandwich or something…look, not got much cash on me…”

I ended up giggling at that one. Not laughing, but sort of snort-chuckles. “Does Alec know you are running out of readies, John?”

For the first time ever I saw him blush. “Well, no real job, cohabiting, like; the benefits people are being a bit cuntish. Bloody typical, aye, they get all equal opportunity on our proverbial donkey, and then see it as another way to screw us. Sorry, probably not the best metaphor. Look, Alec sees us right, but I don’t want to sponge”

I stopped and turned him towards me. “Two things, marra, two things you need to get straight. Firstly, the thing that breaks most couples up is money, and combined with secrecy that is a dead cert, aye? Secondly…secondly, I can see what you have done for him, everyone can, so no guilt just because you aren’t earning properly just now. How many housewives are there? What they do isn’t paid, but it’s as valuable, as bloody equal opps as an equal opps thing, aye? Speak to him; he…”

The words were there, and they should not have surprised me, but they did, with the intensity I suddenly knew was between the two of them. “He loves you, John, very obviously, and I know you love him, so don’t fuck it up over money, aye?”

He looked away again. “That’s the thing, Jill. I do, and I think he does, like, as well, and I have quite simply never been in this position before. It was always about the shagging, when I were younger, all the physical shit. I mean, that lad in the Army, that was a good bit of---“

“John, trust me, I don’t really need to know what you get up to in bed, aye?”

“Aye, I know. And to be honest, well, there was a bit more to him, and perhaps a couple of others, aye? Loneliness, like; it’s there all the time. Just, well, the shagging sort of kept the loneliness away, but this, this is different. This lad cares, Jill. And he’s been there before, with …you know”

“Aye, John, I know”

“It’s not easy for people like me…what’s funny?”

“Ah, pal, just consider for a moment who and what you are talking to, and let’s sod off from here and get that sandwich. My treat, and that isn’t a debt, aye?”

So we wandered back to the County Mall and found a seat in Giardino’s, and I had a small moment of revelation as I realised that we were being seen as a straight couple, and my remark to John about ‘who and what’ came back to me.

It took a while, but I think I got through, and yet again I was being confronted with the simple fact that it wasn’t just me that had problems. Not only that, from John’s careless remark it was clear I also wasn’t the only one with her head up her arse, and that thought in itself made me smile, because my own internal pronouns had shifted. All the years of acting out a role were behind me. A confused snack break? Most definitely!

Problems. I had a sudden thought, and pulled my mobile out of my handbag.

“Hiya Jill! How’s stuff?”

“Hiya, Karen, rather good at the moment. Just been in with John for his interview”

“Interview? Oh, the other John! How did it go?”

“Quite well, from what he says. Turns out one of the sergeants there knows him from their younger days. Listen, we’re having a coffee, and a quick bite, and it’s noisy here, so what are you up to on Monday?”

“Nothing as yet. What can you offer?”

“Monday evening there’s a music session at a pub not far from me. I was wondering how James might cope”

“What sort of music? Nothing loud, like that shit you listen to?”

“No; I get the impression it’ll be like a sort of Irish pub crack thing, with beer and curry and stuff. We can put you up if you want”

“I’ll have a word with Terry, yeah? It could be good for him, James that is. He gets music, I think, no need to talk, and it’s all numbers, so it works for him. Send me the details, and I’ll see what we can do”

We said our goodbyes, and I rang another number.

“Hiya Will!”

“Hi Jill; out with Mum doing some shopping, so…”

“Does she know my name?”

“Nope. She’s out of earshot just now; she’ll think I’ve got a girlfriend if she hears, so if I go weird on you you’ll understand”

“Ready for Newcastle?”

“Absolutely, but you didn’t ring to ask me that”

“Bloody students; too clever for their own good. No, it’s a thing on Monday evening, just a musical evening at a pub, few of us going. Could you find an excuse?”

“Yeah, Jill, be nice to catch up with you and the girls. Your parents out?”

“Your mam’s back?”

“Yeah, could bring a sleeping bag, but…oh, hi mum, just sort of setting up a date…”

I heard Von’s voice tinny in the background. “Who’s this?”

“Just some girl. Name’s Jill”

“Is she a nice girl?”

“I think so. Look, Mum, she can hear you, that’s not too cool, yeah? What can I tell her? Night out on Monday, kip at hers?”

“With her parents away? You are a dark horse, William. Can I speak to her?”

“She’s a bit shy, Mum. Not now, ay?”

“Well, about time you found a girl, and I will have no say when you are at university, so, OK, go on, Where is this date?”

“Just over into West Sussex. I can grab the train”

“OK then. I’m just going to look at some gloves for your nana. I’ll leave you to your chatting-up”

“She’s gone, Jill”

I laughed. “It’s not just over into West Sussex, it’s right the other side!”

“Ah, I didn’t say where it was just over FROM, did I? Anyway, I’m an astrophysicist, not a geographer”

“And it’s actually in Surrey….I’ll mail you the details, aye? Oh, don’t worry, I’ve set up a new account, saves confusion, just in case she reads your e-mails. Trust me, Will, I wouldn’t put it past her”

“OK. Monday it is, then”

I got John home then, with some stern words for him about secrecy and sharing, and arrived in my–our–place just as my lover did, and somehow ended up in the shower with her, and…count your blessings, Jill Carter, count them and smile.

Monday came, and Larinda offered to stay sober and drive us to Charlwood. I had thought of asking the other John, but I knew there would be enough work with James to take the edge off the evening’s fun, so quietly shelved the idea. Four of us in the car, then, five when we collected William from the airport station, and then out through the fields to the pub, which was a solid brick place I remembered visiting years before in the course of business. I hoped they wouldn’t recognise me, and add some chef’s special sauce to my food, but then realised I was looking rather different now. We found a corner away from the obvious musicians’ space, and I went to the bar to gather the first round. Alec followed me.

“Jill, all I will say is that John and I talked, and he told me it was your doing. End of conversation, but thank you”

He hugged me, and took the first two glasses back to our table. I looked around for familiar faces, and there was Den, and the chesty WPC, sergeant, whatever, that had dealt with our incident with the queerbashers. They entered amidst a great crowd of people, including Annie, and I spent a while trying to work out who was who and what they were to each other. There were young people as well, and one of them, a lad, called her ‘mum’ when he wasn’t wrapped up with a girl that looked as if she had cornered the world’s entire supply of pink. Behind them came Karen, Terry and James.

Terry murmured into my ear. “Crowded here, love, so don’t know how long he’ll last. See how the music settles him, OK?”

James was staring straight past me, and I thought he had zoned out completely, till, to my astonishment, he said “You are William and you are my friend”

The boy smiled. “You are James and you are my friend”

James’ eyes started to focus on people instead of the backs of his hands, and he smiled, and once more I was struck by how beautiful he was. “Jill. You are Jill. Rob is gone, and Larinda is here. Why are we here, Jill?”

“People will be playing music, James”

“Do they need CDs? I have CDs. I have one hundred and thirty four”

“No, James, they make their music from scratch. They play their instruments to make it. See? There are guitars, and that’s a flute, and a violin, and…I don’t know what the others are”

I took my time to look at the crowd around Annie, and what struck me was an impression of physical fitness. She herself was in a rather pretty dress, with suede court heels that looked good on her legs, and as I watched the man with her I wondered how I could ever have thought her a dyke. There was another couple, the woman tall and ginger, but the man was just like hers, fit to the point of silliness. It was Annie that began, and the flute was hers.

It wasn’t really my sort of music, I will be blunt, but some of the players were astonishingly good at it, including the ginger woman, and Annie herself. She seemed to be trying to outdo Ian Anderson, and it was a close thing. I kept an eye on James, and what he was doing worried me, swinging the upper half of his body from left to right and back again, but in time with the music. When it stopped, he stopped, and I suddenly realised it was what he thought of as dancing. The young man with Annie was watching him, I saw, when he wasn’t banging away on some odd drum.

Eventually, there came a break, and he came over to us.

“Hi, I’m Darren, yeah, that’s my mum there in the silly shoes, and that’s my girl Chantelle”

“I’m Jill. Your mum’s Annie?”

“Yeah. Not my real mum, yeah, but she’s realer, like”

I led him a little away from James. “James has one or two issues, Darren, so if you want to talk to him, you need to let me introduce you”

I went back to our group. “Who wants another drink? If you are thirsty, tell me”

As his parents watched carefully, James unfolded from inside himself. “I would like a drink please Jill because I am thirsty”

“What would you like, Darren?”

“Coke, yeah? Please”

“I am thirsty so I would like a coke please Jill. You are Darren and I am James”

“I am Darren and you are James”

I looked at him sharply, appreciating his quick understanding. James smiled. “Are you my friend?”

“Yes I am your friend”

“You play your dish thing on its side so all the music can spill out”

That was so deep for James, so typical. He looked at something familiar, and saw it in new ways, like in his bird book. Darren smiled. “Have you ever tried playing music?”

“I have one hundred and thirty four CDs. They play music”

“They are copies of music, like. This is playing music, like what my mum does, an’ Steph over there”

Ah. The one at the airport…Darren was still talking, and he was very calm, and absolutely patient. I caught the pink girl watching him, and her look was so soppy she could have been used to define puppy-dog eyes.

“Would you like to try?”

He held out his drum, his bodhran, to James, who stared at it, then looked across to his mother. Karen just nodded, and Darren sat down beside James and started to talk, quietly and in simple terms, about what his two hands had to do. I left them deliberately alone and went to the bar for their cokes, and when I came back, James was banging softly on the drum with what looked like some sort of wooden sex toy. And he banged, and Darren spoke slowly and softly, and two women, one pink and the other dark-haired, watched him and smiled.

CHAPTER 5
I looked up from the boys, and realised Terry had disappeared. Karen caught my eye and nodded towards the exit, and I walked out into the cooler air just as some other reedly-deedly thing started up. It took me a while to find him, as he was tucked behind a small extension to the front bar, sitting on a picnic table. He was crying; his tears reflecting the streetlights on the road by the pub.

“Terry pal, you all right?”

He sniffed a couple of times, and nodded. “Just a bit emotional, girl. It’s…”

He paused, looking off into the distance, and I handed him a tissue from my bag.

“Jill, I love my boy, our boy, Karen loves him as if he were hers, which he is, and I’m not making much sense, am I? Just…now and again he tires me, and I have to pull it all in; when he used to throw things, when he locks himself behind his eyes, yeah, just staring at his hands, I resent him sometimes, and that is wrong. You should never resent your own kid. It’s not his fault he is what he is…”

I sat down beside him and linked arms. “He’s a beautiful boy, Terry”

“That’s obvious”

“No, love, he’s a pretty boy, aye, but you get inside him and he’s beautiful. Just look what he’s done for me, said to me, aye? He’s bright, and he cares. Just, sometimes, he can’t connect”

Terry stared at me, and nodded. “You know what’s odd, Jill? Since he…met you, rather than Rob, he’s better. More…more the boy I love, more often, yeah?”

“Isn’t he always the boy you love, Terry?”

“Oh fucking hell, of course he is, but it’s just nice to be reminded every now and again WHY. There’s all sorts of strange shit goes on in his head, but what comes out is getting more predictable, more…look, I was going to say logical, but that’s the wrong word. More, well, finished is better. Sorry, shouldn’t have left him”

“I rather think he’s in good hands, Terry. That Darren has an awful lot of patience. I think they’ve clicked. Come on; pints to sup, aye? People to heckle”

A weak grin. “And curry to eat?”

“Whey aye! I promised you that one!”

I took his arm, and led him back inside, and the music was banging away nicely, with a seriously sharp guitarist in a silly hat trying to match Ian Anderson’s clone and the mad redhead, and it was a while before my eyes took in what was happening just to their left. Darren had clearly come with a spare drum thingy, bodhran (I looked it up later), and he was sat next to James. They were mirror images, each with their drum and their knobbly wood stick thing, and James was staring intently at Darren’s face. I could read his lips, and they were counting, synchronised with Darren’s: one-two-three, one-two-three. Both were playing, audibly and in time, and with little flourishes that included hitting the wood bits that held the skin, and when the guitarist stuck out his leg in an obvious signal for a finish to their tune I saw Darren raise his drum and drop it back down just like a lead rock guitarist chopping off the end of a track.

And James followed exactly, ending on the beat and with the other instruments, and started to laugh. It was an odd sound at first, then gradually more natural, and he reached out and put his nearer arm around Darren and kissed his cheek. I looked quickly round for Terry, and Karen was busily swapping saliva with him just then, her own tears obvious. Will slipped past me, and approached the two boys, and something was said, and Will came back over to me grinning.

“He just said, you are Will, and you are my friend, and my music makes me thirsty and I will have a coke”

There was a break, just then, as plates of curried stuff were brought out. Darren tapped James on the shoulder, pointing to his parents, and there was a slight fading of the smile. The two young men came up carrying their music dishes, and James walked straight past me to his parents, and when Will handed him a coke, he simply turned to him, smiled, and said “Thank you, Will”, as normally as if he spoke like that every day, every hour. I felt a presence at my shoulder, and it was Annie.

“That’s a canny lad you have there, Annie. I, we will have to say thanks to him. He’s really brought James out of himself”

She smiled. “He has a bit of form for that sort of thing, aye?” she said, and then started to laugh.

“Sorry, Jill, it’s just he has a lot of form for other things, aye, but all in the past. No, he’s a good boy, and I am proud of him. Very proud. ASD or OCD?”

“OCD? Oh, you saw the counting. No, autism. He was a real basket case when I first met him, but just recently he’s come out a bit. We have another mate, like, a bit further along the scale, but…shit, lass, you know, I only realised exactly how badly he’s off when I saw him with the lad”

She grinned. “Life’s like that, girl! Takes somebody else to let you know where you are, aye?”

There was something behind that smile, and I didn’t think it was entirely sweetness and light, but I didn’t want to ask, just in case it might spoil the mood. James was still in as close an approach to normality as I had ever seen him make, and Darren was showing him odd things with his hands while Will and Ms Pink stood and listened, and I had yet another moment of understanding.

The girl, Chantelle, was obviously devoted to Darren, it was as obvious as a fart in chapel, but she was hanging back. She clearly understood what he was trying to do with James, and she was patiently and sympathetically letting him do his self-appointed job. I turned back to Annie.

“What is it here, with you lot? Some odd collection of saints, or what?”

That hint of darkness was there again. “We have all just had a few…issues in the past, aye? Gives you a bit of understanding, empathy, aye? It’s…it’s just that there’s so much shit in this world we sort of decided that we weren’t going to add more to it, do our little bit to ease it, aye? Now, enough of that. You have friends over there; I wouldn’t mind an introduction, especially if I’m going to be working with one of them, aye?”

“But you already know him!”

“Oh, bloody hell, a pedant. You’ll be a bloody accountant, aye?”

Larinda had come to my other shoulder, and the first I knew of her approach was the bray of laughter.

“Bloody taxman, girl, taxwoman, yeah? Anyway, who are you, and what are you doing chatting up my girlfriend?”

Another of those moments, coming so quick, so often, following on the realisation that I had finally abandoned the forced thoughts of myself as ‘he’ and ‘him’. Girlfriend. Annie grinned.

“Trust me, I am firmly on the other bus, not that one, aye? Annie Johnson, sergeant down at the nick your mate has applied to work from, is all. That’s my husband over there with the musicians”

Larinda grinned. “Just checking, my girl. I’m Larinda, this one’s fiancée. Oh, sorry, Jill, didn’t you know? I just thought, as you were making eyes at strange women I better put my marker down properly. Just to be clear, yeah?”

Annie was snorting. “Strange women… oh dear, I shall have to introduce you, but enough is enough for tonight. Moving onto safer ground, aye, what did you think of the music? What’s funny?”

Larinda grinned. “I really, really do not think it’s her sort of thing”

“Oh? And what is?”

My lover put on a shifty expression, looking to each side like some Victorian stage villain, and then loudly whispered “Hawkwind…”

Annie shuddered, and then returned the gesture. “My husband…Eric…he plays the…”

Once more, she looked mock-furtively to each side, before “Banjo!”

I realised a few things, just then, and it was a definite watershed. I was enjoying the evening. I didn’t care for the music, not really, but for what it was, it was pleasant, and well-played to the extreme. I was being accepted in every way as Jill, as a woman. There was healing here; not saints, not angels, but people who had clearly been through the mill, faced their own demons and come out the other side intact. Most of all, though, outshining everything else, was Larinda. Not a lesbian, not like me, but she loved me as I loved her and there, before a stranger, she had just pledged her life to mine.

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.

CHAPTER 7
Lights, Flashing in my eyes, and then passing over me in a long string as I seemed to move down a corridor. Something stinging my arm–fuck, that felt better, for the pain had come with the lights, and it had arrived in capital letters. Voices.

“Her, not him, you twat!”

Larinda’s…

“I am sorry, but with those there, it’s hard to see…her as a woman”

“Well, she’s MY bloody woman, yeah? Sorry, getting a bit upset, OK?”

“Do you want to go and sit down somewhere? Get a cuppa?”

“Not leaving her, am I?”

“Well, you will have to keep out of the way, and if they take her into theatre, that will mean outside”

A hand on mine. I tried to squeeze it.

“Jill? You with us, love? Oh shit! How you feeling?”

I had lips, and a tongue, and the air was moving now, but the connections were slippery and broken.

“Hurts…what happen?”

That other voice, some doctor or nurse, obviously. “Don’t stress her, please”

“Lover, John Wilkins came round, trying to be sociable, yeah? Found you, got the ambulance and filth out. You’re in the Royal East Surrey”

“What about Nye? Von’s dad? It was him”

“Walked into the nick, cool as shit, yeah? Nick me now boys, but it needed doing, he says”

Things started to go away again. I held onto her as long as I could, but she went with the lights, the corridor and the world.

Disinfectant and the smell of food don’t mix well, but they were there, and I added the aroma of fresh vomit as someone held a small bowl to my face. My head hurt like fuck, and there were serious twinges from my groin. The memories came back; on the floor, trying to breathe as he kicked and kicked…I came back to the here and now as I realised it was Larinda who held the bowl. My head was bare, but the nighty I wore was my own.

“Lover? How you feeling?”

“Like shit. What happened? I remember him, kicking me, and then, you know, nothing till I got here”

“Von’s old man, yeah, her dad, he did it. Looks like he kicked you in the head as well”

“Face?”

“You vain bitch! No, in the side, then walked straight into the local nick. Arrest me, boys, but I was provoked, and did the world a service. He’s banged away at the moment while they assess the damage and the CPS piss about”

She smiled, and there was an odd sort of laugh, followed by tears. “Was just a thought, yeah, fucking good job for the old bastard that he was nicked by a different force. If the other John had got him, he’d be fucked. You any idea what triggered it?”

The memories were coming back, bit by bit. ‘Perverting little boys’, that had been his line. William. It must be William.

“Love, it must have been something to do with Will, what he said, like, about perverting little boys. My phone was flat, aye? You need to check it; it’s on charge in the bedroom”

Another memory rose bubbling from the depths. Theatre.

“Larinda, love, what exactly has he done to me? Apart from what feels like splitting my head in half?”

“They thought that might be fractured at first, but no, just concussion, thank fuck. No…”

She trailed off, then squeezed my hand. “Lover, I ain’t gonna get my breakfast no more, yeah? Both smashed to shit, both gone. Empty nest sort of thing”

I tried to make light of it. “Well, never really wanted them, did I? Just, like, I might have chosen a slightly less painful way to get rid”

She tried to smile again, but she was too close to cracking to make it genuine. “Jill, I left John to look after the house, yeah? That OK? If I ring him, get him to grab your phone, run it round the nick? See if there’s anything from Will?”

“Be good, aye”

“Going out to make the call, yeah, but be right back. You’ve been assimilated, Carter, you know that”

The world went away again just then, for a short while, and when it came back it brought more people. John Wilkins was there, with my sweet woman, and so was Will, tears in his eyes. I grunted a greeting, and reached out for John’s hand, for Will’s.

“Nice timing, John, just when I needed you. Thanks, mate”

Memories. How he would never, ever be my mate. So wrong.

“Not a problem, Jill, not at all. I took the liberty of letting Sally know, so others may visit. I’ve also told the office for you”

“Appreciated. I owe you a pint, aye? Will…what the fuck happened?”

“Oh, Jill, this was all my fault! It was the news, this morning, and there was something on it about gay marriage, and Mam went off on one of her rants, and Bamps was staying with us, and she and him, you know, they wind each other up, and I just got angry…”

Larinda said, very calmly, “And so you told your mother, yeah? Finally, you came out?”

He nodded, the tears falling. “And Bamps, he went ballistic, jumps in the car and sets off, and I knew where he was going, and I rang, but it was just the answer thing, and I texted, but I got nothing back, and she was screaming at me, so I just stuffed things in a bag and got out, and shit, a train, and…”

John was still calm, so detached. “He arrived just as Larinda called me for the telephone, so I locked up and brought him with me. We dropped the phone off at the police station, with the charger”

Larinda moved across to hold Will.

“Son, none of this is your fault. We all have to be ourselves, yeah, and that can hurt others, but you have to be honest. It was going to come out…sorry, no other words for it, yeah? But your mum, she’d have known some day, so what’s done is done. You’ve done nothing wrong. Your granddad, he’s the one, he’s got the hate”

“But it’s not, is it? He cares about me, that’s why he did it!”

Larinda kissed his cheek. “Welcome to being a grown-up, Will. Life is complicated as shit, we just hide that bit from the kids. Jill, I am going to take these two off for a cuppa, cause we are a bit busy in the corridor and they don’t like more than three in at a time, yeah? Laters, soon as”

A kiss and she was gone, and then it was Rachel, and John Forster, Alec by his side, and after a while Sally and Stewart, and then a lovely bit of confusion as Annie and Dennis appeared just as a Surrey copper came in to ask the questions that were inevitable.

I came slowly back from the headache, and in a way it was as if each person that came to me, each visitor that took my hand, left their love and drew away a little of my pain with their presence. Friends. All that I had so nearly thrown away, so recently.

Morning light, and the smell of breakfast. Where the hell had the evening gone? I was helped out of the bed into a chair, my breakfast before me, and though the room moved a little bit further in my vision as I stopped moving, it wasn’t too bad, and I was starving. Larinda was slumped snoring gently in a chair by the bed, and woke as the catering lady shook her gently by the shoulder.

“She’s awake, love. Want a cuppa?”

“God, yeah. Jill, how’s you?”

“Better, love. Where’d yesterday go?”

“You just flaked out, lover. Shit, stiff all over, me”

There was a pause as she took a draught of her tea.

“Will’s at ours, yeah, he didn’t want to go home, so I left him with a key and John to look after him, make sure he don’t do nothing silly. He’s blaming himself big style. Tell him he’s done nothing wrong, but he’s still hurting, poor kid. How the hell did you end up with such a fucking cow?”

“Loneliness, pet, that’s how”

"Yeah, well, you don’t get to be lonely again, yeah? You are mine for keeps, Carter…”

She trailed off again, then lifted her face to the window, lines set hard. “I nearly went down there, Jill. I nearly got into my car and drove down to hers. Was gonna get the address off Will, and see how she liked a good fucking kick in the fork. But you, you was here, and so I thought, yeah, laters for you, Von my love, laters”

She turned back to me. “But you’re here, hurting, and I couldn’t leave you, yeah? Anyway…the coppers want to see if you can do a statement this morning, lover. I can see them in the corridor. Call them in”

“Aye, gan on, get it over with”

She waved them in, and it was obvious they had sent one of each to cover all options. A bit like myself, really. I gathered what courage I had left, and looked the woman in the eye.

“No”

“I beg your pardon?”

“No. I will not give a statement”

CHAPTER 8
“I beg your pardon?”

She wasn’t like that Sergeant, Kirst, Kirsty…I was having a little trouble keeping my thoughts straight. They had me on some pain-killer or other, and while it was seriously good shit, as my junkie friends might put it if I had any, I needed to keep my concentration to get this right.

“I said no statement. Do you know who exactly is behind this?”

She perked up just a little. “Well, as he walked into the nick and held his hands up, we have what could be called a reasonable suspicion”

“Let me tell you a story, then”

I took her through the not-so-intimate details of myself and Von, William, his sexuality, and that text from Nye. Once more she visibly sat up straighter.

“Have you kept the text?”

“Till this morning, aye, but I deleted it as soon as I did some thinking, like. Look, what actually is going on here? Miserable old fucker…sorry. Nasty old man, bigoted as all hell, aye, but he loves his grandbairn, and for what it’s worth, Will loves him, and after all, what’s he done to me that I didn’t want done anyway?”

Larinda bristled at that. “Kicked the shit out of you, yeah, put you in casualty instead of a proper doctor’s whatsits, that’s what. How the hell do you think I felt? You take this old bastard and you stick it to him, so far up his fucking arse….sorry, constable, bit upset”

The woman copper sighed. “Ah, sod it, I’m Tracy, he’s Blake. Think his parents were stuck on Dallas or something”

“Better than JR, yeah? Trace is right, sod the formality. Look, we see where you are coming from, but look at it from the wider angle: he’s come round, punched you out, kicked you hard enough for a GBH charge to stick, and gone into the nick with a grin so wide his head should have split. And then you…Miss, you say thank you very much, away you go home, no hard feelings. See it our way, if you can”

I nodded, the room moving slightly as I did but Larinda’s hand tight and steady on my own. “Aye, I can that, but you try and see it from where I am. There’s a young man round our house, blaming himself for everything. Push him too hard and he’ll break. Put his grandda in a cell, and he will do fuck knows what. There’s a family there, and wrong as he is, the old bugger thought he was protecting them”

Tracy leant forward. “And so he goes away feeling that he can do what he likes? He can kick a pervert in the head and get a medal”

Her head snapped to the right as Larinda started. “Sorry, but that is how he sees it. You are a perve, you made his boy a perve, this is how the world works. And what next? Where does he draw the line? Someone gets a kicking because they, I dunno, look at his azaleas the wrong way? I deal with people like him every day, Blake does, it’s our job, and they all have that attitude. Respect, they call it, and then someone ends up dead”

That other girl, Melanie, off the bridge…that was what Tracy meant. I felt the tears that had held back thus far start to push forward, begging to be set free.

“Look, I don’t know, aye? I just can’t wreck Will’s life. He’s got enough shit there already, and putting his bamps away would finish him”

Blake nodded. “I know, but you need to be aware that the CPS can still go ahead if they feel a charge could stick. You would still be called, still put in the box”

“And if I say no thank you, refuse to answer?”

They exchanged a look, and Tracy took the tag. “Rape victim, recently. Had all the usual problems, decided to withdraw the charge. Not only that, she claimed she’d made it up when she clearly hadn’t. Got jailed for it”

Larinda jerked. “You are taking the fucking piss!”

“Nope. Judge was a bit over the top, but I sort of see his point. Sort of. Miss Carter, you get called, you try and stay schtum, you will end up banged away for contempt. There’s too much evidence in the public domain already, what with your ambulance ride and his bit of triumphalism. Look…yeah, this is how. VIS, Blake?”

“Course, yeah. Miss Carter…”

“Jill”

“OK, Jill. Victim impact statement. Newish thing where the victim gets to speak to the court and say how shit they feel after the crime. You word it the right way, say what you have about the boy, yeah? The old bigot gets his club number but the judge should go light”

“Club number?”

“Criminal record. He’s a knob key at the mo, right, Trace?”

She winced. “Jill, knob key is a sort of code at our nick for people without CRO, a criminal record, club number. NBCY, yeah? Not been caught yet. Sorry; job makes you a bit cynical, but he has been caught, and he needs a short sharp whatsit to let him know. Look, we’ll clear off for a bit, but think on, please? The VIS, that might be your way forward on this one, cause I think our CPS are begging for a bit of hate-crime prosecution. Makes them feel trendy. Some of them might even take their ties off”

They were gone, just a piece of paper with their numbers on for a souvenir, and Larinda began her own attack.

“They are right, Jill. He walks away from this, what’s next? Will finds a fella and his old man comes round and shoots you? Fuck it, look at me: all I wanted was a nice bloke, and I found him, found the best in the world, but he wasn’t, so I ended up with the best girl in the world, yeah, and then I see how much shit I missed spotting. Told you: no escape, Carter. But we has to let him know, one way or the other, he do not touch my girl ever again. You think on. He’s gonna go for a guilty-but plea, I bet, and then there’ll be mitigation based on provocation and family love and---what? Bloody hell, lover, you know I do a lot of reading!”

She leant into me, her voice softening. “Lover, we need to let Will know that his bamps was wrong, all the way, but that it’s not his fault. He needs that day in court, he needs to be told he’s a cunt, yeah, but what that Trace says, that’s your job. You do your statement, and we sit down, you, me, Rachel, bloody Alec would be good, yeah, and Will, and we make our own speech. We…yeah, bloody hell, girl, WE, we make that old fart look so small, we take his bloody triumphalism away from him for us”

Suddenly she was laughing. “Jill, was gonna say something really stupid, yeah, Bout how you be the bigger man, yeah?”

Laughter of my own, followed by more tears. She held me like a child, and I knew, in the end, that she was right. Let him have his day in court, but on our terms.

I dozed again. I must have done, for the clock had moved, and there were food smells again from the corridor and a man with a white coat on by the bed.

“Good afternoon, Ms Carter. I am Dr Hussain, just here to have a quick check on the injuries. Would you like your friend to leave for a moment?”

“Fiancée, Doctor. No, she can stay”

“Good. Saves me calling a nurse round for modesty’s sake. Could you just pull those curtains round? Ta”

There was some gentle manipulation, and a lot of wincing from my woman, but he seemed reasonably happy, if that is the right word.

“Ms Carter, here is the state of play. You have suffered a quite serious concussion, clearly resulting from a blow to your head, but there is no fracture, for which God be thanked. That concussion may result in nausea and a sort of vertigo effect”

“I was sick a couple of times, and if by vertigo you mean the room moving around…”

He nodded. “Those will pass. Unfortunately…”

He shook his head. “You are a confusing case. Can I assume that what we had to remove was already on your surgical wish list?”

I nodded. “Yes indeed. I just, well, planned it in a slightly less painful way”

Larinda sniffed, but there was a twinkle in her eye. “Don’t worry about what I want, girl!”

The doctor sighed. “Can I assume you are intending full surgery for that matter? I ask this because if it is to take place more than a little while from now, you may wish to consider prostheses so as to keep the skin from atrophy. To leave your surgeon some…raw materials, yes?”

I shook my head. “Never wanted them, Doc, so I don’t want anything back. If I can get fixed soon, then yeah, I will. Just need signing off from the shrinks and then I will look at options”

He nodded. “Well, to be fair, you do seem to have more support than I normally see in such cases, if that is not speaking out of turn. We shall leave the…area to heal, then. It looks as fine as can be expected, and to be honest such a loss, surgically, is quite a minor thing. Do you have any budgie-smugglers?”

“You what?”

“Tight swimming trunks. When you begin healing properly, your penis will tend to pull at the wound unless it is constrained. Speedos or similar work well. Oh, and we will need to speak to your own doctor, of course, your GP. Do you have an endocrinologist? Your hormone balance will naturally have changed”

And so he went on, and it was all so matter of fact that I had to ask myself what else he had seen in his career to let him take me so easily in his stride, and then, just a very few days later, I was wheeled down the corridors and past groups of smokers to the car park, where John and Will were waiting to take me home.

Mates. Family. I started both my statement and the VIS the same afternoon.

CHAPTER 9
“All rise !”

It was finally our day in court, and I had done my level best, together with help from Rach and Larinda, to present as neatly and femininely as possible. Will was beside me, with John Wilkins, as we waited for the formality of the plea.

“Aneurin Wynford Prentice, you are charged…”

It droned on, in that oddly flat voice used in courts throughout the country. I wondered if they had special classes in it, like the men who read out the football results, where you knew who had won, lost or drawn by the intonation used on the second team’s name. This wasn’t a silly game, though, it was wilfully assaulting, occasioning grievous bodily harm with intent, contrary to section et cetera of statute whatever.

“How do you plead?”

“Not guilty on account of I was provoked”

The Clerk whispered to the Bench, and the Chairman, who was a woman, nodded. “Mr Prentice, the plea is either that you are guilty or not of the charge. Anything else is either defence or mitigation before sentence, unless you are to claim unsound mind”

“Not guilty then, aye, your honour. I was protecting my boy”

She sighed. “You nay sit, Mr Prentice”

The CPS lawyer (‘Call me Lawrence’) was up first, and smoothly outlined the case before giving me a sharp nod. Oh. Of course. Out of the court room till called to give evidence. A little group of us hurried out, and I spotted Von in the public gallery, looking dreadful. Her eyes couldn’t hold mine, and went down to her lap. Ten minutes later, I was called back in, and by my real name. The Book, and the oath, and the memory of the quick bit of coaching from Dennis and Kirsty. Look at him, listen politely, then answer the Bench. Don’t argue, don’t get drawn, don’t try to be clever. The CPS man took me smoothly through the events, and then it was Nye’s brief.

“How do you know the accused, Ms Carter?”

“I used to go out with his daughter, Siobhan Prentice”

“Was this as a man or as a woman?”

Fuck Dennis’ advice. “As a woman pretending her hardest to be a man”

“So the relationship was one entered into under false pretences?”

“To that extent, yes”

“So you were rather careless of the affections of my client’s daughter, then?”

“No. I was trying to be something I wasn’t, for her sake, and I couldn’t, so I ended it, for her sake”

“I see. But after she had made very clear her dissatisfaction with your…situation, did she not debar you from any contact with her family?”

“Yes, she did, which was when the accused threatened to kill me”

There was a cough from the Bench, and the Chairman spoke up.

“This threat to kill. Does it form part of the matter here?”

The CPS man bobbed up. “No, Your Worship”

“Proceed”

I could almost read her mind. Threats to kill would have been a serious enough charge without the assault, battery and GBH, so she was wondering where we were headed. The defence bloke started up again.

“Why did you continue to contact her son William?”

“I didn’t. He contacted me”

“And why would he do that?”

“Because he needed help. He is gay, and had no idea how to deal with his family”

I looked at Nye as I said the last, and saw his face clench in hatred. I hoped Will would be able to get through his own ordeal without breaking.

“A young man would turn to…you before his family?”

There it was, laid out for the Bench to make of it what they would. Pervert. Deviant. Corruptor. The bastard was banking on the potential bigotry of the magistrates, and there we would hang. I took a breath.

“Yes. His mother had expressed her opinion forcibly and often”

Again, the Chairman spoke up. “Counsel, is any of this germane? We have a charge of assault, in essence, and that is the matter to be tried. These are matters surely more proper to mitigation. Does your client contest the essence of his alleged attack on the witness? I will not have this trial descend into some version of an old-fashioned rape trial”

Something was going on with her, something dark, but she was right. Will deserved better than having his private life, his most intimate self, pinned out for public display. The lawyer took the hint, and the rest was simpler. I opened the door, he hit me, kicked me, I woke up in pain. He still had a snipe at me, and I had his version of ‘weren’t you going to get them cut off anyway?’ before I stepped down, dismissed, which meant I could stay in the courtroom.

They went easy on Will, as it turned out, just taking him through the argument with Von and his warning to me, and then my lover did her bit, and then John.

It was amazing how he perked up, and I remembered how he had been at work, so anal, so controlled, and I realised that he was actually in his element. What, after all, is giving evidence other than the most extreme form of pedantry? There was a moment, though, just one, when Lawrence asked him how he had felt on seeing me on the ground.

That was the first time I had ever seen him really cry. He took a moment, and the tissues, and then straightened up.

“How would anyone feel on seeing their closest friend broken and beaten? I thought she was dead, and so I did what I could, but yes, I was devastated. I love that woman dearly, as a friend”

And then it was Nye, and this time the beaks let him run through his build-up to the attack, how he had warned me to leave his boy alone, but how I had conspired to infect him with gayness, and what else was a grandfather to do? It was our man who led him through that, and I tried to catch a glimpse of the defence lawyer’s face, for this was not what he wanted. He did his best, though, playing up the surrender at the nick, the remorse…which didn’t exactly work for the old man.

And so the bench retired, and their return was quick, their verdict unanimous. The Chairman turned to the defence.

“Now, Counsel, we have your moment for mitigation”

“Your worships, the mitigation is simple and obvious. It would have been better-presented by the accused himself, but I shall do my best”

A little snipe back. He continued.

“Mr Prentice is a loving grandfather, a proud and honest man. His daughter, Siobhan Prentice, present in this court, is one of his most precious possessions, as is his youngest grandson, William Roberts, who has given evidence today. When it was discovered that the then partner of his daughter was a fraud and a liar–no, Your Worships, it is clear that as she has decided that she is female, any other presentation would have been fraud and deceit. When the deceit was admitted, he most naturally looked to protect his family.

“Despite his best efforts, however, he discovered that the person he assaulted was still in contact with his grandson, and when the child admitted that he had been drawn into that same world of deceit, this good, honest, proud, loving man snapped. He did what any other loving father would have done, and defended his family. He acknowledges absolutely that the manner of his defence was wrong, and in his remorse he went to the nearest police station to surrender.

“In the light of this, and of his previous good character, we would ask the Bench’s clemency”

The Chairman’s mouth twitched slightly as she turned to our side. He popped up.

“We have a Victim Impact Statement, Your Worships”

“Proceed”

She stared hard at me, but I rose, with the bundle of pages, and began.

“Your Worships, this statement may come across as a little unusual, given the crime involved, but I hope it will be understood. I am transgendered. That is something that has been made very clear in this hearing, but the actual experience is something that cannot be guessed at. I fit a rather common profile for people like me, in that I have gone through life trying my level best to deny what I am, what I have always been. Women like me overcompensate. We do the whole male thing, we sometimes become more masculine than anyone else, and we hide and suppress who we really are as long as we can.

“Then we break. That is the only word I can find that fully describes the experience. We break in different ways, though. Some transition to their true gender, badly or successfully depending on their circumstances, and very late, but they do it. Some do not succeed. They turn to alcohol, or drugs, or start taking extreme risks, or self-harm, or…or they simply opt out of life. Suicide the slow way, or the quick, but it is suicide.

“That is where I was a short while ago”

I had turned to look at Von as I said that, and the effect was as I had hoped.

“I had found a partner to ease my loneliness, and I loved her dearly, but I knew I could not carry on with my life. I had a plan, which was a simple one. I have heard it called ‘flensing’, where every external aspect of a life is cut away so that the end hurts as few as possible. Von was to move back to Wales, I was to ease out of her life, and as soon as I had cleared up a few more problems, I would step out. Jill Carter has left the building, left the fight I thought I could never win.

“Things happened, then, and they were the gift of friends, the gift of life. The woman over there entered my life, and shook it to the core. She has stayed with me, supported me, accepted me despite her own nature, and shown me that living is a far better option than anything else. Other friends have spoken to this court, and there are many who are not here. Into this renewal came William, who was as lost as I had been. William is gay. That is something he has finally made public, but just like my own dilemma he was in a hard place with nobody to talk to. A family that has always expressed their hatred, openly and clearly, of perverts is not the place to feel safe in opening up.

“I will not even stoop to denying the odd idea that gay people are made by others, and as has been said formally here the parts that have been removed were of no value to me, but I will say this: Nye hurt me. I do not ever want to feel such pain again, and I have seen the pain he caused others in the eyes of my friends. That is something I will never, ever forgive him for, and nor should this court. However…

“However, I understand him. He is wrong, so wrong it cannot adequately be expressed, but what he did he did through love. He loves Will, as his counsel has clearly expressed, and I know, because I also love Will as if he were my son, that Will loves his old Bamps to distraction, just as he loves his mother. There are two people in that family who need to learn the meaning of those words, who need to grow up, but none of that will be served by locking up one foolish old man.

“Accordingly, I beg the court not to pass a custodial sentence on Nye Prentice. No good would be served by it. Nye, I will never forgive you, but for Will’s sake, I offer you my hand”

Von stood up and hurried out of the court, face streaming, while her dad sat with his mouth open. I put away my paper and sat down, making sure I did it as elegantly as my body would allow.

“We will adjourn to consider sentence and to await reports”

They rose, we rose, and once more the appraisal from the Chairman, eyes flat on mine, but just a hint of a smile as she turned away. My friends gathered round me as Nye walked past, his face unreadable, and Lawrence shook my hand. I had to ask the question.

“What was going on with that Chairman? I was expecting a lot more of the godless pervert stuff, but she slapped him right down, like”

“Ah, Kathleen Powers. Bit of a name on the local circuit. It was when she was a lot younger…look, not here. Perhaps over a coffee?”

We gathered our bits and pieces and he led us over the road to the fortunately quiet Costa, and to my surprise insisted on paying.

“Who wrote that statement, Jill?”

“I did, along with Larinda, my friend Rachel and my therapist”

“Neatly done. You care for that family, don’t you?”

“Ye bugger, aye. I just couldn’t, well, do THIS to them”

Larinda snorted. “Did it to me, though. Anyways, this beak, yeah?”

Lawrence nodded. “Bit of the shitty end of the stick, sort of thing. She was on the receiving end in one of those old-style trials she mentioned”

Larinda looked puzzled. “What did she do?”

Lawrence sighed. “She got raped, twice. Once in her flat, by her then husband, and once more in the witness box. Allegedly, that is, because he was found not guilty, even though she waived her anonymity. Got balls, that woman”

He looked around the table, and sighed.

“Ah, perhaps not the best-chosen of remarks!”

CHAPTER 10
My phone rang, just then, typically before I could make any sort of coherent reply. I checked the number: Karen.

“How’s it going, girl?”

“Just finished. Beaks asked for reports, but we’re all out. Gone for a coffee, like, with the brief”

“Where away?”

“Costa’s. just over the road”

“We’ll be there in five”

“Pardon?”

“Didn’t dump you when you came out, not doing it just cause you got a kicking. Got stuff to tell, anyway. Who’s there?”

“John–Wilkins; my girly, of course, Lawrence the brief, Rach and Will”

“Sprite, no ice, medium white Americano, and a hot choc with marshmallows and choccy stirrer and whipped cream and whatever the hell else they can squeeze into it”

“Cheeky cow!”

“But you love me!”

“Aye, but I’m having therapy”

“In five!”

And so they were, the three of them grinning as I got the hugs, and then it struck me. The three of them. This was as normal, as real, as I had ever seen James. There was the ritual greeting, of how I was Jill, and he was Will, and we were friends, but there was an edge of humanity to him that let his beauty shine from his face more than I had ever seen before. Terry caught my eye, and winked. After I had made the introductions, and paid a silly sum for the drinks, the man explained.

“You missed that music thing, Jill”

“I was sort of otherwise engaged, Terry. Other things were shouting for my attention. Doctors. Sharp knives”

Larinda murmured “Budgie smugglers…” and Rachel guffawed, and then, naturally, we had to explain to both James AND John what we meant, and then again to James that men didn’t really walk around with small parrots in their swimming trunks. Lawrence and I talked the newcomers through the trial, and the possible consequences, and Karen just sat and smiled at me.

“You always were a soft bugger. Will, see what we mean? All because of you---no, I didn’t mean it that way, this didn’t happen because you are not how your mother would have liked. What I meant was, well, look at her. Sees you at risk, promptly puts it all on hold. Me, I’d have gutted him with a rusty sardine tin”

She looked at my lover as she said the last, and got a quite definite nod of agreement.

“Anyway, done and dusted. Will, love, I am really sorry about what this has done to your family, but, well, they made their bed, not you. They will come round, sooner rather than later, yeah? Till then, you just be yourself and try not to eat these two out of house, home and wardrobe. Nice skirt, by the way, girl”

Terry looked over at Lawrence. “This may confuse you, but I mentioned some music earlier. There are people…”

James interrupted his father, to my astonishment. “They are friends, Dad. They are called Annie and Steph and Darren and Kelly and Jan and Bill and–”

Karen put her hand on his arm. “And are they your friends, love?”

“No, Mum, they are our friends. They make music with me but they are our friends”

Karen turned to me. “That Darren boy, he took James under his wing”

“Birds have wings, Mum. Darren is a boy not a bird”

Astonishing…Karen continued. “He decided to teach James about counterpoint, cross-rhythms, and that Kelly girl, she had a bag full of all sorts of bangy hitty shaky things, and we ended up seeing how many James could play at once”

“It was nine. I could play nine things at once. With counterpoint and counting and the things can happen at different times and it is still music”

Terry was a little moist. “James has talent, Jill, a talent we would never have known about, but you introduced us, and…”

Karen took his hand. “Look, love, we met these people only through you. You met them, in essence, because of the same sort of crap you were here for today, yeah? Silver linings...look, next year, or Christmas, they do the same shit, and it’s amazing, and I know you don’t like the music, but hey, we watched, listened to our boy on a stage playing percussion for a bloody folkies’ version of Metallica and Jethro Tull, and if you could bottle that and sell it---I am gushing. Sorry. But…”

She indicated James with a little flick of the eyes. “A wall is sort of breaking. That’s what’s what, and, well, thank you. We loved you anyway, yeah, and, well, you know what we mean, yeah? Amy time, anything”

It was Rachel, in the end, of all people, who was first to make her excuse and disappear to the ladies’ for running repairs. I joined her as she wiped her face clean and sorted her mascara. She turned to me with a half smile, brush in hand.

“You’d be a liability at a depressives’ meeting, girl. Bloody Pollyanna, yeah? Shit; you see what I meant, back then, those queer-bashers? You were so screwed, so shutting yourself off, and what did we say? Come here, OK?”

A hug; more repairs, this time for me, and we returned to our table. Lawrence looked a little shell-shocked as James held forth on his new passion, and after only a few minutes more he made his excuses and left. That was the moment my phone bleeped at me once more: a text had arrived.

‘Can we talk?’

It was from Von. I looked across at Will, and he immediately understood.

“What does she want, Jill?”

“Dunno, aye? Just says ‘talk’. Your call, lad. She’s your mother”

Rachel looked at me, and then turned to the young man. “Has to be done some time, Will, and with us here, yeah? She gets silly, we walk out”

Larinda muttered something about a slap, but I gave her a hard stare to make Rachel’s point. This was Will’s decision. He sighed.

“OK, then”

I texted back ‘Costa opposite court’. Ten minutes later she was outside the windows looking in, but without her father, thank god. That would have been too much, and without a Fossy or a Stewie, I really didn’t want to risk another kicking. I had had a sufficiency, indeed a surfeit. It seemed to take her a couple of minutes to gather her courage, and I actually saw her shoulders go up and down as if she were hyperventilating before a dive into deep water. She took the plunge.

“Will. Rob”

“JILL” snapped Larinda, her eyes blazing. Von needed to be careful, I knew. Any repeat of her usual polemic about perversion would have Larinda at her throat, and probably Karen and Rachel too. Von’s eyes fell.

“Jill. This is hard, aye? Will…can we talk?”

“Go ahead, Mam”

“With all these strangers, son?”

“With all these friends, Mam. My friends. Friends who judge me for the right reasons, yeah? Unlike…”

“Unlike your own Mam? Aye, perhaps”

She drew some slow, deep breaths and turned to me. The name seemed to stick for an instant, but she forced it free, brought it out.

“Jill, what can we do? I do not want to lose my son, which is bloody obvious, isn’t it, but…this is hard. He is my boy, and…I am sorry. I know you didn’t infect him, not like that crap Dad says, aye, but, well, with you like this, it’s just, well…”

Rachel chipped in. “We don’t really have that much time, woman, so get to the point”

There was real anger there, both Larinda and Rachel clearly holding it in only by main strength, and Karen just stared flatly at her like a cat watching a bird. It was obvious that Von was picking up the waves of hatred, and also that she was close to tears, and then she crumpled, her voice almost a wail.

“I just want my baby back!”

I couldn’t help it, and left my chair to hurry her to the ladies’ I had only just left, and something in her untied itself as she fell against my chest and let her tears soak us both. It took a little while for her self-control to come back, and that was with a question. Phrased as a statement, it was still a question.

“We’re in the ladies’ loos”

“Well, aye, of course. Where the hell else would I go?”

She pulled back and looked at me, and for the first time it was clear that she was seeing me, and not just the Rob-picture she had expected or transposed onto the reality.

“So it’s not being daft, is it? This is you?”

“This is what has always been me. This is why I had to push you away, aye?”

She shook her head, and then very, very gently said “You actually look OK. I mean, I don’t fancy you, I fancied the Rob you, but…”

Larinda’s voice spoke from over her shoulder. “Yeah, well, fancying is my job, now, not yours. If we’ve got some sense going now, not all that shit you were shouting, we can go and sit down and sort your poxy family out”

I raised an eyebrow, and Von looked at her, mouth open. Larinda drew herself up, almost exactly as Rachel would.

“What? She may forgive you, but there’s only one soppy cow in this marriage, and it ain’t me. I will do what I can, for the sake of one sweet boy and one sweeter woman, but if you ever, ever give me an excuse you get no second warning, and this is the first. Now, let’s see what the one who matters thinks, all right?”

CHAPTER 11
That struck home, clearly, and after yet more repairs we made our way back to the others. Will looked up at me, an eyebrow raised, and I nodded.

“Your mam wants to say a few things, son”

There was a shift in the dynamics just then, as tense bodies subtly relaxed, and it was clear once more that there was a pack in the coffee shop. One had been attacked, and the others formed up to face down the threat. I caught James looking at his father.

“Is Von a friend, Dad?”

Terry smiled gently at him. “I don’t know, son. Some things must be waited for”

She sat down, in a chair that Karen had brought from another table.

“How…how are you, love?”

“Fine, Mam. These are good people. They look after me”

“When are you coming home?”

He sighed, and looked around us, hints of moisture in his eyes.

“I don’t know, Mam. Is it home anymore? With Bamps and all?”

That was a thought that clearly cut her to the bone. I could almost read her mind. He wasn’t playing the game, following the script. Mother and child argued, she declared her love, sobs, embraces, happy return to family home. She had clearly picked up on the ‘pack’ feeling, and there was a moment, as she looked around at us, when I saw understanding rise in her face. He was in the pack too. Will leant forward and took her hand, which was trembling.

“Mam, I love you. That doesn’t go away, not ever. But who I am, what I am, that doesn’t go away either”

He looked round us, meeting our gaze one after the other. Me, Larinda, Karen, James…He turned to me and gave just a hint of a nod.

“How did you get here, Mam?”

“I drove up, love. I don’t know what Bamps is doing, do I? Or…or what they will do to him”

One more, Will’s eyes made the rounds. “Can I come home with you?”

Rachel’s lips tightened, and I felt Larinda twitch, but Will held a hand up. “Look, how much of my life is ahead of me? Most of it. And…this is my Mam, yeah? Mam, look, shit–sorry–I am not suddenly going to be bringing boyfriends home, am I? To be honest, I’ve never, you know, well, never actually done anything with anyone at all, have I? Just…I want us to stay a family. Even Bamps. But I want some conditions first”

Larinda squeezed my hand twice, and I took the hint.

“Son, whatever you decide, we are all there for you, aye?”

He nodded. “Thank you, Jill. I know that. I think I’ve always known that bit about you. You don’t run away”

John surprised me yet again. “Jill, you have run away all of your life up to now. The thing you should be proud of, the thing that made me so foolish in the witness box, is that you knew when to stop running”

Rachel laughed gently. “John, how did we never see you, the real you, all those years in that office?”

He smiled, and for once it was normal, not the pinched, haunted effort I was so familiar with, not the shark’s-teeth grin he had shown at so many traders’ records.

“Because I was running as well, Rachel. The difference here is that…oh, I am sorry. You are Siobhan, I believe? I am John Wilkins. Until I retired, I was Jill’s manager. Where was I? Oh yes. The difference is that I knew neither that I was running, nor what from, and so I had no idea that I should stop, or when. My own…my peculiarity is in detail. I see details, I focus on detail, I am unable to step back for the bigger picture”

He looked around at everyone once again. “Most of you here know that I have issues that are the subject of attention by a therapist, but there is a difference between what she can do and what is done by simple humanity. That, I believe, is the point William has made. He is looking at that bigger picture, he is relying on the humanity he sees. Siobhan, understand this: there are very few second chances in this world. You must seize this one or lose forever”

Von sat quietly for half a minute, clearly weighing her response, which was the first time I had ever seen her pause before delivering an opinion. When it came, her voice was so quiet I had to strain to hear her.

“You are saying, then, that Will is going down this path whatever, yeah? That I can’t…”

Another pause. “You will have to bear with me. This is my world, all tipped up and thrown on the floor. It don't come easy”

That was like a clearing of mist from a mountain view. This was the woman I had fallen for, the one I had worked so hard not to hurt, the woman…the woman I had loved. Slowly, slowly, she was cracking the shell of bigotry her family had grown around her, the nastiness of her father’s considered opinion of anyone that didn’t travel the same road as he did.

“Love, you would really come back?”

“Why wouldn’t I , Mam? I mean, when did you stop being my mother?”

There was more, and there were tears, but essentially the job was done. Something had finally snapped in Von, reality hadn’t just seeped round the edges of the blinds she kept drawn but rather ripped them away and stood in front of her. Will kissed her cheek and turned to me.

“Do you mind if I get my stuff, Jill?”

“Gan on, Will. Keep the key, aye?”

Von jerked. “For once…woman, you can trust me. He won’t need a bolthole”

I smiled. “I know that, pet. But a lad has to come and see his friends every now and again, like”

Again, the dawn rose in her face. “And you are, aren’t you? His friends? So what happens now?”

Will laughed, and there was relief in it, as he clearly realised he was not going to lose his mother after all.

“Mam, I think what happens next will involve university and a lot of work”

“Yes, love, but you’ll be so far…”

It was clearly her day for revelations. “Jill, your mam, she knows about you”

“A bit hard to hide, like. Aye, she does, and she approves”

“And if I have it right, she knew about my boy before I did”

I took her hand. “She did have a bit of a head start with our Neil, like, so Will was no big deal. Look, lass, it wasn’t meant as a slight. It’s just, well, look what happened when you found out”

Almost a smile there. “Love, go on, get your stuff. I have cawl at home. Not too far, is it?”

John stood. “I’ll drive him round, be a bit quicker. Jill, I think…I think tonight, if you do not mind, I would like to go to a pub. This day has been a stressful one. So, would it be…different, that’s a good word. Would it be different if I asked if you had a spare bed for me so that I do not have to drive afterwards?”

Von was shaking her head as some of John’s oddness emerged. I saw Rachel disappear off to a corner at that, phone out. It was James who made the move.

“John, you are a friend. You are my friend, and it is not my house but Jill’s house, and Larinda’s house, for it is one house but they are two people and they have three bedrooms and I have seen them. Jill is my friend and she is your friend”

There was a pause then, and for a moment I had the awful thought that he was closing down again, for his hands started to come up towards his face, but they moved onwards, to touch his stepmother’s cheek.

“John, friends have visitors who are friends and they are called guests and two of the three bedrooms are guest rooms so you would be a guest and Mum can we be guests as well because Jill has camping things and I could sleep like that but without a tent”

I just nodded to John, and he hurried away with Will. I smiled at Karen, feeling her simple delight in what James so easily called her.

“Pet, you know the answer, aye? He can have the settee, John’s a bit old for that”

Rachel came back over. “I got all that, and it’s sorted. Had a word with the other John. There’s a session on at the Sun again, he said, so if you want we can have some silliness with our beer. James?”

“Rachel”

“How would you like some time with Darren?”

“There are only three bedrooms”

“No, son, we go out to a place where you can play some music with him and his mum. Then he goes home and you go back with Jill”

Von sat quietly though the exchange, and then, oddly, put her hand up. “Is this where my boy has more friends?”

Rachel nodded. “Yeah, a right mix. The other John’s my bloke’s brother, and he’s, er, gay as well”

Von still had her hand up. “So…if Will wants, could we come too?”

Clear and open and beautiful, that was the face James turned to her. “I am James, and you are Von. Are you my friend now?"

CHAPTER 12
In the end we took up one corner of the bar at the Sun, as James made his way directly to Darren. Some connection had clearly formed between them, and James seemed to bloom each time they met. What was important, though, was that some of the openness clung to him afterwards. I rarely saw him now in lockdown, hardly ever saw his hands shutting off the world beyond his face.

What I had begun thinking of as the usual suspects were there, including the two whatever-the-female-Italian-word-for two-maestros was. Flute and fiddle; two instruments the Hawks had used so well on the Warrior album, but not in the same way as the two nutters. Along with the Woodruff pair and the Johnson trio I saw Annie’s mad dyke friend, wife and daughter, and a very, very relaxed Alec sitting with John Forster.

Rachel gave me a nudge. “Not got my boy, but hey, it’s a good crowd. John says we’ll have Sal and Stewie later, so your liver better be in good nick”

“I have the advantage of regular checks on it, cause of the hormones, like. So I know where I stand better than you!”

“Na, I always say the liver is evil, and must be punished! What’s Von doing?”

“Dunno. I think she plans to take Will home, after she’s met some of his friends”

Rachel slumped slightly. “You do take the fun out of a girl’s evening. I was looking forward to some real paint-stripping, slap the bitch up, yeah? And she’s just a sad old cow, really”

I gave her a sharp look, and she held both hands up. “No, didn’t mean it like that, Jill! Just, well, we’ve none of us sort of covered our lives with glory, have we?”

I saw her point. She had been wound up to lash out at a pantomime villain who, in the end, had turned out to be just like the rest of us, saddled with the realities of her life and the effects of her upbringing, and hurting terribly from the loss of her son.

“You calling me a sad old cow too, Wiseman?”

She grinned. “Neither of us is sad now, right? I mean, I miss him, most of the time, but no, sad’s not me. Not any more. Dunno about the old cow bit, though. Shit, you lucky bitch, I didn’t think of that!”

“What?”

“Here I am, tits getting saggy, and you’re older than me, but cause yours are brand new you’ll still be perky when I’m touching my knees, you cow!”

Larinda had been listening, and just smiled. “We should form a club, a sort of not-so-secret society. Sort of ex-saddos, yeah?”

I was watching Von as Will spoke to what she must already have accepted were simply the other gay men there. Larinda stepped in closer and put her arm around my waist.

“I really don’t know yet, lover, if she is learning or if she’s just doing her best to hang onto her baby”

“Pet, it’s a mother thing, I’m sure. I think…I hope she’s got to a stage where she sees that she has to back down a bit, accommodate, like. If not, this will just get shittier”

She squeezed me. “Well, let’s just give her some room, then. But keep an eye on John. I think he might be planning an out-of-body experience. He’s on vodka and orange”

“Oh arse!”

By halfway through the evening, we had managed to sneakily switch his intake to orange juices without. James was almost welded to his seat next to Darren, so that was one less thing to worry about, and I was therefore allowed actually and finally to relax. It was odd in the extreme, but once the two less conventionally inhibitioned people were taken care of, and I had followed my woman’s injunction to step back from Von, I felt myself physically relax. It was in the shoulders and in the jaw; I had been holding myself like someone in a bad coat on a cold day, and it was almost painful as the tension slipped away. The arrival of Sally and her husband helped, of course. Safe…

“She don’t like shirtlifters, does she?”

It was Annie’s friend, the in-your-face with the scarlet hair.

“No, Ginny, not at all. Bit of the wrong crowd for her here, aye?”

“Bollocks is it”

There was a touch of venom in there, but her voice was only just loud enough to carry over whatever rumpty-tump the house band was producing.

“It’s exactly the right crowd for a bit of education of the sad fucker, yeah? Like she gets to see Sal’s mate there, see him smile for the first fucking time in years, then look at her kid and understand why he never did, that’s what!”

I peered at her. “You don’t know Will, though, not really”

She snorted. “And we ain’t been there, me and my girly, and every other girl like us, and boy, yeah? Growing up, thinking you’re sick, listening to what everyone at school says? Anyway, nuff of that. She’ll learn, or she’ll lose. How’s the empty sack?”

I chuckled at that, and she grinned, the venom gone and the insanity back. “What? Nasty horrible things, making you all butch and not-girly, and you is a girl and on the right bus with me and Katie, yeah?”

Another set of tendons creaked as even more tension leached out of me, and she saw. “I can give you a workout, woman, but we would need to see to your diet. You cannot haz cheezburgers or drinkahol if you take me up! Worked for Annie, she was a fat fucker too”

Once more, an arm slipped around me. “Yebbut, she’s my fat fucker, Ginny!”

Another flicker in the mad kaleidoscope of her personality. “That James, he’s coming along, yeah?”

Larinda slipped round in front, so that I was holding her back to me by her hips. There was just a little bump there, a hint of a grind, and a quiet murmur from part of me as well. Oh dear. Calmly, she spoke to the mad woman about autism and connection, about obsession and revelation, and all the time she made little movements against me that produced a tension utterly different from that I had been feeling before. Ginny didn’t seem to notice, at one point turning to point out Darren’s girlfriend, her daughter, as she laughed with the two boys during a break in the music.

“See that? Those two, they had shit, and they are about as normal as normal can be. Even when one of them lives with a banjo player”

I bit my tongue at the obvious reply, and Ginny just grinned. “Yeah, I know! Laters, got straight people to outrage and I wants a snog with my girly and that should do it! Got any reaction out of her yet?”

And she was gone, as Larinda broke down in giggles. She turned back round to me for a kiss.

“You know, lover, this was exactly the right place to come, but we better make sure we have aspirin in the house. John’s on his way, but Terry’s coming up on the rails”

The evening wound down at eleven. It would never be my sort of music, but I couldn’t deny the life that it set free in people, the effect it clearly had on James, as well as the effect it had, via rather a lot of Fursty Ferret, on Terry. I left Larinda to work out the logistics of the inebriated while I went to see how Will was getting on, giving a smiling Alec a kiss as I passed. Von was pensive, so I took her for a short walk in the car park.

“Now you see what we are about, lass”

“Yes”

It was very flat, almost toneless. “That couple, those two men…they are the same as my boy, aye? I mean, my boy, he’s the same as them. I…”

Her voice trailed off. “You hate me, don’t you?”

I hesitated for a second, but it had to be done, and I took her in my arms. “No, Von, I could never hate you. All I did, it was to protect you, aye? You mean a lot to me, you, and Will, and the others, even that old bastard that hit me. You exasperate me, depress me, hurt me, but I still love you all”

“I am sorry…Jill, but, you, like this…”

I laughed as gently as I could. “Not to worry, pet, that boat sailed a long time ago. I am more than happy where I am, and I do not really think that you are ready for comfortable shoes”

She stiffened. “That red woman, and the other one, In public…”

“Two like me then. But look at their daughter, aye? She happy, all over Darren like a powder-pink rash? That’s the point, Von. We are not infectious. We just ARE, aye?”

“But you…you aren’t queer. I see now, what I should have seen, a fucking woman, aye? I have no doubts now. More I see you, more it…more it makes sense, and Dad, he, well, he talks a lot of cobblers, but he’s, Will, he’s my baby”

“Von, how many have you had?”

“One or two”

“There’s no way you can drive him back tonight. We’re a bit crowded, but if we squeeze…”

There was a cough behind me. “When you two have done your canoodling”

Von laughed. “Aye, she’s yours now. That’s something else that makes sense, aye? Could you come here, please?”

There was almost a calm in her voice, but when she pulled Larinda into a three-way embrace all that came out with the tears was “Sorry!”

Eventually she was back in control, and actually laughed when the tissues were produced from MY handbag, but she didn’t let go of either of us.

“Lover?”

“Aye?”

“Had a word with John, Fossy, cause he was watching how many she---how many you had, Von. You have an offer of a bed, beds. The Johnsons are staying round the corner, next door to Steph’s gaff. Darren’s grandparents, yeah? They got beds”

Von was puzzled. “But they don’t know me”

“They know Will, and that’s enough. Come on, girls, we need to get people home, and I would rather not have to undress the other John, and Terry’s out of it, which means the only other bloke in the house is James, and, well…”

Von was still staring. “All this, you just take it as it is? How?”

Larinda pulled me to her, and kissed me, with just a little pressure of her thigh to remind me of what she wanted, and then turned back to Von.

“By being able to see what is right in front of me, girl, and by making sure I don’t let the good bits escape. You got any sense, do that with your boy. He loves you. You love him. Get over being a fuckwit and you might keep him”

Still the bristle, the little simmer of mistrust, but the woman I loved most was showing me why I did, allowances made even if boundaries remained defended. I lay with her in the darkness later, as Terry’s snoring came through the wall from the next room, and a thought struck me. At no point had anyone told her about Steph or Annie.

CHAPTER 13
It was a morning of groans and shamed faces. Karen was particularly smug for some reason, and I collared her as I poured tea and she worked on eggs and bacon, sausage and mushrooms, ready to tweak a couple of hangovers.

“Oh, isn’t it obvious? He owes me one now, so I can hold it over him like a Swiss Army Knife of Damocles or something”

“You what?”

“Well, haven’t decided what my options are, yeah, or what he can do to make up for it”

“Karen, I think he was sort of, like, James and all, aye?”

She smiled. “Yes, I know, and of course I would never hold that against him, but, well, he doesn’t have to know that bit, does he? Keep them wondering, works a treat”

“You are a devious cow, lass!”

She grinned. “I was going to say you’ll learn, but then that one of yours beats me hands down. JAMES!”

He appeared at the kitchen door, only slightly adrift.

“Can you please go and see if your father is awake and if he is tell him his breakfast will be cold if he does not hurry”

James disappeared, and Karen raised an eyebrow. “Have to spell it out, or he’d be back here to report that yes, he is awake. Tea? Ta!”

I hadn’t bothered with hair that morning, just a cloth to keep it from looking a bit too surreal. We gathered around the table at Larinda’s insistence, and I watched James as he ate. Such an advance, though I saw him count his beans. John looked embarrassed.

“You OK, John?”

“I was intoxicated, wasn’t I?”

Terry grinned through his headache. “Oh yes!”

Karen just muttered “Takes one to know one…” and there was actually a smile from the older man.

“May I say something, Jill?”

“Of course, John. Friends here, aye?”

James was nodding. “Yes, friends. We are all friends”

John nodded in turn. “Yes. That would appear to be true. Alcohol…it has never been something I have overindulged in. I…I do not like to be out of control, as it is a dangerous state to enter. Last night, I felt….”

He paused, looking around the table. “I felt I had no need for caution, for what on reflection must be the first time in decades. I have never been one for friends, in my life, but last night, even though there were strangers there, I was amongst friends. It is a new sensation for me. Thank you”

Karen reached across for his hand. “No need, my friend. We have more of our son now than we have ever had before, and that is partly down to you. I mean, I have to say that. Young Darren has woven quite a spell, but you are there in the mix”

James smiled, and once more it was open and warm. “When can we see the birds again, John?”

“Whenever you want to, boy. I am at work several days of the week…well, they call it work, but it is no labour, no hardship....You were absolutely right, Jill, in suggesting that post. When will you visit next?”

I had to laugh at that one. “John, I may now be free of both hospital and court, like, but I still have what used to be called gainful employment. I’m not yet a lady of leisure”

Karen grinned. “Got you a pressie. Nearly forgot! James, can you please go to the bedroom that we used?”

“There are three bedrooms, Mum”

“Then please go to the one that Dad and I slept in, OK? Bring my handbag. Bring it to the table, please”

He was back in a minute, and Karen took a while to look round the table. “Look, some of you know this, some of you might not, and I actually don’t feel I am breaking a confidence. I mean, Jill’s a bit sort of ‘out’ now, agreed?”

There was laughter, and she let it run before raising a hand. “Right…a little while ago I went out for the day, with hubby and lad, to one of my best friend’s favourite places. It was a glorious day, and that friend did a lot, in a very little space of time, to bring said lad a little more into tune with the world”

“You are talking about the bird place, Mum. Where I counted types and heard the forte fortissimo”

“Yes, son. You are absolutely right. But who did we go with?”

He looked straight at me. “Jill”

“But was it Jill then?”

“Yes. Always Jill. Hiding in a Robskin but it was Jill”

“That is right, son, but nobody knew about the hiding then. And that was the day I was honoured, because I was the first person she told. Do you remember how you did that, Jill?”

I could actually feel myself blushing, so I just nodded.

She smiled. “Have you told the story to these people?”

“No. It sort of came out in other ways”

“Well, boys and girls, you have to imagine the scene. I can see there is something really twisting about behind her eyes, something she just has to tell, and we are sat there talking about the past, even though I have got rid of the two boys so she has a chance to talk, and yet she is still waffling. So I ask straight out, why are we here?”

“I remember. Bit bloody pushy, like”

“It worked, didn’t it? Anyway, after a bit of filler about parents and children, she ends up pointing at my T-shirt and gives a little wave”

She paused, still grinning. John looked puzzled, so Karen again lifted a hand to forestall interruption. She reached into her bag and brought out a small package.

“They don’t make them any more, so I sort of went naughty and got one printed”

It was pink, and as I held it up the understanding rose in John’s eyes, and Larinda just snorted.

“Girls ride bikes too” read the slogan, and I felt the circle close. John had come to an understanding about friendship, and I was there with him. That was the shirt that had turned my life around. I couldn’t speak, so I just hugged her. So simple a gift, so deep a meaning.

The morning was vanishing in a haze of happiness and refilled cups when the doorbell rang. It was Von, with Will just behind her. I met his eyes across her shoulder and he gave me a short nod.

“Kettle’s just boiled, lad! Come on in”

Von paused at the door with me, cocking her head to one side as Will went through to the others.

“If I didn’t already realise how impossible it would have been, I would have said you’d set me up”

“You mean Ginny and Kate?”

“I mean bloody all of them! There’s not a normal one there!”

She wasn’t exactly shouting, but there was an edge to her voice. “Von, come in, sit down for a bit, aye?”

We managed to squeeze people into chairs and settee, the boys sitting on the floor, but I couldn’t let that one slide, and I indicated the others. “Normal, Von? These are all normal people”

“I am not normal” said James, unhelpfully.

“Yes you are, son, and don’t even think about it John! Von, love, these are people, just like you and me, and just like the people who put you up last night!”

“Did you know one of them used to be a man?”

“Which one, pet?”

“That Stephanie”

“So you didn’t spot Annie as well then?”

Von’s eyes widened. Forgive me, Annie, for breaching your confidences. Deep breath again.

“See her boy, Darren? Is he normal?”

“But how can she have a boy if….?”

She waved vaguely at her crotch.

“People adopt, Von. Some normal people can have kids, some normal ones can’t. Did the girl in the pink look odd to you? All over her boyfriend despite what her parents are, aye? Look, pet, it wasn’t deliberate, that’s just who I have as friends. But they are all normal, none of them are evil, nobody made them different. Well, apart from a little surgery, of course. Just, well, the bounds of normality, the envelope, it’s a bit wider than you’ve accepted before”

“Well, considering my boyfriend has decided to become a woman I haven’t been handed a very normal life, is it?”

“Von, welcome to my side of things. Look, we’ve had an evening, and you’ve had a morning. Where do we stand? Where does Will stand, rather, as he’s the one this is all about, like”

She looked round the room, weighing us with her eyes. Man in woman’s clothing, two middle-aged women, one middle-aged man, one distracted youth, one older man. Her gaze settled on me.

“Do you know what you look like, Jill?”

I hazarded a guess. “Bloke in drag?”

“Yes. No! No, not like that. You are not pretty, Jill, you never will be if I am to be truthful, but…it’s after the court, and last night, aye, and….I can see it. You never were right for me. You did what you could to close me out, and that hurt, aye, hurt like hell, but you were right. I can see that now”

I was doing a lot more than shut you out, Von…I left that unspoken, but I caught the flicker in Karen’s eyes as she made her own silent response. I looked across at Will, as he stared at his mother as if trying to send some telepathic message.

“Where do we stand, Von? You, me, Will, his Bamps?”

She looked down at her knees, and once more I realised she was about to cry. Her voice was just barely audible.

“You stayed with your Mam went he went for his look-see, didn’t you?”

“Aye, we did”

“Would she forgive me, do you think? It’s just, my boy is going to go to college, and if there were someone up there who cared…”

I thought of the people who already cared: Neil, Ralph, Mam, the Forsters when they were about.

“That is already arranged, pet”

“I…I will speak to Dad. He must know this ends, aye? I mean, not this, but what he’s doing, what I did, what…the evil we brought. For Will’s sake, aye?”

I took her hand. “For Will, but also for all of us. Ah shite…hello, my name’s Jill Carter, and this is my other half Larinda. Are you a friend?”

CHAPTER 14
A fortnight later, and they were ready for sentencing Nye. Of course, we had to go, and it was no surprise that Von made her own way there, Will by her side.

She had been making the efforts I had never anticipated, and I had to rein in my urges to be a little snide about it. I couldn’t quite get past the fact that when it had been me, her response had been direct and threatening, but when the perversions came from her baby it made her pause and think. Still, however it had happened, pausing and thinking seemed to have entered her life. I couldn’t really complain about that, could I? I had Larinda at hand for that little job.

“All rise”

In trooped the beaks, down we sat, papers were shuffled, and then the chairman settled her gaze firstly on me, and then on Von, sitting so close to me in the gallery. An eyebrow rose slightly, and then she nodded to the usher. Nye rose, eyes looking raw in a face suddenly a lot older than I remembered. I thought I saw a hint of a tear, just as the clerk and the beaks went through their formal dance.

“Aneurin Prentice…I have presided here for over fifteen years, and I must admit to some slight confusion over the relationships I see here. I am reminded of a number of domestic violence cases I have tried, and I see a similar closure of ranks before me”

I saw Rachel twitch slightly at that one. The chairman continued.

“There remains no doubt here that this was a brutal and premeditated attack on an innocent woman, an attack that involved serious distress and pain not only to her but also to her friends and partner. Your claim that the attack was justified in some perverse manner leaves me aghast. It is of a kind with the warped logic that is used to excuse so-called honour killings, and I am minded to treat you as I would treat the perpetrators of such an act, with as long a custodial sentence as I am empowered to impose. Then again…”

She sighed, and shook her head. “Then again, the innocent victim of your actions, for she is indeed innocent, and no perversion of thought can properly attach any guilt to her…the victim has herself spoken out strongly and movingly in your favour. Prentice, be aware of that, for it should shame you deeply. I have been at an impasse in assessing the most appropriate return for your crime, for crime it was.

“You have an exemplary Service record, for one thing. Your daughter and grandson clearly adore you. Even the person you beat and kicked into unconsciousness spoke out in your favour. Be relieved, then, that I will not send you down to incarceration. You are not going to prison, Prentice, not unless you are unbelievably wilful or stupid in your future actions.

“You have talents, and they are to be used. Three hundred hours Community Service, and I will ask that it be tailored to reflect your talents so that the community will truly benefit. Bound over for five years to keep the peace. And, for Ms Carter, even though it would appear that what was lost she desired gone, five hundred pounds for pain and suffering. Usher?”

Nye was led away to the court offices, blinking at Von and myself, as Will hugged his mother. The chairman turned back to us.

“Ms Carter, would you please approach the bench?”

I worked my way down the row of seats as one of the ushers opened a little gate, and found myself being smiled at.

“Ms Carter, I find this an odd case. No, not your gender. I have dealt with a large number of domestic violence cases, and almost always the victim fights to withdraw or minimise the case against the criminal with whom they live. And, to be honest, I despair. This, though: this is different. Why were you so anxious for his sentence to be so soft?”

“I didn’t think that was soft, Your Worship”

“Oh come on. He is a violent old sod who needs a serious lesson. I could have sent him down for a decent stretch, or even referred it up to Crown for sentencing. GBH is indictable, after all. So why the concern over him?”

“His grandson, Your Worship. He has enough shi…enough problems in his life as it is”

“Shit. The microphones are off, so you can say the word. Gillian Carter, you are a strong woman. Thank you for being human with it”

I smiled as best I could. “I just have the right friends…”

“Including his daughter, it seems. Ah well. May your luck continue, then”

She nodded to her colleagues, they rose, we rose, and they were gone. Luck and friends. Yes indeed.

A surprisingly short time later we were landing at Newcastle airport again, and it seemed as if we had made up most of the passengers on the twin turboprop plane. Rachel, Karen, Terry, James, Will, Von, Alec, both Johns and the two of us, it had got a little silly. James had closed down tightly when the plane took off. Terry had been sitting next to him, talking gently as the boy’s hands obscured his face, but eventually his tea consumption forced him to make a short visit to the aeroplane toilet. To my surprise, John Wilkins slipped into the empty seat. Bu the time Terry returned, James was talking, hands down and eyes looking out of the window. John looked up at the boy’s father.

“Would you mind if I stay? I am showing him how the wings work”

Terry just shook his head and settled into the seat next to Rachel with a soft laugh, then called across to the older man.

“Thanks, mate”

Landing, baggage and exit, and a mother who could walk far better than recent memory held, but seemed to need to cling onto another geriatric coffin-dodger for support. I expressed this view along with an enquiry as to whether she had been hitting the gin again, and she had the cheek not just to threaten but actually to slap my arse.

“Oy, that’s my job!”

Hugs for them both from Larinda, as Jim and Rachel said an intense hello, and then I saw my mother’s face tighten as she saw Von.

“And you are here on what terms, Siobhan? For the boy’s sake, aye? But any shite, and you are dead and gone. So don’t try me”

Raafie put his arm around Mam’s shoulders. “Norma hinny, she’s here fer the lad, aye? Gan canny on her. She’s not hor dad. Ah mind, me, that thoo sayed thoo can taak te this one, aye?”

Will held his own mother’s hand. “Mrs Carter, just for now, please? Mum is trying her best, and it’s not easy. Now, you don’t know many of these…”

He began the round of introductions, and when he came to John Wilkins she stepped forward and kissed his cheek.

“You are the lad who got my girl to hospital, aye?”

“Er, sort of”

“Then you are welcome, proper welcome. Siobhan, I will do this for the sake of aal these others, aye? Now, transport. Thy brother is on his way, like, but some of thee will have to take the Metro to Heworth and had on a bit for us to pick thee up, aye? Jill, where exactly are this lot meant to rest the night?”

Jim called across during a short pause for breath. “Whey, Ah’ve cleaned up the upstairs for the noo, like. We hev plenty a space. Jill, there’s thy kid, aye?”

Neil was looking so much better, but his embrace was wordless and firm. He left me and moved straight to Larinda, and then, with a short flicker of a search from his eyes, to John Wilkins, who brought his first words from him.

“Thank you”

That was when my mobile rang. “Jill Carter”

A girl’s voice, southern accent. “Hello, where are you?”

“Who is this?”

She laughed. “You olds are always so paranoid….ah! Spotted you!”

A young couple pushed through the crowds towards us, the girl waving a phone over her head. She was so pretty I felt an ambush of jealousy take me. A very tall and terrifically ginger boy of a similar age was beside her.

“Hiya! You must be Jill! My Aunty Steffy sent us!”

“Sorry, but who?”

“Steph Woodruff. Mad ginger fiddler…friend of Annie’s? Annie Price? Works at the airport”

Oh, of course. “Sorry, didn’t twig, like. Annie give you my number?”

“Yeah. I’m Kelly, this is Mark. Came to see if you needed picking up. Got Mark’s granda’s car. Who’s the one going to Uni?”

“Er, Will, over there---“

She was gone, straight to Von’s boy, and I turned back to the tall redhead, who was grinning.

“I will never get over how much life she has in her, Miss”

Local. “How, it’s Jill, aye?”

“Aye, aal reet. Better explain, like. We’re both at the Uni as well, so Annie sez to her Aunty Steph, like, how about meeting them at the airport and seeing if they need a lift. And, well, new lad at college, she sez, could do with a bit back-up till he gets his feet under, and, well…”

He was blushing. “Look, Jill, Kell, she does all this, this bouncing, like, so I get a bit lost in the wake, aye? But, well, we’re here, and me granda’s got the people carrier for the kit, so…”

Friends, once more, so many friends I was losing count. Friends I didn’t know I had, who drove to an airport on the suggestion of a friend of a friend, just in case we needed a lift. I looked across at Rachel, who was still absorbed in Jim, and Larinda, who had seen the arrival and clearly heard Mark’s shy and stuttering explanation, and all I could think was condensed into one question.

How could we have spent so many years being so stupid?

CHAPTER 15
I was feeling just a little shell-shocked on arrival. Rachel was away with her own distractions, Mam was eying up Von, Neil was trying to tease Fossy, James was closing down again and I was trying to remember who the hell was who. I looked over our little army, and there was John, his face showing that he felt just like me. I waved him over.

“Felling a bit out of it, mate?”

“Oh, Jill, so many new ones, and they speak so oddly”

“It’s what I grew up with, like, so it’s not that big a problem for me, but aye, these two suddenly appearing, it’s a bit, whoa, can we slow down a bit? Look, you did well with James on the flight”

“It was a bit of focus, Jill. I was told once that if you feel sea-sick the best thing to do is to look out at the horizon, find a fixed point to watch”

“I didn’t see you as a sailor, John”

“Me? Oh no. The land moves in a way I can normally predict. Water…I am a man of routines, Jill. I realise that far more since…”

He trailed off, looking around, then turned back to me, head cocked. “This is something I am not well versed in, Jill. Friendship. At work, it was like being on terra firma. I could act and react, and the rules were there, they were clear. It was like machine code in a computer: write these letters, and the machine will do such and such; write others, and a different result ensues. This…this is like being at sea. Things move, yes? They move when they want to, and one has to react to that, and I do not do reaction particularly well”

As ever, my lover was at my shoulder. “Bollocks you don’t, John. Remember what her mum said to you?”

“Yes, but…”

She slipped an arm around his waist. “It’s friends, isn’t it? Never really had them, have you?”

“No, but…”

I took his hand. “Look at me, John. This young lad here, and the girl bouncing round Will, they are friends. I didn’t know who the hell they were, like, until Mark here explained, but hey, you adapt, say hello, and get on with the introductions, aye? You ever go swimming?”

He looked at me, and there was a hollowness there. “A rather obvious answer to that one, yes?”

“Sorry. I was just thinking, I took Mam off on holiday once, down to Mallorca for a treat, aye, and she gets in the sea, and she’s lost about forty years in age, and I calls over to her so she can’t see the wave behind her, and splash, she’s soaked, and she’s laughing, and that’s friends, aye? They sneak up on you, and they surprise you, and all the time they keep you afloat”

“Yes, but I do not know how to do this, Jill”

She kissed his cheek, and he blushed. “John, you’re already doing it. All friendship demands is to be returned, yeah? You do that already. I mean, look what you did for James on the plane!”

“Yes, but he was lost, and he needed---“

Together, in unison, the two of us all but shouted “Exactly!” and Larinda started to laugh.

“Sod lecturing the poor old sod, Jill, I am parched and your Mam possesses a kettle, yeah? Show on road?”

Mark was now chuckling. “Bugger a hell, you fit right in with Kell’s lot. I should have expected it. Where are we off to?”

“Washington, marra. Want directions or do you know the way?”

He grinned. “Driven Granda round enough to his gigs, like, or rather from them when he his bit beer. I’ll gie yez a hand with the bags”

“Mostly Will’s stuff, for college, like. Howay then”

He called across to his girl. “Put the lad down, Kell, you’re spoken for!”

Larinda laughed out loud. “Wrong bus, Mark”

“Aye, Annie said, but I need something to blackmail her for every now and again. Let’s get moving”

The house was overfull, but the weather was kind and so we sat out on the lawn and the patio, tea in hand and Rachel in Jim’s. I was watching Von in particular, as her eyes flickered backwards and forwards between Alec and Fossy’s comfortable position, hand on knee and arm around shoulder, Rachel and Kelly in their similar cuddles with their men, my mother’s brazen and disgraceful display of canoodling with some aged Lothario, and her boy. We had naturally separated into couples of various kinds, John talking quietly with an unlocking James and Neil with Will, and I wondered where her mind was taking her. Would she be able to fit the older men’s display into context with the other lovers’, or would she be seeing nothing but perversion and my brother as a waiting predator?

Tea first, suspicions later. She still had her standards, though, and collected the cups for washing. I followed her to the kitchen sink.

“And?”

“And what, Jill?”

“What are your thoughts? Your boy, his safety, all that?”

She shook her head, as if to dislodge a fly. “I still can’t see it as right, innit? I mean, those men, they are….they are acting like they were normal, like it was all normal, aye? And the rest of you, even your Mam, she , you, you just pretend it’s OK”

I took her shoulders. “Von, Von, for god’s sake, we are not pretending here, it IS bloody normal! Shit, woman, look at me. What do you see? Who am I?”

She stared at me, mind clearly working for once. “I see Jill Carter. Rob was never there, was he?”

“Bloody hell, she has it. Now, what do you see when you look at Rachel?”

She smiled. “I see someone who is so lucky, so in love, and he’s a good man, isn’t he?”

“So you don’t see a punch bag?”

“Pardon?”

“She has false teeth, Von, that’s how normal she is. Look at her now, aye? And Alec, there’s a widower, just like Jim is. Both of them, lost and hurting, aye? Look at them now! Ah shite, I just spent ages explaining the concept of friendship to someone with learning difficulties, and you are normal, so why should I have to explain fucking love to you? Just look at Alec and John, then at Rachel and Jim, and you tell me if there is any difference there!”

“But…”

“Von, I saw you checking out Alec, and Neil, and Will, and it was in your eyes, aye? All that time you never watched Kelly and Mark, or Mam and Raafie, or Karen or Terry, or, bugger a hell, me and Larinda! How perverse is that?”

“But you and Larinda…you, you are still…”

“Ach shite, Von, we’ve done that bit. I’m as gay as Alec, or Neil, or Will, aye?”

Her voice was quieter. “And what about Larinda?”

I had to search for the words. “Larinda is just special. More special than I could ever say. She is not gay, is all I can say, but she accepts, she adapts, she rides the waves, aye?”

“What waves?”

“Just something I was saying to John, like. Look, just watch Alec, watch the two of them, and you tell me if there is anything different there”

“But they are both men”

“I KNOW! DOES IT FUCKING MATTER?”

She flinched, and then looked out of the window for several slow seconds.

“No. It doesn’t, does it? It doesn’t fucking matter”

I took her in my arms. “Von, love, I know he is your baby, and I know you love him. You have done more, moved more than I could have expected and it’s just the last bit, the last step. Love him, love him properly, love him for what he is and not what you think he should be, aye?”

Mam was behind me this time, with the tissues, and a muttered comment about sensible women. A few minutes later, once Von was tidier, Mam muttered to me.

“Back to the garden, lass. Raafie wants to say something”

I led Von out to the sun and greenery, and rejoined my lover, who raised an eyebrow in greeting. I nodded, and she took my hand to kiss the palm before cuddling into me. Raafie coughed for attention.

“Now, Ah am going to try and speak so that aal of ye can follow what I say, because this is important. It woulda been nice if thy Ian were here as well, but ah weel, we have most of ye. Now, Norma and mesel have a sort of announcement for ye, and Ah am guessing from the looks on one or two fyeces that…well, Ah’ve asked her, and she sez yes, so it’ll be before Christmas, like”

Mam was grinning, and they kissed properly as Jim started to laugh. Rachel slapped his arm, and the grin got broader as he drew a small box from his pocket and held it out to her, and of course her answer was yes, and Jim just laughed again.

“Ah’ll be open in an hour, and Ah got a relief barman in, so Ah think…Mark, thoo and Kelly want a spare bed?”

The hangover the next morning was a beast.

CHAPTER 16
It was still sitting there, at the back of my mind in one sense but so dominant in others. Larinda. I had said she was special, and it was true, but each time I looked at her Von’s words leapt at me. I was gay, there was absolutely no doubt in my mind. It was as much a part of my life, my soul, as my gender, and something I had found just as difficult to express.

After I had tried to shower the hangover away, I stood and looked at myself in the mirror. Bald…nothing I could ever do about that other than shave it off and add a wig. Smooth skin, at long last, on my face, and in between waxing and selective electrolysis the rest of my body was following. Breasts…

They would never be the biggest, but they were mine, or rather ours, as Larinda made plain most nights. But below…below it hung, not huge, not too bulbous, and after my impromptu surgery far less prominent. The thing I had hated most of my life. I realised with a shock that I had actually almost liked it, for a few sweet moments with my lover, but in the end it was a piece of wrongness attached to that part of my body. I had always wanted it gone, but that roused the debate: could Larinda accept its departure better than I could accept its presence? There were other issues. With it there, no change in gender, no recognition certificate. With it gone, no marriage to the woman I knew I needed to be with for as long as I lived, and the two engagements the day before had salted that open wound. Who was it that said there were no simple choices?

Von had got very, very drunk that night, especially after Mark’s grandfather had joined us at the pub. She had seized on him almost as a token normal person, Mam still being more than a little wary. Something had been said, something that seemed to involve long discussions and rather a lot of gin. I would have to ask the boy.

Mam had opened the conservatory, so breakfast was taken semi-al-fresco, the pub crowd joining us with a couple of platters of bacon and sausages just needing finishing in the oven, and once more it was clear who was enamoured of whom. I had dug up a little courage from somewhere, and selected a summer dress that very nearly matched my lover’s, and it was with some embarrassment that I saw that both Karen and Rachel had chosen something very similar, because the latter, of course, filled hers in ways I could never dream of doing. Jim caught my eyes, and followed me into the kitchen as I went for more tea.

“Wanted to say thanks, Jill”

“What for?”

“How, Ah saa thee looking at her, and she’s a bonny lass, like, and she’s mine, and, weel, without thee, aye? Just, like, divvent think thesel any less of a lass, aye?”

“You getting telepathic, Forster?”

He sighed. “Aye, a bit, but some of it’s a bit obvious. Ah think it’s a bit of a crossroads for thee, aye? Just remember this: wor lass and me, like, we pays wor debts. Whichever way ye decide to gan, we’re there for thee”

And that big strong man, the man who had grown up with Rob Carter, he stepped forward and kissed me very gently on the lips. Me. Woman. No doubt ever in my mind, just fear in the expression of it, and there they were, once more. Friendship and acceptance. I returned to my seat, mind whirling, but still juggling those earlier thoughts. Larinda gave me a knowing look, and squeezed my knee.

“Norma?”

“Aye?”

“Can I make a suggestion for later? For lunch?”

Neil laughed. “Dinner, you soppy soft southerner!”

She pouted. “Me guest, me get pandered to. No, just a thought. John and James here are very into birds, yeah?”

Rachel snorted. “Be very careful how you say that if you include Jill in it”

Von gave a very wry smile, and I could see her thoughts. “Yes, she is, isn’t she? Jill…love, I had some hard talking last night. You cleaned me away, didn’t you, but for my sake, innit?”

I sighed in my own turn. “Aye, that is the heart of it. You should know…you should have known I would not, could not hurt you or the boys”

She nodded. “I know that, and yes, I should have known it from the start”

She looked around the table. “Wiser heads than mine here, even my baby’s. Will, can you forgive a stupid blind woman?”

Mam coughed. “My house, my rules, and the fact that you are here, Siobhan, shows that he can, aye? So had thy gob, and don’t spoil it by looking too closely. Now, Larinda: what was it?”

Another squeeze of my knee. “I fancied some caving, in that place under the cliff”

Jim laughed. “Shite cellarman, like!”

Larinda fixed him with a Paddington. “You think anyone will want more drink after last night?”

Two old men’s hands went up immediately, followed, after some nods, by those of Neil, Will and Terry, who nudged John. He grinned in a totally natural way and stuck his own up. Jim gave a very bogus sigh.

“Ah suppose Ah’ll just hev te work again the night, and stay sober, like. Arse”

Rachel almost purred. “I prefer you sober, love…”

I swear he blushed. We hatched a sort of plan involving a visit to the University for Will, where Kelly and Mark would store his bits and pieces ready for his official arrival, and then down to Marsden for lunch. As I finished loading the dishwasher, Mam came up behind me.

“Mind these, lass?”

A very old pair of Zeiss binoculars. My throat clenched. “Where?”

“Raafie found them in the attic. They’d slipped down behind that bit hole in the chimney. He’s had them set up again”

My father’s old birdwatching optics. The ones he had let me use when we had gone out as father and sort-of-son, those early days of the Young Ornithologists’ Club, of Marsden and the Barmston Ponds, of Gosforth racecourse lake. I felt my eyes filling, damned hormones, and she knew my thoughts and took me in her arms, my mother’s arms.

“It’s OK, Jill. If he could see, like, he would see what the rest of us see, and that’s a daughter, and a strong one, aye? He’d be proud of her. She has taken so much shite, all of her life, and look at her, look at how she cares”

She moved away a little, to look me in the eyes. “Thy Dad, he always said, to judge someone, look at the friends they keep, and that was him, aye? Not just the friends they pick, the ones they keep, the ones who stay there, who stand by thee. Look through that window, Jill, look at who’s standing by thee, and think on, aye?”

I nodded. She smiled, her eyes sinking into the laughter and pain lines of her face. “You are thinking about the operation, aye? How that Larinda will take it?”

Once more, I was silent, just nodding.

“How many years have ye left, Jill? Raafie and me, well, we’re both a bit older, like, so things have to have a wee bit hurry to them, but ye two, well…one day, together, there’ll be a decision, but for now just watch and wait for a while, aye? When it’s right, ye’ll know. Now, these dishes don’t dry themselves!”

“Bloody hell aye they do! It’s a dishwasher!”

“Aye, but I like to give them a bit rinse off when they come out, like”

In the end, the three youngsters went off together to the University as we cleaned and sorted, or in Jim’s and Rachel’s case lay on the grass in the sun, and once they were back we sorted out seating and headed for the coast. John rode with me.

“What are the ticks there, Jill?”

“Ah, occasionally Arctic or Great Skua, but in the main just basic auks, cormorants and a lot of gulls”

“So nothing special then?”

“Well, I think it is. Wonderfully eroded coastline, lots of stacks and caves, a half-decent café at the bottom of a lift, clean sand…what more do you want?”

He looked a little puzzled, so I continued. “John, lunch out with mates, aye? No need to be special; mates are the thing”

“Dinner…”

There was the hint of a smile there. Just a hint. We parked in a flock near the top of the lift shaft, and James insisted on using the stairs, Terry and Karen in close attendance and John following behind.

“You sure, John? There’s a lift”

He looked me up and down, and for just a moment MAC was there, festering in his eyes, and then it switched to Rachel as his shoulders and head rose.

“I am older, Miss Carter, not bloody old!”

The demon vanished with a grin, and I turned to help the truly aged into the lift. Down, book tables for an hour later, and out onto the sand, waves foaming through the caves under the Rock. The gulls were in full voice, the fulmars skimming the cliffs, wingtips bending almost unnaturally as they banked. I felt their presence, and James and John were at my shoulder.

“They say their name, Jill. I don’t need a new name for my book, they say it!”

Kit-tee-WAHK, kit-tee-WAHK, the kittiwakes were doing just that, the noise level tremendous, so loud it seemed more of the old sea stack must be about to collapse, and John was steadily scanning the ledges as if there were complete silence about him. James touched his shoulder.

“They say their name, John!”

The older man turned. “Yes, James, like chiffchaffs or cuckoos”

He paused. “They do, don’t they? They say their name….they shout it…”

I thought for an instant he would fall over as his eyes glazed and his hands shook as they held his binoculars. Abruptly, he looked up, and there was such an expression of confusion, of dawning wonder that I didn't know what to say or do as tears came to his eyes.

“Jill…this is real, isn’t it? This is life…these birds, they are alive, so many of them, so alive, so real, why could I never see this?”

James stepped past me, more open than I had ever seen, and took the older man in his arms. His voice was quiet, measured.

“John…I am…I see things not right, and sometimes it is hard, and it is all clouds, but I can see friends and I have more than I can count, for I like to count, and…”

He paused, with obvious difficulty. “I know, sometimes, who I am, and others I do not know, and Dad and Mum, they have people to talk to me, and sometimes I can find their words from their mouths to my ears and sometimes…and sometimes I can know they speak but not why and I cannot see how people feel because their faces are not mine but I can see crying and that is not good and you are my friend and I do not want you to cry because that is not good”

John hugged him back. “James, you are my friend, and I am crying, yes, but it is good, because just now, just like you, some of my clouds are gone. The birds, James, they say their names, and it is because they are alive, and real, and so are we, and I know it now, and…shall we go and have too much to eat, and then come out here again, and sit, me and you, and just listen?”

“Why must we eat too much?”

John grinned, eyes still wet. “Because we can, and because we are alive, and with friends”

CHAPTER 17
I was astonished. There is really no other word that could possibly mark what I had seen. The whole thing about the range of curses that the phrase ‘autism spectrum disorder’ covers is communication, or rather the lack of it.

Sufferers cannot pick up the signals that others drop with abandon; they exasperate, they piss off, they…they stand with their hands before their faces to ward off a world that makes no sense to them. The classic test for ASD is to point at something. The ‘normal’ child looks in the direction of the pointing finger, and the damaged one at the finger itself.

I looked at James, at the beauty that shone from him, and found the word ‘damaged’ curdling in my mind. I had never, ever heard him speak of his problem before, and what he had just said tore my soul apart. This wasn’t a blindness, a lack of sight: it was a loss, a failing that he recognised as such. He knew he was limited, that there were things he could never see, and how that loss must cut him to the bone. Shit. The person with cerebral palsy, they function inside just like any other human being, but can’t connect with the outside they see so clearly. James, ye gods; what must it feel like to see, to understand those around you only to see it blotted out by clouds rolling in just when you needed the light?

And I thought I had problems…a surge rose in me, a sudden realisation that every thought, every mistrust of Terry, had been so wrong it was beyond apology. He loved his beautiful boy, without reservation, and if his orientation was a little unconventional, then who was I to set the bar of normality? And John…what was wrong with me that I had missed all the signs for so long? Larinda took my arm.

“Jill, love, something going on with those two?”

“Somehow they seem to have crossed over into our world, pet. I don’t know how, but whatever…John’s, James…they have touched on something, aye? Something shared”

“Well, food’s up in ten. Ordered you the green salad”

“You what?”

She just grinned and squeezed my arse. “Gotcha. Your mum said you’d want the gammon, so I sorted that one out. And tea is on its way”

We turned to head back to the restaurant, and she took my hand.

“This place takes me back, lover. Us and beaches, yeah? Remember that day in Brighton?”

“How could I not, lass, considering exactly how bloody immoral you were getting in public!”

“Was in a train carriage, just us two”

“Open bloody framework, more like! I didn’t know what hit me!”

She suddenly turned serious, the smile dropping from her face. “No complaints?”

I took her by the shoulders. “How could I have complaints, love? I wouldn’t want to be without you, ever…shite, look, without you I wouldn’t be here at all, aye? Just thinking, is all, thinking about fairness”

“You buy your rounds!”

“Worst attempt at a joke I’ve heard in years, love. Look, so far, all this change, me, the docs, the tits, it’s all been about me, and that’s not been fair on you. I mean, remember when you tried, that time, to get me ‘sexy’, and it all turned to ratshit, like? I know you love me–“

I put a finger to her lips to shut her up. “I do know you love me, despite all of this, and sweet Jesus I love you, but it’s just, well, I’ve been thinking, aye? And watching those two…”

I took a couple of deep breaths. It had to be said, it had to be cleared up. “Larinda, all these changes have been for me, to let me be who I should have been from birth. You are no dyke, we know that, and I am just worried…worried that if, when, I go for the end process, operation, thingy, it won’t be right for you. That’s…that’s the fair bit. And I don’t know what to do, pet”

She stepped forward and held me tight, her head on my breast. Breasts. She spoke softly into my chest.

“Jill, love, to be honest this isn’t anything I ever expected, ending up with a woman to love, yeah? That’s the thing. I mean, I know your body, every, well, inch, and it’s not changed that much. I mean, there’s these things, but…”

She settled herself more closely against me. “That old fucker, he sort of moved it along a bit quicker than I wanted, yeah? But there’s the thing: I don’t see Rob no more, it’s so obviously not you, never was, and it’s like I said: more I see you, more it’s clear you are a woman, and there’s no secrets there that it throws me off a little”

She laughed. “Funny thing is, it’s these things. They threw me a bit when they started to come up”

“They’re not that big! Not at my age!”

“Big enough to show, lover, and…”

She leant back, looking me in the face, her face tense. “Look, here’s the silly thing. Tits, I love ‘em, me, or at least mine, especially when a…partner shows them the proper attention. Yours, well, I wasn’t sure, but you seem to like them just the way I like mine, and…what I like, what I always like, is to be nice to someone. That’s my thrill, yeah? You know I likes my breakfast off you, and that’s all about me pleasing you, and that is what really gets me going. I see you all happy, and I says to myself, I did that, all on my lonesome, and your tits, bit like that. You go all gooshy, and it’s like, almost, when I used to, you know, and it’s sweet, yeah? Me knowing that I can do that to someone I really love”

“And if I, you know, get, down there?”

“I really don’t know, lover. I’ve been thinking a lot about that. Thinking about those other girls, Annie, Steph. How’d their fellas cope with the reverse?”

“Well, from what I can gather they sort of ignored it, like. Stayed away”

“Yeah. Steph says she used to wear cycle shorts in the shower”

“Bugger a hell, Larinda! You’ve been talking to them more than me!”

She cocked her head to one side, a slight smile showing again. “Well, what did you expect? Never thought I’d be cuddled up to no old slapper in my dotage, did I? That’s the odd thing, their fellas don’t see them as anything other than girls”

I tried to give her my own smile, but that last phrase had drawn a little blood. “That’s because we aren’t anything other than girls, love”

She settled her head back against my bosom. “Sorry, love, didn’t mean it to sound like that. Just, I know you are a woman, known that ages, slapped myself that I couldn’t see it when we met”

I tried to make my own joke. “You had your eyes on lower things, pet”

She sighed. “Yeah. Pity…look, I see what you’re saying, yeah, so here’s my bit. You make me happy, that’s the truth. I think I make you happy–shut it, my turn–and this is it, we go with what you need to do, and if you have to wear knickers to bed, then that’s what we do. No biggy”

She chuckled. “Well, it was definitely more than a mouthful, but you know what I mean”

Once more she pulled back, and this time it was her finger that went to my lips.

“What we are talking about got you ready to kill yourself, so don’t give me any crap about not being important, yeah? I love you, heart, soul, bits, whatever. You don’t get away, Jill Carter, man or woman or whatever, and that bit of meat nearly took you away from me. We do what we need to, but we do it together, and I will bloody well cope, got me? Now, food is served, tea to drink, and lecherous crumblies to tease. Come on”

She led me back into the semi-cave that was the restaurant, and I caught a flicker from Alec, and she gave him a single sharp nod. So it wasn’t just the other women she had been talking to, then. I realised that she was doing all she could to make work what was for her an extremely unnatural situation, and if I had been able I would have loved her even more for that than I already did.

And I realised that such a thing was impossible.

CHAPTER 18
The meal was no wonder of modern cuisine, but it was properly cooked and filling, and I noticed that it wasn’t just tea being consumed by some of the older sorts. People were happy, that was the overwhelming thing. Mostly in pairs, mostly touching, even Von’s earlier pain seemed to have left the building, as she came to life discussing her baby’s college plans with Kelly and Mark as if Will wasn’t even there.

Something had broken in her, some wall, and I could see once again the animation and life in her that had first drawn me. I had never hated her, never despised her. I had, to the best I could manage, loved her, and that was why I had made the decision to push her away. I could do no less, but Larinda was beside me now, and I felt that such would always be the case. Whatever happened, she would be there. She had made that abundantly clear. I pulled her back out of the restaurant to the terrace just before our pudding was delivered.

“We have a loose end, pet”

“What, that we haven’t sorted out already?”

“Marriage”

“Oh…”

There was a flicker there, and then her smile returned. “You realise you don’t need to ask, right? So what are you proposing---sorry!”

Teasing sod. “I, we, can do it now, as I am. I mean, still got something left, still legally a bloke, like, so it could be done”

Her smile softened. “And would that be what you want? I told you, lover, no man in you at all”

“Well, I’m a dyke, aye, so there wouldn’t be, would there?”

She reached round to slap my backside. “Be serious. No way could you or would you stand up in drag for a wedding, and it would look odd doing it in a dress. So what are you suggesting? Do it as we are, or wait for the law change they’ve been arguing about? And do it after…we’d have to get divorced as it stands now anyway, yeah?”

“You’ve been doing a lot of thinking, love”

“And an awful lot of reading. You forgot one trick, my girl, and that’s going all foreign”

There was something else in what she was saying, and that was her clear acceptance that at some point the full surgery was to happen. “So? I mean, I haven’t even asked you properly yet”

She cocked her head again. “Oh, for fuck’s sake! Jill Carter, will you marry me? That a yes? Done!”

I felt my mouth hanging open, and she just grinned again. “We ain’t got no fella here to do the trad bit, so why shouldn’t this girl ask that girl rather than the other way round?”

She kissed me, to seal the pact. Job done. Neil winked as we returned. “I’ll get me suit cleaned, then. Going to need it a bit, it looks like”

The dessert was there, and so were smiles, and James was still open. Life was good. We drove in convoy back to the house, and yet another pot of tea before people began to disperse, Kelly and Mark off to their digs and Rachel and Jim to the pub with those who were staying there. Mam sat down with the two of us, Will and Von.

“So. Do ye have a plan, a date, or anything?”

Larinda put a finger to my lips. “Sort of, Norma. This woman will get wed as a woman, so the choices are down to two. Either we wait for the law to change here, which is sort of on the cards, or we sod off abroad to somewhere that allows it and do it there, and sod the law here, yeah?”

Mam laughed. “Wasn’t exactly how Ah imagined Ah’d get a daughter-in-law, like, but welcome to the family proper, hinny”

“Yeah, and we need to get this one sorted first!”

Raafie looked sharply at Mam, and gave a crisp nod. She took his hand, and I was struck by the ease with which they touched each other. How had I never seen that, in all the long, lonely years of her life since Dad died? She sat up a little straighter, squeezing his hand.

“Jill, this’un and me have had a bit chat, like. We’re both getting on, and when we go, whey, it’ll mostly end up in tax, aye? So…both of us, we hev pensions, we hev savings, and they would come to you, and Ian and Neil, aye? And, well, if we sort of get rid of them before we gan, and you get them, it means more of it stays with the ones we love”

“Aye, Mam, I get that, like, but Raafie…”

He grunted. “Ah tyek thy Mam on, Ah tyeks her bairns an’ aal. Ah owe, what else de Ah hev te spend it on, asides beer and tabs!”

He looked across at her, and smiled, his eyes folding into the wrinkles around them.

“And if it myeks hor happy, like, what mair could Ah want?”

There was more to the discussion, more detail, and it turned out that Larinda had done a LOT of talking to Annie and Steph, in greater length and detail than I could ever have suspected, but I was a bit out of the conversation due to a sudden flow of tears. I felt another pair of arms go around me at one point, and it was Von, her own tears falling.

“You do love me, don’t you? You always did, that’s why you did all that to get rid of me, and there was me being bloody stupid, innit?”

She looked up at Larinda. “You’re welcome to her, girl. Shit, no, that’s not what I meant to say. I mean, it feels a bit like one of them relay race things, where they pass the stick along, the baton, thingy, and it’s the baton that’s important, that it gets to the finish, aye? And Jill here…it’s the last leg, so I’m handing her over to you, love. Get her to the end for us?”

Larinda sniffed and nodded, speechless for once. Von looked around, face wet.

“Look, I always loved…him, I love her, but I don’t do women, not me, and this one, you, you have more strength in you than me, so you look after my girl here, aye? I’ve been bloody stupid too long. It ends now”

As I have already said, there was more to the planning, more to the discussion, but in the end it all boiled down to family and love. I was more aware of everything that evening, when we were, of course, around at the pub. James was already upstairs, as his earlier humanity was fleeing before an onslaught of strangers using the bar. Terry had gone with him, but Karen remained with us. She prodded Larinda.

“How much planning have you already done, love?”

My fiancée took a sip of her wine. “Well, first thing was to sound Steph out about security at the airport. Didn’t want no groping of my girl. Then I spoke to Annie”

Rachel was laughing. “Sodding conspiracy, Jill! She’ll tell you she’s booked the flights next!”

Larinda shook her head. “No, I haven’t, but I did get a recommendation for a surgeon”

I put on my hardest Paddington. “And who was that from?”

“Annie…”

Rachel ended up choking on her drink at that point, and it was John who came up with the line that sent her rushing to the ladies claiming she was about to wet herself.

“She has no doubt chosen the wedding dresses already, Jill”

Karen was cackling away at that one, but it was Larinda’s next sally that did the dirty. Rachel returned just as I asked the killer question.

“And how exactly did Annie convince you about this surgeon, pet?”

Even in the dim light of the pub, I could see the blush. “Er…she showed me some of his work”

When the laughter finally died away, my dear mother said, in a very small voice.

“I don’t know about thee, Rachel, but I have now most definitely wet mesel. Who’ll help a little old lady to the netty while her man fetches her a change of knickers? What? He knows what I keep in me knicker drawer!”

I couldn’t be sure, but what Raafie muttered as he left sounded a lot like “...and what she keeps in her knickers”

I lay that night with my lover, as seemed the only way things should ever be, and just held her to me.

“All of this, love, all you’ve done on the quiet. You are sure?”

“Absolutely. I mean, I said so on the beach, yeah, but that was odd, cause I was sort of trying to tell myself what I was telling you, and the more I said, the more sense it made. And speaking with the girls, well, I said I wanted to see how they coped, how their men did, and it sort of took off. I needed to know what I was doing was right, and sorry I didn’t share it with you”

“But you are sharing it, love, that’s the thing. Was it you that spoke to Mam?”

“No, I suspect Neil did, that would have been a bit cheeky coming from me”

“And inspecting a copper’s naughty bits wasn’t? What the hell did you say, ‘you show me yours and I’ll’ et cetera?”

She giggled. “Not exactly, she just says ‘see what you think’, and I says ‘not into girly bits’ and she says ‘well Steph got hers inspected on her hen night’ and, well…it wasn’t planned, yeah?”

She cuddled into me. “Told you. Here for the long term. Do what you like to your bits, won’t get rid of me, yeah? Just…just do whatever you need to, and I’ll be there every time you wake”

CHAPTER 19
It was a crisp Autumn day, the freshly fallen leaves mixed with the confetti that Neil had insisted on and the sun warm through the net of my headgear once out of the soft wind. It was Neil who had stood up with Ralph, and it was Neil who had spoken to the vicar at High Usworth to arrange my mother’s second wedding in the same church that had celebrated her first.

But it was Ian I was watching. The first time in nearly a decade I had seen him, and I couldn’t work out which way his mind was turning. All I knew was that he was not happy, and it wasn’t just because of my dress and heels. There was something nasty behind his eyes every time he looked at Ralph. I had an idea why, but not now, not here.

Mam hadn’t gone the whole hog, of course, just dressed nicely, but there was such a core of tradition in her that it simply had to be a church wedding, and just as traditionally a reception in the British Legion hall where traditional corned beef slice would feature. Christenings, weddings, funerals, it had ever been thus.

“Mam, why not use Jim’s place?”

“Cause it’s a pub, pet”

“Aye, but you’ll be having a drink anyway, so what’s the difference?”

She had sighed. “Jim’s the difference, hinny. Look…could he relax in his place, or would he be forever checking round, being sure it was all done right, like?”

“Ah. I see”

“Aye, Jill. He has his own lass alang, so let him have a bit relax, a bit of a bop, aye?”

Ian, in his usual arrogance, as I saw it, had tried to drive all the way up in one go the evening before, but pleas from his wife Ellen, and a car-sick teenager, had left him with no choice but to stop at a motel sixty miles short. He was in time for the service, but only just, and his look on seeing me had been utterly dismissive. When he found out I was matron of honour I thought he would explode.

Down the hill to the Legion, then, and the usual rituals of speeches, food and music. I cried when I saw Mam take the first dance, her hips freed from the endless pain she had suffered, and I had laughed at Neil’s skilful dance around the words dirty, old and man in the best man’s speech. One down…

The one thing Mam had insisted on, besides her church, was a full guest list, and when she said ‘full’ I nearly fainted.

“Aye, I know, it’s coming out of thy inheritance”

“No, Mam, it’s not that, and you bloody well know that. These people are not your friends. Ach, shite, I don’t mean it like that, I mean you don’t know them”

There was a moment, just then, when my mother suddenly looked her age, and I wondered exactly how much pain I had caused her in my selfishness.

“Jill, pet, understand this: I nearly lost a child. I know exactly what you were planning, and there was no way I could’ve survived seeing thee lying with thy Dad. I owe folk. I owe lots of them, people I’ve never seen, people I would meet, aye, just so I can say thank you. Look, lass, a meal, like; a bit dance and a glass or two: what are they compared to my daughter, alive, standing by us at my wedding? Small payment, return beyond price. Let’s have a list, aye?”

And so the guest list did a Topsy, and grew beyond the small circle of her friends from her old choir, and the neighbours, and we had the Woodruffs, the three Johnsons, both Forsters and their partners, James and his parents, Kelly and Mark (and his grandfather!), the McDuffs, the Armstrongs and a trio of what Larinda called ‘wimmin’ from Brighton

There was also MWUTBAC, as Rachel had dubbed him, the man who had, despite his denials, effectively saved my life, and in a particular twist Mam had personally asked both Will and his mother. Von had called me with the news, tearful, ashamed.

“Why are you surprised, Von?”

“Bloody hell, Jill, after what I did?”

“What, like grow up and show what a loving mother and good friend you are?”

That had been another tearful conversation.

So the church had been almost full, and the legion was stretched a bit, as people met and rebounded, trying to work out who was who and with whom. And my mother smiled, and she danced.

I finally had my chance, and walked straight up to Ian as Ellen was off with their stroppy teenaged daughter Bethany to give her yet another lecture on sneaking glasses of wine. He watched me approach, and his face was an odd mix of resentment and inability to focus. I understood the latter: so many of my colleagues had suffered the same agonies when I first came out. They saw me, they saw wig and skirt, and yet they still saw Rob.

“Well? No comments, then? Not like you, is it?”

We were in a reasonably quiet corner. He sneered.

“What the fuck do you think you look like?”

I sighed. “I look like me. I look like a middle-aged woman with alopecia and the best wig she can afford, which, funnily enough, is exactly what I bloody well am, aye? But it’s not just me, is it?”

That had laid open a scr. He looked away, jaw working. I stepped forward. Let him smell my perfume, make the point as hard as I could.

“What is it, Ian? Is it all the puffs, like? Or the dykes, the lezzers? None of them want you, so you’re safe there, aye? Or…or is it Mam?”

That was another nerve touched, and he muttered something.

“What was that, brother dear?”

“It’s not right”

I was sure I was reading him correctly, just then, and for a moment I wanted to wrap him in my arms, take away the pain that was so evident, hold my own brother and heal him, but I knew him too well. Forever the alpha male, always the rutting stag, he had to be slapped before he would ever listen. I took a deep breath, and softened my tone as much as I could without losing him.

“You still miss Dad, don’t you?”

“It’s not right, Mam…”

“She’s lonely, pet”

That brought a grimace, and a glare straight at me. “Don’t…”

I kept on. “Fifteen years, aye? That not long enough to grieve? And are you going to tell me that he’s not a canny lad? Not good enough for her? Or is it that you think she should just sit and pine till she drops dead of it?”

Mam was back on the floor then, as several of the guests took over the music. She and Raafie were doing the Slosh, a line dance from prehistory, and she was giggling. So was James. I moved to one side of Ian and pointed to the Happy Couple.

“That upsets you? Seeing Mam happy? Are you that fucking small-minded?”

And that was the crack in the dam, for suddenly he was in tears, and what else could I do but give in to the impulses I had had right at the start, and hold my grieving little brother as he wept. There were words, broken sentences, but what it came down to was Dad, and loss, and the fact that he had tried, tried so hard it had hurt, tried to be our father in all ways, and before he had arrived Dad had already left. I had always understood that about Ian, his need as middle child to be the special one, to be the head, the Big Man of the family, but it had been impossible, for I would always be there, older. I started to laugh, and he froze slightly, control returning. I hugged him tighter.

“Think about it, bro. Think. Who’s the man of the family now? Not me, is it?”

He lifted his head, face wet.

“Ian, pet, there was never any point in trying to be me, to outdo me, aye? You might have wanted to be me, but that wasn’t who I am. Look…let’s get you cleaned up, before your lass sees, like, and then we have some people to meet”

“Rob…”

“Jill”

He sighed. “Jill. Those are real, aren’t they? The tits”

“Aye. Not the biggest, certainly not like Mam’s---no, don’t go there---but I’m happy with them. And I think Larinda is, in a way”

He looked at me, really looked at me, and so much of the tension had drained away with his tears.

“I’ll have to clean myself up, aye? You can’t come in the gents’ with me, can you?”

Small steps, but quickly taken. I gave him my best smile.

“Of course not. Now, wash up, and you have people you must meet. Your sister-in-law for one”

She was behind me as he left. “You OK, lover?”

“Sort of, pet. He’s so screwed up, over Dad mostly, resentment at her daring to get married again, aye? But, shite, even with that warping his thoughts he can see how happy she is, and she’s still his Mam, and a boy wants to see his mother smile”

She kissed me. “Girls too, yeah? You did well there, but I don’t think you realised how many people were watching”

“Not Mam?”

“No, but Alec and Stewie were there, and…”

She laughed, and it was a happy one. “John, Man Who Used To Be, yeah? There’s a sodding human being growing in there, and it’s a sweet one!”

“Bugger a hell, pet, I haven’t exactly been a good host, have I?”

She kissed me again, and it was as gentle as she had ever been.

“My love, these people are more than capable of having a good time without supervision. Look at ‘em!”

Indeed they were, as two fiddles, a flute, two drums, a guitar, pipes and some other thing with strings were being played with complete lack of said supervision. Larinda settled back into my arms.

“More important, my love, much more important. Like getting Von and Will sorted, yeah? Just, well, I want all your family at our wedding, and all smiling, even if they do bloody cry. Sod it: I want them all crying as well!”

CHAPTER 20
Ian was back in a couple of minutes, his wife turning up with the wayward offspring a few seconds after. She peered at his face, seeming to spot the red in his eyes, and then turned her gaze onto me.

“That’s not really your colour, Rob”

My lover was still at my shoulder. “No, but it suits her. Hi, I’m Larinda, I’m going to be your sister in law”

Ellen’s face blanched under her layers of slap. I mean, I spent fifty-odd years as a bloke, and I don’t use as much as she---wind your neck in, Jill. Don’t give Ian a chance to withdraw again in defence of his wife. My thoughts were all over, but it was Bethany who broke the stand-off.

“Cool…like Jerry Springer, innit? What do I call you?”

“Aunty Jill would be OK”

“You getting it all sliced off, then?”

“Straight to the point? I think that’s the bit most people worry about, but it’s not the be-all and end-all, pet. There’s a lot more stuff going on, things like acceptance, recognition, aye? Your Dad just did that bit, for one”

“What you do, dad?”

His brow furrowed, and I smiled. “Accept I can’t use the gents’, aye?”

He looked relieved, as if he feared he had done something unmanly when his guard was down, but Ellen’s jaw dropped.

“You are using the ladies’ bogs? That’s disgusting!”

“Well, not really. They are a little cleaner than I remember the gents’ being, but a toilet is a toilet”

Bethany was laughing out loud by now. “This is SO mega, SO cool, my friends is going to be like SO jealous, yeah?”

“Bethany, this is Larinda, my fiancée. Love, Bethany, my niece”

“You must be like lezzers, yeah?”

Tact learnt from my dear brother, clearly, but no sign yet of Ellen’s bitchiness.

“Well, yes, Beth, I am indeed gay. Larinda isn’t, but you see that very tall woman over there? She’s gay, and so’s her wife”

Ellen sneered. “You are not to talk to them, Bethany. No warping of a young girl’s mind, or is that what you were after, Rob? Eh?”

She pursed her lips as if tasting something that had crawled into her mouth and died. “You bring people like that here? With normal people?”

I made as wide a gesture as I could. “Ellen, what the fuck is ‘normal’ supposed to mean?”

Bethany giggled at the word.

“Sorry, bro, but she is a bit off target there, aye? Look, Ellen, we have two lesbians here apart from me, and at least four gay men, aye? Lots of women, of all types, and even the bride hasn’t got as much chemical sludge on her face as you. I mean, how old are you? Forty-five? Forty-six? You’ve got more on you than someone who’s been bloody well embalmed after a car crash! And you call that normal?”

“Yes but there are real women over there. I mean straight ones. With the queers”

That got me laughing, and Ellen had a sudden attack of insight.

“Oh god, it’s a trannies’ outing, isn’t it?”

I realised she was scanning the others, looking for stubble or too wide a stance, and for a while I watched her jaw work as she stared at Kirsty, her bigotry so loud I could read her mind.

Huge tits, must be false.
But there’s a kid. Could it be adopted?

I had had enough. “Ellen, Kirsty was born that way…”

Larinda murmured “Just not quite so big…”

“…but two of them were christened Adam and Steven”

Her face was still going through all sorts of grinding and chewing operations, so I thought I better move things along before she self-ignited.

“Ian, pet…” brought only a slight twitch. Good start.

“Do you remember a case a few years ago up here, big police corruption story, like?”

“Aye, I followed that one. There were supposed to be links to the new stadium in the Toon, but that was all lies”

“Aye, that bit was, but do you remember how it all came out? One copper, aye?”

“Aye, but didn’t he get blown up years later?”

I was impressed. He had kept up with the news. He caught my expression.

“And what? They tried to fuck about with the best club in the world, and if it hadn’t been for that one poliss they might have got away with it, so I sort of picked up on it. Good lad, that, got a lot of shit from it”

From what I had heard, mostly in his back and legs. “Ian, that’s him over there. Want an introduction?”

Ellen was now doing fish impersonations, and Bethany was clearly only slightly drunk, but enough to be raucous as she enjoyed the show.

“Dennis Armstrong, his missus Kirsty, this is my other brother Ian. Bit of a football fan”

That was it, that was the key that finally unlocked my brother’s humanity. Ellen was along in his slipstream, of course, and Bethany was cooing over the infant as Ian’s congratulations and Den’s bashfulness soon turned into a discussion of the much more important subject of football. Bethany was half-listening at first, but as the ball game took over she turned more and more soppy over the child, the wine she had sneaked not helping. Kirsty was more than happy with the attention, but she still had a copper’s eye for Ellen.

“Bethany, see this kid? He wouldn’t have had no Dad if it weren’t for our friends, yeah? You come with me, and I’ll introduce you”

As soon as the three of them were away, Dennis became all business.

“So, Ian, let’s be straights, aye? What are you going to do about your sister? She wants your support, wants you at her wedding. Sorry if I’m out of turn, Jill, but I am not blind, and far from bloody stupid”

Ian was caught by surprise, but Ellen wasn’t lost for words this time. “What sister? Brother in a bloody dress and wig, more like!”

Ian turned his head, and in a flat voice said “Shut the fuck up, Ell”

I felt Larinda twitch, and a murmur in my ear went “Tell you later, lover” as Ian turned back to Dennis.

“What am I going to do about my sister? I will tell you what. I am going to stop talking the shite I have been, for a start. Come here, lass”

He hugged me, and this time he kissed my cheek. Whether it was my association with a hero, or perhaps the removal of my status as an older brother, a rival, I didn’t know, but it may just have been a little bit of maturity at last. He turned back to his wife, voice cold.

“Got that? No more ‘Rob this, Rob that’. These people can see what she is, so why shouldn’t I?”

His gaze went further, over to Mam where she sat with my stepfather, tears running down her face from yet another dreadful joke from Jimmy, Mark’s grandfather, and his face softened. Finally, it seemed, I was getting him back, the brother I had shared a bedroom with for so many years, the one who had started cycling two years younger than me because, well, if I had a bike, he had to have one as well.

“This is partly down to you, isn’t it? You let Mam breathe again. I’ve not seen her so happy in best part of twenty years. And Neil, hell…I don’t hold with puffs, like, you know that, but he is still my brother, and he has a smile back too, after what that bastard did to him”

I had a sudden suspicion. “That little accident that turd had. That was you, wasn’t it?”

Dennis chuckled. “I’m just going for a leak at this point in the conversation, like”

Ian watched him walk off, and gave one of his coldest smiles. “I might just have been somewhere nearby. Nobody touches my family”

Larinda stepped past me and hugged him. “Welcome back to it, love”

Bethany was back as Ellen stood silent. “Cool! Everybody’s like happy! Aunty Jill, Mrs Armstrong introduced me to someone what met the Queen! Got a medal off her and like everything! You got cool friends, Aunty!”

Ian’s eyes did another flicker of recognition, and I was reminded how bright he actually was behind his veneer of sexist machismo.

“Oh, pet, I think your Mam might like to meet that one. Off you go, Ell”

This time his grin was evil, as Bethany led her mother away and Kirsty stayed with us to await her husband.

“Kirsty, let me get this straight: woman ran barefoot over broken glass?”

“Yeah, Annie, that’s her…oh, yeah! Ian, no offence, like, but how’d you ever get a kid? I mean, if her fanny’s as tight as her arse obviously is…”

He had the grace to laugh, and then what Larinda whispered in my ear nearly made me spill my glass. It was clearly the phrase that had tickled her earlier.

“Fucking Ell…”

CHAPTER 21
Ian looked hard at me, and I realised I was getting a second appraisal. That was unusual for him, as his normal approach was to make his mind up and stick to it, because an alpha male could never be wrong, ever. I took the plunge.

“How’s Hayley doing?”

Again that little flicker as he changed gears. “Really well. The new home seems to suit her; friends like her, aye? People on her own level…Ell could never cope with that. You know what I mean, bro…”

He paused, the clockwork still obvious in his eyes, and looked at Larinda.

“How do you cope? I mean, I watch you, and Kirsty here, and her hubby, but you all act as if there’s nothing wrong”

Larinda sighed. “It’s been very hard at times, but there’s one thing you should get straight, Ian. There ain’t nothing wrong now, but there was a shitload wrong before, yeah? She makes more sense like this”

Kirsty was nodding. “Yeah, ‘slike my Sarge as was. I mean not ‘my Sarge’, that’s Den, but Annie, yeah? She was going down the shitter till we got her sorted out. I mean, it was mostly her scary friend, and her bloke, but yeah, we all did what we could. You’ll have to talk to her, get another look at it. Ah fuck”

Her eyes were off to her right. “Looks like your missus has just met Annie herself”

Ellen came storming back, Bethany towed along by her left arm.

“How many fucking pervert benders are there here?”

Bethany was blushing and giggling at the same time, and her “Mum!” was overtaken by Kirsty’s smiling “Oh, three, I think. Hi, Den, give it a good shake?”

Ellen’s mouth was opening and shutting like a carp’s. It took her a while to get the words out, but they came.

“Ian Carter, I am not staying here in a place full of lezzers, bumboys and trannies!”

Ian’s calm was glacial, and the tone of his voice matched it in temperature.

“Not a word for my mother, then? You’ve damned everyone else in my family”

“I want to leave, now!”

“Then, dearest wife, fuck off. Call a taxi. We need the car”

“Who the hell is ‘we’?”

He looked at his daughter, who gave a quick nod. He turned to me. “Can you give A2B a quick shout, Jill, if they still run? One passenger to the Birtley Premier Inn, aye? You can wait outside, dearest. Need cash for it? No? Bye”

He then turned away as if she wasn’t there, and after a few seconds she slumped and walked out. Bethany looked at her father.

“Dad…?”

“No. Not this time. At her age she should have some manners. Now, we were talking about your sister. I should explain, aye?”

His, their, first-born. I had visited often in the early days before his attitude and his violence pushed me away, but each visit had been the same. I found Ellen in her nightclothes, often still in bed, watching TV. The child would be in her own bedroom, a video playing, and not even a cup of tea would appear for me unless I made it myself. Ten minutes before Ian was due home, and suddenly little wifey would be dressed, vacuum cleaner howling away. In all that time, not a word would be said to the poor girl watching musicals in her room, clearly because her nature was not something her mother could connect with.

“Kirsty, Den, Larinda…our first bairn came with Down’s, aye? Not horribly so, she’s not as bad as some I’ve seen, but my beloved darling could never cope, and her sister didn’t help much. No, shut it, Bethany. You were always too young, too silly, aye? Anyway, she’s in a home for people with similar…conditions, and, shite, Jill, she talks now, aye? Actually has conversations”

Bethany went to her father and hugged him. “Dad, she’s got people to talk to now, yeah? Mum was…”

She faltered, and looked at me. “Aunty Jill, you never really liked Mum, did you?”

I sighed. “Social skills, courtesy, pet. You have to stretch things a bit”

“Well, you were right, and I hate her”

Larinda was forceful. “No you don’t. You just see her faults now. Never say you hate your own mother, not and mean it, yeah?”

Kirsty nodded. “Yeah. She’s right. Ian, you should talk to Annie, yeah? And, well, Ginny be good too. Give you an idea. Sorry for your girl”

Ian shook his head. “No, Beth’s right. She’s in her own place now, we see her when she wants. Well looked after, for once. Jill knows what I mean”

Kirsty led us over to her friend, who was in a very smart suit with some rather nice shoes that I…no, stick to the plot, girl. Kirsty made the introductions.

“This is Jill’s other brother Ian, love. Believe you just met the wife. Annie, stop laughing, and I saw you watching my Den’s arse when he went for a leak. Ian, Annie Johnson, QAG, and her hubby Eric. The tall red bit is Ginny, oh, and just to set the scene properly, the other girl we were talking about is the ginge over there that was playing earlier. I’m off to get a glass before your mother drinks it all. Sod it, no. Den, you know what I likes. Fetch”

“Yes’m”

Annie turned to Bethany. “You OK? Your mam, ouch”

Bethany just nodded. Ian frowned. “Sorry about that, but she is a selfish, lazy cow who has a small mind but loves to share it”

Bethany giggled again. "So why’d you get married, Dad?”

“Cause Hayley was on the way. And if I hadn’t stayed with her, I wouldn’t have had her, nor you, aye?”

“Oh, Dad!”

“So take a telling. Annie, I saw you in the paper twice, aye? First time were those kiddy fiddlers, that right?”

She sighed. “I have been in a few times, before that. I was in Traffic, aye?”

“Ah”

That was it, just ‘ah’. He turned to me. “And you know where I was, Jill”

Bosnia and Iraq and all sorts of other shitholes. Yes, I knew. I was also noticing how he was using my name more easily, and he turned back to Annie, eyes softer than I had ever seen.

“Alcohol or nightmares, pet?”

Another, deeper sigh. “Both, for a while”

Eric slipped an arm round his wife’s waist. “Kicks, she does, but they seem to be going away. Some smells, though, they bring it on”

Once again that soft tone from my brother. “Burning…vehicles, pet?”

“How did you know?”

“I was in the RTR. Trust me, I just know”

And with that he stepped forward and embraced her, a kiss to her cheek, and then looked around.

“I’ve been a cunt, haven’t I? Sorry, but…Jill, outside, please?”

He actually took my hand, leading me to the car park. “I need to say a few things, like. Sorry about Ellen, for a start”

“She is what she is, Ian”

“Aye, but she’s mother to my bairns, aye? No, it’s you. Look…I could never see you, like, you were always there, older, Dad’s, Mam’s favourite, aye?”

“I always thought that was Neil! The baby, aye?”

“Well, we see what we see, and sometimes not aright. I’ve not spoken to you much…well, not at all about what we saw in those places…”

He drifted away for an instant. “That Annie, she’s been there, aye? I can tell”

“A couple of others too, Pet, John Forster, for one, and Stewie”

“Stewie?”

I noticed he hadn’t twitched at what I had called him. “Stewie. Good friend of Annie’s, saved me from a nasty kicking a while back. Marine. Falklands, Bosnia, at least”

“Poor fucker”

“Aye. But look at what we have here, like, look how they’re smiling, look at Mam. For fuck’s sake, look at us. When did we last talk at all, never mind like this?”

“What, with you in a dress, like?”

“No, you daft bugger–“

And with that he was holding me, and it was right, and I felt years of anger and mistrust blowing away. He wasn’t crying, but I was, and I blamed the hormones and the fact that I was a bloody woman, and that he finally seemed to be seeing that. Eventually, he let me breathe.

“What will you do about Ell, pet?”

“Join her later, sleep, and go home as normal. She’s my wife. She has her good points”

I raised an eyebrow, and he grinned. “Aye, well. Now, we have a mother to get back to. Howay”

He actually took my hand to lead me back in, and went straight to Mam, who saw, and smiled so wistfully I thought she would burst. Ian whispered to Raafie, who nodded and went to get the music stopped. Ian stood back up.

“How, can yez all fill your glasses, for I have a toast!”

There was a scurrying and clinking, and he looked round, smiling.

“Now, I’m a bit late to this party, like, and I’ve been a little bit off with it, for a few reasons, but hey, there’s always a first in everyone’s life, so here’s mine. Ah wes wrang! Got that? Won’t happen again. So, if glasses can be raised, I give you my Mam, who I love beyond words, and the aad bugger who has put the smile back on her face, and…and the sister I should have known I had years ago, but that I see beside me now. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, Miss Carter, Mrs Elliott, and Mr Elliott!”

CHAPTER 22
Of course, we had to make the introductions to the others, and that was when I realised how sharp Ian’s focus had been on me and Mam, as he hadn’t even noticed the Forster brothers. So many explanations, so much history, and so often his eyes would drift as his mind processed such things as Alec’s presence at John’s side.

“My middle brother Ian; John Wilkins, retired colleague and life-saver”

“Oh, don’t, Jill!”

“Well, it’s true…and Von you might have heard Mam talk about. That’s her boy Will over there with Nelly”

He fixed Valleys Girl with a slightly puzzled look. This was clearly a little outside his world of certainties: people broke up, separated, and cleared off to different paths. They didn’t hang round their old partner as a new style of friend. Especially after their father had just…I could hear the wheels spinning without grip. I looked round for Bethany as Von tried to explain the somersaults her mind had performed, and spotted her with the rest of the young people.

That made sense to me. Darren and Chantelle were never far apart, and James had been particularly open for the whole of the day. I caught my niece grinning as Darren supervised James in his idiosyncratic way of describing his music, and Bethany whispered to me “He’s weird, Aunty Jill”

I put on my best reptile smile. “A quick word, missy?”

Once a few feet away, I gave her a Paddington. “Weird is not a nice word, Bethy”

She blushed. “Didn’t mean like BAD weird, he’s just, like, DIFFERENT”

“He has a few problems, pet. Autism, aye?”

“Bit like Hays?”

“Not at all, love. Look…your sister, aye? She’s…I don’t like the word retarded, but, well, there’s only so much she can learn. James isn’t like that”

Bethany sniffed. “Don’t care what she is, she’s my big sis and she should be happy”

There was a flash of maturity to her just then. “Like, this new place, yeah? It’s all others like her, she gets to talk to people and they can’t put her down, cause they is all at the same height, same level, yeah? And when she was with Mum all day, nobody to talk to, and she’d break things, and the arguments with the rents…she’s happy…”

I hugged her. “You love her, aye?”

In a very small voice. “Yeah. Mum’s a real bitch to her”

Too much like work for Ellen, and she was never a fan of that pastime. Boost her self-importance as a school governor, yes; actually put her hand to a figurative plough, well, pigs would fly. Bethany sank her head against my breasts, which warmed me beyond words.

“James…what is he?”

“James, hinny, is a beautiful boy who can’t talk to people. What he isn’t is stupid. Just think of him as a sort of bit deaf, bit blind, like”

“He’s got lovely eyes…”

Oh dear. “I see. Look…what he has is a sort of failure in being able to communicate, to read people, and you are seeing him at his very best today, aye? It seems…well, with Darren he seems to have found a link, like a pipeline so he can talk. Keep it to yourself, like, but see the older man I introduced your Dad to? Mr Wilkins? He’s sort of the same, but milder, like. Do you see? Can I have a promise?”

“Like what?”

“Be nice to James. Let him start any talking, aye? And please, no touching. He doesn’t get signals. Not like other boys”

A squeeze. “But he is well fit!”

She stepped back a little. “You got weird friends, Aunty Jill”

“I have true friends, Bethy. Much more important, aye? Now, be nice to him”

She giggled. “That girl, yeah? She got that Darren tied up like a tied up thing”

I smiled. “You fancy him as well?”

A true flash of maturity then, or at least an attempt at it. “Well, weddings is for like checking out the talent, int they? I’ll be good. Promise”

I turned back to see where my brother had gone, as Bethy returned to those of her age, and with a shudder I saw that he had finally collided with Annie’s red-haired lunatic. I scampered across; I could think of no other verb considering the shoes I was wearing.

“Hiya, Jill! Just correcting a few thought crimes in the tool of the Patriarchy here!”

I reached behind me for support, to find Larinda’s hand there ready, as it usually was.

“And have you left the edged weapons at home? Airport security a bit tight, aye?”

“Fuck no, just put the katana in the hold baggage, not a problem. He’s too bright for a hired killer, anyway”

Ian looked at me. “Runs in the family, Ginny”

“Yeah, but what you doing with the hellbitch, then?”

As straight to the heart as ever. This was Ginny in serious mood, I realised. Ian looked around for Bethany, and seeing her safely with the others he sighed.

“Valley commando, aye? Got back from Germany…oh shit, Jill, you remember Lauren, the hairdresser?”

Years and years back, when we were still speaking, and he had lost weight, and his hair had been highlighted, and she was a delight. It was clear how stuck on her my brother had been, and then something had happened, something he never mentioned, and she was gone from his life as if she had never existed.

“Aye, pet, she was a canny lass”

“Aye, she was…”

Pain flickered in his eyes. “Squaddies and beer, aye? A few too many times turning up at her Mam’s when I should have known better, and, well, her Mam wasn’t stupid, and…”

And then a disco in Tidworth, and a girl of sixteen who wanted a billet and an income, with parents who shared that worldview, and bang, two months gone and the true depth of her humanity only coming out when they saw the hand genetics had dealt their first child. I realised Kate was next to her wife, and she was nodding.

“Happened to Stewie over there too, but…no, not today, your Mam’s day, yeah? Seriously, we are not trying to dig out your secrets, Ian, just we feel a bit protective sometimes. Lot of history here”

Ginny nodded. “Fuck yeah. Lots of shit and damage and pain and shit. But that’s not what we got now, it’s–“

She looked at Kate, who just gave a little head shake. “No, not that simile”

She turned back to Ian. “While my beloved here is full of life and invention, when it comes to her choice of analogy there is an instant failure in her settings for taste and sanity”

That was when Ian snorted half his beer out, fortunately into his glass, and laughed in the most natural way I had heard in years.

“Fuck me, sister dear, you have some barking mates!”

Kate smiled. “And very good ones. Welcome to our coven, circle, group, whatever. Jill was worried about you, how you would play this. Thank you for being what we should have expected from her brother”

Von was at my side now. “Aye. Took me a while to see, innit? But, well, think you see clearer if it comes harder”

She started to laugh. “Haven’t heard ‘Valley commando’ in years, see?”

Ian smiled. “Load of Taffs in the recon troop, like, so we got the lessons. Pity I didn’t learn from them, really”

Again the flicker as his mind worked. “Siobhan, aye?”

“Von”

And then it clicked. This was the Von of my earliest days with her, the charmer…you naughty bitch!

I understood right then what Ian was going through, the mental leaps and twists, as I ran through a whole series of options in my mind. Von had clearly decided to smile nicely at my brother, and, well, if any two were suited it was her and Ian, but he had his younger daughter with him, his wife at a hotel, another daughter…my hand was tugged hard.

“No, lover. Not now. He wants to move on, let him. Look at me, yeah? How long I spent with Mr Max Power? Look at Rach”

“Aye, pet, but, well, what if it turns into shite?”

She sighed. “How old are we all? How many mistakes we all made, yeah? Just, this time, best they make their own choices. Just, well, perhaps try and see they both stay sober. Oh, and mine’s a white wine”

CHAPTER 23
I drifted into people-watching after that, as the happy couple headed for their honeymoon destination of, well, our house. Mam had been clear and to the point.

“We might have worsels a bit trip down to Spain later, like, but for now I just want me own bed and a Cup of Tea”

I could hear the capital letters. “Now, the rest of yez can all have a proper party, a bit loud music and that, aye? We shall be asleep right early”

Off they went, and I found Ginny at my shoulder, or, to be more exact, at my bum, which she squeezed. Larinda coughed.

“Er, that bit belongs to me, girl!”

“Yeah, well, just checking she ain’t gone all flab-arse with the ‘mones, yeah? Worked for Annie, and she was one right fat beardy cow! See your bro’s found friends”

And he had. Somehow, the weight of their experiences had worked like magnetism, and Stewie, Ian and Fossy were clearly swapping yarns and jokes. One thing was clear from their faces, and that was the avoidance of issues like burning vehicles and dead men’s faces. No, they’d be sharing experiences of beer and girls (or at least beer, in John’s case), fights and practical jokes. I realised that sometimes that was how people healed. They didn’t need to compare experiences; they just needed to know that the person with them had walked the same path. In a way, that was what bonded Larinda and Rachel.

The hall had polarised in other ways. Women were clumped together, their men at the bar or talking Men Things, as the three veterans were doing. The young people were similarly grouped together, and the one woman who defied categories was over with the DJ. And she got her way. As the music started up again, louder than before, the guests split up again, along different lines, the dance floor almost entirely devoid of males apart from Darren…and James. I wouldn’t have called it dancing, precisely, but it was in time with the music, and he was smiling like a Summer morning.

Traditions were upheld, as the music eventually settled to the slower stuff that brings the men to their feet and the arms of their lovers, and I wasn’t immune to that despite my departure from masculinity. Couples were together properly as the evening came to a close, but I did spot Rachel giving John Wilkins a slow dance, and Mark’s grandfather smiling happily as he just sat, with a pint, and watched. James was beside him, and Bethany next to James, clearly following my instructions not to confuse him. There were a few sidelong glances as Fossy and Alec stepped out, and then Neil and Will…

That brought me up short. Both were lonely, both single, yet the age gap was there…no, I could see from their eyes that it was just affection, friendliness. Will’s first dance with a man, no doubt, and a sudden thought made me search the dancers for Von.

Valley commando, indeed. She couldn’t have got much closer to Ian if she had stripped him. Why couldn’t life just, for once, try and be a little simpler? Larinda nibbled at my earlobe.

“Jill, relax, yeah? All safe, nobody fighting”

“Traditional at a wedding, aye, the punch-up”

“Your bitch-in-law did that bit already, lover. Neil’s not trying to jump Will, and Ian ain’t going off to shag that Welsh bit neither”

She paused. “Well, not tonight, anyway. Come on, winding down, and if this is the last smooch one this girl wants a smoochmmmmmmm”

The best way to shut her up. That was the end of the affair, and we broke up into pairs and trios to make our way to our respective beds. James was already disappearing back into his head, and I saw Darren’s face fall as he realised. Bethany said something to him, and he gave a grin, nodding sharply. Bethany ran to the bar for a serviette, found a pen and wrote something before handing the paper to Terry with her own smile. Terry read it, and just hugged her.

“Jill, Is there room at Mam’s if I leave the car? Had a few more than I intended, like”

“I don’t think she’d mind, Ian. Taxi to the motel?”

“Aye. Gets me out of the clutches”

“You didn’t seem to be objecting that strongly”

“Wife and bairns, Jill, wife and bairns. At least, for now, aye?”

“Go on”

“Ach shite, aye? That was one piece of crap too far, even for her. I mean, for the bairns, aye? I’ve stuck with her for them, but, well, Hays is sorted now, and Bethy is old enough”

He looked away, once more the thoughts swirling away.

“I know what I said to you earlier, but, well, I have my own secret, Jill. I’ve had enough of her. Shite, I had enough of her years ago, aye? So I’ve seen the shyster”

He turned his gaze back on me. “Drew the papers up a while back, Thought, whey, I’d see how she went, see if she could like learn a bit, grow up. Papers have been sitting at the solicitor waiting for a signature for a year now. I always backed off, always thought, like, Bethy, Hays…and, to be honest, what she said I always sort of agreed with her, aye?”

“Tell me about it. What was it? Bumboys, lezzers, trannies?”

He just nodded, standing in silence for a few seconds. “Nelly, he’s really looked after Mam, hasn’t he? While I played happy families down in Wiltshire. Years lost, Jill…years she hasn’t got. And those boys, Stewie, John, they know, and so does that copper, that Annie. And, well, seeing that friend of yours, aye? The Valleys girl?”

“Ian, you’ve only just met her…”

“Aye, and that’s not the point. I don’t mean I want to run off with her, like, just that I got a bit look at how life could have been, could still be, aye?”

This was a different man to the brother I had known before.

“Jill, how long have you known the mad one?”

“Ginny? She’s really a friend of a friend, aye? Mate of Annie’s”

“She’s…she sees how thing s are, better than me…”

I realised he was crying, very gently and softly. I did what I had to, and held him, and he squeezed me back.

“How much have I fucked up, lass? All those years. Ginny told me about Chantelle, aye? How she fought back, got her own life again after all that shite, rape, aye? And here’s me being such an arsehole over who Dad liked better! I just, I just…shite, sorry, love!”

I felt another pair of arms go around us both, and of course it was Larinda. We stayed wordless for a while, and then softly said, “There is a way to make us all feel better, Ian”

“What’s that?”

“Come to our wedding, yeah? We’re gonna have a proper one, not some civil partnership shit, and she ain’t marrying as no man, so either we wait for the law to change or we fuck off somewhere else to do it. And I am going to make a decision for her, cause she is going to need giving away, and that’s your job”

Ian whispered back. “Where would that be, then?”

“I’ve been following the news, yeah? Here, if they change the law, or Scotland, cause they say they will first. If not, Denmark”

He laughed softly. “Got it all worked out, then?”

“Well, someone has to. That one couldn’t organise a piss-up in a brewery. Come on; clean your face, say goodnight to people, and then it’s Sunday lunch tomorrow, up at the carvery”

“I don’t know if we can, what with Ell, like”

“You will be there, for your Mam, your brother and your sister, yeah? And if she plays up there’ll be a queue to punch her up the bracket”

Ian was clearly feeling the effects of the roller-coaster. “I have to live with her…”

“Not what you were saying five bloody minutes ago!”

She turned to me. “He should speak to bloody Rach!”

I sighed. “Ian, it’s your shout, aye? Just remember: we are here for you. I know that sounds trite, but you earned a lot of respect from our friends tonight, and they don’t impress easily. And, well, my brother, aye? We work this one out as a family, and Bethy’s just as much my family---“

I looked at Larinda, and she nodded. “Just as much OUR family as you are, aye? Not alone, little brother, never alone, not any more”

It struck me then that he had been fighting this battle for years, but it had been on her ground, among her family, with nobody to back him up. Not any more. Never on his own again; I felt the decision take root in my heart.

I watched later as the taxi took him and Bethany back to Ellen, and realised Terry was beside me.

“You OK, Terry?”

“Just wanted to say thanks, but they’re away now”

I smiled at him. “Bethany quite fancied James, mate”

“Ah, Jill, it wasn’t that. It was this”

He handed me the paper napkin they had written on.

‘You are James. You are our friend. We are Bethany, Darren, Mark, Kelly and Chantelle. We are your friends’

CHAPTER 24
I lay with my lover in one of Mam’s spare beds, the dark heavy on my eyes. I had hoped to come to some sort of accommodation with Ian, knowing that there would be absolutely, no chance of any such gains with Ellen, but everything had turned upside down. As for Von…

“You awake, lover?”

“Aye, pet. Bit of a day”

She laughed softly. “Understatements aren’t really you, love. Bit of a day, my arse. It was insane! You OK?”

“Ah, yeah. Just trying to get things into some sort of order, what with Ian and Ellen, aye?”

“Not to mention your ex…what you think she’ll do?”

“I know one thing, like, and that’s the simple fact that she’s very big on family. I don’t think she’s going off after him unless he clears the decks first”

“Wait and watch?”

“Bugger a hell no. She won’t just poise politely, she’ll make bloody sure he knows where she is! What’s funny?”

“Oh, lover, don’t you see? She gets you, just with two less years on the clock and not wanting to chop off your whatsit, yeah?”

We were silent for a minute or two after her little joke. All the thought, all the inner debates I had hit myself with…

“Jill?”

“Aye?”

“If, you know, you want, all the way, yeah? I’d cope”

“I just don’t know what to do, love. I mean, there’s two of us, aye? Not that fair on you. I mean, one of us is straight”

“Yeah, but one of us is ill and needs healing”

“Aye, love, but I’ve lived with it for more than fifty years”

She cuddled into me. “And I can live without it for whatever time we have left, but I couldn’t live without you”

There were a few soft tears, but her humour could never be kept down.

“Besides, it don’t work that well no more. Got to get my brekky from your Mam’s frying pan now”

So, of course, one joke led to another, and then to some teasing, and then to something very nice, for both of us. As things got particularly nice, I just hoped Mam was properly asleep.

Breakfast was not the most sociable affair, as so many were round the pub taking advantage of Jim’s usual generosity, but before our evening flight back we congregated in the back bar, tea urn in place to save on the washing up. It felt odd; so much had happened in a couple of days that it was more like setting out on a journey than taking our leave at the end of things. Ian had brought his family with him, and there was something haunted in Ellen’s eyes. I don’t know how much he had told her, but there was definitely fear there.

I had a moment’s fear of my own, the worry that my brother’s freedom with his fists might have transferred from the man in the pub to the woman in his bed, but surely never with his daughter standing by. I caught up with Bethany in the ladies’, where I saw one of those odd moments of disassociation I was so used to by now. ‘He’s in the ladies’…she’s in…he’s…oh sod it’

“How’s your Dad, pet?”

She stared into the mirror, applying yet another coat of mascara.

“He got stroppy with Mum”

There was a pause, and she looked at me from the mirror, stare level, almost defiant.

“And I would have got stroppy too, if it were, like, me, yeah? She was bang out of order, well wrong. He was like SO angry with Mum”

“He didn’t, you know,…?”

“Hit Mum? No, he never does that, but this time, I like thought, maybe, she been so stupid, pig-nasty, yeah? But no, he just, like, walks away, talk to the back”

I waited, for I knew there was more, and her face crumpled.

“They’re finished, int they? Broken home shit, yeah?”

I nodded. “I can’t be sure, pet, but I think they might be. Your Mam said a few things that are a bit hard to take back, and your Dad, well, he’s a proud man”

“Yeah, and Mum’s like a cow. A lazy cow. Always has been”

“Bethy, she’s still your Mam, aye?”

“Aye…yeah, she is, Aunty Jill, and I love her, yeah? But that doesn’t mean I have to like, well, LIKE her, yeah? She’s a cow, and a bigot, and lazy, and what she did with Hays, weren’t right, no way. So…”

“You going to be OK, love?”

Again that look, almost adult, her father’s strength in her eyes.

“And I got a like choice? Gotta be. Gonna be”

Suddenly she giggled. “And that Welsh slapper, oh dear. Like, get a room!”

The laughter was gone as quickly as it had arrived. “We’ll be OK, won’t we, me and Dad?”

I nodded. “He has a strong family, aye?”

Once more her eyes measured me, the child right on the cusp of maturity.

“Yeah. Gotta be strong to do what you doing. And Uncle Neil, he’s still going, even after…”

“You know about that?”

“I know what Mum said, and Dad, and he wanted to go up and take his army mates, yeah, and Mum, she like says, what’s he expect, shirtlifting fairy, and Dad, he says, yeah, but he’s my fucking---sorry, Aunty Jill, he says, he’s like MY fairy, and nobody touches mine but me, and there was all arguing all night, and Dad he says he like KNOWS who it was, and Mum wouldn’t let him”

I hugged her. “I had my own ideas, love. Sort of met one of them a little while back”

“Yeah?”

“And I sort of kicked him in the bollocks. And he said…”

My own giggles came tumbling out. “He says I fight like a GURL!”

She pulled back, making a face. “Well, DUH!”

And the laughter led to tears, which meant repairs, and more hugs, and I caught Larinda looking at us from the door, a soft smile on her lips, just for a moment till she left us to our confidences. Five minutes later we walked out, as the old friends we had always been and the newer ones we were becoming. Ellen shot us a glare, but there was a fear in her eyes, and I could see she was slowly working out how far things had spun out of her control and into the hands of the bumboys, lezzers and trannies she hated so fiercely.

That was an odd moment. My mind took a step sideways, for I couldn’t work out whether she hated me more for being the second of those or the third, or both together.

My attention was captured by Jim ringing the ‘time’ bell at the bar, followed immediately by his shout into the front bar that he hadn’t gone mad, he just liked the sound, and beer would still be served to those with the necessary cash. His brother stood up.

“Jim and me, like, we just want to say that this has been a smasher of a weekend. Norma, Raafie, ye did us proud, aye? So, we were thinking, well, two announcements. Nelly here did a bit dig around, and then the four of us, we sort of put wor hands in the till…or rather into pockets, wallets, like. So ye have a week. Raafie, I know you have a passport, cause Neil found it, and we’ve booked yez a week in Puerto Pollensa, in Mad jorka, as Raafie calls it. All inclusive, aye except for ale”

Mam started to argue, and Rachel just raised her hands, and I was amused to see her head go back, just like the old days. No arguments, she was saying.

“Look, Norma, we owe you. You and Jill here, yeah, there are four of us who have a proper chance of happiness after a lifetime’s worth of shit, so you WILL not refuse. Got me? Anyway, that’s part one. Alec, over to you”

My shrink was grinning, but his eyes were moist. “Part two, indeed, or rather parts two and three. We know this vicar down our way…and, well, the law hasn’t changed, but sod it, a double wedding, both brothers, yes? Simon-the-vicar has a couple of slots in April, so here’s your warning to sort out best bib, tucker and dancing shoes. Date will be announced as soon as Simon has cleared his calendar”

Ellen was almost snarling. “Married? In church? Is that even bloody legal for people like you?”

Kirsty was on her feet, right then, and I saw Steph pull her husband back and nod to Annie. As for Den, he just smiled, a hand on his wife’s arm. His voice was very soft, polite and terrifying.

“As someone who sort of works in the law, the legal bit will be done up the road at the registry office, so you can see Alec and John’s part as a celebration. Just be aware that it was a good enough place for us, and those two, and those two, and…” as he pointed to three other couples.

Larinda smiled in a similarly predatory way. “And if the law is changed, it will be me and my girly here in the same church. Right, Jill?”

I nodded, but Ellen’s stupidity had been ignited.

“No way am I going to go to some bloody freak show like that!”

Kirsty, looked up at Den, as the room held its breath and she held her hands up for silence. She then smiled at each couple in turn, from the Johnsons to both Forsters. Her smile widened to show her teeth.

“What the fuck makes you think you are invited?”

CHAPTER 25
Ellen stood there, jaw hanging open, and that was how it described itself to me in my head, Bethy’s use of cow for her mother seeming so apt. Ian stood up, and embraced Mam.

“We better get ourselves on the road, Mam. Long drive ahead, and best done before more things are said. But they will be, aye? Just not here”

As he shook his new stepfather’s hand, Ellen started to say something, and all Ian said was “No”. It was in the same tone as Den’s earlier little speech, and it had a similar effect. Ian made the round of farewells, leaving all the men except Neil with a handshake. Neil himself got a bear hug, and all the women a hug and a kissed cheek. Including me. As he held me he whispered in my ear.

“Bethany’s just told me. George?”

“Aye”

“Sweetly done, sister. And one day, when they all think I’ve forgotten, I will come back for the rest, aye?”

He took one last look around the room. “Thank you, all of you. You’ve done my family proud this weekend. I am grateful, truly. Jill and Mam know where I am, so if there is anything you need, just ring”

And he was gone, a shaken but silent wife in tow. Once the door was shut, Kirsty glared at her husband. “Where’s my sodding pepper spray when I need it?”

Annie was chuckling. “Not seen you that scary for ages, aye? Den, remember what I said to you?”

“Oh yes, very well. Something like ‘THAT attracts you?’ wasn’t it?”

Kirsty looked hard at him. “And what did you say in reply, dearest darling of mine?”

Annie snorted. “It was ‘OOOOOOOH yes!’, butt!”

That broke the mood, and suddenly the room was alight with stories of meetings and proposals, and stupid misunderstandings that had had to be sorted out in amusing ways, and as is the way with such things the clock span faster than anyone realised. It was at one moment, when Larinda was sharing some salacious titbit or other, that I saw Von looking at me wistfully. I gave my lover a squeeze of the knee, and moved over to sit beside my ex.

“You OK, Von?”

“Suppose so. Just, well, bit wondering how it all went wrong, innit?”

I sighed. “That was the thing, like. It was wrong from the start. I just didn’t have the guts to sort things properly, earlier”

She looked at me in silence for a few seconds, and then shook her head. “No, Jill, you have guts, real courage. What you’ve already gone through, aye? No coward there. What you’ve got now, THAT’s right, that’s tidy. Just wish I could have known you as yourself rather than lose you as Rob”

She looked away, over to where a number of coppers and a Marine were clearly arguing restraint tactics with a Customs Officer, though it could have been bedroom technique for all I knew, and then she spoke looking away from me.

“I shouldn’t say that. I didn’t lose Rob. Rob was a fiction, never real. I was talking to that Karen of yours, and she told me what her boy said, about you putting on a skin, and that was it: a mask, innit? But I could have had the friend, Jill, the real person”

“You’ve got me now, pet”

That was when Larinda’s remark about Ian came back to me, and I grinned just as Von turned her eyes back to mine.

“What?”

I explained, and she conjured a smile. “Yes, there is that. He’s very like you…well, very like Rob, to look at, and he’s not stupid, is he? Does the squaddy bit, but he’s got a mind in there”

“What you going to do?”

“Nothing while he’s wedded, wouldn’t be right. But he has my number, and I’m not that far away. Closer than we were, innit”

She looked down at her knees for another long moment.

“New beginnings, Jill. Weddings should be about beginnings, and I think we need to begin thinking about the flight back. Come on: we need to separate the men from the beer”

“They’re on tea, Von”

“Aye, but there’s beer here, and men are weak and pitiful creatures in its presence, and besides I was promised a Sunday lunch, and it is Sunday and lunchtime”

So it was out to the place at the top of the hill, by the Angel, where it seemed that Von had indeed been busy and we had what seemed like an entire wing to ourselves. James had resurfaced a little from his hidden and private world, and when Ginny went into some rant about vegetarianism, all her words mixed and combined in a manner that made no sense while simultaneously making all the sense in the world, he began to smile again. The mood carried on delightfully as it had been at Jim’s pub, and without Ellen’s shadow it was even brighter. The crowning touch came with the presentation of a small cake after the meal, hand-iced to congratulate the newly-weds, and Mam shed more than a few tears. I took her to the ladies’, of course, Larinda and Von by my side, and after she had washed her face, Mam sighed.

“You are going to think I’m daft, pet”

“It’s a wedding, Mam. Traditional to cry”

“It’s not that, hinny. It’s, well…I was just wishing your Dad could have been here as well, aye? And, like, if he was, whey, none of this would happen at all!”

My other two women went to her and held her. Von stroked her hair.

“Norma, that’s not daft, not at all. I know what you mean. Just, well, don’t think of Ralph as stepping into his place, replacing him, aye? Just, well…”

She gave me another quick glance, and I realised what she was doing. Stupid things had been said by her, vile and hurtful things, and she knew that now, understood how and why they hurt. More importantly, she now understood why they were wrong. If only such understanding could come to my sister-in-law.

“Norma, Ralph isn’t a replacement, he’s a new story. Like having two books on a bookshelf. One doesn’t replace the other, aye? They’re just different stories. He’s a good man. You know what I think?”

Mam sniffled just a bit. “What, pet?”

“I think, deep down, Ralph wishes Jill’s Dad was here today as well. I think he loved him just as much as he does you, just not that way, aye? But he can't have one back, so he’ll do his best to make the other one happy. Can’t say fairer than that, innit”

My lover looked at my ex. “Von, what the hell has happened with you? No offence, but when we met you were talking some real bollocks, and now, well, you are sort of coming out with proper sense!”

“Bloody obvious, girl. I did talk some crap, I did worse things, and Dad, well…I am truly sorry for that, Jill”

I put a hand to her shoulder. “I know you are, love, and that’s important to me. Important to Mam too”

Mam nodded, and Von kissed her cheek.

“Watching the others, Larinda. That’s what it is, and talking to you two, and watching my baby…I never saw before, how unhappy he was. I never knew, because that was sort of how he always was, aye? Nothing to compare it to. I see him here, and I watch that other couple, that Alec, aye? And then, well, that ignorant cow Ian married!”

Larinda smiled. “See her as competition, girl?”

“Not bloody likely! Once she’s out of that house, there is only one winner. No, it’s not that. Not about fancying Ian, aye?”

She drew a long breath. “I just saw myself, like in a mirror, and it wasn’t nice. I saw her, and I heard myself, what I said to Jill, and my baby, and I knew how easy that could have been me, those thoughts, those words, aye?”

Mam hooked an arm into Von’s. “Whey, I always said to Jill that you were an easy one to talk to, like. Just nice to hear the sense coming back. How, this old woman’s finished her bit cry, so let’s get back while I still have some cake left from those gannets”

Later, leaning against my lover as the plane droned south, I realised how much poison Von had drained from my soul. There was a future ahead, something I had denied for so long, and it seemed it would involve my family after all. Who, exactly, had Rob Carter been? Whatever the answer, he had been good enough to catch the attention of a woman showing more depth and character than I had ever anticipated, and I was now in the position Mam had hoped for. I had both stories to read at the same time.

CHAPTER 26
Unless you are peculiarly lucky, work is something that serves to highlight the pleasure of what you prefer to spend your time doing. If it weren’t for work, you think, I could do whatever it is all day and every day. You know, though, in the back of your mind, that it would be like bathing in chocolate. Kinkily nice for thirty seconds or so before it would cloy and repel.

I was lucky, sometimes. Not that often, but it was far from uncommon. I would find myself in some drab little room, or perched on packing cases in a warehouse, and something would catch my eye. It was like crossword puzzles. Mam always loved the general knowledge type, while I preferred the cryptic ones. She would sit with a pile of books by her, of all types. Encyclopaedias, an atlas, a couple of history books; the crossword would take a couple of days, but she would plug away until she was finally finished or stuck. I did point out that there was a thing called the internet, but she simply glared at me.

“That would be cheating!”

“And all those books aren’t?”

“They’re different, aye? This is research, not cheating!”

Every now and again she would let me talk her through some of the solutions to the cryptic ones, but she could never quite pick up on the hints and clues, not even when I gave her “Girl in Crimson Rose” (eight letters, for those interested).

That was how my job spoke to me at times, and the numbers and their games would take me into such a Zen state that I would emerge to find a mug of tea, or terrible coffee, that had given all of its energy to the air. I sat one day, packing up my bits and pieces at yet another builder’s who couldn’t resist the temptation to claim all of his purchases even when the delivery addresses were places he hadn’t admitted he was working, and realised that my life was actually just like one of my puzzles. All of the elements had been there, laid out in the wrong order. All I had had to do was pick them up and reshuffle, turn it round, and bingo, solved.

Yeah, right. A few strokes with a pen, and Nye, my family and Von would have smiled sweetly in acceptance. Jill Carter, metaphors and similes are useful, but in life the clues can get hurt.

It was three weeks since we had come back south, and Mam and Raafie should be home from Mad Jorka. I smiled at the thought; the old man had declared he would be trying out every aspect of Catalan and Spanish cuisine he could, and Mam had simply said that he could do what he liked, but she wanted proper food.

It seemed her flexibility was limited. She could take on a daughter, and a new husband, but eating ‘foreign muck’ that wasn’t high street Indian or Chinese was beyond her.

Raafie had been insistent, though, just as insistent as he had been when Neil asked him, not wholly as a joke, whether we should now call him Dad.

“No. Thy Dad was thy Dad, and he stays thet way, forivvor. Thy Mam might be me wife, but yeez are his bairns”

Proud man. That image, two books on a shelf, stayed with me, as it made so much sense. What had belonged to his best friend hadn’t become his, he had simply taken it on in trust, and at that point I knew, suddenly, that I actually loved him. Sod his words, Dad he became to me, in my private thoughts, and as I looked at Neil, and heard an old woman laugh in the kitchen, I knew that he held the same thing in his soul.

Back to work, then. Rachel wasn’t exactly changed, but there was a smile to her most days that I preferred to the sometimes feral grin that she had shown so many traders, the one that had certainly shone out when she had taken her famous Rolls Royce what seemed like an eternity ago. Jim had done things for her…

I had to catch myself there, because in my current frame of mind all that led to was a string of thoughts about what he did TO her, and that was a bit too much for a workday afternoon. Sod it; pack up, ride to the office, write it up and see about another penalty for another thief.

As I loaded my bag onto the bike, my phone went. Von.

“Jill…”

She was breathless, as if having run some distance. There were noises in the background, a garbled announcement of some kind.

“Where you at, Von?”

“Just leaving Southampton. Made assumptions, innit”

Shit. “Von, talk to me”

“I will when I get there”

There was a long pause. “Your brother rang me”

A click. She had hung up, and when I rang back her phone gave me the old “The person you are trying to call…” message. Shit. I rang Larinda.

“Lover?”

“Von is on her way up, and it’s by train, if you see what I mean. Ian rang her, that’s all I know”

“Spare bed?”

“Fuck knows, pet. But I do suspect she’s had a few”

“Ah. Want me to pick her up from the station?”

“Remind me why I love you…oh, you just did. Sorry, love, you shouldn’t have to put up with this”

“Isn’t it part of your life, Jill? In which case, well, your life, my life, all your worldly wotsits, yeah? You got any idea when?”

“I could hear station noises when she rang, so I assume she was still on the coast”

“I’ll get on the net. Laters!”

Click. I was stuffed, as for all the wrong reasons I didn’t have Ian’s number. Drunk, and on the way. Arse, once again. I got home as quick as I could, and once in the door I looked at myself and realised that my biking gear didn’t tick the girl boxes enough. By the time I heard my darling’s car in the driveway I was in skirt and heels rather than in slacks and flats. Leave no doubt in Von’s mind…

“Hiya Von”

“Hey, Jill. This isn’t a problem?”

Yes of course it bloody well is. “Not for us, no. What’s doing?”

“Ian rang me”

“Aye, you said. Von….what for?”

“He’s served the papers, innit. She’s out the door”

“And what did Ian say?”

Her face twisted. “That was it, really. Didn’t say much more than that, and…”

And tears. We got her sat down, a cup of tea before her, and the story came out. Her day off, she had been making the rounds of her family by phone, including a long chat with her Baby in Newcastle, and she missed him so much, innit, but he sounded happy, aye, and she wanted him back for Christmas, cause the house was so empty, and then she had picked up the bottle of Pinot Grigio for just a glass, aye, just to relax, and with it the phone once more to speak to her Dad.

“He still rants, Jill! I tried, aye, tried to tell him it’s not what he thought, all those things at the trial, your Mam, and he just shouts that you did it all to humiliate him, and he hangs up!”

So the glass of Italian white had needed company, and she had sat for a couple of hours working through old photos, of William and his Bamps, times of laughter and joy, and the bottle had emptied, and so another had been found in the cellar, and as she opened it she hadn’t known whether her trouble with the cork screw had been through alcohol or vision blurred by the tears she was shedding.

And the telephone had rung once more. Ian, letting her know just that one small thing. He had hung up almost immediately, which had hurt, and so she had got into her car to come here, and after she had almost hit a pony realisation had sunk in.

“Where’s the car now, Von?”

“Station car park in Brock. God knows what the cost will be. Why’d he hang up, Jill?”

I looked at Larinda. She put an arm around the woman who should have been her rival, and I felt my heart swell.

“Von, love, have you heard yourself? Not just your driving, yeah? You got his number?”

“Yessss…”

“Come on. Spare room, lie down, talk later, yeah?”

She was back in five minutes. “As a sodding newt, girl! That dad of hers, fuck me. Is he terminally bloody thick or what? Lover, me or you?”

“Eh?”

“Talk to your brother, yeah? Got to explain, she ain’t no pisshead”

Her look became far more direct. “She ain’t, right?”

“No, pet, she isn’t. I mean, she likes a glass of dry white, aye, but that’s a glass, not a bottle. We have a meal, we’d share just the one bottle, like, that be all. Never a pisshead”

“OK. Well, we ring Ian, we see what he says, yeah? I got the number off her”

It rang. “Carter”

“Ian? Jill”

“Oh. You heard, then”

“Aye. Von’s here”

There was a sigh, and then a long silence.

“Ian…”

“She was pissed, Jill. I’d thought, you know…”

“Ian, that wasn’t her. She’d just got off the phone to her son, and then her dad, and then, well, you do know about what her dad did? To me? And why?”

Another silence. “Aye, Mam told us. Look, I can’t, well, I thought, like, and she was nice, and, Ellen, aye, but I can’t deal with a pisshead, not with Hays, like, and–“

“Shut up, Ian. Listen. You caught the woman on a bad day, at her worst. And you’ve seen her at her best, aye? Just think: how many years have you put up with Ellen? Think on that, and be sensible. You’re just getting out of one marriage, why are you looking at jumping feet first into another?”

“I’m not…”

“Oh bugger a hell, lad, you bloody well are! Look, for once in your life just go with the bloody flow, stop insisting that you have to be the big fat controller for everything and everyone!”

“I’m not fat”

Almost a joke. “You could do with losing some weight, bro. Look, will you talk to her, when she’s sober, like. Be fair with her, aye?”

Another silence, and I could almost see him as he worked out every ramification, every possible blow to his self-esteem.

“Oh fuck it. What’s your postcode?”

He was at the door two and a half hours later, Bethany in tow.

CHAPTER 27
I looked at his expression, and sighed.

“Bethy, Larinda’s in the kitchen sorting some food, so…”

“Yeah, yeah, let the olds talk”

As soon as she was gone, and the door shut, I turned to my brother.

“What the hell is this? I mean, I don’t mind you here, like, it’s something we should have sorted ages back, but…why now?”

He looked embarrassed, and I realised Larinda and Bethany were back in the room as I sat him down. He reached out for his daughter’s hand.

“I don’t know how best to say this, aye? But I learned one thing the other weekend, and it’s a hard lesson for me”

His voice trailed off, and Bethy sighed. “I found this, like, song for him, yeah, and I made him listen”

Larinda raised an eyebrow. “You MADE him listen?”

Bethany blushed. “Yeah, I did. Dad’s a bit, like, stuffed up, messed up, yeah, and it’s hard, shut up, Dad, my turn, you are crap at this, yeah, so let me. You got a coke, Aunty Jill?”

Larinda nodded. “Tea for you two?”

Ian grunted. “Bears and woods?” and Bethy continued.

“Dad’s always like been the big man, always been the success, yeah?”

Yes indeed. Always wanting to match, to beat, his own father. And me, of course.

“Was never wrong, even when he was, and when things like turned to ratshit–sorry–it was always someone else’s fault. Mum couldn’t be a cow–yeah, Dad, my turn, OK? Because, yeah, HE had picked her, yeah, so how could she be, cos he don’t make mistakes”

She looked up at Larinda, and cocked her head. “Look, I don’t, like HATE Mum, but just cause she is Mum don’t mean I have to LIKE her, does it? So we’re at home, and I’m listening to my sounds…Aunty Jill, what you listen to? Like, music, yeah?”

Ian grunted again. “He…she, sorry, was always into space rock and shit. Jill, this one’s gone all folkie, aye? Me with the metal, and how the hell…”

Bethany sniffed. “Better than Hays’s musicals”

I grinned with a sudden memory. “Your grandfather was into opera, lass”

Ian snorted out a laugh. “Aye, I remember. Trying to sing bloody Puccini all the time!”

Larinda held up a hand. “Very nice, yeah, but two things here. First, I am trying to educate this one’s tastes, and second, we have a woman asleep upstairs who needs to know what the hell is going on. So, Bethy?”

“Yeah, OK. I am not some folkie, yeah, I like singer-songwriters, cos they have to, like, be able to sing and write both, and Mum, she’s into poxy Westlife and shi–crap like that, and the thing about singers like mine is that they have something to like SAY, yeah?”

I tried, I really did. “Like Alanna Morisette?”

“Alanis, yeah, and she’s just, like BOGUS”

Larinda laughed. “I like your style, Bethy, but cut to the chase?”

“Cheryl Wheeler, yeah? ‘Frequently wrong but never in doubt’, and that’s Dad, always, but he’s learning, yeah? Trouble is, he don’t learn quick enough, and look at this, right now. Why are we here, Dad?”

“Because I stuffed up, pet”

“No, Dad, because you stuffed up loadsa times! You rang Von straight off, then you hung up, then you crapped yourself that it was all wrong after what you said at the wedding, and then you jump in the car and, like, roar over here at STUPID speed, yeah, and, like, if we don’t have no tickets from no cameras, I’ll be WELL shocked”

She looked at him, tears on the edge of falling. “Frequently, yeah, but never, and now, like, you see yourself as wrong too often, and you try too hard to put it right…”

He looked at her, his own eyes brimming. "So why are you here now, pet?”

“Cos you like told me to come… and cos I love you, Dad”

He couldn’t cry, not in front of three women, so he went to the toilet for a leak. Bethy sighed again, once he was out of the room.

“It like ate him up, Aunty Jill, seeing her. It was how she was with her boy, yeah, and our Hays, and the way Mum treated her, and I think he suddenly saw it all as a like waste”

My lover held an arm out, and Bethy settled into an embrace. “And how could that be, girl? When it brought him you? Now, how do we get him to think before he jumps?”

My niece laughed. “And what’s next week’s Lotto numbers, yeah?”

I settled back with my woman’s hand as she held my other girl. “What’s the plan, pet?”

“Don’t think he had one, yeah? Just like drop in here and it’s all sorted, just takes Superdad’s presence, yeah? Look, he thought he’d shat on her, shamed her, so it had to be cleared up, right here and now. Don’t know when we were like going home”

Larinda turned to me. “Was he always like this?”

“No, love, he usually made a decision and stuck to it. This is new. I think he’s sort of discovered, well, doubt. What to do?”

She thought awhile. “It’s Thursday, yeah? Can you get tomorrow off?”

“Office day, like, so, well, aye”

“I can get tomorrow off with a bit of delegation, so… Bethy, fancy a shopping trip? Up town? We got a bloke to carry the bags”

I must have shown my confusion, and she grinned again, the old mischief dancing in her smile. “I give Alec a ring, yeah, and see what they do, and we go to the Imperial War Museum, and he gets to do the bloke thing and, afters, we gets to do girly things, and in between he gets to do big soldier boy with Von, and her Dad was Navy, weren’t he, so? Von gets one spare bed, Bethy the other, and he gets settee duty. Hang on, He’s coming”

He was indeed, and he wasn’t alone, as a tearful Von preceded him into the sitting room. I looked at Bethy, and she was off to sort a cuppa for her.

“I woke up, and wanted the loo, and, well, he was there, aye? And I sort of said sorry, and…”

Ian shook himself. “No apologies, told you that. Both of us have been a bit daft, like, so let’s wipe the tape. Jill, you’ve been plotting, I know that look”

“Not me, Bro, them”

Larinda mock-whistled, then grinned. “You fancy some military shit, Ian? Show off a bit, then the blokes treat us to tea at Liberty’s?”

That was a moment that lived with me, a moment that will always warm my heart. Ian looked around the room, smiled at me, and said “What blokes? Only me here, aye? Me and four bloody women!”

Larinda nodded. “Fair point, and duly noted and anticipated. Get Alec and John along and that’s three blokes, more bag-carrying capacity!”

He leant forward. “Oh, aye? Who exactly is this little trip supposed to be for?”

Bethany leant forward, the back of one hand against her forehead. “Oh, Daddy, don’t you like want me to be HAPPY?”

Von started to laugh, and then the laughter turned to tears, and sobs, and I held her as it became one long and incoherent apology. Eventually, she ran down, and as her breathing came back to normal Ian spoke, softly.

“Von?”

“Yes?”

“I was wrong. Sorry”

Bethy smiled. “Gotcha”

“Not now, lass. Von, I didn’t think, I just reacted, aye? Putting the phone down, racing over here. I mean, even ringing you straight off, aye? That was me not thinking. I’m sorry, right?”

She lifted her head. “But you’re here now, innit?”

“That doesn’t mean…”

She held a hand up. “Don’t say it doesn’t mean anything, because it does, aye? I don’t mean, mad passion and stuff, aye, but you put yourself out to see me right. Thank you”

She started to laugh then “That’s me stuffed, innit? Seen me at my best and now at my worst, aye? Bloody air of seductive mystery woman gone now, no surprises left!”

I remembered a few intimate moments we had shared and thought that she was perhaps not quite shorn of all surprises, but I took her point.

“Look, people…Ian, Von, what are you up to tomorrow?”

Von smiled. “Day off, innit?”

Ian looked at her, and sighed. “Baggage mule it is then”

Von murmured something to Larinda, who laughed, and shook her head, and so we ordered a curry to be delivered, and left the wine alone, and finally saw everyone off to their beds with smiles rather than tears. Once more, I lay in my proper place, beside my lover, and I had to ask.

“She said ‘Hope he ain’t no bloody mule, aye? Want a man that works”

CHAPTER 28
We made an odd little group as we rode the train up to Victoria and then by tube to Lambeth North. Larinda had collared John and Alec, as planned, but then added Rachel.

“Well, the boys will have enough for an extra mouth. What else are men good for?”

I watched her face as she said that, and there was only a slight twitch. She whispered to me as we walked to the station.

“Told you, lover, it’s you for me, for always, breakfast or not, yeah? Got your shopping feet on?”

“Why? You have plans?”

Again a little flicker. “Yes, actually. Tell you later”

An odd little group indeed, and the dynamics were interesting. Ian had, of course, gravitated to John Forster as their common ground pulled them together. Alec watched indulgently, secure in his affection, while Von fidgeted, unsure as to how close she should get. I saw Rachel having a quiet word with her, and once again I had to turn away to avoid them seeing the sparkle of a tear in my eye.

It caught me, every now and again: the memory of how I had been flensing my life. Taking steps, indeed, and these people had already been in my life, all of them apart from Larinda. How could I have been so wrong, so stupid? So much of what they had borne in their lives trumped my little problem; the way I now lived showed me that. Apart from my breasts, I was just…well, no. Nye had done some redecoration, so…

Larinda came back to me as I tried to make sense of my thoughts.

“Penny for ‘em?”

“Not much, love. Just, like, how could I have missed seeing how good my friends were?”

She just smiled, and linked an arm through mine. “And did they see who you were, back then? They do now, yeah, so it’s a draw, right”

Once again her quick mind spotted the joke, and through giggles, she muttered something about scoring later, and my mood rose with her laughter. We walked into the museum, full of boy’s toys, to an immediate mutter of ‘Bastards!” from Ian.

He shook his head, staring at some tank or gun thing.

“Why the hell did they have to do that to it?”

John looked hard at him “Do what?”

“Cut the side off like that! That was history!”

He looked rounds at us all. “Look, this is the Jagdpanther that used to be up at Duxford. It was taken out by a Cromwell, dinky little gun, pathetic armour. Crew stalked that monster through a town till they caught it, and put a couple of rounds AP through the flanks. That was history, those holes, and they’ve cut them off so you can see the bloody engine. Bastards!”

Then he looked at us again, registering the slight looks of confusion most of us were giving him. “Look…these days we’ve got the best tanks in the world. I mean, the Septics come close, but only cause we showed them how to make better armour. Back then, back in World War Two, we had shit tanks. The development from what killed this thing became the best in the world, like, same thing Dad used to fettle, but before then they were really crap.

“This kill was a big thing, aye? I read the log, it’s a Regimental thing, David and Goliath, like, and they treat it like this! Not right!”

Bethy grinned at him. “But you are glad you, like came, Daddy dearest?”

His own grin flashed back. Once more I was seeing the little brother of my youth. “Oh bloody hell aye, pet! Howay, let’s see what else they’ve disrespected”

And off we went. There was so much, from the Colditz glider to model ships, from WWI trench weapons to full dress uniforms…

Two moments. The Blitz Experience, where we all trooped into a mock-up of a shelter, and the tape began playing, and some dreadful Mockney actress started asking if anyone wanted a sing-song, apples and pears, pearly king and queen, ‘avabanana, and then suddenly the lights went out and WHAM the whole bloody thing jerked sideways, and Von had to change her knickers in the ladies’.

And the other, in the exhibition on the Holocaust. Two young lads, full of their adolescence, and then presented with a faceful of John.

“Tell you what, lads, I can’t actually see any joke here, and yours don’t make me laugh, so why don’t you both fuck off now while I am still smiling?”

They took in our numbers, and fucked immediately off. I raised an eyebrow to my friend, and he just grimaced.

“Srebrenica, Jill. Other places. Tell you sometime”

Ian’s arm went round his shoulder as Alec took John’s hand. My brother, cuddling a puff, a queer. The day was not exactly full of surprises, just confirmation of how far he had come back to his humanity.

Eventually, we managed to get boys out of toy box and back to the tube, where I did the steering towards Oxford Circus and the short walk to Liberty.

“What’s it like, then, this Liberty place?”

“Nice, Von. All half-timbers and stuff. That right, Jill?”

“Love, I have never been there. Wasn’t exactly my sort of shop most of my life, like”

Rachel leant her chin on my shoulder from behind.

“Von, girl, all you need to know is they have a bloody good caff, and they sell shoooooooooooz!”

John laughed at that. “You want to hear what Annie says about stuff like that”

I put on my best innocent child face. “What, cafes?”

Sod it. We went in, we found the café, and it cost the Earth. Ian winced at the price, but his card came out and so did the clotted cream…

They lost interest twenty minutes after we finished the last scone and drained the teapots. There was a sale on, and Rachel was salivating over some Kurt Geiger items, and, well, the boys clustered round Alec’s very posh mobile phone and came to rapid agreement.

Ian nodded. “How far?”

Alec looked at the screen. “Corner of Carnaby Street. Two minutes”

Ian looked at John, and got a nod in return. “White Horse it is, then. Don’t spend too much, girls”

“Daddy, sweety…”

Ian looked at me, then back to his daughter. “OK. Fifty quid, but I vet it when we come back, aye? And no spoiling my girl, sister dear”

He started to walk off with the others, then turned back to address Von. “Aye, and you an all, pet. I know what she’s like”

And they were gone. Von smiled, slightly dazed.

“I am, well, in front of his daughter, aye? Am I allowed to pass comments about his arse?”

Bethy grinned. “Yeah, Dad’s always been fit and stuff. Not as fit as James, though!”

Rachel snorted. “You lot didn’t spot it, then?”

Larinda frowned. “What?”

“John slap Alec’s arse, yeah? Cause Alec was checking out Ian’s when he thought nobody was looking!”

Once more, I thought back, and remembered how bad the man had been when we first knew each other; threadbare, almost broken, brought back to life by a man who had made my school days hell. It seemed there were fewer certainties in life than I had assumed.

So the day went, as Rachel succumbed to the lure of some very pointy shoes, and Bethany laid claim to a dress that I would never have imagined would take her eye, and, well, Larinda and I bought matching underwear. Properly fitted, measured, comfortable and sinfully expensive. Larinda grinned at me.

“Can you remember, years back, that first time, yeah?”

I did indeed. “Didn’t go very well, did it?”

She kissed me, to the disapproved grunt of at least one sales assistant but also to a definite happy “Aaaaah!” from another.

“I couldn’t see you back then, lover, but I can now. Said it already, but it bears repeating, loadsa times. It’s you I love, yeah? Packaging, it ain’t important. I love YOU”

“Bears repeating, like? Go on then”

“I love you, Jill Carter”

I took her to the changing area; the kiss was a bit long for public consumption. She broke, and rested her forehead against the slope of my breasts.

“That thing we were talking about earlier, yeah? Sort of set a ball rolling, big one, like that temple of doom thing. Made enquiries”

“Hmmm?”

“Had words with Steph, and she had words with what she calls her Immigroid colleagues, and, well, don’t know what the law’s going to be here, yeah? But, now, yeah, we can marry. All legal, traditional, cause you still have a little extra there, even if…”

She tailed off. “No, that was wrong. Told you, it’s you I love. Yeah, it would’ve been simpler if you were a bloke, but you’re not, you never were, and I fell in love with you, so that’s it”

She looked me in the eyes for a long moment, and just for an instant I regretted the little bit of make-up I wore.

“Jill, if we marry like that, the law says we divorce when you, you know, finish things off”

And there was a new slant to how I had been using that phrase, not that long before. She dropped her eyes again.

“After that twat I married, I said, no, it ain’t going to happen again. If I get remarried, it’s for life, so I weren’t going to make a quick decision on anyone, yeah?”

A deep sigh. “And that’s it, yeah? I marry you, it isn’t going away just because some arsehole law says so. And it’s marry, not civil partnership, it’s real, and it’s traditional cause, shit, Jill, I’m just a soppy old tart and I do trad things, yeah?”

Her hands knotted in my blouse. “And when that old fucker did that to you, Von’s dad, and I had to argue before they would let me see you, yeah? That was Alec, pulling strings. Something else happens, something worse, neither of us gets a say”

"What have you done, pet?”

Another sigh, and her head once more on my breast. “Made enquiries, love. Place called Billund, got cheap flights from Gatwick. Steph says the UK accepts things from there as being like a Civil Wotsit, but that’s not what it is out there. It’s a marriage, real, proper, yeah, and it don’t go away when, er, THAT does”

She pulled herself tighter to me. “Thing is, it’s got a theme park, where they make Lego, yeah, so there’s lots of accommodation, and cheap flights…and the bloody Danes don’t care about what’s in your knickers”

I kissed the top of her head. “Thank you, love. There’s more, aye?”

“Er, yeah. Got, well, look. We have the proper bit in Denmark, we are legal, they can all piss off cause for once the law is on our side. Small wedding, just closest with us, witnesses, yeah? And Steph, she has this friend, and he’s a vicar, in Horley… you might remember dancing and shit”

“The rest of it?”

“Sort of booked him for a weekend in April”

CHAPTER 29
“And what exactly are we planning? “

She almost whispered, “It’s me that’s been doing the planning”

“Aye, well it’s ‘us’ now, OK?”

Another long sigh. “Just a couple for the Danish trip, that was what I thought, yeah? Just witnesses. I thought, well, Karen and Terry, but that means James, and, well, I sort of thought, John?”

I could see her logic with John and James, but why Karen and Terry? I asked her, and she just looked me straight in the eye and smiled, more gently than I had ever seen her do before.

“Who was it you first came out to, Jill? Who was it who took your hand, made it work?”

I kissed her again. “That bit was you, love”

The smile quickly became her more usual grin. “Yeah, but I got a better job that day, so can’t be me. Now…planning. We get this done, and then we have a shindig, yeah? We show off, let the world know”

“How many were you planning on inviting, woman?”

The grin again. “Dunno yet! Let’s get back to the others before they get all the good stuff, yeah? Bollocks, but this is complicated”

“What is?”

“Trying to work out what you do with two brides. Do we have a best man? Girls? Who does the giving away?”

“That’s obvious, my stepfather for me!”

“Yeah, but I ain’t got nobody left…shit, yeah, of course. John Wilkins, he’s the one”

Her eyes were wide, as I assume mine were. The idea was so unexpected, yet somehow so absolutely right. After how he had come through for me, he deserved a place not just in the pews but at the heart of things. I started to laugh as realisation pushed through the delight that had filled me.

“Larinda, love, just, no: don’t tell him yet, please? If you do, he’ll only obsess, like, buy every book he can find and fret over what to wear. Oh, shite, speaking of which… do you see me in the white kit, or you, or what?”

She looked at me hard. “You want that, don’t you? I should have realised. I get it wrong every now and then, lover. I get so used to you as you are I forget what you went through to get here, what you never had. You had dreams, yeah?”

I took her arm and started to walk her back to the others.

“Dreams were all I had, pet. Dreams and prayers, like. I think everyone like me must have that sort of thing in your life, hoping…you wake up one morning and it was all a bad dream. I had the same desires, wants, as every other little girl had…”

I tailed off, looking round me at the racks of clothes, the shoe displays.

“Love, just doing this, today, this is so far beyond what I actually expected I could ever do”

I drew a slow breath. “No, I bloody well knew that I would never be able to do this. That was what was killing me. Never to be free, never to be allowed… I was just like any other girl, aye, watched the wedding, wanted to wear the dress, but all the other little ones got to be bridesmaids at least and me, I got nowt. They went in matching dresses and I got shorts, jacket and tie”

Another breath, and I realised I was angry. Bloody hormones; I felt like a comedy teenager, but in my case the shout of ‘it’s not FAIR’ would have been absolutely true. Another thought fought free from behind my rage.

“One thing, love, I should stress, aye? Wearing the dress, being the centre, oh aye, but never a man in the dream, never a one”

She grinned again. “So no morning suit for me, then?”

I laughed. “Matching or complementary? You haven’t got the shape for a suit, anyway”

“Neither have you, any more”

Cheeky cow; she gave my left tit a squeeze as she said that, but as it actually belonged to her, along with all the rest of me, and everything I owned, how could I complain?

We rejoined the rest, the men returned at last from their libations, and I raised a hand for silence.

“Friends, family… we have a little announcement. Shouldn’t be a surprise, really…”

Alec grinned. “Where and when?”

I saw Von start, and almost automatically reach out for Ian’s hand.

“Well, my beloved here has made enquiries, and we have two dates, sort of, and two venues. The first is the legal bit, where we marry as women, two women, in Denmark. Don’t get your hopes up; that one will be a fly in, fly out, and not a do of any kind. Just getting the words on paper, like.

“The second, though, that’s in April. We have a friendly vicar courtesy of Steph–the tall redhead, Ian. No, the SANE tall redhead”

Rachel sniffed, head cocked.

“Larinda, remind me: why is he so amenable?”

“Simples, Rach. He marries Annie’s cousin in December. Keeps it all in the family; remember what Kirsty said about how many of them got wed there? Same bloke”

“So you two….full fairytale schtick?”

I thought back to our conversation, about the dreams and prayers of a lost little girl.

“Rach, pet, this is already a fairytale, aye? Proper wedding, like, just puts the icing on it”

Another sniff. “Bloody meringue, more like! Bethy, you know what this means?"

The teenager squealed. “Hen night yay! Er…Daddy dearest…?”

“Oh, I suppose you can go on your aunty’s hen night”

Bethany was suddenly serious. “No, Dad, that wasn’t what I wanted to ask. Just, thinking a bit, and it’s not been, like, fair, yeah? I mean, there’s someone else in the family…”

Von caught her idea first. “You really love your sister, don’t you?”

“Yeah, I do, and she’s, like, never had any real fun cause of Mum, and, well, if she could just, like, BE there, be a normal girl, all friends and stuff, yeah? Please, Dad? Please?”

Ian kept silent for almost a quarter of a minute as Bethany pleaded with her eyes. He nodded, just once, and there was a tremor to his cheek.

“Bethany, pet. You have just made me very, very proud of you. I can’t…I can’t say much more than that, aye? Look, no promises, but I’ll talk to the home, like, and see what they say. Jill…”

He was almost out of control, I realised. What Ellen had done to his elder daughter over the years had hurt, clearly, and there was the younger girl effectively depriving herself of a teenager’s dream debauch, all for the love of her sister. Von stepped in.

“Always possible my baby could be home, innit? He could drive the girls… oh hell, one advantage of having a gay son, see, is you can trust him taking drunk girls home!”

That broke the mood nicely. Ian was back to himself at that.

“Well, I would be there to drive as well, like, just to make sure my daughters get home”

Von pouted. Ye gods, this was definitely once more the woman I had first met.

“What about me, then? Don’t you drive me home?”

Ian chuckled. “You trust me to drive you home?”

“Don’t trust you at all, but you can still drive me home!”

It was a good job none of us were drinking.

Once more I lay with the love of my life in the darkness of our bedroom, the house now empty apart from us and our thoughts. Karen and Terry had been touched, almost beyond words in her case, and John…I am sure he was crying down the telephone.

Little girls dream, even when everyone tells them they aren’t little girls and never will be. I had dreamt, and prayed, to everything from Jesus to random stars, and the answer lay next to me, breathing softly in her sleep.

In the morning, I would book the flights.

CHAPTER 30
It seemed my lover had moved things on beyond what she had admitted to me, and rather presented me with a fixed and fully prepared package. She had been in touch with just about everyone involved, tweaking the details and filling in little boxes where necessary.

“Why not somewhere closer, Pet, like Holland?”

“What with a ferry, driving, be a longer trip, yeah? Here we just pop into the airport, quick flight, job done!”

“Aye, but we could fly to Amsterdam in even less time”

That grin again, the grin that saved my life. “Yebbut, they ain’t got no Legoland in Amsterdam!”

Apparently that sorted the argument. A week after he had left our house, I rang Ian.

“How are things down your end, pet?”

Deliberate, that word. Make him accept, make him realise. He seemed to have done so already, but a little gentle reminder every now and again didn’t hurt.

“Canny, Jill. Out with Von last night…”

“Ian, take this the right way, aye? Going very, very quickly there”

There was a short silence at the other end of the line. “Aye, well. Things are a bit complicated just now, like, and she helps cut some of the shite away. We’ll talk some time, aye?”

“You got problems? Talk to me”

“Not just yet, lass, aye? Now, when’s this Danish trip?”

“Next week. The devious woman’s been doing an awful lot behind my back. Sometimes she scares me!”

“Bugger a hell, bro---er, Jill, you have enough scary friends without having to live with one! Send us a postcard, aye?”

“I’ll send one with Lego on. Hays like that?”

“I think she would, aye”

“Ian, you coming to the church for us?”

“Aye”

Just that. The man who cut me off for so many years, in one word, committed to attending our wedding. One word, better than all the flowery phrases ever written. Aye.

“And…Hays?”

“Oh god aye, woman. I was going to ask about that. Hen night, aye? Hays?”

“Of course…oh, bloody hell, Ian, of course she can! Every little girl’s dream, aye?”

“Matching dresses?”

“Me and her, or the bridesmaids? Both, we think. You see Bethy and Hays together, aye?”

A silence again. “Something their mother never did, love”

“This is a family do, aye? We do it as family. Thank you”

“Thank me for what?”

“Coming back to me. Now, I have a lot of work to do…”

And a brother to leave in private while he sorted, in a Manly Way, the tears I could tell were there.

Gatwick was its usual manic self. Annie and Eric had generously made room for us just round the corner, Darren cooking us a mean breakfast, and a taxi delivered us with our luggage to the underground warren that was the drop-off point. Through the stinking allegedly no-smoking areas carpeted with dog ends and into the airport proper, to the coffee shop where three men and a woman awaited us.

Man was indeed the right word for James now, and I smiled at Bethy’s fascinated description of him.

Terry was on form. “People, you may be wondering why I have called you here today…”

Karen slapped his arm. “Coffees, muffins, now! Move it, slave!”

She turned back to us as he disappeared with our order. “That was a demonstration of how husbands should be treated. Bit wasted on you two, wasn’t it?”

She looked at us both intently. “This is box-ticking, isn’t it? No hen night, no big party?”

I nodded, and looked at my lover. She gave a quick smile.

“Dead right. This gets us legal, and we are only doing it because the miserable bastards are dragging their heels over here. Church do, yeah, that’s the proper one even if it’s got no legal wotsits. That’s when we have the family in, the friends. Sod it, most of our friends are more family than a blood relly, yeah?”

I squeezed her hand. “Never thought I would, you know…”

Karen smiled, as John and James worked through some bird magazine together. “What? Get wed?”

I shook my head. “No, simpler than that, like. Much simpler. I didn’t think…well, I sort of had plans not to be here, aye?”

Karen’s face twitched as her husband returned, and she held her hand out blindly for his. “I had, we had, well, we had guessed. That was why…all that time ago, when you spoke to me, seems like another world. We knew something was up, and, well, it was just a chance to see if you would talk to us. I’m so glad you did. We’re glad”

“No maudling!”

I looked at Larinda. “You what?”

She grinned. “Maudling. Being maudlin; just made it up. Come on. Drink up, trough down and get through the rubber glove people. Plane to catch, woman to marry!”

We had done the online thing the night before, so all we had to do was take our hand baggage through security, which was not scaring me in the slightest. I had my carry letter, I had my new passport in my real names, and most importantly I was surrounded by family, who had already shown their worth.

In the event, it was completely without incident, and we trooped into yet another coffee shop and sat watching the aircraft for a while until there was a cough beside us. Two men, in uniform…shit. The much larger one spoke.

“You Jill?”

I nodded. How did he know? Well, look for the bloke in a dress, of course. I had no illusions; they were punctured every time I went out to work at a trader’s.

The smaller man pulled up a couple of chairs. “Hi, that lump’s Dave, I’m John”

Not another one. This was getting silly.

“Steph sends her regards and best wotsits. Got caught up with a job, so we came over to make the complaints”

I was goldfish-like in my graceful reply. “Complaints?”

He grinned, showing a missing tooth below his impressively broken nose.

“Yeah, bloody right! Two women marrying, no sodding stag do for close friends and hopeful hangers-on to get pissed at!”

The bigger man, Dave, rumbled out a laugh as Terry bristled in mock outrage.

“Absolutely! What are the male alcoholics of this area meant to do while the women are knocking back the tart fuel? I think we should form a rival group!”

Dave laughed. “Redhill Stag Knights-with-a-K!”

Terry frowned. “Stag Knights of Redhill!”

John with the nose: “Redhill Knights of Stag!”

Terry: “Splittists!”

Karen sighed. “Bloody men and Python. Girls: quick look round the smellies?”

I looked over at the other two. “James be OK?”

Karen smiled. “With John? Absolutely. I think…Jill, you were saying about your brother’s girl, the one living away?”

“Aye. I see what you mean. Similar enough to communicate, aye?”

“Aye. Er, yes. I actually think John over there has done an awful lot to bring our boy into this world, so thank you. Smellies and oooh! There’s a Monsoon over there, with the ‘S’ word!”

Later, as the plane droned East over the North Sea, I thought of our little period of separation. There was a niggle there, but a small one. Had Karen taken me away as one of the girls, or because she wanted me to feel like one of the girls? Sod it, it didn’t matter. I was where I was, what I was, and never going away from that.

Bang! Wheels down, and I realised I had been asleep, slumped against Larinda, and my bra’s left strap had drifted away from its proper place, which led to some fumbling inside my blouse. The seatbelt light came on, and shortly thereafter, with a bit of a wiggle, we were down and taxiing. Immigration was no problem, though there was a slightly closer look at my face from the official as he clearly spotted the ‘M’ in my passport, and then we were on a bus to the former youth hostel that Lego had absorbed. James was still amazingly open.

“Mum, there’s a campsite, look. We should have brought our tents”

“I don’t know if Mr Wilkins camps, love”

“John. His name is John and he is my friend. He told me he is my friend and friends use their first names even when they change like Rob to Jill”

He smiled again, and I saw him with Bethany’s eyes. Larinda broke the spell, quite deliberately nudging me.

“Lunch first. Appointment at four, but we need to sort something out, lover”

“What? I thought you’d already done all the sorting, pet”

“Not quite. Names, yeah? Surnames?”

“Ah…”

“I thought…arse, this is going to sound like that Monty Python silliness the boys had. Carter-Simmons. Works for me. You going to be a splittist?”

I whispered in her ear. “Later, if you’re lucky” and for once she actually blushed.

“Be serious, love. This is important. This is our name for the rest of our lives!”

She shook her head. “Please be serious. I am here for you, forever, for as long as either of us breathes, and I am about to drag you down to some Danish office building and say that officially, and…”

So I kissed her. No alternatives were left, and I hadn’t spotted her nerves because my own were screaming at me. Karen giggled.

“I’d say ‘get a room’, but you already have one! Come on; bags on beds, glad rags on, vows to swap before saliva! Chop-chop!”

She began to walk away, but stopped to call over her shoulder.

“Terry says the restaurant does an eat-till-you-puke deal!”

Men.

A bus ride; such a prosaic journey. We signed in, stood and said yes, signed out, and that really was it. Legally married, whatever the UK decided. I felt confused, numbed by the speed and simplicity of the whole thing. I mean, the chapel or room or whatever you called it was nice, and Larinda looked gorgeous in a dress that matched mine, and Karen (and John) cried, but it was really, truly a non-event as far as I was concerned. What it meant, though…

What it meant was that at last we had a say in each other’s lives. No longer could a doctor or nurse tell one of us to mind their own business because said business was now joint. Carter-Simmons and partner, spouse, wife. Oh yes, the ceremony was nothing special, but the result, well, I will admit that Karen and John weren’t the only ones who wept.

Terry and John had acquired champagne while we girls were in Monsoon. There was more wine in the nearby shopping centre. Lesson to myself from the following day: theme park rides do not mix with a hangover.

CHAPTER 31
Steph was waiting for us at Gatwick this time, and of course she had to inspect our rings, and hug, and all the usual little touches that aren’t actually that little in the meaning and emotion they carry.

“Dave tells me Little John was up to his usual standard, or should that be down?”

Larinda grinned. “Caught him checking out Karen’s arse, and then she caught him checking mine out. Cheeky bugger!”

I did my best to bristle. “And what’s wrong with mine? Bloody men!”

James was puzzled. “We didn’t check any arses in…”

John took him to one side to explain. Sometimes James could be so literal, I thought, and then wiped that one. That word, ‘sometimes’: it had once been ‘always’. Whatever connection he had found with John, it was working wonders. I turned back to the tall redhead.

“You will be there in April? Not having a big entourage, like, just a couple of bridesmaids, but we’d like as many friends as possible there”

She grinned. “You want music?”

I thought back to my earlier uncharitable and very, very wrong thoughts, and just grinned. “Why not?”

Her smile became broader. “We could offer you a little more, Jill. Annie’s family are a bit choral. Would you mind if I invited some more people, good people?”

I looked at my…bugger a hell, aye, my wife, who was smiling as broadly as Steph. She slipped an arm through mine after giving my backside a squeeze.

“There you are, arse checked out and approved of. Steph, both of us have had a lot of shit over this relationship–no, love, I’ll tell later, yeah? This day, it’s gonna be a big wotsit, demonstration. We have as many ‘good people’ as we can in, we rub it in the faces of other people, like those arseholes in the pub a while ago. If I could have the whole bloody world there, just to see who I love, then I would”

She squeezed my arm. “Wanted this one as soon as I met him, her, yeah? Took both of us a while to get it sorted in our heads, and I will always have issues and stuff, but she is mine and I ain’t changing my mind. Let everyone else see that, yeah? Now, we better get home. Work tomorrow, yeah?”

Steph shook her head. “Some honeymoon!”

Larinda shook her head. “Told you, we ain’t had the wedding yet, just the paperwork. Got an idea for the honeymoon…”

Work did indeed take over after our return, and I noticed one odd thing. The traders and accountants I dealt with seemed not to stare as much, as if my wedding and engagement rings added some sort of glamour to me, in the old magical sense. Can’t be a man in a skirt, look at the rings. The weather worsened steadily as Christmas approached, and then suddenly it was there, and I found myself sitting in a store room realising, as I stretched my back and neck, that it was only a week away. I had become so focussed on the events due in April that I was missing the months before. Mam had always told me off when I had wished, as a small child, that it could be the holidays Right Now.

“Wishing your life away, pet!”

A week. Ouch. When I got home that day, there were two messages on the answering machine.

“Jill, Larinda, it’s Annie. What you up to for Christmas? Give me a ring, aye?”

I suddenly found myself in tears. Every now and again something came out of nowhere to remind me where I had been, how close I had come to having, being, nothing. Such a simple message; such weight to it. Just like Steph at the airport. I went to wash my face and put the kettle on, and nearly forgot the second message, which I only listened to after my wife came home and noticed the message light.

“Jill, Ian. We need to talk”

So terse, so typical. Larinda called out as she went to the kitchen.

“Brought a set meal Chinese from work, love. You give him a shout while I get the oven warm”

“Carter!”

“Ian?”

“Aye. Thanks for getting back to us so quick, there’s a few things I need to sort out”

I found myself smiling at that. “We already did a lot of sorting out, pet”

“No, there’s stuff I need to do…look, I am trying to get a court order on this one, but…”

There was a long, long pause.

“Could you take Bethy in rather than her mam getting her claws into her? Hays is sorted, with the home and that, but Bethy…”

I had to sit down, hard. What the hell was going on?”

“Ian? What? Talk to me!”

His voice was clipped, oddly precise, the same flat tone that he had used when he told me all those years before that if he ever saw me again he would kill me.

“I need to make sure everything’s sorted”

Fear held me close just then. “Talk to me, love, please!”

Larinda was at my shoulder, sensing the wrongness. Ian was still flat, dead.

“Von was a chance, aye? I got to see how things could have been for the girls, and I went at it like a bull, like I do, aye? I… I would like to make it work, give it a shot, and I thought, well, she’d be good for the girls, but things… things move on”

Silence, except for the sound of his breathing.

“I’m on a timer now, Jill. It’s a myeloma. Blood, bone marrow cancer thing. I start the treatments next week, after Christmas, like; they gave me that much. They weren’t sure at first, so I have been having the tests, and now they are sure, so… I just thought, the girls need a family, and if I don’t have time to sort things out with one good woman I thought, well, two good women would do”

I was crying, and Larinda was concerned, and so I made writing motions. A pen, an old envelope, and enough words to spell it out for her. She settled into a hug as I tried to form the words I needed for my brother. I put the phone on speaker.

“Ian… what do the doctors say?”

A long sigh. “Shite, woman, they say they will start chemo after the holidays, like, give me family time. But they’ve been very blunt about my chances. It doesn’t just go away. If I’m lucky, really lucky, they can put it into remission. If I’m a bit lucky…”

Shit. “How long, love?”

“Unless I have lottery winner’s luck, typical time is four, four and a half years”

There was a little hint of a chuckle from him. “Now you see why I got so pushy with your Valley Commando”

“Have you told her, Ian? Shit, have you told Mam?”

“Neither. I don’t want Von to know just yet, and Mam, well, she’s just wed, like, it wouldn’t be fair”

“Neil?”

Another little chuckle, as the proud man got himself back together. “Traditional, that’s me. Sort of thing that should be shared with your sister before your brother”

I realised I was crying steadily now, no sobbing, just tears falling.

“Jill? Can you take Bethany when I go in? The docs say I’ll be in shit state for a while after treatment. And, well, later, if, you know, when I don’t win the lottery?”

That brought the sobs, from both of us, and I was nodding before I realised he couldn’t see, and I stumbled over the words, the ones that told him what a stupid bloody question that was, and how I loved him, and for god’s sake get over to ours for a proper Christmas, and we closed it down as he said he had more calls to make.

“Mam?”

“No. Neil first, then, if I can, Raafy. I owe him that”

Another of those awful, dead pauses.

“Then I better tell Von”

Pause. “And Bethy”

CHAPTER 32
It was Larinda who reacted first, once again showing who was stronger in our partnership. Ian had cut me off to ring Ralph, Neil, any others who he could find the strength to tell, and my wife just took the phone from my hands, looked through a small notebook she pulled from her handbag and dialled a number. We were still in loudspeaker mode.

“Brains’r’Us Undead Deli!”

“Sorry, Ginny, this is a serious one. Is Kate in?”

“Off to work in an hour. You sound like shit, woman”

“Feel like it, girl. Can you give her a shout?”

Kate came straight to the phone, and Larinda gave her the condensed story.

“Hell, I am so sorry, Larinda. Jill there?”

“Speaker phone, sat next to me”

“Jill, not my field, yeah? Where is he? I mean, where’s he live?”

I caught my breath again. “Over in Wilts”

There was some muttering, and then Kate was back. “Look, I am going to give you no fairy stories here. Normal tactic with that particular species of bastard is really heavy chemo, with steroids, all sorts of nasties. There’s work on stem cell stuff, but he is going to suffer a lot just from the therapeutic sessions. Here’s the deal: I will have a word at my place, and I’ll shout Eric. You call Alec, and you do it today”

“I’m lost…”

“Eric’s in Crawley, Alec’s in Surrey. We lay out the situation: single man, single parent, nearest family in Surrey, see if we can get Sussex or Surrey to take him in”

She was talking to herself by then, rambling on about crosscharging primary care trusts or something like that, and then Ginny came back on.

“What are we doing for Christmas? His last healthy time, yeah, before he turns into a bag of shit and pain? Got an idea…”

Kate muttered something else. “Yeah, sweety, we do that. Simon’s place, usual CBT Chrimbo, except it’s never CBT for you cause I always warms it up for my girly cause she is only ickle and has a small but very nice bum”

Kate came back on. “Ginny could be right, girls. I am pulling no punches here, you need to understand this. He is going to hurt, feel sick, want to give up and die, and sitting on his own over there will not be good. If we can get his treatment transferred over here, would you put him up, him and the youngster?”

Larinda took my hand and nodded, as if I had actually needed such a signal.

“Family, Kate. My brother in law, my niece. Nieces. What else would I do?”

“I didn’t really need to ask, did I? Right. We start the negotiations today. My darling will give Annie a shout, I’ll kick my own admin people, and you call Alec. The Christmas thing we have in mind is camping at the church. Music, silliness, beer. If Simon has room we put Ian up in his place. Jill, I have to say it, but his kidneys might be one of the first things to start misfiring, so… shit, good idea if you call him back and get the name of his lead doctor. Go on. Calls to make…and Jill?”

“Aye?”

“None of you are on your own in this”

I forced a smile. “I knew that already. Thank you”

Alec was my first call, and he swore sharply. “Kate’s absolutely right, Jill. He needs company, and support close by. I will speak with the Royal East Surrey, lay on the family and single parent stuff, if that’s OK”

“Whatever it takes, love”

“First time you have called me that, woman”

“Well, I suppose it is only just becoming clear, like”

There was a light flashing on the phone, another incoming call, and then my mobile went. Larinda took the land line call as I opened mine.

“Slowly, Von, slowly!”

Deep breathing. “What is it with me, Jill? Kiss of bloody death, innit?”

“Not you, Von. Never you. It’s just that the world throws shit around, and every now and again we catch some”

“Yeah, but now, right now, Christmas… no wonder he was moving so quick, aye?”

I quickly explained the plan to get his care transferred to somewhere nearby.

“Makes sense, it does. I mean, I would have visited him, but family, that’s the thing. I can still… I can still visit, can’t I? At yours?”

“Always, Von, always. Look, we will try and sort out a Christmas for him, over here, like, so if you want to stay over here…”

There was a pause. “I was going to spend it with the boys at Dad’s, see, but, well, there’s a bit of tension still, innit, with Will and him, and… could you take two of us?”

“One way or another, pet, we will cope. Now, got to get organised, aye?”

“Aye. Jill…”

“Yes?”

“Please understand this, but I still love you. I mean, not like that, I see you better now, clearer… but I think it’s time I was there for you”

“Thanks, Von. Really thanks”

I was speaking to a dead phone. She had made her declaration and then run away. So typical of her. I turned my attention back to my wife, who just mouthed the word “Annie!” and carried on that odd half-conversation that consists of “Yes…uhuh…absolutely…of course…really grateful…bye”

“That was Annie, lover. Ginny rang her, she scared up Eric, and he’s working on Crawley. She’s already offering a spare bed or two, and then she says ‘Steph’s house is hee-yooj, aye’ and Darren’s grandparents are next door, and, shit, like half the bloody country’s offering! Shit, call your brother back, before he gets like you were before you got sensible”

Bethy answered, and it was obvious from her voice she had been crying. “He’s in the garden, Aunty Jill. He’s…he doesn’t like me to see him like that”

“Call him in please, love?”

Some more muffled noises.

“Aye?”

“We are working on a plan, Ian. Me, Larinda, some friends. There’s two bits to it. First, what were you doing with… no. Better I put it this way, like. Your Christmas is going to be over here, with family”

“I was going to have Hays back…”

“Aye, but you bring her over here. She hasn’t… met her aunty yet, and it sort of fits into the second bit”

“Which is?”

“Kate and Alec, and Eric--- arse, you probably don’t remember who I mean. Two friends, who are doctors, are talking to their people to try and get you a transfer, and a third who works at another hospital is talking to his own. That’s Brighton, Crawley and Redhill. You come over here for your care, we look after you, you and Bethy. There are people offering you rooms, no questions, no conditions”

Silence once more. “You never had friends like this before. Not so many”

“Shit, Ian, I was never allowed to be me before. I think…look, I am not going to say I’m a nicer person. I’m the same person I always was, like, it’s just…”

He laughed, really laughed. “I am having bloody silly thoughts, lass! Just got this sudden daft picture in my head!”

“Tell us then”

“Look, what I said to you, what Neil’s said, Mam, it took me a long time to see. Looks like your friends were quicker. You are real now, aye? They all thought you were a puff at school, and that, looking back, was so completely wrong, but they were still catching hints, like. I’ve done a lot of reading since, well, you know, and I’m getting some idea of what you’ve lived with”

Another silence. “What you were thinking of not living with, am I right? I remember, those times, when…different world back then, pet, different world. Look, are you sure Hays will be fine?"

“She’ll be with good people, Ian, lots of them”

“Aye, I am only just starting to realise how many. Let me sort her out, and aye, we will do the Christmas thing with you. Make it a good one, like”

Unspoken, the words hung: in case there are no more.

“Von’ll be there, love”

“Aye, I know. She rang me, so it all works out OK. What’s this Christmas thing then?”

“At a church, camping”

“You are taking the piss!”

“No, not at all. There’ll be live music”

“Ah?”

“And beer”

“Sounds better”

“And lots of friends and family”

“And Hays will be safe?”

I smiled. “Can’t think of anywhere safer, pet”

Just before he hung up, as I realised how firmly he had dragged himself out of the despair that he had shown earlier, I had to ask about the idea that had made him laugh.

“Oh, lass, it was a bit silly, and a bit rude. I just thought, if people had a choice between being a friend to you when you were pretending, or to you as yourself, it was a bit like offering a lad a choice between shagging a real woman and an inflatable doll, like, and then, well, I couldn’t get the image out of my head. My sister, in that position, arms just so, gob open…”

He laughed again. “And that was when I realised that I love you, and trust you, and shite, see you at Christmas”

Click.

CHAPTER 33
In the end, it was Eric who came through with a result. Kate knew the right administrators to approach, but it was a man I hardly knew who moved and shook the right people to find Ian his bed.

Annie rode over to see us with the news that weekend, and I had to ask how her husband had managed it.

“Think about it, aye? He runs the path lab. Every surgeon, every oncologist, they all have to come through him, so he gets to know them, aye?”

“Oncologist?”

“Cancer doc. People who will be treating your brother if all goes to plan”

“Annie…look, I, we hardly know Eric, not really. Certainly Ian doesn’t. Why are you all doing so much for a stranger?”

She took a sip of her tea, frowning slightly.

“It’s sort of got to be a tradition with us. I mean, by ‘us’, not just the girls who are sort of on the same journey, aye, but wider, broader. We had… we had that death, that murder…”

Her voice tailed off and her eyes looked through me for a moment, and then she forced a smile.

“Others, all sorts of people who have come out the other side. I see a lot of the worse side of things in this job, aye, same with Steph and Kate, and it is just nice to be able to chuck something onto the other side of the scales”

“Then please give Eric our best. He’s a lovely man to do this”

Her face lit up. “Oh, trust me, I know exactly how lovely he is! I married him, aye?”

A fair point. “So what exactly do we have at Christmas?”

“Got any more biccies? Ta. Right, it’s been going a few years now. Two nights, first one a carol service, with some music and stuff, hot supper and beer, aye? Then the WI do a bash for some group or other. Kids in hospital, OAPs, that sort of thing, with a full Christmas dinner, and then we have the rest of the evening to become disreputable”

Larinda laughed. “Don’t need no whole day to do that! Just, we ain’t exactly equipped for camping, not in Winter, anyway”

“Ah, don’t worry about that. Bill and Jan have a tent you won’t believe. Just get a couple of sleeping mats and bring a great pile of duvets and pillows, aye? You’ll be fine”

Off and away, and Larinda sitting grinning at me.

“Glad you chose living now, lover?”

Stupid question. We hit the camping shop the next day, and I saw exactly how easy it would have been to bankrupt ourselves with Things One Must Have. We stuck with a couple of self-inflating mats rather than an air bed as Larinda pointed out the problem of heat loss through convection, and once more I realised exactly how much reading she had done in her own wilderness years. That was naturally followed by a flood of warmth and love, and so I kissed her, which brought the usual mutters from people around us.

“What’s that for, lover?”

“Because I can, wife”

She grinned wickedly. “Then hold that thought for later! Look…”

She was holding a pink fleece hat. “Not sleeping in your wig, lover, so this will keep the top end warm. Now… I know Bethy’s size, but not her sister’s, so what do you think?”

“For a hat?”

“No, silly, I was going to get these as Christmas presents”

Fleece jackets. I raised an eyebrow.

“Jill, my nieces now too. It’s how marriage works, yeah? Your family, my family. Just thought we could get three similar ones for father and daughters. Just not in pink for him, course”

There were even more mutters that time. As we broke, she just said “Later, lover, most definitely”

I pulled out my mobile. “Ian, it’s Jill. We were wondering, how big is Hays now?”

“About 5’2”, I think”

Men. “No, pet, dress size, jacket size to be precise”

“I always get her a girls’ medium”

“Colours?”

“Blue or red, I think. She likes red, says it’s a laughing colour”

That brought a little flicker of sadness to me, as it was so much like something James could have said, but James was a soul in a cell and Hayley simply came underprepared for the world.

‘Laughing colour’. She was still there, still a girl with a life and love to give.

“We’re just finishing the camping shopping list. You all set up?”

He actually laughed. “I must be daft, girl, but I chased up my old QM and he’s shouted us a load of kit. Hayley’s really excited, says she never had a family holiday before. Er… she’s here with me”

Another voice, one I hadn’t heard for years. “Uncle Rob! Where are you?”

“In a shop, and, well, I’m now called another name”

“Why?”

“Because my old name was a mistake”

“What’s your new name?”

“Jill”

“That’s a girl name. You’re a boy”

I remembered James, his words about Jill in her Robskin. How the hell could I explain this to her? Larinda took the phone from me and hit the speaker button as we found a quiet corner.

“Hiya, is this Hays?”

“Yes. Who are you?”

“I am your new aunty, Larinda. We got married”

“You married my Uncle Rob?”

“Sort of. She’s Aunty Jill now. Bethy’s met her”

“Where’s Uncle Rob then?”

“He was really Aunty Jill. She had to hide”

“Oh. Why didn’t she hide all of her?”

What the hell? “Hays, it’s Aunty Jill again. What do you mean?”

“You didn’t hide your feet, You have to hide everything, or people see you. I saw your feet once. They were purple”

A memory surfaced, back when I was still visiting Ian and Ellen, back while Dad was still with us. I had been at a low ebb, and as so often in my life I had found little bits of affirmation, of expressing femininity, and painted toenails had been the tactic. Getting up in the night to use the toilet, sitting to pee, a sleepy little girl appearing at the bathroom door.

Larinda laughed. “Hide and seek, Hays. It was me that found Aunty Jill. I love her a lot”

“Will I love her?”

“Did you love Uncle Rob?”

“Yes! Lots!”

“Then you will love her too. Can we speak to Daddy now?”

Ian came back on, and we swapped more details of the plans and preparations, and once more there was a little catch in his voice.

“Larinda, pet, well, welcome to the family. I mean, REALLY welcome, like”

Click. Ian and emotion.

It had rained the week before, but a few days of sun had dried the turf enough to avoid mud. Frost was promised, and so I packed my new pink hat after we had finished wrapping three presents, and we loaded up the wife’s car for the run down to Horley, the sun low in the sky. Winter solstice, when the darkness starts to pack ready for the return of light and life. Please let that be an omen for Ian. Please.

I was shocked at the sheer number of people there, The car park of the neighbouring pub was filled with cars and motorcycles, as well as a couple of camper vans. Several of the cars had what looked like French plates on, and as we entered the recreation ground with our first bundles I saw that tents were sprouting everywhere. Steph shouted out to us from what looked like an aircraft hangar in nylon and aluminium.

“Jill, this is the Edifice, Bill and Jan’s little home from home. Separate bedrooms, aircon, satellite TV, maid service… I’ll leave you to settle in, I have a shedload to sort”

Bill and Jan were as welcoming as I should have expected, and we were efficiently installed in our own bed…room? Inner tent? Whatever, we had a great nest of down and warmth for the night, and I was blessing Larinda’s insistence that I wore trousers.

“It’s what women do, lover!”

“Aye, but I am not really like that yet, am I?”

“Long top, cover the bulge. I know what you are, and so does everyone else, and that’s just another girl, so do as your telt”

That got us both laughing. “Well, I was listening to your mother, wasn’t I? And it worked!”

Kit stowed, a gentle stroll around the site greeting friends old and new, and…wow. There was a slap to my arse.

“Eyes off the blonde, you’re a married woman now, and I didn’t allow leching before you were wed!”

I grinned at her. “Looking only, pet, but you have to admit she was a bit special”

“And I’m not?”

“No, you’re not. You’re a lot special”

“You silver-tongued charmer. You just want to get into my knickers!”

“Wrong size, pet”

“Oh shut up and kiss me, woman”

Laughter in her eyes, a smile that never left them as long as I was looking into them. I had found my haven, my shelter, and it wasn’t the one filled with duvets.

“How, you two!”

Larinda looked over my shoulder. “Ian! Bethy! And…you must be Hays. Pleased to meet you”

I turned, and Hayley was there, taller than I remembered but smiling as sweetly.

“Are you my new aunty?”

I smiled. “Yes, I’m Aunty Jill now”

She made a tutting noise and shook her head, and in a remarkably mature way just said “Don’t be a silly, you’re my old aunty. Is this lady my new aunty?”

My wife laughed. “Definitely one of your family, Jill!”

She gave Hays a hug and a peck. “Aunty Larinda is who I am, but you’re a grown-up now, aren’t you?”

“Yes”

“So here is an offer from me. Grown-ups can use each other’s names, so if you want you can just call me Larinda”

Hayley thought for a moment. “Can I just call you Aunty?”

“Of course, darling. Now, where are you sleeping?”

“Daddy bought a big tent, as big as a circus”

“You got lions and tigers and clowns?”

A child’s laughter. Is there a sweeter sound?

“Jill, want to grab the…?”

I wandered off to the tent for the presents, and as I walked I remembered my earlier words.

A lot special.

CHAPTER 34
I returned with the three parcels, and caught my wife’s eye as I approached. When I reached them, Hays was partway through a declaration of how old she was and what age Santa was meant for. Ian had been absolutely spot on: she had found a route to grow, to become a person, rather than something left out of sight in a bedroom so as not to irritate her mother.

“Early prezzies, but you’ll understand”

Larinda took my hand as the wrapping paper was torn apart, and Bethy was grinning. “Family fleeces, yay! Kewl!”

Hayley was grinning in turn. “I got the same as Daddy and Bethy! Thank you aunties!”

I held my tears. “Those are to keep you warm. Going to be cold tonight, like”

One by one, I was kissed by all three, and then they gave the same to Larinda after she coughed and pointed to her own cheek.

“This family believes in sharing, so I wants my share of the hugs”

Ian had to go to the gents’ for some reason just then, so four of us made the rounds arm in arm, and I was stunned at how few people I actually knew. I saw my blonde again, with a man and a child, as Larinda harrumphed, and there were giant men in leather and others almost as big rumbling away in Welsh, and just then Larinda’s radar clicked on full strength.

“That girl there, the pink one, Shan, she had TEA…yep, in here girls. You like tea, Hays?”

“Do they do chocolate? Hot chocolate?”

“Don’t know yet, darling. I’ll ask”

We entered the church hall, where a slim woman who just had to be related to Annie was pouring and serving next to two much older woman in matching cable-knit cardigans. Hayley surprised me with her confidence.

“Do you have hot chocolate, Miss?”

Miriam, that was her name. The vicar’s fiancée, Annie’s cousin. So many people to keep track of. She smiled at my niece.

“I think we might just have some stored away especially for the politest of customers. What is your name, cariad?”

“Hayley Carter!”

Not just confident, but smiling too. Miriam flashed a sparkling grin of her own.

“Enid, one hot chocolate if you may! Alice, three teas, unless…?”

Bethy squeezed my arm. “Could I have chocolate too?, Aunty Jill?”

Miriam bowed slightly. “Of course. And you must be the Jill I have been told of, and…Linda?”

“Larinda. Pleased etc. Got your bloke booked for April for a blessing”

“Do you sing or play?”

That was a non-sequiteur. I used my best English, simultaneously with my wife.

“Pardon?”

“You what?”

One of the two little old ladies, who were clearly a double act, laughed out loud.

“Merry has her obsessions, my love, just not as bad as her cousin. There will be singing tonight, and playing tomorrow, and she needs to know which side of the stage you will be. Got an excellent choir for tonight already, what with her and Sar’s men”

Merry? It fitted. Merry was nodding vigorously. “We have a fine bottom line, but there are not enough of the distaff side to rise as gloriously in praising our Saviour as might be desired. Do you sing?”

Yes, tenor, and a bad one. Not me. Larinda just shook her head, while Bethy blushed. “Never tried. Not, like, kewl these days, proper singing…”

“I like musicals”

Hayley was completely matter-of-fact in her utterance. Locked away in her bedroom all those years, watching videos, watching the big musical shows she loved. Merry smiled again.

“And do you sing along?”

“Yes, Miss. I know all the songs”

“Might we hear one, cariad?”

“Mum says I mustn’t make stupid noise”

Bitch. Merry held her smile just a little longer than usual, clearly picking her next words.

“My little darling, this is a place where there is always singing, and singing here is never stupid.. Could you let us have a song, do you think?”

Hays turned to me. “Is it OK to sing a song, Aunty Jill?”

“Yes, pet. Absolutely”

She paused, thinking.

“Oh what a beautiful morning…”

A high soprano, almost that of a choir boy, to my untutored ears clear and true, and there was animation in her face as she sang, even though her eyes were closed. I was astonished, and her sister just stood, mouth open at her performance. It came to an end, and Bethy hugged her.

“That was, like, beautiful, Hays! Didn’t know you could sing!”

Once again Merry’s smile, and then a sweet moment of tact.

“We will have lots of songs, with the words written down for them, so can you sing with your eyes open, my little friend?”

Translation: can you read?

Hays just nodded. “Can I see the words first?”

Merry nodded. “We have a special place for the singers. Special seats. If it is all right with your aunties I will show you now. Ladies, it would seem a little preparation would be in order. Would that be acceptable to my new chorister’s family?”

“Absolutely. Want to see where you will sing, Hays?”

“Can I take my chocolate with me? Will Daddy be able to see me singing?”

Larinda smiled. “We will make sure of it, love”

One of the cardigan sisters handed her a mug of the brown stuff, and then Bethy and ourselves received our own, and Hayley was off, hand in hand with Miriam. Bethy’s eyes were shining.

“Dad’s gonna be, like so…so proud, yeah?”

Larinda squeezed her. “And you ain’t?”

Bethy just grinned. “Yeah. Oh…tea for Dad, yeah?”

We found him in conversation with John Forster and Stewie, naturally.

“Where’s Hays?”

I sighed, nonchalantly. “Taking stage direction with the vicar’s floozy”

“You what?”

“Get a seat up front tonight, bro. She’s in the choir”

Bethy was nodding frantically. “She can sing, Dad! Nice lady got her to like do a number, and she just does it, and she’s SO good, and I didn’t know, and….YEAH!!!”

Stewie snorted. “You do realise she’ll be returned eating leeks and wanting to watch rugby?”

Larinda gave my hand a squeeze as a hint.

“Ian…”

I held out a hand for his own, and he took it.

“Ian, I really think she is safe there, and this is a chance to let her do something, make something. She’s not stupid, like”

He grimaced. “But that’s the point, isn’t it? That’s what people like her…”

Bethy spoke up. “No, Dad, my big sis isn’t stupid. She has, like, limits, road blocks on her, but not stupid. And she knows how to love, so we just love her back. Her night tonight”

Ian seemed to be having bladder problems, as once more he had to scurry off to the gents’. When Hays was delivered back to us half an hour later, though, he let her fleece take the tears.

It got confusing after that. There were so many people that I didn’t know but who all seemed to have at least a nodding acquaintance with each other, at least until the locals started to arrive for the carol service. There were children of all ages, from babies to teens, couples of all sorts from his’n’hers tweed to Ginny and Kate, bikers, cyclists… the buzz was incredible. I ended up losing track of whom I had already greeted. Had I said hello to Kirsty yet? Rib-cracking hug–yes. And of course Eric.

“Thank you. Really thank you. This is Ian’s family; we’ll have the girls with us when, you know…”

He smiled, and it was a sad one. “You do know this will be far from pleasant? He will really hurt, need his people for strength?”

Bethy nodded. “’S my Dad. That’s all”

Eric squeezed her shoulder. “Just be ready to be strong when he isn’t, love”

There was more, from Kate as well, but that was the gist of it. Save your strength for his dark moments.

Bethy broke that mood, with a squeal. “James!”

I gave him a quick assessment: hands up, out of focus in the eyes, Darren and his pink girl patrolling along with Terry, but suddenly the sun of his smile rose in his face as he saw my niece.

“You are Bethy!”

“You are James and you are my friend!”

Darren was grinning as well now. “James has his drum for tomorrow. We gonna make BOSS music!”

Bethy stepped forward to hug James in greeting, and there was an odd fumble as his personal space was invaded, and he stiffened, but then relaxed and hugged her back. Bethy kissed his cheek, which clearly confused him, and then had the sense to step back.

“Got my big sis with us, and she’s gonna like sing in the choir!”

James nodded. “Your sister is a singer and I am a musician”

That was Terry’s turn to need the gents’.

So many people… we ate the shepherd’s pie that was offered, we had a couple of beers in the pub, the service started, and…there was a whole evening of conversation, sermons, a bible reading or two, more beer afterwards, some very quiet lovemaking with my wife in our nest of duvets, French people, Welsh, Rachel appearing fashionably but ecstatically late with her man, whose train had been delayed, but it all settled around one moment.

The heavy artillery of all those big men had started a song I always think of as ‘Bread of Heaven’, and as it came to the bit I remembered, there was one tenor alone, with a number of soprano voices, that soared beautifully into “Feed me till I want no more!”, and one of those voices was Hayley’s, and it was pure, and clear and lovely.

Ian was in the middle of a pew. He had to offer his tears in public that time.

CHAPTER 35
Why did I agree to sleep in a tent, in December? I was awake for one very simple reason, and that had been the impact of my wife’s sub-Arctic knees against the backs of my thighs. I had thought uncharitably about the impermanence of modern marriage till she pointed out that she had brought tea for both of us.

It was warm in our nest of duvets, though, a pale light leaking through the sides of the tent.

“Tea, love?”

“That Merry, sweets. Up, bouncing about, smiling. Not normal, yeah? Oh, and gonna have to get you something better to snuggle in than that thing! Cycle tops for sleeping, I dunno”

“It’s warm, and I like it”

“Makes it hard to tickle these…”

I would never have the fullest of chests, never gain breasts of any real size, but they were there, and they were mine, and Larinda had adapted surprisingly well to what they did for me, and what she could do to me through them, and we almost forgot the tea.

“Happy Christmas, lover”

Finally, out to a grey morning with a drizzle of sleet that made my nose ache, and a simple breakfast in the church hall. I spotted the rest of my family as we entered, all in their new fleeces. The Cardigan Sisters handed us a plate of calories each and we found ourselves some chairs to settle in for the demolition.

“Can I sing again Aunty Jill?”

I smiled. “Ask your Dad, pet”

“Can I sing again Daddy?”

Ian smiled, in such a tired way that I wanted to take him in my arms.

“If you want, Hays. Was it really good?”

“Yeah. The songs were all new but the tunes were easy”

Ian hugged her, one armed. “You sounded lovely, pet. Look… I know you like where you live now, and you have friends, but how would you like to live with your aunties for a bit? Daddy has to stay over here for some time, so if you were here I would have company. What do you think?”

“Where would we live?”

“Your aunties have spare rooms”

I smiled at her. “You might have to share with Bethy, though. That be OK? Bethy? That suit you?”

The younger sister narrowed her eyes. “Got like school and stuff, yeah? Exams next year and that”

I wondered how much Ian had actually told her just then. He looked up.

“Time you girls knew, like. Bethy, Hays, Daddy is not well”

Bethy snorted. “You told me!”

“No, pet, I didn’t, not really. I have given you some idea, but you need to know how bad it will be. Annie’s husband, and that doctor, Kate, they’ve told me what to expect, and it’s not going to be nice”

He paused, drew a long breath. “All of this is so you two can be safe. I am going to be in a very bad way, and then get better for a bit, then bad again, and it will go on for a long time. This is one time when Daddy needs help, needs his family with him, and this is your, our family, aye? Bethy, I need you to be strong. Strong for me, and strong for Hays. School can be sorted, and… they will try and sort me, as well”

He looked at me then. “You have so many good friends here, pet. You never had that when you were young. That’s how I knew all this was right for you, more right than when you were a… bairn. They’ve pulled out all the stops for me, and all because of you. I don’t deserve it”

Larinda took his hand. “You are our brother, so shut up. This is a proper family. I ain’t had one of them for a while, so we make it a good one, OK? No bollocks about what you deserve, you just take what you’re given and smile. Now, schools… need to do some digging after the hols. Girls, you gonna be strong? Your dad needs it”

Bethy nodded. Hays looked puzzled.

“Daddy, you’re not well?”

“No, pet, I’m not”

“You going to die?”

That was a conversation stopper, but he held his ground. “Everyone dies, pet. I just hope it will be later rather than sooner, aye? Just, for now, Daddy’s going to be unhappy a lot, and hurt, so I need my pretty girls to be there for me”

Bethy took his hand. “Hays can like sing for you, can’t she?”

Ian smiled far more warmly. “I would love that. Will you sing for me, darling? When I hurt?”

“Mum always said I was stupid, it was stupid noise”

Larinda went to say something, but I shook my head. This was Ian’s place.

“Hays, pet, your mam was wrong. What did all the other singers say? And the nice lady who asked you to sing?”

She looked down, and there was a blush coming, and never had I seen more clearly how the little girl inside fought her damaged body.

“They talked funny, Daddy”

“Lots of them are Welsh, pet. They don’t talk like normal folk”

The blush was there in full force. “They sounded like that lady friend of yours. One of them… he said…”

She put on the most perfect Welsh accent imaginable, and looked up, her round face red.

“There’s beautiful, see?”

Ian smiled again. “So if foreign people can love your singing, why can’t Daddy?”

She was in his arms, crying about how she didn’t want him to go, and he just held her till the sobs died away.

“That is why we will live here for a while, my darling. We’ll be a family together, aye? And Nana, she’ll come down…. hell, you have a new Granda to meet! So much to find out. But, why the tears? We’ve got things to do, so many people to meet, like. Come on, time for a wander!”

His girls took a hand each, and I my lover’s, as we set out to see what dregs of humanity had braved the sleet, and I blessed my wig for once. There were plenty of children, from the very small to teenagers, and we found the pink one helping her boyfriend the drummer to transfer food and drink from a van into the back of the hall’s kitchen. To no surprise on my part, James was helping, and once again that beautiful smile lit his face.

“Everyone here is my friend!”

Darren’s patience, Shan’s steadiness, it all seemed to be working some of the same magic that had brought Hays out of her shell when she had been moved to the residential care place. In some ways, the two were similar. The world around them moved in ways they had difficulty grasping, but throw them a line, help them stay afloat, and they shone in ways that could astonish. Ian spoke directly to James, and there was a flicker and then a steadying.

“Got enough beer in, son?”

“I am not your son you have daughters and there are two”

Darren chuckled. “Mr Carter is just being friendly, James. It is how older people sometimes speak to people who are still young”

That brought a genuine laugh from all three girls and a “Cheeky pup!” from Ian. Darren just grinned.

“Some people will say there is never enough, lahk, and when Mrs Hall’s family get going, oh dear…”

The last was in such an affected accent that I snorted. Darren grinned back.

“Can’t swear no more, not in company, Mum says, so I does Nan instead, just think sweary, yeah? James, we nearly done now, get some practice in before the lunch? And scuse me, but what are you called?”

“I am Hayley, but Bethy and Daddy call me Hays”

“I heard you sing last night, Hays. Sweet!”

Another blush, another boost. “Thank you”

“I’m Daz, this is Shan, she’s my floozy, lahk, and this is James, he’s our friend, and there’s Ali, and Stevie and Suzie so we got loads of people who aren’t too old”

There was a cough behind us, and it was Eric. “And can I call you ‘son’ then?”

Darren ducked his head and grinned. “I call you Dad, yeah?”

“Only when you want something! Ian, how are you?”

Ian coughed, clearly a little embarrassed himself. “Was just looking for you, like. Wanted to say thanks. Girls, Mr Johnson here, he’s the one sorted it out so we could be together when…when I am not myself, like. We owe him, aye?”

“Rubbish, Ian. We do it all the time”

“What, find spare hospital beds for strangers?”

“No, do things for friends. All friends here. All of us. Now, how’s your French?”

“You what? Not bad, I suppose. I had to do some stuff over in Belgium for a while, and I had the kraut, but they were in the wrong part, so I did a course in it”

I stared at him. “Weren’t you the one who once told me the only thing wrong with France was that it was above sea level?”

“Aye, sis, I was, but firstly it was Belgium, and secondly–“

He looked hard at Darren, and then winked. “Secondly, I grew up”

Ian turned back to Eric. “I’d offer you any body part you wanted, but they are not exactly likely to be in prime state. Anyway, why Frog?”

“We have some visitors from Normandy, and while one of them is an English teacher, the others are a bit more difficult. Steph does what she can, and her hubby has a bit, but that’s about all, and what with the Welsh lot it can all get a bit, you know…”

“How many are there?”

“Two couples, one with a kid. Oh, and one bloke’s a copper, the other’s an ex-squaddy”

“Oh aye?”

“Aye. Yes. You are as bad as my wife. Er, Legion”

“Oh shi--- er, hell. He OK?”

Eric just grinned. “You need to ask? Look around you, and remember what I said. Friends, yeah?”

And so we ambled, and split up as the dynamics dictated, the girls off with a gaggle of teenagers that just seemed to accept Hays as one of their own, and Bethy’s eyes firmly on James. Ian disappeared quite quickly, and I spotted him later in the usual little huddle of veterans together with a stereotypical Frenchman and a tall and raw-looking blond man, a bony girl almost as tall obviously translating as my beautiful blonde woman played with her child beside them.

There was a moment when I saw my brother as he was, the alpha male, this time amongst others like him, and his arms were moving as he told what was clearly an outrageous story before all at the table erupted in laughter, delayed for some by translation, the tall girl clearly having difficulty getting the words out through her giggles. What was clearly her partner rose to his feet, and bowed, doffing an imaginary cap.

Chapeau, Monsieur.

I found my eyes were getting moist. It wasn’t going to last for him once the treatments started. Be strong, Jill.

Be strong.

CHAPTER 36
We worked our way through the graveyard, following the old habit of looking for the oldest stone, the youngest and most tragic death. There, on the edge, in a clearer spot, was the one I wanted to see, the shape and pattern so, so familiar.

“This was Alec’s, Stewie’s friend, yeah?”

“Aye, pet. Thought, you know, pay some respects. I mean, all of this here, it sort of comes from her, aye?”

My wife nodded. “You do too, I suppose. This lot, they pulled you out of the crap”

I turned to her, and kissed her gently. “I rather think you had a lot to do with that, love”

“I don’t like to blow my own wotsit---no, don’t even think about making that joke!”

She sobered, quickly. “You are thinking of it, aren’t you?”

I squeezed her hand. “Been thinking about it ever since I knew it was possible, love”

“You know what I mean. It’s been on your mind ever since that old bastard kicked you. I was talking to Annie, yeah? And Steph. Wanted to get an inside sort of thing. How their men coped. With, you know, before the op”

She turned me to her, taking the lapels of my coat in her hands after picking off some imaginary piece of lint. “It’s different here, yeah, what with everyone but you being straight. Annie says her Eric had real difficulty at first, seeing her as a woman, and Steph says the opposite, so it’s not simples”

She leant forward, head on my breasts as she so often did. “This is a joint decision, yeah, cos we is married and that lets me get my claws into all your worldly wotsits, but it’s your decision as well, yeah, your body, but…”

She settled further into my embrace. “What’s that bit from the wedding vows? With my body I thee worship? Says nothing about what body you got, so here’s my formal statement, lover. I married you eyes open. We’ve discussed this, danced around it, avoided it off and on, but it’s always been there since I found your clothes, so all I will do is repeat what’s the heart of it: I love you. I married you. I didn’t marry your cock, though I did sort of love it a bit, yeah? As long as I have the person I love to wake up with, that’s all I want, all I need, and that means you can do what YOU need and I will still be there”

She turned to look at the gravestone. “Till death, yeah?”

“Love… there is nothing I can say…”

“Then just gimme a snog and we’ll see about some lunch, yeah? “

“Dinner”

“Bloody northerners!”

“Doesn’t matter. When did you ever hear of a Christmas lunch?”

“Snog now, lover!”

We returned to the church to find a number of odd vehicles arriving as well as a coach, as it appeared that the dinner that year was for the children’s hospital, and there was a steady flow of wheelchairs and walking frames before all were seated at the long tables. Various musicians were assembled on the stage, including James and Darren, but there were also several women mixed in with a group of mainly thickset men. And Hays in the front. The vicar, Simon, picked up a microphone.

“Ladies, gentlemen, friends. Welcome to another Christmas at St Nick’s. We are grateful, as ever, for the generosity of the Women’s Institute, and this year we have received substantial donations from the local Rotary club and Lions. This is a significant part of our calendar, not just because it is Christmas, which sort of has a big place in my job, but also because it is a time for giving. People have given money, as I have said. The lovely ladies of the WI have given their culinary skills, and I can already smell the results, so if you hear a rumble from my stomach blame them.

“We have, as ever, our musical friends to entertain us, but this time we have decided to begin with something to involve our guests as well. Last night was our carol service, and I know that too many of our young friends here missed having one. So, before we begin our meal, we shall sing. The words are on the sheets of paper on each table. Happy Christmas to you all!”

A heavy-set man with part of a finger missing stepped forward from the choir.

“Now, we have children here, so as they are foreign we shall have to sing in their language, aye? I am sure you have sweet voices, and as we are well-represented in the lower registers, can you please help our ladies to shine? First one is a slow one: Oh come Emmanuel”

I watched my brother as the wall of sound hit me, before realising he was actually wearing a an apron. This time, as his daughter sang, his tears were held, and what shone from him was pride. I noticed he had the tall blond boy and his skinny partner with him, also wearing aprons, and he turned to them and said something that was simple to divine without hearing: that’s my daughter there, the one with the sweetest voice of all.

The choir worked through the songs most of us knew, and gave us a few more obscure ones, and then did something in Welsh. I looked for Hays, and she was singing along quite happily, which was astonishing. After the last song died away and the band began something gentle, I made my way over to her. Ian and his new friends were already dishing out food, and I found her with the self-appointed spokesman, the one with the damaged finger.

“Aunty Jill! Did you hear me sing?”

The big man was grinning. “Arwel Powell. True soprano here you have, Aunty Jill! Clear and pure, aye, and she can take the old language as well”

“How the hell did you get her to do that?”

“I have no idea at all. Just showed her the words, aye? And she says, that’s foreign, and I say, well, cariad, it’s a different alphabet, but the sounds are always the same, aye, not like English, and she says show me, and she’s singing the words in a proper Abergwaun accent in twenty minutes flat, Duw!”

Idiot savant, that was the old and insulting phrase. It was odd: I looked up the phrase later, and found out it was coined by the same man who gave his name to Down Syndrome. Whatever the name, it fitted her. That first imitation of a Welsh accent, her first performance in a choir, they were only hints as to her talent.

At that moment I truly hated her mother.

“Hays?”

“Yes, aunty Jill?”

“Did you enjoy that? The singing?”

A huge and absolutely genuine smile, the smile of a happy child.

“It was magic! Mr Powell, he showed me how the words work, and all I had to do was read them and sing what they said”

“And you had no problems with that?”

“I don’t know what the words mean…”

Arwel grinned. “How about these words? Dinner is served, and an old man wants to eat, so a little girl…no, a young lady, that’s what you are, aye, a young lady must want her feeding as well. Shall we, ladies?”

Hays looked puzzled. “Shall we what?”

“Find your daddy and then find some food?”

“Yes please! And will there be more singing?”

He sighed. “Not like that, cariad, but the boy will probably do some different singing tonight, with the band, aye? And there will be dancing”

“Never done that”

“Then tonight you shall dance, aye? Come on, there is turkey and tatws”

And in a whisper to me “And a pint. Fair syched, aye, after all that singing”

The dinner was exactly as could have been expected, the waiters and waitresses, Ian among them, dishing up plates of the traditional turkey and trimmings before finding a seat for their own meal, which was finished by a sort of Christmas pud obviously made in trays but served with properly tasty custard. There were all sorts of children around us, adults interspersed, and the noise level rose to such a pitch that I saw the musicians simply nod to each other and shut up shop before finding their own meals. So many people, and so few I had actually been able to speak to.

Eventually, the children began to disperse to their transport, and as I sat replete something fell across my shoulder. An apron. I looked behind me to see a grinning brother.

“Dishes to do, lass! Get thy pinny on and get to it!”

Cheeky sod. In the end, it was quickly done, a chain gang of us getting through it double quick, and a cup of tea was waiting at the end. I thought back to the morning cold: I was doing this for fun? Ah well. Tea…

Ian was beside me. “Fancy a walk this afternoon? Sophie has somewhere she wants to show her other half and her sister”

“Sophie?”

“That teacher Eric talked about. She’s here with her lad and her family. There’s an old fort up on the hill north of here, they say”

“Oh, up on Reigate Hill? Not been there for a while. Walk off the dinner, like?”

“Aye. Save me getting fat”

I understood the weak joke, his acknowledgement of what would happen to him in the next months.

“Aye. How many of us going?”

“I’ll ask around. Should be enough cars”

In the end it was the five of our family, plus James and his parents, Stewie and his wife, and John Wilkins, plus five French people. We parked at the little food stand, closed up for the holidays, and I realised the sleet was actually snow now. Light, dry, but snow. I led the way over the little footbridge on the frozen path, a small child riding high on his father’s back in a papoose sort of thing, and realised Bethy was still close by James, so close she was actually touching him now and again, and he was still open.

John held up a hand. “Nuthatch. Hear it?”

Bloody hell. “You’ve, er, seen them before, John, surely?”

He grinned. “Seen them, but never watched them. Remember the kittiwakes? Look, there you go”

A blue-grey bird moving head first down a tree. The tall French girl whispered to her friend “C’est une sittelle”

She turned to me. “I am sorry, we have not made the introductions. I am Sophie, I am a teacher in the Normandy. My brother Roland, my sister Maggie, and the little man, he is Guillaume. The blond, he is my… what would you say in English? My lover? My man?”

“Partner”

“Yes. Benny, we are partners”

I raised an eyebrow, and there was a shy smile. “Yes, he is the other two words as well. I was here one other Christmas, with Roland, and it was a journey I needed. We have made the circle now, no?”

The snow was still light, but settling on the path and the grass, so the air was clear enough for me to show them the distant towers of London before we explored the little fort, Sophie making predictable jokes about it no longer keeping the French out, and finally we emerged from the trees to the little pergola and orientation table, where she kissed her brother. There was a real sweetness to the big man’s smile just then, and I realised there was a lot of history riding on this walk. Stewie whispered to me.

“Last time they were here, she was healing. Attempted suicide, thing. After some men decided gang rape was the sport of the day”

I turned to stare at him, all of my own fears about the future collapsing in ashes as I compared what I had with what the girl had faced.

“Shit, pal! She seems, like, so sorted!”

Stewie sighed. “Got her man back, so that helped, and I do believe her brother did a bit of up close and personal on the ringleader. Last time she was, well, like a little mouse. You do realise she’s like you?”

Shit. Of course. Obviously started young, but once told I could see the lines in her hands, the size of her feet. What was also clear, however, was the simple acceptance her partner/lover/man showed in everything he did near her. I looked around, at Karen and Terry snuggled together watching the planes land at the airport, James and Bethy as close as they could get, obviously for mutual warmth, Stewie’s wife settled into his side just as my own was to mine, French people doing the same while John simply stood taking pictures as Hays ran around trying to catch the larger snowflakes on her tongue.

A happy Christmas indeed.

That night was chaos, in the nicest way imaginable, as the musicians let rip properly for once, all sorts of instruments playing such a range of music, and what was obviously Arwel’s ‘Boy’ showing how powerful his lungs were to everything from Tull through Deep Purple to Metallica, and there was dancing, not just from the mad ginger fiddler but from almost everybody in the hall, even the cardigan sisters getting up.

And in the middle, a little girl dancing her soul out, face wet with tears as her Daddy did his best to keep up with his child.

CHAPTER 37
Morning, cold and dry, a skin of hoar frost on the tent’s fly sheet. I did the necessary after the night’s beer and found my wife emerging for her own dash as I returned to the nest. Jan was already up, a pot of tea brewing in what could only be called the dining room.

“Hangover, Jill?”

“Not really. Sore feet. Going on a walk and then trying to dance in silly shoes, not good for the sole”

It took her a couple of seconds to get that one. “That is dreadful, woman. Tea?”

“You have to ask? Larinda’ll be back in a bit, like, so best make that two cups. Then get the place sorted, ready for the off”

“How’s your brother?”

I thought on that for a minute, and it was obvious, in the end, how I had to answer her question.

“Jan, this will sound odd, given the circumstances, aye? But, well, happy seems to fit the bill. Aye, happy. Shite ahead, pain, all that, but he’s seen his bairn well, blossom, and…”

I couldn’t put it any clearer, the words failing me, but that was it in summary. Hayley had shone over the weekend, her singing flawless and pure as her joy in music shone through in her smile. Larinda returned, taking her tea with a smile and a squeeze of Jan’s shoulder. Voices were beginning to sound from various directions as the rest of the campers awoke. There was a faint but definite smell of bacon teasing my nostrils. Larinda noticed the slight motion of my head and sniffed as well. Jan just grinned.

“That’s our Merry! Sod cooking on a camping stove when we have a proper kitchen. Shall we? BILL! BACON’S ON!”

Thick tights, a wool skirt and some flat-soled boots did me, along with a fleece. One advantage of a wig was that it worked just about as well as a woolly hat for keeping the head warm. Wrapped up as warmly as possible, we crunched over the frosted grass to the hall among a steady stream of people with identical aims: getting outside a breakfast. Merry was, of course, ridiculously cheery, dishing out fried items and beans, toast and tea, with the help of my two nieces, Shan, the French girl and her sister.

Sister? Sister-in-law? Whatever, they were clearly happy to be involved, and there more than a few of the men being served who seemed disappointed not to have her deliver their breakfast. There was a strong smell of coffee competing with that of the bacon, and Sophie caught my eye, picking up on my reaction just as Larinda had earlier. She smiled, and there was an impish twinkle there.

“We have not the taste for coffee as it is made here, no?”

I had to laugh. “You mean you are too polite to say what you really think, that it’s shite, like”

“Shite?”

“Er, not very good”

“Ah. Can I make the guess that shite is not a polite word?”

Larinda was chuckling away beside me. “Definitely a bloody teacher! How did you sleep last night, girl? OOOH! Merry, bring a couple of slices of bread, you’ve got a new toaster!”

Sophie was staring at her feet, the blush slowly fading. “This is still a new thing for me. My Benny, we had a misunderstanding of our circumstances, and…”

Chantelle was at her side by then. “Sophie, they are friends, yeah, mean no harm”

The French girl looked up again, a small smile flitting past her lips. “I know that, Shan. But I thank you. Yes, it is still a new wonder for my life, but I am doing what I can to make it a familiar one”

Shan was still hovering. “My mums say we are sisters, lahk, survivors together, so we look out for each other, yeah?”

Larinda just nodded. “Yeah, I think we all of us know a little about that, Rach too. Getting protective, girl?”

Chantelle stood up straighter. “Yeah. Don’t let nobody ever do what they did to me. Mums tell me that’s the way to kill the demons”

Suddenly she was laughing, her face sparkling in amusement. “And Mum Ginny, yeah, she says cur their balls off, it’s the only way to be sure”

Sophie blushed again, and in a very small voice said “But please not the balls of my Benny, no?”

We managed some sort of hug over the serving counter, and yet again I had the realisation that others had had it, still had it, far, far worse than me, just as Ian joined us and underlined that. Von was with him, and they were actually holding hands. Ian saw that I had noticed.

“Aye? Makes sense, lass. Clock’s ticking, but enough on that. How, slaves, Daddy wants his scran!”
Hays giggled. “I’m working, Daddy! Merry’s my boss today”

The Welsh woman just grinned. “I think your Dad needs a good feed this morning, for it is a cold one, so go to, girls”

We took our breakfasts to one of the tables, together with more tea, Larinda opting for a cup of the French coffee, which was quite tempting.

“How are you feeling today, Ian?”

He frowned. “Odd to say it, but hopeful. I mean, I know there’s going to be a lot of shite ahead, a lot of pain… but seeing Hays so happy, it leaves me feeling things’ll be better when I go, like”

Von bristled. “Not going, see? You will have plenty of years with your girls, so no silly talk from you, is it?”

Ian winced. “She got talking to all those other sheepshaggers last night. Buggered her vocabulary right up”

A long, drawn-out sigh. “I know there are new things coming on, new treatments, but the probability is very high that I will be dead in the near future. That’s it in a nutshell, so I have to accept that. No, let me finish. What happens happens, so we simply make the best of it, like, and seeing Hays so happy, finding out what she can do…. Ach, how I hate Ellen for that! No, we give them as good as we can, aye?”

He challenged me with his eyes, and then the defiance collapsed again.

“Assumptions, pet. This is my worry, aye? My problems, not yours”

Larinda snorted. “Utter and complete bollocks! Rach, morning, grab a pew! Ian, what is it about the word ‘family’ you don’t understand? You are sodding well doing it again. Typical bloody man”

Rachel and Jim had their own plates piled high, and I was briefly tempted to go for a second helping, but Larinda stopped me.

“Arse size and nice clothes, girl. Ian, we have brought you over here, we are sorting the girls, yeah? For once in your life stop being the bloody alpha male and just go with the flow. Just look how many women you have on your bleeding case, and give it up!”

Jim rumbled a laugh. “Aye, marra, tek it from me, Resistance is useless”

Rach went into her usual tits out, head back pose.

“Don’t recall no resisting from you, love!”

“Aye, but what with the handcuffs an aal…”

That broke the mood, as Von raised her hand and said in a quiet voice “Please sir, I won’t resist, honest!”

Rach softened. “When does it all start, Ian?”

“Fortnight into the New Year. Eric’s given me some advice on what I’ll need, and Kate… Kate’s talked me through what to expect. She’s a bit in your face, like. No illusions there”

Von hugged him. “And you would want a fairy story and a nasty shock, Ian?”

“No, you are right. Better that it turns out to be not as bad as she says”

He grinned, in a strangled way. “Couldn’t be any fucking worse than she telt us! Jill, when do you want us gone?”

I gave his hand a squeeze. “Whenever, pet. Just need to decide if you are going to move over here full time, or just when, you know”

“Well, I have to work, in between, like, so as long as you don’t mind…”

Rachel snorted yet again. “Bloody men! Ian, family!”

He nodded at that. “Aye, you are right, lass. Just been out of it a bit too long, like. It was a lot different when we were boy--- bairns. Now, the girls. I think they should stay over. Easier with the schools, after all. Problem is, they’ll only see me when I’m in shit state”

Von hugged him. “Can’t be helped, see, so we make it as easy as we can. Lots of strength here. Just need yours now, isn’t it?”

He was on the verge of tears. “It’s the girls, aye?”

Larinda smiled gently. “They will be fine. Now, eat up, pack up, and we’ll sort out the shower roster at home”

“Shower roster?”

“After all that Dad-dancing, you are as ripe as, yeah? Showers and a quiet lunch, and then see what we can do for a bit of fresh air this afternoon”

Ian grinned. “Not enough fresh air lying in a tent?”

Larinda shook her head. “Not that, love. See this ground, all frosty and stuff? Bound to thaw, turn to mud and shit and misery, yeah? Get out with the girls, get some more pics of you together”

“While I’m still alive, you mean?”

“Sod it, no! While you are still fit. Give you something to look back to, and forward to as well, yeah?”

In the end, we had to delay our departure from the church as Merry quite unreasonably suggested that we do some of the washing up. Again! Her father had to wear an apron. Again.

Eventually we were in the front door, the kettle on as bodies sat wherever they could as the girls sorted their bedroom out and James and John discussed what we might see at Mercer’s country park, our destination for Larinda’s ‘fresh air’. Karen caught me watching the two men, for surely that was what James was becoming.

“Got a present for you, girl!”

She handed me a flat and floppy parcel. “Go on!”

It was a T-shirt, and as I looked at it Karen just laughed. “Took me an age to find one, but what with everything that’s happened since that day, I just thought it would fit. I mean, I hope it’ll fit you, course, but I mean---well, you know”

It was a copy of her old shirt, the start of it all. “Girls ride bikes too” was the slogan. Full circle. I wore it under my fleece, over a bra, of course, which made it even more poignant, as we ambled past the little lake and ponds in the park and John took more pictures while swapping species with James, who was now holding hands with Bethy. Hays sported a spare pair of binoculars from my collection, and the weather was still crisp and cold, a skin of ice over the waters. We had agreed: Ian would leave after New Year to sort out his affairs, but as of that day Larinda and myself were effectively to be foster parents. Ah well; we had already trained the two of them in dishwashing. Now we just had to add cleaning and laundry skills.

CHAPTER 38
“Aunty Jill, where’s the spare loo roll?”

“Under the sink in the wooden cupboard”

“They’re all wooden!”

“The one that LOOKS like wood, Bethy!”

“Oh, right…got it!”

Larinda snorted into her tea. “Well, four women, one house. Take them in this evening?”

I thought for a few seconds on that one. “No, not tonight. Do us a favour and pick up a card from work? I’ll get them to sign it, take it in for him, like. Give us a chance to see what state he’s in. Save a shock, aye?”

“Drive you in?”

“No, I’ll ride down, get the train back. I still remember what you said about my arse, pet”

I was off out the door shortly after Larinda, the girls already on their way to the bus stop for their school run. It had only been a fortnight, but it felt as if they had been with us forever. It had taken a little prodding, but there was a special ‘school’ in Reigate for Hays, and they functioned largely as a training and vocational centre. That had been a morning and a half…

“So, er, Ms…Mrs…”

“Carter-Simmons. Mrs”

Live with it, woman.

“Mrs Carter-Simmons…”

“Jill, please!”

Give a little, take a lot.

“Jill. Thank you. Philipa. Now, is there anything…does Hayley…”

“No, Philipa, she is fully socialised and very sweet”

Finally a genuine smile. “That is not what I was groping for, Jill. I was wondering, in fact, if she has any particular interest, anything we can cultivate?”

“Perhaps you could ask her yourself? She is sitting outside, after all”

“Of course, of course. Shall we?”

I rose to call my niece in, in her best dress and shiniest shoes. She had spent at least an hour making sure that shiny was exactly how they were.

“Hays, hinny, Mrs Newport here wants to know if there is anything you really like to do”

Her face lit up, as pretty as she would ever be, life dancing in her eyes just as she had done at Christmas.

“I like to sing, Mrs Newport”

I smiled. “Could you give us a song, pet?”

Five minutes later and Philipa was apparently in shock.

“And she speaks Welsh as well, Jill?”

“Er, no, she just remembers the words, like”

Hays smiled again. “Mum said it was stupid noise but Mr Powell said there’s beautiful see and Aunty Jill and Daddy say it’s beautiful as well so…does that mean Mum was wrong?”

Oh yes, love, absolutely sodding wrong, as wrong as it was possible to be, but put that thought away Jill and smile.

“Different people like different things, Hays. What do you think, Mrs Newport?”

She shook herself. “I rather think that anyone who would stop her singing… no, little pitchers. Hays, if you are to study here, we will try and give you as many chances to sing as we can. In fact…”

She clicked her intercom. “Sharmila, could you find me the contact details for the Reigate Singers? Thank you”

She positively beamed at me. “My sister-in-law is a great one for the choral stuff, but she has no voice to speak of. Her friend Emily, though, she is a singer, and it would be churlish not to introduce them. When you leave us, Jill, I will give you Judith’s number as well as Emily’s and whatever details Sam comes up with and, well, Hayley, welcome to our little community”

Tea. Decent biscuits. A quick tour of the facilities, and off we went. The problem I had anticipated simply evaporated with a few notes from Hayley’s voice. Yes, kid, your Mum was so wrong it hurt to think about it.

The day’s work was routine, simply two CTNs with the usual cock-ups with their retail scheme and rather a high rate of wastage of confectionery at one. Its proximity to the gates of Bethy’s school may have explained that one, and I made a mental note to keep an eye on her for the next month, in case peer pressure got a bit much.

Back to the office, dump the official crap, into the ladies’ (not the day for anyone to argue THAT one with me), change, and onto the back route to Crawley. My mobile went off just as I passed the Royal East Surrey.

“Forgot something, lover?”

“What?”

“Card for your brother?”

“Shite!”

“I’ll drive down. Meet you at Waitrose car park?”

“Thanks, love. Girls home OK?”

“Oh yeah, coats on floor, shoes on stairs, legs over armrests, video of ‘Annie Get Your Gun’ on the telly”

I laughed. “You OK with the girls being here, pet?”

A Rachel-like snort. “Family, innit? Now, get back soon as, yeah? Doing soss and mash for tea. Hays asked for it. Need to get some in”

I had to laugh at that. She might be a manager at one of the biggest local supermarkets, with access to all sorts of food products at staff rates, but our fridge and freezer were still limited in size, and it was taking time to adjust our purchases to the menus demanded by two teenagers. I mean, why couldn’t they just eat curry like ordinary people?

I chucked the card in my saddle bag after a quick snog, and left my wife to shop while I hurried on down to Crawley by way of the back route through the airport. Eric was on duty, so I was able to cadge a cuppa in the staff canteen while they prepared the wards for visiting hours after the evening meal. He was straight to the point.

“I won’t say I’ve been there, Jill, cause I haven’t. I mean, there was the time with Albert, and when Den got hurt, but that was different. He’s not out of it, he’s not going through one process and it’s done, he’s starting a series of them, and they might not work, and they might go on for a very long time, and they STILL might not work, and each time after the very first he will know exactly what to expect. I… one of our friends, aye? She had a father, he went into remission. All fine, after shitloads of chemo. Six years free, then it returned, and all he said was ‘No, not again, just make me comfortable and get it over with’, and so they did, and that was it”

I stared at my tea. “You think Ian would, you know, give up?”

“I don’t know, Jill. I hardly know him, but I don’t think so. I saw him with his girls, aye? Too much there for him to fold”

I did my best to lighten the mood. “You know, when you get all stressed like, you sound just like your wife”

“Do I? Oh bugger. Look, just be aware that what he might say now, when he’s hurting, he may well be thoroughly ashamed of once he’s between sessions. He’s a man’s man, aye? I mean, isn’t he?”

I reached out for his hand, and of course he didn’t flinch, just covering mine with his other one.

“Jill, look, not going to be easy. Just smile, bright talk, don’t stay too long. I know you’ll want to, but he will want to be a coward in private. That’s how he’ll see it”

“You see a lot of this, pet?”

“Not that much, not being on the wards, but, well, we have a son, and, well, been there, smelt the T-shirt, just for different reasons. Oh, and I like yours, by the way. Could have done with a copy for Christmas”

“For Annie?”

He laughed. “No, for Darren to give to Shan. Something her mums would approve of. Look, let’s go up. I’ll take you, but I’ll wait outside, yeah?”

In the end, it wasn’t what I expected. He was still solid, his hair was unchanged, there was a pronounced shortage of chiming and pinging machines… but he looked tired. I noticed three small disposable bowls on the bedside table, and two sentences into our greeting he tried to fill one, falling back with a grimace, tears standing in his eyes.

“Before you ask, Jill, like shit. Really, truly, like shit. If this is what it’s going to be like…”

I thought of Eric’s words. “I am going to ignore that bit, pet. Here’s a card from the reason I am ignoring it, and while you look at it I will talk over you, aye? You have a date, and it’s April and it’s with Simon again”

“That vicar? What for?”

“To listen to your daughter sing, of course. Oh, and to see me and your sister-in-law properly wed”

I didn’t take the vomiting personally. I did get his promise.

CHAPTER 39
It went on. I dropped in when I could, as the first session tore his health to shreds, and he would be there, silent and grey, staring into space. There were times he didn’t speak, just holding my hand, tears falling, and there were other times.

“No, Ian, I had your promise, aye? Just two more days and home with me, and Larinda will do better stuff than you’re getting here”

“Not eating it, lass”

“And why not?”

I knew the answer, the nausea and pain festering in his eyes. What was the point? It was all a waste of time, the doctors would never win, was it worth the pain: the questions sat there between us, unspoken. I clung to his promise.

There were stares, of course, each time I arrived, the biggest news to hit their little death row in years. In an odd way, it helped my confidence. I was never going to pass easily. That had never been the case, never would be, but I was used to the looks by now. I knew who and what I was, and so did the people who mattered, so sod the rest. I heard the odd mutter, but after a while it died down; the only one my memory held to was “No, that’s his sister”

Ian was insistent that the girls wouldn’t be allowed to come to the hospital, as he would be on a downward arc. Home, our home, the family, that meant recovery, each day better than the last, and that was what he wanted for Hayley and Bethany, as well as Von. I put that to her.

“Noah!” she had said, in her best Valleys strop. “If I set my cap at a man, see, I take the good and the bad. What it should be, aye?”

She had twitched just a little, looking my way, but Larinda had simply smiled, taking my hand, and Von had softened.

“You were never a man, innit? We both got it a bit wrong”

We shared the visiting duties, in the end, and she would call round the house afterwards before the long drive back to Hampshire, eyes raw, and I knew without asking, I knew what my Von had been doing. Strong for the man in the bed, or in the chair with the bag of poison dripping into him, flesh and hair falling away, and then, afterwards, sitting in her car as the tears broke free, sobbing and waiting till she could see to drive and erect the wall of brittle cheer she brought for the sake of the girls.

“A hug for each of you, aye, from your Dad”

The day came at last, and she was there, with her car, to collect him as the first period of chemo ended. I could only guess how he was feeling, after being poisoned steadily, killed slowly so that most of him might live on a little longer.

The weather matched his face, as drizzle and low cloud pressed down on the wet streets. Larinda had laid in a store of bland foods, things to slip past whatever nausea remained. I helped him in from the car, and I heard a strangled sob from Bethy as she saw the state of him. Hayley just burst into tears.

Larinda was bright and sunny. “Cuppa, love?”

Ian grunted as he settled into an armchair. “Pint be better, like”

“That a good idea, with, you know?”

“Don’t give a shite, me. Tell us we can gan for a pint later, lass. Just the one, like”

Von was hovering, and she gave a sharp nod as Hayley settled down against her daddy for a cuddle, and we three women left two girls alone with their hurting father and rattled cups in the kitchen, till the doorbell rang.

Rachel, carrying a large plastic container.

“Microwave’ll do, yeah? ‘Straditional”

Von laughed, her first genuine one in ages. “Let me guess... chicken soup?”

“So sue me! How is he?”

Larinda pulled me to her. “Pretty shit state at the moment, Rach. Be better in a few days, though. He’s already after a pint”

“Not dead yet, then. Er, sorry, you know what I mean. Where to?”

I thought for a few seconds. “Somewhere quiet. Black Horse, I suppose. No sports there”

Rach nodded. “John, Fossy, he was asking, yeah, Give him a shout?”

“Not sure, Rach”

“See what the man says, Jill? I think… I think people just want to see he’s still alive, yeah? He made quite an impression at Christmas. He’s good folks, is your brother”

“Aye, he is that, just sometimes he lets his pride get in the way. We wasted more than a few years, like. Look, there’s the kitchen bits, if you start the soup warming, I’ll take him his tea and see what he says, aye?”

Both girls were sat with him, now on the sofa, eyes red. I handed Ian his tea, and knelt on the rug before them.

“You know this is an important thing, like, that your Dad has to do?”

Silent nods.

“It will get better each time he comes back, girls, each day will be easier. You just have to be strong for his bad days. Can you promise your Aunty Jill that?

Two more nods.

“Right, people, Rachel has brought round her traditional remedy for all known ailments, and that is chicken soup, which is warming in the microwave. Ian, we will take you to the Horse later, but Rachel says John is asking after you. Fancy a bit more company?”

He sighed. “Be good, pet. See some people who aren’t sick or trying to make me sick, bit crack, aye. Oh, Eric says he’d like to stop by. Give him a shout?”

I left him to the other women and stood in the hallway for some quiet while I rang.

“Johnsons!”

“Hiya Darren. Eric or Annie in?”

“MUM! FOR YOU!”

“Annie Johnson”

“Hi, Annie, it’s Jill”

“Oh, Eric was saying, he’s out today, aye? How is he?”

“Been better, but wants a pint tonight. We’re off to the Black Horse later. Know it?”

“We’ll find it. Ale and comfort food, aye?”

“Oh yes. Rachel has him on chicken soup, like”

Annie laughed out loud. “With her name I should have guessed, aye? Girls bearing up?”

“Oh, pet, I really think we did the wrong thing. They saw him, just now, looking so ill, and when he left them, like… it’s such a change. They have to go along to see him for the next session. Not fair otherwise”

“Aye, good point. Look, what time?”

“Sevenish?”

“Sounds good. Anything you need?”

“All sorted, like, at this end. Just, well, I think he needs a bit of life round him, a bit of gentle revival. How, had a thought. Simon might be good”

“I’ll give a shout. Seven?”

“Seven”

Ian was dozing when I returned to the living room, and I wondered if he would actually be able to take the stress of going out to a pub. I found a blanket for him, and Bethy smiled as she helped me tuck it round him.

“Aunty Jill?”

“Yes, pet?”

“Daddy says to tell you don’t even think about not going to the pub. A woman should know her place, he says”

I sniffed. “And what place is that, exactly?”

Bethy grinned. “I asked him that, yeah, and he like smiles and says, ‘with her family, course’, sneaky thing!”

“You OK?”

“Have to be. No choice. Hays, well, we’ll make her OK, cause Daddy is first, and Hays understands that. This pub, it’s got like music?”

“Don’t think so, pet”

“Good. He says family, we do family”

The first pint was at seven fifteen, John and Alec joining us ten minutes later and a vicar, his fiancée and three Johnsons two minutes after that. There was a theme of sorts, and it was distraction. John kept Ian smiling with Army tales, as Annie chipped in with anecdotes of hapless thieves and inept drunks. Alec just watched happily while Darren joked with and teased my nieces. Annie’s cousin bypassed everyone else and cut straight to her own questions.

“Simon and I will have your service pass as delightfully as possible, ladies, but we will have to have some prior, warning of the arrangements. Bridesmaids, best… person, how…”

She frowned, and took a mouthful of her tea.

“Look, it is rather traditional for the bride to arrive after her intended is in position before my own intended, aye? But here we have two brides, and so it must be asked, what is the order of things to be?”

Simon chuckled. “And the other question?”

“Be silent, darling. Yes, the other question”

Ian was smiling now, the pint seeming to ease his mood, and all ears and eyes were now on Miriam. She sat up straighter, bringing her knees together, and for a moment I saw Rachel in her. Merry’s head was steady, though, her expression earnest.

“The question must be asked! What is the colour scheme to be? I must not clash!”

CHAPTER 40
Ian was away not that long after his first session of treatment, and that was difficult enough for the girls. Perhaps even harder than seeing him trying to smile through his pain, but he had a living to make, and his pride to uphold. For their part, they had schools to attend, and I gathered some new friends to maintain.

Oddly, they were happy times. Ian rang every night, and there was a tag-team of daughters to hang on his words. He spared some time for me, though, and I felt the warmth each time. Family. So important, and now so real, so clear to me, as clear as Hays’ voice as she took us at our word and sang around the house, free to do so, encouraged to do so, loved at last for her singing and her soul. Steph surprised me one day, sticking her head around the kitchen door one Saturday.

I had, in the end, insisted that certain people were as much family as my blood kin, and family do not wait on a doorbell or a knocker, but enter with a smile and a hug, and that was Steph. Her skinny man was in tow, and as Hayley did sweet justice to some Welsh hymn or other Steph looked at her husband and received a smile and a sharp nod. She turned back to me.

“Pub Monday, Jill?”

Geoff was nodding. “The Sun, over by us, you know it. It’s the monthly session, and we thought Hayley might like to do some singing”

II thought for a second. “Dunno, like. Mam’s due down for the week, cause Ian’s over for his next session, aye?”

“Where are they staying?”

I laughed, and Steph grinned again. “Newlyweds still, yeah? I remember these things”

Geoff laughed, ruefully. “Kid with a new toy…”

That woman can blush. Dear gods, can she blush. She tried to cover it up with bluster, but most of her was still shining.

“So where?”

“Eric and Annie are doing the honours, like, so we still have room for the lad”

“Your Mam up for a bit of live music?”

“Sings with a choir, like, so aye, I would say so”

Geoff was nodding. “Makes sense, all in the family, yeah? Genetics? That was always Kell’s problem, she could never find a boy with the music in him. You heard from Will, by the way?”

“Flying down with them. Von’ll be here, and it makes sense. Grown lad, aye, and she wants his hand held when he travels”

Steph looked a little wistful at that. “Still her baby, yeah?”

“Oh shite aye, that’s Von. Maternal as all hell”

“Just like Annie and Sar. Some women… I never really had that urge, myself. I mean, it would…sod it, cuppa? Ta. It would have been nice, but, well, it was never a CRUCIAL thing, aye? Annie, yes, oh dear me, Sarah, bloody hell, she was made for the job, but me…”

Geoff was laughing. “She says I am enough of a child for her to have to cope with! Sod it, wife, you haven’t stopped being a teenager long enough to get broody!”

Blush.

Geoff gave a triumphant grin, then sobered quickly. “Just a thought, girls, but, well, doesn’t all that say something about, well… girls like you, yeah?”

I rattled some cups, got the milk from the fridge, poured.

“And?”

“Hell, it’s something that should be obvious, if people open their eyes. I got some shit, yeah, and so did Eric, and, where’s your missus?”

“Work”

“How much grief is she getting for being with you? No, I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just that those of us with an inside track, what we see is people, individuals, women, yeah? Other people, they see queers, trannies, they see cardboard cut-outs, yeah?”

Steph murmured “Or toilet cubicles for extended periods, love”

He snorted. “Point well made, darling. No, I’m going all round the houses here, but just trying to say that people aren’t all the same, and the mainstream see girls… like you, yeah? They see you as that cut-out thing, all the same, and you aren’t. Just like any other woman…shit, just saying that makes it sound as if I’m doing the same. ‘Girls like you’, yeah? I didn’t mean to patronise–“

I put my hand on his arm. “No, pet. You’re not. I understand what you are trying to say, and it’s appreciated, aye? The thing that really put me off trying to be myself was always that fear, that the world would just see me as some oddity to be laughed at, like, and, well…”

Words failed me for a moment, and I just waved my hands around, trying to indicate them as well as Hayley, singing away in the living room.

“Look, I’m home, aye? I have a partner who loves me. I have friends who stand by me, and family that holds fast, as family should. I am treated by everyone that matters as the woman I know I am, aye? And that lets me know… shite, it tells me that the outsiders, well…”

I paused for breath, and to hold the tears. “That night, in the pub, the queerbashers, like. That nearly broke me. This is the odd thing about Ian. You said about Annie, aye, and Sar? Well, this is me being maternal, me having my family, me doing the healing, paying back. This is my validation as a woman”

Geoff nodded. “That’s one of the words she uses”

Steph grunted. “Well, it’s true. We, girls like us, we need that extra recognition, aye? Vulnerable, aren’t we?”

That broke the spell, as Geoff erupted in raucous laughter, interspersed with various attempts to get out the words “Vulnerable? You? I watched you play rugby!”

In the end, we agreed on the pub for the Monday, and Geoff left me with an awful lot of thinking to do. The conversation had come from nowhere, but it had held real depth. In my heart of hearts, I was just another woman. To the ‘straight’ world, I was a cipher, a tranny, a person assumed to fit neatly into a pigeon hole. Geoff was absolutely right, and once more I could see exactly how and why Steph loved him. Pity he was male, and that I was already spoken for, but nobody’s perfect.

The party flew in the following day, and Ralph did his best to crush my ribs with his hug. Will hung back, looking oddly vulnerable.

“Mum here yet?”

“Bringing Ian over Tuesday, pet. What’s up? Oh bugger a hell, I know that look!”

He was blushing to rival Steph. “What do you mean, Jill?”

I fixed him with my best Mam stare. I may not be exactly maternal, but I had had a bloody good teacher, who was doing her best not to giggle as I raised just the one eyebrow, or at least tried my best to.

“Who is he, William?”

Mam was actually giggling, and Ralph was beaming.

“A canny lad, aye? Enough said”

Will looked up through his lashes. “Jill, it’s all a bit sort of a cliché. Someone that knew someone that knew Mark, and, well…”

I gave him my best Aunty-smile. “Happy?”

The answer didn’t involve words, so I just hugged him.

“People, live music tomorrow?”

Mam fixed me with her own Mam stare. “Since when did you ever do live music, Jill, as I assume this is people playing”

“Aye, mam, but it’s the friends who play, like”

My stepfather smiled gently. “Aye, pet, and ye hev friends noo, aye? Not like when ye wes at school an aal”

Thank god for the chat with the Woodruffs the day before. I had those emotions in control just then, so I was able to move along smoothly, nothing to see, thank you.

“I know some musicians, Mam”

“Aye, I know. Me for one”

“You fancy a bit song, like?”

Ralph grinned. “Mair important, like. Whe’s driving te the pub?”

A sigh from Mam. “How, pet, the romance isn’t dead yet, then”

I thought of Geoff’s comments about newly-weds and had to turn away. I did manage to get Will to one side, and I was as direct as I knew I needed to be.

“Want me to talk to your Mam, pet?”

His eyes were hollow. “Could you? I just don’t know if she’ll understand. I mean, she’ll have ideas, you know, about how we are, how things should be. You know how she can be”

Once again, Geoff’s speech earlier was there, the assumptions that ‘people like us’ fitted a pattern, that cardboard figure. Sod that.

“Will, just leave it with me, aye?”

In the end, it was an anti-climax. I took Von to one side when we were in the pub, as Steph and Annie did something complicated, and I simply said “Will has news”

Her face crumpled, and I held her as Larinda’s eyes asked the question that my smile answered.

“Aye, Von, I’ll answer that”

“Mmmfhh?”

“Is he happy? Well, Mam thinks so”

Prejudice, assumption, convention. “Jill…”

“Aye, love?”

“Could you help me, you know, be… be there for him and not be so bloody Dad about it?”

Hayley’s voice rose with Mam’s as I hugged her closer.

“Von, hinny, you are already there”

CHAPTER 41
I sat by his bed as he cried, holding his hand with my right while my left held the tissues ready.

“I can’t do this any more, Jill!”

I tried to pull my own emotions back. He looked dreadful the hair almost gone, skin looking almost green. Weight had dropped off him, muscle as well as fat, and his knuckles shone white where he clung to me. Sod it.

“You telling me you’re a coward, Ian? You’d abandon Bethy and Hays, like? Shall I just pop out into the corridor and send Mam home? You don’t do this, you don’t fold like some soft Mackem”

“Not a Mackem…”

“Then prove it, or I’ll put the girls in red and white!”

He grinned, sort of, but the pain and the nausea were never absent, and the grin became sobbing. A nurse looked in, face composed, and something passed between us. She saw this every day; how the hell did she keep it together?

“How are we doing this afternoon, Ian?”

He turned his tear-streaked face away, and I answered for him.

“Not wonderful, nurse”

“Candice”

“Candice. Thank you. I’m Jill. No, not wonderful today. Sorry”

She came over and did a few things with tubes and the pressure cuff that seemed to be permanently on his arm. Electronics and pumps whined and gasped, and she made a few quick notes on his chart.

“Doctor will be round in a few minutes, so he can talk you through Ian’s progress. But…Ian, please listen to me. That was it for this session, OK? No more for a while, yes? Time to recover with your family”

His voice was low. “I’m not recovering though, am I? Just treading water”

She squeezed his shoulder. “Let doctor explain all that. I’m just a nurse”

No ‘just’ in that. I asked myself again: how did she cope? She stood up and away from the bed. “More visitors outside, I saw. Two maximum at a time, right? And don’t worry about time limits. We don’t play that game here, within reason”

Once again I felt her meaning rather than heard it. This was, after all, only slightly removed from a gentler version of Death Row, and they were allowing as much family time as they could without interfering with their work. I stood to go.

“So remember, brother dear, grow some backbone or it’s red and white for the girls, aye?”

I walked out past Mam and Von, wordless, nodding to them to take up station as I carried on down the corridor followed by Larinda until I found the ladies’, and privacy, and my own dam collapsed. Ian wasn’t the only one who was losing strength.

No words. She just held me, and she was the strength I was so in need of. Twenty minutes later we were in a small room with the doctor, a small man from Hong Kong. He told us that in what was clearly his attempt to lighten things. It didn’t work; my eyes, my heart, just saw Ian in his bed.

“I will not try and make things better that aren’t, my friends. The cancer is very aggressive in your son’s, your brother’s case. We are having a difficulty in managing his chemotherapy as the need is for some brutality, and by definition he is not a well person”

He steepled his fingers, looking down at a piece of paper on his desk.

“Are any of you in any way religious? Ian included?”

I shrugged. “Look at me, Doctor. Doesn’t fit well with most churches. Ian, no, definitely not. Why do you ask?”

“Ah, there are people who object to some treatments. Blood is a common one. In this case I am talking about stem cells. There are new treatments, but some people have… opinions about the world that does not let them accept such things”

Mam looked up from where she had been leaning against Ralph.

“If we don’t try this?”

The doctor suddenly looked very, very tired. “He dies, Norma. I would say, even with the best care we can give here, he leaves you in about six months. I am sorry to be so blunt, but I have been running his bloods as carefully as I know how. I believe you have a friend in the lab, no? Well, even with this latest course, the prognosis is…”

He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “I am sorry, but this is a thankless job. His prognosis is dreadful. With the treatments he is receiving, he has received, there is no longer much more we could reasonably do beyond looking to his comfort. The chemotherapy is a brutality too far. The new treatments, well, I promise nothing”

Mam was trembling. “No choice, then? We try, or he’s gone?”

The doctor nodded. “I need his agreement, though. The Trust has gone a little silly on respecting diversity in this sort of thing, and they are petrified that even if someone is cured they run the risk of a law suit if the patient’s belief system is compromised”

Von snorted. “You are joking!”

“Unfortunately not. And as he is so ill at the moment he requires some in loco parentis support”

Von stood. “I’ll do the talking. My turn, innit?”

Mam looked at her, suddenly calm, flat in her stare. Seconds passed, and Von held her gaze. Then Mam nodded.

“Aye, I think so. Gan on, Von. We’ll wait here”

My old lover stood, face wet, and took some time to look each of us in the eye. Mam reached out to take her hand.

“Thy turn, lass. Show us you’re worth him”

Von was in the room for ten minutes. Candice brought us tea, and some plain biscuits, and a small bag of mint humbugs.

“Look, I always carry a few of these. They help with that aftertaste, you know, when patients don’t… hold onto their food too well. It’s the best I can do”

Mam smiled. “They don’t pay lasses like you anywhere near enough, pet. Thank you”

Our nurse just flashed a quick, tight smile and left us. Larinda shuddered.

“What a shitty job…”

Von put her head into the office just then to call the doctor, and he left us, carrying a buff folder that clearly held the necessary documents for Ian’s agreement.

He signed. I signed. Mam signed. We left. I wept.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

He was back with us, not that long afterwards, the chemo finished for too short a time, and I returned from work to find him slumped in an armchair before some dreadful Australian soap opera. He was wrapped in a dressing gown, his old army cap comforter on his head, and I saw that even his slippers looked too big for him. Bethy called from the kitchen.

“Cuppa, Aunty Jill?”

“Aye, pet!”

Ian turned red-rimmed eyes to me, face still grey.

“Sorry, lass”

“Sorry for what?”

“Sorry for being a bit of a puff, like. No excuse for whining on like that”

I will never, ever understand men. What is it with their sodding machismo, their ‘face’, their…

“Ian Carter, don’t you ever, ever apologise for being human! None of us here, not me, not Mam, not Larinda, not bloody Ralph, none of us could go through what you are without breaking, aye? None of us can even IMAGINE what you are dealing with! I will slap you if you talk such shite again, got me?”

He looked away, and there were hints of tears in his eyes. Bethy came in just then, teas in hand. As her daddy tried to pretend interest in some sunwashed nonsense, she cuddled in gently beside him.

“Daddy, Hays asks if you would like her to sing for you tonight”

“That would be lovely, pet. Look, owt left of of that soup Rachel brought round?”

“You want some?”

“Please”

Once she was gone, those fading eyes turned back to mine.

“Look, it’s a pride thing, aye? I hear what you say, but, well, dignity, shite like that. I shouldn’t be lying in a bed crying. You’re right, though. Just… just not in front of the girls, like”

The girls in question were back in a minute, with a steaming bowl of chicken soup and a couple of songs in what sounded like bloody Norwegian or Swedish, which led me to wander which of my, our, peculiar friends had that odd taste. Bethy cuddled him as he ate, Hays kneeling before him to sing, and I noticed with a quiet smile that her first act had been to turn off the television.

Song. The occasional slurp or clink of spoon. He looked up at me once more, and this time there was the tiniest, faintest of smiles.

“Would you really, you know, all in red and white?”

I tried on my widest grin. “You’ll only find out if you fail us, aye? And I won’t let that happen. Eat your soup”

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.

CHAPTER 43
Terry was standing just inside the door.

“It’s odd, Jill. He’s always been easier with women. Less threat, I suppose”

I kissed his cheek. More evidence, if I needed any, of my acceptance.

“Thought I’d leave them to themselves for a while, like”

He nodded. “How’s her dad? Oh shit, mate, I’m sorry”

My face had clearly given me away. “Aye, Terry. Not good. They’ve got something new they want to try, but, well…”

No tears. Not tonight, not in front of the girls. Later, most definitely, wrapped up in my wife, my lover, then I would cry, but not just then. Larinda appeared on cue, and squeezed my hand, raising an eyebrow, which allowed me to return to the earlier topic.

“They’re outside, pet, having a bit of quality time, like. They’re happy, so I thought I’d leave them to it”

“Been talking to Eric, lover”

So much for getting off that subject. “What’s he say?”

“Apart from ‘I am not a doctor’? Just, well, he’s seen some mixed results, but when it works it works well. Apparently he had a word with Ian, get round all the patient/doctor shit”

“What do you mean?”

“Your brother, he says he don’t want to wait while things go backwards and forwards and the doctor decides what he wants to tell, yeah? And he asks Eric if he could just tell him direct. So Eric covers his arse with a signed note”

She paused. “He likes your bro. I says to him, what about contracts and shit, and he just says nobody needs to know but us, and friends trump contracts”

With a lurch in my guts I realised what Ian was planning. A little extra notice if it went wrong, and then thank you, good night. He would leave us in a way and at a time of his own choosing. We were more alike than I had realised. I collared him during a drinks break, and he looked a little embarrassed.

“Least I could do, Jill”

“You do know why he wants the extra notice, don’t you?”

His face tightened. “Yes. Pretty obvious. I… I think I would be looking at the same thing, if it were me in his shoes. Shit, we know people who have done it, or tried to, for other reasons, and this…”

He looked away. “I don’t see it the way the medical staff do, you know that. I just do the lab work. And after a while the bloods and other stuff stops coming in, and we move on, to another poor bastard. But I talk to the nurses, yeah? After they’ve turned the analgesia up to eleven, and the feeding to zero, and they’ll never admit it, but they give just a little push every now and again, just to get it over with, and someone goes from heart failure or pneumonia, but it’s really starvation, but we call it something else, and in the end it’s a soft way to go. Better than…”

He looked at me again. “Let’s just say I couldn’t do their job”

It was a conversation that simply died, as my brother was already doing. In the end I just hugged him, of course. That night I lay with Larinda, neither of us speaking, no need for words. The tears were there, from both of us, and all I could feel was futility. I could do nothing, absolutely nothing, to help him apart from look after those he left behind.

Bethy was up first the next morning, and I came down to the kitchen to find her singing as she made toast and a pot of tea.

“Good night yestere’en?”

She blushed at my grin. “You were, like, looking?”

I hugged her. “Only just to see where you were, that you were safe, aye? He’s a very special boy is James”

She nodded. “Yeah, and not just cause he is well fit. It, like, took me a while, but he talks sense, yeah, just does it, like, ODD”

“You have to tune your thinking a bit, pet, most definitely”

“Yeah, but what it is, he says something, and it’s like he’s been, like, thinking for AGES about it, and it’s odd words but it’s well right what he says, yeah?”

I remembered his words about the pain of taking off what he called my Robskin. “Aye, pet. He’s a very deep lad. Takes a while to get to know him, work him out. Oh, and is he a nice kisser?”

“AUNTY JILL!”

For just those moments before the two girls were out the door, life was fine, how it should be. My own work kept me on track a little longer, and it was back to family life in the evening. Tea, the call to or from Ian, similar chats with Mam, and always that subject avoided. The nights, though, just the two of us and the demons in the darkness, the nights were hard.

The start of February saw the change. Ian arrived in Von’s car, looking like some freed inmate of Belsen or Auschwitz, Each time, despite what I already knew, it was a shock. Each time we went through the same routine, except for the pub.

“I can’t take the beer these days, pet. Cup of tea’ll do us. I feel the cold a bit, like”

And off to hospital the next morning. That time, however, it would be different, with the new therapy, and while Ian was still doing his best to maintain his mask of courage, I knew this was the crunch for all of us. Either it worked, or nothing did, including Ian. The day after he went in, we had Eric, Annie and Darren round for dinner. We had to avoid some questions, of course, but Eric did his best to explain the treatment to Bethy.

“What you have to understand, love, is that I just run the labs. I am not any sort of medic. I have a bit of an idea, but don’t take me as gospel, yeah?”

Bethy nodded, and Eric took a sip of wine.

“What it is with cancers is that they are like part of your body decides to grow, but the wrong way. That’s what tumours are, and they can sometimes make other bits of you go wrong. When it’s the sort of thing that’s got your dad it gets a bit more complicated. It’s not just that a bit of him grows wrong, but also that what goes wrong means he doesn’t get other things that his body needs. So we have to give that back, and that’s what they are trying to do. The doctors are using a sort of cell that can be made into what he needs, and they are trying to poison the bad ones”

“Will it work, Mr Johnson?”

I watched him weigh up his answer. In the end he sighed.

“Real answer? We just don’t know. Sorry, love. I can’t give you good news just now. We just have to wait and hope”

Wait we did, over two weeks as he cried in his bed or sat listlessly in his armchair with the other dying men. Each visit left the girls shredded, each night left me staring into the darkness wondering which way the coin would land.

Three days after Valentine’s, Ian’s card had still been next to his bed, Von making no secret of sending it. Doctor Chao called us to his office, and another of the amazing medical team brought in a tray of tea. The doctor went straight to the point.

“I know Mr Johnson is giving your brother early notice of the results, as he came and spoke to me about it, so no secrecy here, yes?”

He held up a hand. “Perhaps the girls might want to take some tea to their daddy?”

Once they had gone, he looked down at the bulky folder on his desk.

“I know why Ian asked for that information, ladies. It is not uncommon. I will not enter into any discussions about death with dignity, euthanasia or any such thing, and, well, in this case I am hopeful we need not consider such a course. It seems, for once, as if the little drops of goodness we are putting into him are starting to do what they should. He is, well, stabilising is not exactly the right word in this sort of thing, but it will have to do. He’s not going downhill just now. He isn’t coming back up, yet, but for now we have, it seems, arrested the plummet. We have space for breathing, for attacking the cancer rather than just his body as a whole”

There was a hoarse sound from Von, and a whimper from Larinda, but I was making my own noises, and they were just as undignified. The doctor passed me a box of tissues.

“Not wonderful news, Jill, not recovery, not yet. But it is the best news he has had in a long time. Now, well, we just try and steer him uphill again. I believe he has a wedding to attend in a few weeks? He will be there. Trust me on this one”

I did. What other choice did I have?

CHAPTER 44
Ian lost his job the week after Von took him home. Prolonged sick leave, unsatisfactory attendance, whichever snide form of words they used it came down to the same thing: the companies he dealt with didn’t want a dying man anywhere near their businesses, their premises or their staff. Perhaps they thought he was infectious. I swore when he told me, but the fatigue, the resignation, sat in his voice when he answered me.

“And aye? What exactly is the point of arguing? Jobs mean nowt if I die, lass, and if I get better, well, fuck ‘em, I’ve started from scratch before, I can do it again. Just… just make sure the girls are looked after, like”

“They’ve got their dad for that”

“Aye, well”

That hurt me. It was odd how his mood had changed. The new therapy was helping remarkably, but the stronger he felt the more resigned he seemed to become to the death staring him in the face each time he shaved. Before, with his chemo, there had just been the pain and nausea. Now, he was finding the strength to despair.

The last month had been hard work. His stabilisation had affected all of us in different ways, because suddenly there was no end in sight and we were faced with the prospect of having to deal with a continuous wait, literally at Death’s door. Mam was having problems with so much travel, so Neil had been standing in for her when he could, but naturally it wasn’t the same. It was Steph who came up with the winning suggestion.

We were slowly forming our own little coffee group, Annie, Steph and myself, with Rachel, Merry and Larinda added in to keep the chromosome count balanced. It was a sort of moveable feast, from house to house, or sometimes to the Viennese place in Crawley for the cakes, and we would be joined by Sally, or Annie’s barking mad friend and her wife. I still got more than a few stares, especially when hand in hand with my own wife, but each day it got easier, and it was the acceptance by the other women that did the trick.

I had always known I was female, but so many years of playing the game had left me with little hiccups in my mental vocabulary. That was slowly changing, and the biggest signal my mind was sending me was the way I was thinking of my friends as ‘the other women’. That one word, ‘other’, was crucial. I had been through my trials, my crises of confidence, and the one issue that had always lurked was summed up in other words: fraud, fake, fantasist. The more I sat with the other women, the more I settled into being simply another woman.

Steph’s suggestion was a simple one.

“The year’s getting warmer now. My house is a big one, and it only really gets used properly when the family’s down, and Kell and Mark have sort of shortened the need for an extra bedroom”

I smiled. “Cause they are living together, like”

Steph smiled, and there was a truly wistful look on Annie’s face. “She was always so lonely, aye? Always looking for just the right… musician. She had a lot to live up to. Right, Steph?”

The taller woman blushed. “I don’t know what you mean… look, Jill, both your parents are retired, right?”

“God, aye. Years since”

“Well, with it warming up, the family like their little bit of camping, so if, you know… look. Do you think your Mam might want to stay down here semi-permanently? Save on that shitty trip down and back? I’ve spoken to Geoff, he’s more than happy. I wouldn’t charge her anything. Just a little light cleaning, gardening, household repairs…”

Rachel lost it at that point, and Larinda had to pound her back to get the piece of cake to go down the right way. Steph continued.

“Simply put, we have enough room. Naomi and Albert next door would be happy with some company of an older nature too”

Larinda turned from her ministrations. “You do realise that the two of us aren’t that far off the same age as your neighbours, yeah? No spring chicken is my lover”

Before I could reply, she put a finger to my lips. “A well-matured and tasty old bird. And very game”

I kissed her finger and then took her hand, just as Sally raised her eyebrows in query.

“Game? And well hung?”

Rachel really needs to work at her table manners. I put the idea to Mam that night over the telephone, and there was a long sigh.

“This is really you, pet, isn’t it?”

“What do you mean?”

“Friends, like. You never really had them as a young lad, aye, and now, weeell…”

She was right, of course, as mams usually are about their children. “Aye, perhaps, but I was never exactly myself, was I? Easier to make friends when they can see who you are. This lot, aye. True friends. But…”

I thought for a bit. “Mam, not just now, aye? Look at Rachel, for one. She’s been there all the time. Then there’s Larinda, aye?”

“Aye, pet. She’s a special lass. And don’t you ever forget Von”

No. Not ever. I started to laugh. “She always wanted to be your daughter-in-law, aye? Just not quite this way, like”

“You think… no, stupid bloody question. How, let me talk to the lord and master, see what he says, aye? This Steph. She would really, like, just open house?”

“Aye, Mam. Really. They surprise me, all the time. If I hadn’t…”

I sat silent by the phone for twenty, thirty seconds.

“Pet?”

“Aye, Mam. Just trying to find the right words. Those women, they let me see what was possible. I didn’t really have the courage, aye? I mean, none of them have had it easy, and I don’t just mean, well, the lasses like me. Some of the things… no, that’s not for today. Aye, they really are genuine, sincere. You’ll just have to put up with a lot of music. And you’ll be able to spoil the grand bairns”

The most theatrical of sighs. “Aye, always a fly in the ointment. I’ll have a bit word with Raafie, aye?”

I made my decision in an instant. “Dad, Mam. You can have a word with Dad. I mean, he isn’t, you know, and I won’t forget, aye, but, well, he’s earned that, and tell him I said so”

I hung up before the tears could hit either of us. Mam flew down with Dad two weeks later.

March was dreadful, both in weather and in Ian’s health, where he had a sudden downturn as the evil that ate his body seemed to find a new trick or two, but they stabilised him once more, Dr Chao’s image of a downhill slope so clear to us now, and then he fought back, the team at the hospital fought, and Von spent an entire fortnight staying with us, or rather by his side. The hospital even arranged a folding bed for her some nights, and that was the thing that told me how concerned they were. Von was hollow-eyed, and she sat with us for breakfast one day before her trip down to Crawley.

“I had words with it yesterday, see?”

Larinda put a hand on her shoulder. “Do what?”

“Had words with the sickness. Told it, he don’t go, not yet. He got two weddings to be at, innit?”

Larinda nodded, and I gave her a puzzled look, and she just smiled and hugged Von.

“Who asked who, love?”

She just started to cry. “Sort of me asking him, innit, and he just smiles, and says aye, and then, look after the girls, love”

She looked up, and there were more words, about fairness, and it took quite a while before she was fit to drive. Not fair. Not fair in any damned way. I had two people back in my life, and this was the price.

In the end, the crisis passed, and he even started to gain weight again. I caught Von singing some mornings, and I dared to hope.

CHAPTER 45
We were in red. That was Larinda’s choice, not gowns but sharp suits, red, with little pill-box hats with a wisp of a veil just for the convention, and it was Simon’s idea that solved our problems.

My lover had spent the night at Eric’s just for the sake of that other convention, and Stewie had provided us with a matched pair of cars. Matched suits, hats, cars, we were out to show the world that we were doing this as equals, as absolute partners. I had Raafie, Dad, with me for the walk from the side door to Simon’s workplace before the altar, and Larinda had gratified me by asking a certain retired colleague and close friend to do that duty for her. He had seemed confused.

“Why me?”

She had taken his hand, and smiled, her eyes softer than I had ever seen them except when they were on my own.

“Because, John. Because of all sorts of things. Because of Von’s dad, and James, and your honesty, and, well, because. Because I love you dearly, we both do, and because it would be right, yeah? And because. Just because”

The church was fuller than I had anticipated, because it seemed that we had more friends between us than either of us had realised, and the friends had friends or relatives, or lovers, even the bloody vicar. She, Merry, had brought her family over, “Just for a family visit, and certainly not for the purposes of imposing their presence on your day before your Lord, but they do sing well”

That was something that struck a blow deep into my worries about acceptance, reality. They were Annie’s family too, of course, and one evening, when we had sat around our dinner table with Eric and her in some poor attempt to give him something back, she had told us of her fears and doubts when trying to recover what little family she had left.

“What it was, aye, was Sarah’s people. They worked real magic on my lot. I don’t know what I would have done without them, them and Steph”

Eric had snorted at that, and muttered something that sounded very like “Be naked…”, which earned him a slap on his arm. Annie had continued.

“They are good people, aye? Better than I could ever have hoped for, and yes, I would love to see them at your wedding, but that’s just it, it’s YOURS, not ours… I mean, you met a lot of them at Christmas, and…”

And so it was that we had a dozen or more near strangers to add to the list, and the church was equipped with even more Welsh people to mutter about Hays’ singing, and there I was, in a red suit, my Dad at my side, as a choir of family and friends, some of them very, very new, did their best to drown out the sounds of the aircraft heading for their landings.

I looked at the old man, and then over to the corner of the church, where Alec stood, just in time to see him raise one arm, pause, and then bring it down sharply. We would both enter together. Equal. Partners.

In through the side door as Larinda came down the more traditional way, the choice decided by tossing a coin. This way was harder, as I could see all the faces, and my nerves were speaking as loudly as the choir, but then the face I saw was hers, and the shakes were gone. John led her to my side, and stepped back with Dad so they could take their seats, and their places were taken by Rachel and Ian. So many traditions broken, but Annie and Eric had given us the idea, based on their own wedding. I looked over to my brother, and found his smile.

“This’ll be one down, pet, one to go”

Simon smiled. Words were said, and very nice they were, about love, and partnership, and life.

“This is getting to be a very familiar part of my life, joining together people that not only love each other but are loved by all around them, people who show me that all who say the world is lost, the end times are here, is talking from areas of their body that I am sure our Lord did not intend for that purpose”

Laughter.

“That is a great thing about the people I see before me, for I know almost all of you as family in the broad sense, and I know that something a little off-colour does not offend, for you see through the words to the deeper meaning, and smile.

“That is what pleases me today, for we see two people before us that can see in that way, who are seen in that way, and see each other clearly. Two souls who speak clearly, see clearly, and show their mutual love clearly. They have shown that in their earlier act of commitment, and now we are here to bless that union before the Lord who loves all”

He sent his smile around the building.

“Of course, He doesn’t need us to come here in order to see us, but it does rather help the party get started. So…we have the rings?”

We said more words, in sequence, and of course there were tears as we said them, and the tears were equally shared, as in all things, and Simon’s smile was back on us, on both of us.

“May the Lord bless this union from this day forward, bringing peace, and joy, and loving-kindness, and now, of course, as is traditional…”

So we did, and then we had the pictures, and the poses, and my heels sank into the grass, and I lost count of how many people were offering us their own tears.

The hall was packed, and muttering by so many people still added up to a shout when enclosed. Ian stood up, Rachel beside him. A wine glass rang.

“Well, it is not something I really expected to be doing so publicly, but character assassination is rather traditional for a brother. The trouble is, I tried that once, and it didn’t fit, a bit like this suit. There are more comfortable ways to lose weight, but this one seems to be rather effective. And before I continue, I must say thank you to the choir. Amazing what free beer…”

Rachel pulled him down theatrically to whisper in his ear.

“Ah. I stand corrected. Free tea and cake for some, free beer for the rest of us. Well, not me. Somebody has to preserve the family brain cell, like. I mean, the old woman’s pulled some toy boy, me daughter’s got herself one, and, well, my sister has found a jewel indeed. Which means…. My lucky day, seems she had the family brains all along!”

Rachel slapped his arm gently.

“Where to start with today? Some of us here have been along from the start, and it’s been a wild ride at times. Sometimes a nasty one, sometimes delightful, but the ending has never been in doubt to those with the power of vision. That these two were made for each other is obvious to anyone who knows them, even if it did take some small adjustments to get them firing on all cylinders. Speaking of cylinders, containers, bottles, booze… ladies, gentlemen, friends, family, please raise whatever container you have. The happy couple!”

Food, and laughter, and Hays and Mam singing duet in one corner till the new friends joined in, and it was odd how it reminded me of a Hawkwind favourite, of all things, ‘Time We Left’, with the bass thunder and repeated patterns. That brought other memories, of sitting in badly-fitting clothes alone in my room, listening to that track as I read stories of ‘boys’ who had it all so, so easy, and I looked round the hall once more and knew that easy was exactly how my own experience had been. Another place, different neighbours, colleagues, and I would almost certainly have completed the job I had started.

Dancing. I led the traditional slow one, simply because I had done more leading, but we were soon off to more comfortable territory, more relaxed, wilder, and stuff was strutted and shaken to the disco. I realised rather early that I was actually in limbo there; the party was dividing on traditional lines, with most of the women dancing while the men sat and nursed glasses, but I was sitting a rather comfortable fence.

The ages of doubt, of confusion, they were long gone. The niggling voices that had argued in my head, the contents, now rather shrivelled, of my knickers, all were nearly silent. I didn’t have to shake anything at all in public to be female, I just had to wake up each morning and know it as a fact. I was a mature lady, a properly-married woman, and had no need of such silliness.

Bethy, Hays and Chantelle descended on me. I had no choice.

Next wedding, I bring a change of shoes. Please, god, if you’re there, let him be around for it.

CHAPTER 46
It sounds trite to say something as obvious about your own wedding day as ‘I will never forget…’ but that was a simple fact. Things happened, people were there, that engraved it on my soul. One thing, one instant…

To an outside eye, it may appear odd, but it was Eric that was our friend, first and foremost, Annie almost coming along for the ride. I mean, she was one of my lodestones, the proof that my life could work, but it was Eric who had been there, solid, dependable as the air Ian continued to breathe, Eric who had found the place to allow us to care for him as a family rather than fear for him at a distance. They were clearly a double act, or rather a trio, with their son, but it was that man who had made the difference in our lives, and there he was, in a way that spoke of easy familiarity, with a guitar and his wife, among other friends, to give us his music. Annie was holding a wooden flute.

“Now I know this day is really about one couple here, but I heard this one, and, well, this is a day for lovers, and there are three here that this tune…still applies to. It’s called ‘Geordie Lad’ “

Cheeky cow. It turned out to be a delight, a soulful, lilting tune of real beauty, and I made a point of catching the eye of each of them. Jim. John. Ian… Von was looking away, as Bethy shuffled by with James, but the other two were smiling happily at their lovers. The tune rose and fell, and Eric smiled at his wife as he hit chords that rang as bells, and Steph joined quietly in as young Darren did his bit, and love was played live for all. I could almost get into that music, I felt. Well, for a few moments, at least.

Things got wilder, though, and we got some Tull and other stuff, which was more to my taste. Eric was grinning happily away as two women went absolutely mad in front of him. Just as Annie was doing something one-legged and silly, my wife tapped my shoulder.

“Don’t think I didn’t notice, love!”

She was holding a pair of flat pumps out to me.

“Ta, love! These shoes; not best for dancing, like”

She beamed. “Don’t thank me! John suggested it, so I gave him a key and told him where”

“You had some man poking through our wardrobe?”

“You can check your knicker drawer later, lover. Right now, it’s on your feet and start shaking it all about”

Sadist. We got part way through our bit of grooving and the music just stopped, which made me look up to where the son of that big Welshman---Arwel?---where his son was holding his hands up for hush.

‘That big Welshman’. Stupid statement’ most of them were huge, but I remembered Arwel from a couple of conversations, and his son clearly came from the same quarry.

“Ladies, gentlemen, we are heading towards the end of our permitted time here, aye? For music, that is; I don’t think his vicarness will be turfing us out, and Dad’s just gone off for more beer. I know, I know, but he says he’s got the trout to drive for him, just she doesn’t understand good beer, aye?”

He waited for the laughter to die down, grinning.

“I also know that I’m nothing official here, but I got the mike, aye? We can’t do the loud stuff much later, for neighbours, see, so we’re going to finish off with one dedicated to the happy couple, aye, and to all the other couples here today. Eric…”

The smaller man had been plugging wires into things behind Arwel’s son, whose sheer bulk had kept most of Eric’s activity hidden, and when he turned round he had a Gibson electric slung round his neck. He nodded to his musical partners.

“Ready? Follow me in…”

The riff was unforgettable and unmistakeable, and even without a bass it hammered away nicely, driven by Darren and James on their music dishes, and then the big man, Hywel, almost purred the words into the mike.

“You need coolin’…”

I mean, there are more traditional songs to love, but the title alone was worth it, and it was the music of my youth, and it was filthy, sexual music, so what else could I do in a public place but follow the wife’s orders and, indeed, shake it all about. The dance floor was full, Arwel arriving with the beer just as his son began his star part, and there was sheer pride in his smile, even as his wife abandoned him for her own mad moments.

A whole lot of love, indeed, and an awful lot of beer. The next morning was painful, but we were home, we were with family, and we were properly married. The usual morning need was present, and as I slipped out of the bed Larinda just murmured “Put the kettle on on your way”

“It’s downstairs!”

“Make a detour, lover”

To my astonishment, after I returned downstairs to finish the job, Bethy and Hays were in the kitchen, in the process of making a full English. My head had a little argument with my stomach, but the smell of frying bacon beat both into submission. As wedding breakfasts go it was hardly traditional, but I wasn’t going to complain. I took a cuppa up to the wife, thinking how all had turned out, so differently to how I had imagined. So much better than I could ever have imagined, and still surprising me.

“Arse out of bed, pet, they’re doing us breakfast”

Dressing gown on, slippers afoot, we stumbled down to the kitchen, and I was wondering how bad her own hangover was. That was pushed out by the sight of Ian and Von at the table. When had that happened? Stupid bloody question; last night, obviously. Von gave me a little look, almost defiant, but she had his hand in hers and, I realised, his heart with it. Ian smiled at us.

“Bad morning?”

Larinda gave the answer. “No. Not at all. This is the best of all possible mornings, innit?”

Bacon, sausage, toast, eggs, STUFF, it all got eaten, and for once I watched my brother eat with relish. Whatever Eric’s colleagues were doing, it seemed to be doing the trick, and that fact was something the girls had clearly picked up on. It was possibly the happiest breakfast I will ever have. Newly wed, my family with me (and Von was most definitely family) and a Spring morning glowing outside; what more could I ask for?

“How, lass, what’s the plan for the day?”

“No idea, bro. See what the old couple fancy?”

“Whey, I was thinking, like…but no, the girls would hate it”

Bethy sat up straight, clearly picking up a Dad-vibe.

“Like, what would we hate?”

Ian sat and made a great show of thinking. “Well, Brighton Pier, like”

“DADDY!”

And so we ended up in a mix of rides and bad fast food, the ‘old couple’ insisting on their nice cup of tea as the gulls and girls screamed, and Ian shot things, and I thanked Simon’s god for that day.

CHAPTER 47
He held up so well I started to believe we were turning the corner rather than hitting the end of the road. Whitsun was good to us, and we had an extended family break at Mam’s, Von now being almost as much a part of the family as the rest of us, and of course Rachel was along, more relaxed now than I had ever seen her.

She had always been a great friend, a supporter of the kind you trusted to watch your back and take out the sneaky ones, but now it was more. Her sense of humour had always been sharp, spiky, and when she did relax it had never been absolutely. Always, always there had been that watchfulness, wariness. Not nervous or frightened; just tense and ready to bite.

Now, with Jim’s smile and his clear uncomplicated affection, evident in all he did, she was different. The first thing I noticed was that she was failing to do just that, to notice things about and around her. We had never talked in depth about the beatings her husband had donated towards her education and proper deportment, but the evidence sat in her mouth, the plate to replace what he had knocked out. To be honest, I didn’t want to know more. All I needed was to know that she had now met the right one after spending years with a man who should have been drowned at birth.

My own ‘right one’ was in the kitchen, involved in some mother-in-law argument or other about tea-making or some such, and I was happily sat in Her Chair for a while, watching Ian and Siobhan trying to put some order into their lives.

“But I want to come, innit?”

“You looking for an argument again, like?”

“Well, if she wants one, I got a few around I can share with her. Didn’t see much of her when you were ill, did I?”

Ian laughed. “How, Jill, have words, aye? She wants to sit in on the meeting”

“Meeting?”

“Aye. Ellen wants to contest stuff, so we’re having a what the hell, a moderation thing. We sit down with the briefs and try and get an agreement. Bitch wants the house. All of it. Apparently, I prevented her from having a career, like, by saddling her with kids”

Oh yes, the ones she had ignored as she lay in bed all day watching the television. That career. A thought struck me, and I started to laugh.

“Share, dear sister?”

“Just a thought, aye? Want me to see if that mate of Annie’s is free? The redhead?”

“Er…it might be a good laugh, but I doubt there would be much of anything ‘moderate’ with her about. Anyway, I need the house. We need the house”

Von looked up, with a shy smile. “You know I never liked that place in Brock, not really. And he has the girls, innit? Easier for them to stay with Dad and me, well…”

Ian coughed. “Aye, I think Hays’ll settle back in with her old place again. She has friends there, like, so it’s just Bethy, really”

I knew what he meant. The months over our place had let her develop her own relationships, and I wasn’t just thinking of James. It was like that with army brats: forever moving on as another posting came in, never having the time or the continuity to form the sort of lasting friendships that civilian children found.

“Only one answer, Ian. Ask her what she wants”

“Aye, and if she decides she likes it here?”

“We’ve got the room, you know that”

He paused. “Von, pet, can you give the two of us a bit of a moment, like”

She rose. “I’ll go and see what’s holding up that cuppa, aye?”

As she left, his eyes followed her before they turned to me. “It’s still about the house. I have a claim if the bairns are still there, or rather a better claim, like. And knowing her, she’ll try and stir up an argument over custody, and she doesn’t win that one. Not happening, aye? Ever”

“Aye, I see that, but then there’s always the illness card. You haven’t got them by you cause you’ve been under the doctor, all that. Play it up, like”

He gave me a flat stare, not speaking for a long moment. “Jill, you do know… shite, it gets easier calling you that, aye? You do know I am not cured, I am not well? This is only what they call remission. I could go back to, well, being like that, being absolutely fucked, I could go back to that tomorrow or the day after, aye? I was thinking…”

He trailed off for a bit, looking out of the window. “Look, when it was over, all the chemo stuff on hold, I thought sod this, if it comes back I don’t want all the pain again, just let me go easy, like. Accept it, go out gentle, soft. But that was then, and now, well…”

Once more the cars parked outside seemed to fascinate him. I put my hand on his arm. “Well?”

He looked hard at me, almost as if he was trying to strip me away and leave his brother back in place before him.

“How could you not love her, Jill?”

“Ian, it’s not as easy or as simple as that. I do love her, I always did, and she loved me, but, well, that was never me, was it? That was Rob, and it’s almost traditional, this bit, but Rob was never real, never there. I was never Rob, I just played him, and she could never have…”

I lost it then, and all the months of fear and pain came pouring out of me as tears, and he just held me till it was washed away.

“You haven’t had it easy, have you, lass?”

“Master of understatement, aye?”

“Well, goes with the old job, like. Squaddy way of keeping things under control. This is odd, though. Here I am, worried that my brother still fancies my lass, and he’s never been my brother, but my sister still loves the woman, and, ach shite, easy isn’t the word at all!”

I found my best smile. “I am a happily married woman and she’s my prospective sister-in-law, so of course I love her”

He smiled gently, and touched my cheek. “Aye, that’s it. Doesn’t really matter in the end, does it? The love’s there, on all sides, so we’ll just smile and take it as it comes. Now, shall we ask the girls what they would like?”

In the end, I should have been able to guess the outcome. Bethy wanted to stay with us, for the sake of young love as well as for the friends she was gathering round her at school, but she also played the ‘exams’ card. Much easier to stay in the same class right through the course so as to give her the best chance of gaining a university place. I raised an eyebrow at that, as it wasn’t her normal teenage logic.

“Well, it’s like all the people we met, yeah? That Mr Johnson, and the doctor lady, and James’s parents, they are all, like, graduates, and they see things all wide-angle”

I could just about work out what she meant, but she continued with a truly barbed comment.

“Mum, yeah? She was just SO like girly this and flouncy that, when she could like be bothered, like get out of bed and stuff. Girls, yeah? You get the right hair colour, and like half of Addison’s and you get the man, and he like pays for everything else once you got him like trapped. Don’t want that”

Von snorted. “Valley commandos, innit? Good girl. I did my college and stuff, but it went into storage sort of thing for my babies, my boys. Still went to work again, that’s proper. I don’t do parasite, me”

Ian looked at her, and took her hand. “True, pet. Very true. Ellen… When’s Will joining us?”

Von’s face twitched. “He’s down tonight, aye? With Kelly and Mark, and…his friend”

My brother pulled her into an embrace, her head on his shoulder, still so horribly thin.

“You will be fine, pet. I mean, look at how you are coping here, like”

“I know, love, but, well, he’s still my baby, innit?”

Bethy laughed. “Go on, admit it. You’d be just about as upset if he, like, brought a GIRL down, yeah?”

Finally, a small grin broke through Von’s mood. “Aye, I suppose so. Just, he’s my baby, innit, always will be, but… This is what it’s going to be. This is his life, aye? Just have to get used to it. Not losing my Will, am I?”

That night, we were round at Jim’s place, half the pub ours for the evening. Hays had delivered her decision, which was to rejoin her little community, but with the addition of being allowed to sing (may you rot, Ellen!) and Von and Ian were comparing notes on strategy for the ‘moderating meeting’, and probably discussing who would get to throw the first punch. Suddenly, there was a whistle from one of the more refreshed regulars as a truly lovely young woman entered, on the arm of a tall redheaded man. Kelly and Mark, of course, and behind them…

“Mum… this is Eddy”

CHAPTER 48
My eyes went straight to Von, and I saw her stiffen. Reading her mind wasn’t necessary just then, for everyone who knew her would understand what it was she was facing. Her left eyelid twitched just once, and then she buckled on her smile, her shield.

“Hello, Eddy. Is… is my boy treating you well?”

I could almost smell the fear coming off the young men, and I admired Will just then; loved him, in fact. Eddy coughed.

“Um, very well, I couldn’t wish for better”

“How did you meet?”

“Um, I’m doing music, and I know Kell and Mark, yeah, and, well, we all went to a gig, and… sort of traditional”

He was terrified, and once more Von’s thoughts were clear, concerning the exact definition of ‘traditional’ in this case. It was Ian who stepped forward.

“How, I’m Ian, I’m his Mam’s other half. And I’m not on a slimming kick, aye, just been a bit off colour for a while. Where are you from, Eddy?”

That released Von neatly from any reply. Eddy wasn’t a tall lad, not more than 5’8”, and a little chubby, but there was life in his eyes, and clearly Will was in them too.

“I’m from near Leicester, me”

Ian raised an eyebrow. “Plenty of colleges round there, I’m sure. Why come all the way up here?”

Von was trembling now, for the answer would be obvious, just as it had been for Will: freedom to live as he needed to, love whomever he had to. She took my arm and raised her chin to her son.

“Can we have a word, love? Ian, cariad, can you see Eddy’s OK, drink and that? Ta!”

She led the way to a corner table that someone had just left, and sat down heavily on one of the round stools. I reached for her hand, and she clutched it to her as if she might fall through the floor if not held up.

“Will, son, baby… this isn’t easy, you know me, you know how I feel, innit? Just… just let me do my best, aye? Please… patience, all I ask for. But…”

There were already tears there. Her voice was ready to break.

“William… does he make you happy?”

His own voice was strained, but he produced his own smile, frayed at the edges but genuine.

“Very, Mum. Very. His parents… he understands me, understands Bamps and all that nastiness, yeah?”

Von was in his arms then, rising so quickly from the stool I thought he would topple. Through her sobs, I could just make out the words.

“If my baby is happy, that is all I want”

For a minute she hung from his arms, then pulled away and took my arm again.

“We need the ladies’, girl”

We had the place to ourselves for a few minutes, luckily, for that was when she let the tears run free together with her sobs. It took about three minutes, which felt like an hour, but eventually she was breathing normally. We were joined by Rachel and my wife, and the former ran a practised eye over the damage done to Von’s face.

“C’mon, you, up to the flat. Get you sorted proper, not in some pub bog”

In an echo of old times, she drew herself up, shoulders back.

“Course I got my own key!”

A grin. “And my own toothbrush, yeah? Nah, got all the girly crap up there you could need, Von, so we’ll go up the back stairs. Ian and Jim have your boys. All sorted. Jill, laters? Be about ten minutes”

She turned to go, towing Von in her wake, but then looked over her shoulder with a much gentler smile than I could ever remember her giving me.

“I keep saying this, yeah, but you, this, HERE… you make so much more sense than Rob ever did. Laters!”

My wife settled against me. “She’s right. If anyone can tell, that’ll be me, and she is spot on. This is where I must be luckier than Von, lover”

“How’s that, pet?”

“I got to meet you before I fell in love, and she only ever met Rob”

There was only one thing I could do in response. It was rather nice, spoilt only by the arrival of one of the other customers.

“Fucking lezzers! Should be a law!”

Larinda took my hand and led me to the door, turning as we were about to walk out.

“You’re just jealous cause my wife is better in bed than those carrots I saw you getting in Bamlings down the road. Don’t eat them afterwards, not nice”

Out the door just before she corpsed. “Sodding carrots! If she knew about your meat and veg… sorry, didn’t think just then”

“It’s OK pet, wasn’t a bad line, that one. Reminded me of the old joke, you know? Madam, that is NOT how you check a cucumber for freshness!”

The last four words were almost shouted in duet, and we were giggling like rather elderly schoolgirls when we got back to the rest, Mam giving us a Look as we came up to her. She gave me another look, this one a question.

“Upstairs with Rach, Mam. Getting a bit sort-out, like”

“Aye. She’s a canny lass, that one. Jim’s done well”

I gave her a hug, and looked across to my stepfather.

“Aye, and so’s Raafie, like. Eddy?”

“Over at the bar with the rest of the student layabouts. Oh, and that brother of yours has finally showed his self”

I took my wife’s hand again, because I could and because I, for one, was indeed a fucking lezzer, and it felt so, so different from that day, so long ago, when I had met Kirsty Armstrong and her colleagues just after the thugs. I had been so ready back then to throw it all away, life, love, everything, and I realised that absolutely nothing had changed in real terms. Everything I had now, I had had back then. That depth of despair had been needless, for my life had been there, ready in place around me, just waiting for me to step into it. Granted, the cry back then had been ‘Tranny’ rather than ‘Lezzer’, and I now had some tits of my own, but essentially all I had needed to do was open my eyes.

Neil was at the bar with Ian and the four young layabouts, beers, wines and cokes assembling in front of them. Jim was serving, a broad grin on his face as some dodgy or other assembled itself through the laughter. Both Neil and Will looked round as we came to them.

“She’ll be fine, boys. Rach has her upstairs, doing some work on her eyes. No, Will, no, not your fault. It is just the way things are, like, and she’ll be fine---oof!”

The last was because somebody had just grabbed me from behind and planted a kiss on my cheek. Jim’s grin got even broader.

“How, didn’t Ah say Wor Kid was up the weekend? Hiya Alec, what fettle?”

Crash and burn. I ran to the ladies’, Larinda behind me, and after a minute of incoherence I got it into noises that made sense to someone other than myself. She just held me, as patient as ever, till I could talk again. Sodding hormones.

“I am sorry, love, it was just, well, that stupid bitch with the carrots, and I got to thinking about that attack, and I realised…”

I pulled a little away from her. “I was just thinking, and it was all warm thoughts, like, how I hadn’t realised at the time, aye? I had all the support, all the friends anyone could have wished for, and I was so weak, so poor-little-me, like, and I was feeling good, and there was Neil, and suddenly I had a moment”

She just stood and waited as I thought, assembled the words I needed.

“Love, I very nearly made the worst mistake in my life, except it wouldn’t have been in my life at all, cause I wouldn’t have been, and you know what brought this on? I just realised that at the time it all made perfect bloody sense and…”

I had to say it. “Look, all this I am doing now, it all makes perfect sense right now, aye? What if I am just as wrong now as I was when I was getting ready to wave goodbye?”

She looked at me, steadily, softly. Her mouth opened a couple of times, and then she found her own words.

“No. You aren’t. You identified where you were wrong, when you were cutting everyone off, you got that bit right, and don’t ask how I know, yeah? Rachel, Von, me, we talk. Alec even says one or two things, despite his wotsits, confidentiality thing, yeah? Know this, lover: this is you. Rach said it a little while ago, yeah? This is right, this is you, our bed is made and you will be sharing it with me, and it won’t be as no hairy bloke, got me?”

She kissed me with real passion, and then murmured “Still miss my breakfast, though, but we can’t have everything. Come on; face to repair, young people to embarrass”

Ten minutes later we were back out, Just as Rachel returned a happier Von. Will smiled broadly at her.

“Ed, I need to do two more introductions. This is Hayley, and Bethany, and they are my new sisters”

Von blushed, and William laughed out loud.

“Come on, Mum, you always wanted a girl, and now you can have two, and they’re already housebroken”

Confidence, that was the word. The William I had known was blooming now, happy and relaxed. Von caught my smile and then my eye, and returned them with a sharp nod and a thumb up. Perhaps, just then, she had come to the same understanding as I had. Whatever was to happen, for good or bad, she would not face it alone.

CHAPTER 49
We flew back two days later, work calling for most of us, and Ian due his ‘moderation meeting’ with Ellen and her shark. It had been a heated discussion, Von setting her stall out in front of her son and, to my delight, his new friend. This was Von as I had seen her that day at the Quay, full of fight and passion, but this time for good reason.

“Irretrievable break-up, aye? And what Bethy says, she has her own little friend now. Probably had him before all this, before my darling here told her to sod off, innit? Two faced cow!”

Will had laughed. “Mum, tell it how it is, yeah, don’t mince words!”

Eddy had laughed in turn, and that really moved me. “Will, mate, you sure she’s on our side? Scary woman!”

Von had turned a calm gaze on her son’s lover. “Eddy, I am on the side of whatever and whoever makes my baby happy. That’s all. Ian, we will give her a day to remember, right?”

Ian had sighed. “Just remember, pet, I’ll need a few days to recover. I can feel the strain already. Jill, you happy keeping the girls for now?”

“Always, pet. Mam says she’ll pop down a bit. That right? And drag the old man with you?”

Mam had smiled. “I have plans, like, up the West End, aye? Take that bigger lass out, see a show or two, see it for real. No point in having a bairn living down there and not taking full advantage. Anyways, there’s June coming up an aal. She’ll be wanting to have a bit sing for that vicar”

Where had it all come from? Suddenly, I had a life, it seemed, a social circle, friends, obligations, no free time… or rather no time to sit maudlin and without hope, the steps of my exit plan slowly taking shape. I had taken my wife’s hand, then reached across for Von’s.

“I am so lucky, you know, lucky in the women I know. All of this, like, I could never, ever have dreamt of”

A smile from Mam. “And I’m not lucky to know me own daughter at last, and Ian his sister, the girls their aunty? Howay, gizza hug, and then time to get all packed and that”

Warm memories, smiles that lasted the flight back, and most of the next day at work, up until the time I spotted the delivery addresses for building material deliveries that weren’t reflected in invoices for work done. Some things never, ever change, and that’s what kept me in a job.

It was Von who called after the meeting. “He’s tired, Jill, got no more strength, see? I said I’d do the calls, save him getting all worked up. That woman is a cow, aye?”

“What’s the damage, Von?”

“Er… You know I’m selling up, the house in Brock? Well, she’s got half the value of Ian’s place. I think she was expecting to make him sell it, to get the money, so we told her to piss off…”

“You are paying her?”

“Not the way I look at it. I’m buying half the house, innit? Investing in Ian. Look, Jill, this is, well, hell, this is it, aye? I don’t care how long….”

There was a pause, and when she came back she was clearly crying. “I do care, innit! You know that! Just, whatever he gets, however long, I am there, and that bitch is gone, out of his life, out of the girls’ lives, and…”

She paused, and I could feel the rage building from all those miles away.

“She’s got the new boyfriend, see, and he’s another squaddy. Once a valley commando, innit? And he’s said he don’t want no kids underfoot, doesn’t want anything to do with the girls, and she says fine by me, and how can a mother do that? How can she walk away from her babies? And I looks at her, aye, and she just smiles, and I know in nine months, a year, she’ll be knocked up, hook the man then nail him down, aye? Bitch! How did my man ever end up with her?”

I sighed. “Vulnerability, love, rebound, and then by the time he wakes up, aye? And he does love his bairns”

“How could anyone not love them? What she did to Hays, there’s bitchy, there’s unforgivable! Still... at least it means one thing. She’s out of their lives, aye? Signed away custody rights as soon as the money was in front of her snout. Supposed to be a mother!”

“Pause, pet! Now, calendar?”

“Mine’s up for sale, should go quickly. Started the removals yesterday. No reason to stay there now, see?”

I laughed. “You are certain about Ian, then?”

She didn’t speak for a few seconds, and then it was so softly I had to strain to hear.

“Certain, it is. Jill… know this, I truly loved you, loved Rob, aye? But I see you now, and I know that this is how it has to be, this is you, but that love, it doesn’t die. I just see you in Ian, and yes, I know you see him as completely different to you, innit? But he isn’t, not really. You are both pigheaded, stubborn. He’s you as you would have been if Rob had been real, so I get to have you, and him, all together, aye? And…”

I could only wait patiently till she found the words.

“Jill, would you have me for a sister?”

“Von, I would have it no other way, and I think you knew the answer before you asked”

“Aye, girl, but I was brought up with manners. Anyway, brighter things! What you wearing to this wedding?”

That brought a laugh. “I need to ask the wife, but I don’t think it will be new stuff, like; spent enough on ours. You just deliver my bro safely on the day is all I ask”

“You have my promise, sister of mine. All I can do, see?”

That weekend brought another visit to Barnes, for the birds, my social circle seeming to fill half of the place. John was on duty in the Peacock Tower, and as Hayley hadn’t yet returned West we had an interesting mix of personalities at lunch. I was wearing that T-shirt, of course, and Karen was laughing as she dug into the vegetarian main meal she had insisted Terry pay for. Married couples, I don’t know.

“Larinda, this is where it all started, yeah? She sits in–sod it, Jill, I think we are actually sitting at the same table! Spooky! Anyway, we’re sat here, and she just points at my shirt and gives a little finger wave, and the rest, as they say, is history! Jill, one thing, yeah?”

She lowered her voice. “Got the impression, back then, that you were sort of, well, checking out. No, just listen, please. All the signs were there, yeah? But then you come up to me and you tell your deepest secret. That not say something to you? That there’s always been hope, hidden away at the back of your mind? That you’re actually a much stronger girl than you ever let yourself know?”

I felt myself blushing, and that was a day I truly moved on. Comfortable in my skin, comfortable with my family, friends, I resolved to put the darkness into a box and file it somewhere under “being bloody stupid”, and changed the subject.

“Wedding in June, girl. I assume you’ll be there?”

Terry laughed. “Vicar collared…sorry, pun not intended! Anyway, Simon says…oh, I give up. Kaz?”

Karen grinned. “He was making the rounds after yours, and he made the point that it’s going to be the biggest day of his life, and he wanted a blow-out, as many friends there as possible, dancing, music, love, yeah, he really said that, and…”

She sat back smiling, and looked around the group. “He said that we had clearly got more than enough love in us to stand by you, to bring you to life, those were his words, that he wanted people with love in their hearts to be there to see his own love celebrated. He’s a bit soppy, that one, but I can see where he’s coming from, so I suspect only his beardy man in the sky knows where the money is coming from to pay for it all!”

Larinda coughed. “Er, he’s getting a bit of help with that one. Eric told me that the friends and family have put a load in. I mean, his parents are deceased, yeah, and it would anyway be down to Merry’s lot, and, Simon, he’s not like that, and so Annie, and Steph, and…”

I gave her a hug. “I know that look. Can I assume we’ve already contributed?”

I don’t often get to see my wife blush. She just nodded, and I smiled at the others.

“Well, the music alone should be worth the money! Hays, you going to sing for Simon?”

“Will there be Welsh people there, Aunty Jill?”

Oh yes. Rather a lot of them. I sat and thought of Karen’s words, how she had seen the hope that I had denied myself, and started a mental search of my wardrobe.

Life was good and getting better.

CHAPTER 50
That was a seriously odd arrangement. I mean, there were so many tents outside the church it looked more like some sort of festival than the wedding of a vicar, or of anyone else, come to that. For just an instant, I felt completely at sea among so many people, unable to focus on individual faces, and then people started to emerge from the background, rather like one of those hidden object puzzles.

Sally and her man, those French people, Kirsty and her own man, Arwel amid a group of stupidly big men, Annie and her family doing the meeting and greeting as folk filtered into the pews. There was a shipwreck of tables spilling from the Bells next door, and to my relief the weather had held firm and fine for days, so heels weren’t going to be a problem.

This was only our affair by association, of course, but I could still feel the love in the air. Eric, now, he was our friend, true and tried, an anchor throughout Ian’s pain, and now he was doing much the same job for Simon, who, very clearly, was crapping himself with nerves. There were so many uniforms there if could have been a Remembrance Day service, even Stewie decked out in his full Marine Number Ones, and I had an odd moment of understanding. If I had been straight, it would have been a hard choice between Sally’s man and Kirsty’s, which thought brought out a warm smugness in me.

Told you I was a woman…

There were swarms of young people as well, from Kelly’s age down to a few still at the breast, but all were smiling. I felt a sharp slap on my arse.

“Eyes off the blonde, lover!”

“Darling wifey, how could I have eyes for anyone but you? Seriously, I was having an odd thought, like, about who I would fancy if I were straight”

“Well, you’re not, are you? If you were… dibsy the big biker!”

“You tart!”

“Glass houses, love. I’ve got your Mam settled in, pew on the right. Thought, well, more Eric’s side, yeah?”

“So many people here we don’t know, pet”

“Yeah, but so many we do, so play nicely. Look, there’s Rachel and Jim. Time to get bums on pews, lover. Hays is in the front row”

She beckoned Rachel, and I spotted John just behind them, the other John with Alec coming through the lych gate.

“Bride or groom?” asked a grinning Darren at the door, his girlfriend beside him in a dress that showed a very nice figure. Once more, I felt the hand on my arse, and I turned to Larinda.

“Bit young for me, pet, and spoken for”

For some reason this brought a sharp change in the girl’s expression, and I saw Darren reach out for her hand. He looked at me, clearly weighing me up, and then just smiled.

“We’ll tell you one day, lahk. Shan, she don’t know, no harm, yeah?”

The girl tried a smile, but it was a little fragile. “It’s OK, Daz. Merry’s day, yeah? You going to be sitting on the right, Eric’s side, sorta”

Larinda eased into place beside me. “Got his mother already in place, Darren. We’ll be fine”

We passed on down the aisle, and I whispered to my wife “What was all that about?”

“Abuse, lover. Very young… think you pressed a button, yeah? She’ll be fine. Got heart, that one”

Every now and again, I surfaced from my own problems to see that others around me have rather a lot of their own. I knew that I didn’t do too badly in lending sympathy and support, but sometimes I could be a little blind. Anyway, Merry’s day, they said. We made our way to the family pew, Von and Ian already there with Mam and Dad, Bethy cuddled up to James, who looked a little confused.

“You OK, son?”

“I have to play music today. I can’t play music here”

Bethy squeezed his hand, which I had noticed was firmly in hers and not up to his own face.

“Later, Jay. We got like the organ and choir first, and then the wedding”

“My Mum and Dad had a wedding”

“This is like the same thing, just for Simon the vicar and his girl. There’s Hays up front. She looks pretty, Dad!”

Ian smiled, but he didn’t look well. “She’s not pretty, pet. She’s beautiful, aye?”

On cue, the choir started, something in Welsh, and Mam passed the word: Myfanwy. The rendition was subdued, but there was a lot of power lurking there. The pews filled, and Simon the vicar took his place with Eric before another vicar I had never seen before. There was a brief couple of bars of ‘Here Comes the Bride’ and then that power took over, as the choir surged into that tune, the one I still think of as ‘Bread of Heaven’, Hayley’s voice clear and pure above something that sounded as visceral as a jet airliner on take-off. I caught a glimpse, past all the other craning heads, of a slim figure in white accompanied by yet another huge man, and then Eric stepped back and left the main actors to their play. The other vicar smiled around the church.

“Good afternoon and welcome. As most of you will know, I am not from these parts. It is an awkwardness for a vicar to get married in his own church, as he can hardly dance from one role to another. My name is Harry Dunston, and Simon and I were at uni together, so when he asked, what else could I say? He has told me many stories of the people gathered here today to celebrate his love for the wonderful woman beside him, as well as giving me a number of very explicit warnings as to where it would be wiser not to tread. There is only one phrase I can use, then, and it is abundantly true right here and now. Dearly beloved…”

The course of a wedding is well-known, and there were no surprises here. Vows and rings were exchanged, hymns were sung, a small Irish man gave what they called the ‘lesson’ but was actually more of a sermon, which was about love and its true meaning, and I found myself nodding along in agreement.

“So, remember, love isn’t just about putting the other person first, but recognising that if they, in their turn, truly love, they will be seeking to do the same thing for you, and that is the tricky part. My wife, for example, limits my access to certain delights, and she assures me that she does so out of concern for my well-being. In turn, I try to let her know whenever she is in error, and that seems to work well, though I occasionally have to make my own dinner.

“No… in all seriousness, love flows two ways. Be aware that while your partner will want your help for their own needs they will wish, just as importantly, to meet your own. Even with God's help, which is always there in abundance, human beings work best as partners. These two before me, before you, they are the best of partners, and now they shall be joined as such before your eyes and those of our Lord and Saviour.”

He grinned and turned to the vicar. “Harry, thank you for letting me speak for my friends on their special day. I will now hand over for the magical part”

They shook hands, and the Irishman stepped down. Harry smiled again, and looked out over the congregation with an impish twinkle in his eyes.

“Thank you, Pat. Not the conventional order to things, but who cares? Anyway…if there is anyone here who knows of any just cause or impediment to the joining of this couple in holy matrimony, let him speak now, or forever hold his peace! No? Thought not; I can conceive of nothing that could possibly exist that could separate the two before me. So… Miriam, Simon: I now pronounce you man and wife. You may kiss the bride”

Larinda passed me a tissue. I blame the hormones.

Register signed, bouquet thrown (directly to Von, which was sneaky), photos, kisses, and off to the church hall for the reception. A hand tugged at my sleeve.

“Did you hear me sing, Aunty Jill?”

“Yes, Hays, it was wonderful. You looked beautiful in the choir, your Dad said”

Her face dropped. “He’s not well again. Is he going to have to go back to the hospital?”

Always the ghost at the feast. “I don’t know, love, but we’ll be there for him if he does. Today, though, we talk about happy things, like”

“I liked her dress, Aunty Jill. Can I wear one like that when I get married?”

I put on the best face I could. “You have someone in mind, love?”

What a blush! “And who might it be, pet?”

In a very small voice: “There’s a boy at the place they sent me to. He said he liked me…”

I took that to mean the little community Ian had found for her, the place that had let her grow, that had taken her away from Ellen’s poisonous control and neglect.

“Is he nice?”

The blush was still there, and she nodded.

“Then perhaps we should meet him, like. Now, we have to go and listen to some talking, and then it’s cakes and ice cream and things”

“Would you meet him, Aunty Jill?”

I kissed her and pulled her to me. “Anything for my favourite niece”

“But you’ve got Bethy”

“I can’t have two favourites? Come on!”

Long tables, packed out. Eric at a microphone, the happy couple beside him. A knife tapping a glass.

“Ladies, gentlemen, friends. This is truly a great day. This man to my right has served this community, served us, so well that words cannot begin to describe it. He has married several of us, but we’ll forgive him that one. Right, Geoff?”

A bread roll hit him on the chest. “I see my darling wife is trying to feed me up again. Now, this couple came together through the love of many things, apart from that of each other. Scripture, God, a nicely-shaped bottom–no, my spies tell me that was a mutual interest shared by both, and there was absolutely no sniffing involved…”

The traditions continued, and the toast was made, but the dancing was outside, to a ceilidh band that included a lot of the wedding guests. James and Darren sat together, Stephanie and Annie went silly, and couples gay and straight did their thing, even an awkward Will and Eddy.

Ian managed one slow shuffle with Von. He was looking worse.

CHAPTER 51
We stayed the night, as planned, but Mam took her toy boy along with Ian and Von back to our place. Much as he would normally have loved to talk army games with Fossy and Stewart, he was just too drained. He had pulled himself together for Hays, it seemed, and that was all he had left.

Bethy and her sister slept with the Woodruffs in their huge tent, so we had no worries about either young love overstepping boundaries or children alone in the night. Besides which, there were so many coppers camped out it was probably safer than being in the actual police station. There had been quiet moments amid the music, interludes where we had been able to chat and catch up with the friends I had never suspected I would find. Above everything, even Ian’s health, people were happy.

I could see Annie in her cousin’s smile. To be honest, they acted more like sisters, and Annie took a clear delight in teasing the new husband, who rather resembled a startled rabbit at times. I could almost read his mind: when do I wake up? When does the dream end? They did the usual, though, played the familiar cards, changed and gathered their luggage and boarded one of Stewie’s cars for the short ride to the airport and somewhere warm. I had another attack of the sniffles just then, and as Larinda ferreted in her handbag for a tissue, one appeared from my left. Alice.

“I know it’s traditional, Jill, but I just have to say it: lovely couple. She has found a true diamond there”

I had to find a smile for that one. “And you haven’t?”

“Ah, girl, that’s the thing here. So many of us, and somehow, even for an old trout like me, it’s all gone so much better than I ever dreamt possible. I mean, look at them all”

“I have. I was just thinking, like, I never realised I could, you know”

“And now you feel a bit stupid? I was lucky, I already knew I had friends”

She was a mind reader, clearly. “How did you know?”

“Common ground, love. We’ve both been through the same mill. I think… I think it helps us clear our thinking, focus, yes? Your brother, now. My Arwel was watching him. He’s not doing so well, is he?”

That made sense. “You came to talk about Ian, didn’t you?”

She nodded. “It’s the girl, Jill. She really has a beautiful voice, despite, you know, things she can’t help. We have a sort of family tradition with the singing, and it would be a shame… Look. This is embarrassing, but Arwel is too much of a man to come and ask you himself”

Larinda smirked. “Is he too much of a man, Alice? Really?”

The older woman grinned. “That would be telling! Now, here is what he says. He has been speaking to Twm and to Annie’s lot, and they have a proposal for you. Twm and Sioned---that’s Sar’s parents, aye? Er, sorry, too much time with the family. Anyway, they all feel she needs to be heard, and that she is someone with a special gift, and so they are offering to help with funding. Music lessons, that sort of thing”

Larinda put a hand on my arm. “Alice, sweety, that is very generous, but why her? They don’t know her”

There was a distinct set to Alice’s lips. “Eric had some stories to tell, about her mother, about being left alone, and, well, we all saw how her father was. He’s not doing well, Jill, it’s a brutal thing to say, and I’m sorry, but… waifs and strays, good causes, underdogs, call it what you will, she has a voice and a talent and they can see how he feels about it, so please talk to him. For Hays’ sake, aye?”

Alice shook herself. “My Arwel is a lovely man, a kind and gentle one, and sometimes he can’t hide it as well as he thinks. He wants to see a little girl happy”

I nodded. “I’ll speak with Ian, Alice. Just say thank you to them for me, even if he says no. He’s a proud old sod”

“Alice grinned, suddenly looking a decade younger. “Oh, I know rather a lot like that!”

She was off. I looked at my wife, as too many emotions fought for primacy.

“Would you mind if I got absolutely pissed tonight, pet?”

Apparently, I succeeded.

Ian was back in Eric’s care a week later, and the familiar round began once more, the tears, the shame, the sickness. All that was missing was the ritual macho protestations, and that worried me. My brother was folding, everything slipping away from his strength and reach. Mam was down, staying with the Woods, and of course Von was there, but it was all turning sour. I found Von crying in the kitchen one day, clutching a letter.

“Look, Jill, look. What’s the bloody point, eh? Sodding decree absolute, she’s gone, vanished, out of his life, innit, and now he hasn’t got one! Where’s the justice? Where?”

Somehow I found some strength. I don’t know where it came from, because all I wanted to do was slide down the wall with her, sit on the kitchen floor and bawl, but I couldn’t, because one of us had to stand and keep the other up. I wanted to scream my own complaints about fairness, and justice, but Von was at cracking point, and I had to find my steel, and so I held her, and told her the lies she needed, and waited for whatever news Eric could bring.

And each time I visited him, I saw the same face looking at me that I had shown Von, and realised how easily the lies came, how necessary they were.

“Has Eric told you what his in-laws are offering, pet? For Hays?”

He pushed a fork through some mashed potato, a little grimace of nausea on his face. “Aye, lass. Where do you find these people?”

I took his hand, thin, cold. “Just been lucky, like. Lucky…. Lucky to have you, and Nelly, and Mam, aye?”

He tried to smile. “Lucky? With me? I was an arsehole to you, for so many years”

“Aye, you were that, but think on: you turned it round, you accepted me, I couldn’t ask for a better brother, aye? Ian Carter, don’t you ever sell yourself short, cause all I need to say there is two words. Bethy. Hays”

“Well, I suppose Ellen had to good for summat, like”

“Was that a joke I just heard from you? We’ll have you back home soon!”

I never want to see a look like that again. Ian’s eyes bore such a depth of resignation, such an absence of hope, I began to cry, but his words were still strong, still carrying the message he felt he had to give.

“Aye, I’ll be back soon. Look, here’s a letter for that vicar, that Simon. He might could do us a favour. Can you drop it by for us? Oh, and let that Welsh lot know aye, yes, I would love to see Hays get a chance at something special. Now, I need to sleep a bit, pet, so next time, perhaps see if Von can have a bit personal time, aye? I need a bit chat with her, like”

That look, that dead stare, it was in the nurses’ eyes, in the doctors’.

Miriam answered the door, looking radiant, ring on finger, vicar in tow.

“Jill, isn’t it? Come in!”

Simon hugged me, and I handed him the letter. He opened it, quickly scanned, and winced. He paused for a while, then looked up at me from under his brows.

“Jill, do you know… ah, I see you didn’t. Ian is after a favour, but I need to do some work on this one. He is asking for a big favour indeed, and I don’t know if it would be legal, but I will do all I can, yes?”

“How big a favour, Simon?”

“Simply put, Jill, he doesn’t think he has the strength to come here, so it’s a bit Mohammed and mountain. I need to check for a licence”

“Sorry?”

“Marriage. Him and Siobhan. In the hospital”

CHAPTER 52
I was being pulled in so many directions at once I felt I might tear down the middle.

“Stop fussing, Neil. It’s a bloody wig; they don’t get ‘conditioned’, OK?”

Mam was sat at the dresser doing things to herself while Larinda shepherded the girls next door, but Nelly just HAD to help me, as he saw it. I turned to face him, taking his hands.

“Girl stuff, pet. We take our time but we get there in the end, aye?”

I could feel his trembling, and softened my tone. “It’s not over, love. Not over. They’re just getting this out of the way so that Ellen can’t stick her nose in again. He’s pulled through before, aye? We’ll do it again. Family. We’re family. For Ian, today. For the family”

He nodded, looking so lost I wanted to cry, but I had the family courage as my job that day, and so I couldn’t. I knew, though, that later, when I had the space and the time, and nobody to hold up, I would fold and break. Alec called up the stairs.

“Cars are here!”

“Thanks, mate. Down in two!”

I turned back to my brother. “For Ian, aye?”

He nodded, and left the room, and that was when I realised Mam was shaking. I hugged her from behind, feeling her warmth, that smell so, so familiar from my childhood. I murmured into her ear, “Same for you, Mam, for Ian, aye?”

She was battling tears. I could feel the tension in her, the little tremors as she forced her emotions down, or at least fought the outward signs.

“It’s not right, Jill. Not fair, aye? I just get to know me own daughter and I lose my son”

“Aye, but you’re getting another daughter out of it, aye? For Ian, and Von, just for today, aye?”

She pulled back, looking up at me. ”I always said to you she was one I could talk to, like”

“Well, you’ll have the chance now. Come on. For him”

The hospital had found a training room for us, and once again it had been Eric who had pulled the strings. He was a very deep man, but it was clear that once he decided in favour of someone he was constant in his friendship. That was an odd moment for me, looking at a man and seeing why another woman loved him, and realising that neither myself or that ‘other woman’ had started from anywhere near a conventional position. I took a while to look around the room, and it was packed. So many of my friends---no, our friends. Not just those of myself and my wife, but shared with Ian. Will was there with Eddy, his younger brother looking confused beside him, and when Gareth’s eyes caught mine he flinched. Who was this person, in dress and wig, the man who had fed him hot chocolate with marshmallows, the woman whose brother was marrying his Mam. Not easy, not easy at all.

Ian had turned to Eric, in the end. As he put it, he had done more than most, more than any of his old army friends, most of whom had drifted away as the illness chewed away at him. Some people aren’t equipped to handle the sickness of others.

So many friends. Simon was at the front in full vicar kit, Karen’s family to one side, Rachel, Jim, both of the John’s, Eric’s lunatic red-haired friend looking astonishingly normal in a dress with decent shoes. They were all there, even Arwel and Alice on a pilgrimage from the far West.

And Ian. He was in a suit that had once fitted him but now enveloped him, four sizes too big, but as clean as he could make it, as neat as an old soldier could ever be, Ralph, Dad, beside him with Eric, and Steph lifted a violin for the obligatory tune. That was an odd moment, as Von’s father led her in, his eyes flicking to and from my face as if he couldn’t focus on it.

Von had argued long and hard with Ian about the old man’s presence, but as ever she was bound to tradition, to convention. A father gave his daughter away at her wedding, and that was not negotiable. At least the old bastard had the grace to look a little ashamed as he led her to the space where Simon awaited them, Bethy and Hays in attendance. I took a quick look round, and James was already looking at his hands. Shit.

“Dearly beloved…”

Simon’s smile lit up the room. “We are gathered her in a slightly unusual way to celebrate the wedding of this man to this woman. I will admit that I am not actually the person ticking the legal boxes here; we have a Registrar among us, and a special licence, but right here and now it is what we say and do in these moments that bring us joy, that bind these two friends together in our eyes and those of our Saviour. I will confess an interest here, for although I have only known the two before me a little while, their souls, their loving-kindness have spoken to me.

“I will not utter platitudes here, for this is a grim place, but this is a celebration, a time of joy, and such moments are not about place, but about people. I know so many of you here, and some I have married, even my wife”

He grinned. “When I say married, of course, there are two different meanings. Now, Aneurin, you have brought your daughter Siobhan to this place. Ralph, you have brought your son Ian. I thank you both for helping to make this a special day for all gathered here”

Raafie’s face had twitched a little, and I could only guess at what was preying on his mind. Married to the widow of his best friend, standing for her elder son at his wedding, addressed as Ian’s father. Mam was already into the tissues as she hung on my arm.

Simon smiled again, and began the familiar part of the ceremony, Von standing in a simple white dress, no thrills, as Ian’s suit devoured him as he stood beside her and repeated the vows.

Rings. Pronouncement, with a nod to the Registrar. A kiss, and Nye sobbing quietly to himself as the congratulations began. Will went to him first, Eddy uncertainly trailing behind, and I watched as grandson comforted Bamps and finally, finally, the old man reached out and shook Eddy’s hand.

He still couldn’t look me in the eye, though. As ever, my wife was there, arms around me from behind.

“Better than we hoped, lover. At least he spoke to Eddy. You OK, Norma?”

Mam wiped her eyes again. “No choice, pet, is there? We go on, or we stop, and we all have too many other folk relying on us, like, to stop. It’s being a Mam, aye?”

She looked up at me, eyes red-rimmed. “You never got that bit about being a lass, did you, Jill? Never wanted kids”

I looked over to Von, Gareth and Will now circling her along with Hays, and sighed. A quick check: Bethy was with James, his hands down now, a smile in place as things returned to a close-focus comfort zone, and Mam laughed.

“Aye, Norma Carter raised no daft lass. I can see you, Jill, permanent aunty, like. All the fun, and you can give them back at the end of the day. I almost can’t see my Rob there. I can remember him, like, but, well…”

She was trembling again as Raafie came up, and I pulled her to us, to my wife and me, and we clung together.

“For Ian, Mam, for today, aye? Smiles and fluffy kittens, rainbows and unicorns”

“What?”

Larinda chuckled. “Your Mum don’t do the internet, lover. Norma, she just means ‘think happy thoughts’ for now. We will deal with the heavy stuff when we are all celebrated out, but today is happy feet, happy face. Come on, there’s cake next door, and afterwards there’s the pub, and, well, Jill, I know we have company, yeah, but I just want to get shitfaced tonight. Once we’ve left, yeah?”

I looked at Mam, and she just nodded. “Got any gin in the house?”

“We’ll pick some up from Larinda’s place on the way back, aye? Come on, we have to do the mingling bit, and I want some cake. Mam…what is it with you, weddings, and corned beef slice?”

A small smile, but a smile. “Traditional, like. That’s why I brought it down, along with the stotty and the pease pudding. He might be getting wed down here, but no way I would let him miss out. Besides, there were Southerners to educate”

We rejoined the crowd, and that afternoon was as good as we could make it, and later, back at our house, five of us got very, very drunk, and all of us gave up the tears we had restrained throughout the day. For Ian, and Von.

Six months. That was all they were allowed.

CHAPTER 53
He was back in Crawley once more, the treatments wearing away at him, and this time Von was at her father’s, her own wear and tear needing some running repairs. She wasn’t hiding from Ian, I was sure, but her own family continued to live and breathe in what must have felt like another world.

I slipped quietly into his room, set discreetly to one side of the main ward, with my little bundle of gifts and palliatives. He was beyond such things as chocolate, for the nausea was crippling on its own, and flowers had been given a rigid veto by Larinda.

“Too much like a funeral, yeah?”

So the choice was initially difficult, but in the end much simpler. Mints, as they seemed to help with the vomiting, and even if they didn’t they took away the aftertaste. And books. Lots of books.

Ian had found an author called Birmingham, who wrote techno-thrillers that took place in alternate pasts, differing presents, and his geeky obsession with weaponry and the military chimed with Ian’s own past. Von had bought him an e-reader, and while we tracked down the books for him and ordered them through his account on our own computer, all we needed was for someone to take his little device down the road to one of the local cafes with free wi-fi to get the stories loaded onto the thing. It had become a ritual, leaving one of us, whether me or Von, some private time with him, some space where the emotions could be set free, guards lowered, without loss of the face that was the only thing I felt was keeping either of us afloat. Neil was due down in a week, just to serve his own penance for the years of stupidity that had festered between the three of us.

Someone was already with him, a woman, and it was at least three seconds before I realised who it was.

“Hi, Jill”

“Hi, Shan. What you up for? Sorry! Didn’t mean it like that, like. Just, well, didn’t expect anyone here”

“Mum Ginny rode me up, lahk, on the tandem. She’s off with Eric, getting teas and stuff. You want tea?”

“Later, aye?”

“Yeah…we was talking, me and Mr Carter…”

Ian grunted from his chair. “It’s Ian, lass. How’s you, Jill? Larinda?”

“Fine, aye? Just as always. She’s doing a late one today, so I’m on chip duty on the way home”

“You want to watch those. Aye, your behind does look big in those shorts”

Mountain bike shorts, of course. I still had luggage I didn’t want, and that meant lighter stuff was off the menu.

“Always a flatterer, my brother. How are you all doing, Shan?”

“OK. Daz got a match tonight, so we are going to go see him play and stuff”

Ian chuckled, a sound like gravel in a bucket. “And is it the ‘stuff’ that brought you up, then?”

She blushed, but stared him down. “Nah, told you, was Mum Ginny and a tandem, yeah?”

Ian grinned, but she continued to stare at him.

“Mum Kate, she says you two wasn’t talking for years”

Ian nodded slightly, and I could read his confusion. Where was this coming from, and where was she headed? The girl drew a deep breath, and let it out slowly.

“I watch people. I watch them all the time, yeah? Cause some of them is shits, thass obvious, yeah, keep me safe and thing, but also…”

She trailed off for a moment, gathering her words about her.

“What it is, yeah, iss family. Iss… IT’s what I never had, yeah?”

There were sharp lines settling into place between her eyes, her face suddenly far, far older than it should have been.

“You got family, yeah, blood family, and you should never throw that away, never shut a big door on it”

Ian gave me a sideways glance before speaking, his voice as gentle as he could make it.

“But you’ve got family, pet. Your Mums, like, and Annie”

Shan nodded slowly. “Yeah, and you know what? They the best, the best ever. I love my Mums, and my big sis, she so cool, so sweet, an’ Eric… but I had to find them, they weren’t THERE. Not like blood family, not like you and Jill an’ your Mum an’ Neil. Sometimes, I just wish, lahk…”

Before I could stop him, as the pieces suddenly fell into place, Ian asked the question.

“What happened to yours, pet?”

I held a hand up quickly.

“Not a good question, Ian. Shan, forgive me, but it’s sort of come clear in my head. You… you said once you were a rape survivor, aye?”

She nodded, once. I drew in a breath as I took Ian’s hand, an action inconceivable such a short time ago.

“There was a trial, Ian. A nasty business. One of Annie’s mates got shot, Den got bombed. Shan… love… am I right? Was it you in that place?”

There were tears there now, rolling one by one from her eyes. She nodded, once more a single sharp motion, and Ian sighed.

“Jill, pet, was that the one with the Cuthberts?”

“Yes”

He just held out his arms for her, and Shan stumbled into them. I knew the story, of course, it had been impossible to miss, but the names of the children had been kept from the papers. The beaten, the corrupted, the raped. If she was that girl…

Dear god. Nine years old. Ian was crying now, and I could hardly hold my own. This girl, this young woman, had been taken from a hell created by her own family, and fate or karma or whatever had brought her to people so different to all she had ever known, women who had given her the life she should have had by rights, and yet she was still looking at others and feeling the loss of her own kin.

That was when I saw Ian as the father, the protector, the comforter in the darkness. He was always there for his own girls, of course, but this was my brother as archetype, and I realised in some deeper way than I had ever felt that I loved him. All the harsh words, the condemnation, all of them floated out of my soul and away, and I knew fully what a good man Ian was, and that was when my tears finally broke free as I looked at him in the bed, and it WASN’T FAIR.

I fumbled in my backpack for a tissue, and realised there was a shadow by the door, tall with flaming hair. Ginny. I handed her a tissue to save her having to find one of her own, for she was in the same state as me. She took my hand and drew me from the little room of stinks and despair, and laid my head on her breast. Her voice was quiet, her tears warm.

“She gets this now and again, Jill. Touch of the envies. Makes me and my girly feel fucking futile, sometimes. Dunno what to do, yeah? I mean, me, I take things head-on, fucking in the face, but this…”

I could feel the effort in her as she forced the tears back. “Come on, Jill. Eric’s got brews. Leave them to a bit of healing?”

We slipped away, her arm round my shoulders, to the staff canteen, where he did indeed have some cups ready, as well as a plate of biscuits, and Ian’s comment about my arse slowed me down for less than a second. I would ride the calories off anyway. Eric looked up at us, frowning.

“And? Apart from the obvious, what’s up?”

Ginny threw herself down in one of the plastic chairs, which I half expected to break.

“Shan having the envies again, mate. Girly stuff, we’ll sort. She loves us to bits, I know that. Kate knows it too, fuck yeah, and we know she knows we love her, but, well, you did that thing for her, with the war graves, and that was sweet, but, well, she needs some roots”

Her voice dropped. “Eric, it was like she was with Den, yeah? A man’s broken, ain’t no threat”

He took a mouthful of tea. “More than that, Ginny. See how she is around D.A. for a start”

She was nodding. “Yeah, and that’s another bit of the envies. She sees a family, she gets all the shit back cause she never had one of her own”

Eric nodded. “Tell me about it. I’m a dad, and I never even had to do the messy bit”

Ginny gave him an arch look. “Think you do the messy whenever you get the chance, way Annie walks sometimes”

Bless him, he blushed. “Not what I meant, yeah, and you know it. Our boy still has his own little moments, so we just try and be there for him. I mean, both of them know their families had good people in them, they’re not all shit. What’s she doing now?”

I put my empty cup down and took another biscuit. “Cuddling my brother”

Eric nodded. “Fits. Broken men… come on, let’s go and say hello”

Shan was sat by his bedside when we arrived, a soft smile in place and Ian’s hand in hers.

“Sorry, Jill, was all stupid”

I gave her cheek a kiss. “Rubbish. Your Mum’s here, and Eric”

Ginny went to her with a hug. “You better now, love?”

“You saw? Sorry”

“No sorries, never, yeah, not for being real, OK?”

“OK. Mum… Mr Carter-“

A grunt. “Ian, pet”

“Yeah… Ian, he says I got to look both ways, lahk”

Ginny squinted at her. “What the f---lip?”

“He says I go all backwards, look behind, lahk, and life goes two ways, like missing a bus. You see one going off and iss gone, yeah, but there’s another one coming, so you don’t cry after the first one, you just wait for the second. He says…”

She turned to look at Ian, as if asking if she had it right.

“Aye, pet. Ginny, I know she’s just a bit bairn, aye, but, well, I tried to remind her of something about family, and that’s the simple thing, that family can start anywhere. A bit older, and the right man, she gets her own family, her own roots. That’s if she’s into lads, like. Are you into lads, pet?”

Shan blushed at that, and Ginny laughed.

“Into one lad, anyway! Come on, girl, we got a football match to see. And no bus factory just yet, Shan”

She turned to my brother. “Me, me and my girly, we ain’t into lads, but that don’t mean we hate them just cause they is all unnatural in the naughties. You, Ian Carter, you are a good man, so I don’t believe what your sister says. Come on, Shan, we got to pedal!”

The three of them were gone, and I sat alone with Ian as he tried to read, the energy he needed for conversation spent on a wounded girl. I left after he fell asleep, placing his little device in his bedside drawer. It was a lonely ride home, stopping to pick up the chips as a drunk stared at me in the usual way. He lacked the bottle or enough of its contents to have a go, so I wound my anger back in with my despair and continued home.

Shan had been right: we had wasted so much of our time together as family, and it was only when it was looking late that we had realised how precious a thing it was.

CHAPTER 54
The cars were there and it was finally time to face the day’s events. Mam looked old for once, the life that had kept her age from her eyes finally slipping away from her. Dad… I had stayed away from that thought for so long, but now it was a truth that hit me between the eyes… Dad sat with her, doing what he had to, doing what should never have been necessary.

We walked out of the house, my wife’s hand squeezing mine almost too tightly, but she was there, and without her I knew I would have been lost years ago. She reached out for Von’s hand, and just then I knew, as if never before, how much I loved the woman, for without her I would, very simply, not exist. Von looked across at my wife, eyes raw and red, and tried to find a smile somewhere in her reserves, but it never really arrived at her lips. Larinda reached across to her cheek, the tips of her fingers so gentle.

“For Bethy and Hays, yeah?”

Von gave a sharp nod, and a little twitch, and we walked out into the weak sunlight, a layer of high cloud taking the edge off the day. It was a slow ride, the hearse drawn by plumed dark horses, its darkness spreading over the streets as we made our way to Simon’s church, the flag so bright over… no. It was done, it was over. Strength, for those who lived. That was what was important.

Bethy and Hays rode with Mam and Raafie, Dad, while Von rode with me and Neil. I found myself losing it, slowly, without fear. Simon and his wife had been so good, Eric never absent, but this was real, this was here, this was my brother in a hole in the ground. They had done all they could, they had kept him here longer than anyone had hoped, but reality was harsh, and when it came out of its lair it bit hard, and it bit deep.

The end had been sudden, and the doctor direct and to the point, that bleakness living in his eyes.

“He has made his decision, Jill, and that is his right. We won’t force food into him. A drip, yes, keep him hydrated, but no more than that. I am sorry. We have done all we know, but, well, this is the way of it”

I wondered, just then, how many other relatives he had given that speech to, and felt yet again what a truly shitty job he had, and then I thanked him, for helping my brother to die. That afternoon I rang the office, and told them, quite simply, that I would not be at work for a while. They gave me no argument, and Von and I began a shift system, hot-bunking on a camp bed in his little room as the machines beeped and a little pump occasionally whirred into life to give him analgesia in a dose I suspected was a little above normal clinical guidelines. Eric or his wife were there to keep us fed, as was my own lover, and for once what was left of my brother saw no other visitors.

Three days before the end, there was a knock on the door, and a nurse put her head into the room. Von was asleep in the cot, and Ian was in some state of awareness that left his eyes open but his mind elsewhere.

“You have a visitor, ladies, but he wanted to ask first”

Von stirred, and I waved her back down. “I’ll go and see, pet”

Nye was waiting outside. To my astonishment, he stepped forward and hugged me. There was a shiver, and then a peck on my cheek. He coughed as he released me, clearing his throat.

“This is hard for me, aye? I don’t…do…people like you. We both know that. But that man in there, aye? He made my baby smile, an

... and I can’t have this between us, not now, not like this. Will you take an old bastard’s hand? Please?”

“Nye, I would do anything for Von, you know that”

He sighed. “You wouldn’t marry her, though. Suppose that was for the best, in the way of things. How is he?”

That broke me, and I simply said “Dying” as the tears came and he helped me to a chair in the corridor. There was a moment, then, when the grandfather and father slipped out of the shell, and he had tissues for some reason, and that was another enemy turned. When I was stable again, I left him with his daughter and son-in-law, and walked out of the hospital to the little parade of shops nearby, to look at magazines, newspapers, anything but the walls of that room and what lay on the bed.

Nye was gone when I returned, and my brother three days later. We stayed till the end, that line from the Ellison story playing itself on a loop in my mind: don’t leave me to die with strangers. He looked at me, right at the end, and there was a smile of sorts, and then the machines went silent, and the doctors left him alone just long enough to ensure they couldn’t bring him back, and a nurse unclipped everything so that we could grieve without hindrance.

The cars were lined up behind us as the hearse reached the gate to the church yard, the horses so patient in front. Simon was waiting, and as Bethy and Hays helped Mam from the first car, Ian was brought out. I had to fight an urge to giggle as the thought rose “They’ve done this before” at sight of the pallbearers’ precision, and realised that I was on the verge of a breakdown. For Mam, now, Jill. Neil just wept beside me, and Von looked lost until her father stepped forward, an arm round her shoulders. We followed my brother into Simon’s place, and I finally caught sight of how many had turned out for him. There were so many uniforms, not just from John and Stewie, but also from what were clearly some of his old army mates, as well as the British Legion, and a couple of French men.

John, in uniform? A hackle to his beret? Alec caught me looking, and came over.

“I know, Jill. We finally had a result, me and him, with some help from Simon’s mate Jerry. Stung them into an honourable discharge. Human rights, homophobia, all the usuals. He looks better in it than he does in the PCSO stuff, doesn’t he?”

There were police uniforms as well, the old building bursting at the seams, and even Steph was in her official rig. There was music, and readings, and hymns, and it was clear that Arwel and Annie’s family had sent a choir, but, really, all I could do was watch Mam as she slowly sank into herself, and then, all too soon, we were at the graveside, Simon sending Darren for some chairs before Mam and Dad Raafie could fully collapse. So many people there, but as the bugler did his thing all I could see was a hole in the ground that was taking my brother.

No, Jill. Mam. The girls. Simon looked round at the crowd once more.

“Thank you all, on behalf of the family, for your loving kindness here. You will see that I have found a special spot for our brother Ian, next to one who also suffered greatly, who also served her country faithfully. I cherish this space, for it takes the sun and holds it, and who can fail to find hope in the light and the warmth? Ian did not share my beliefs, in life eternal, in a loving Father, but that is of little import here today. Today, we remember a father, a husband, a son and a brother. I look around at the people here and I see that Ian left this a better world than he found it, and I can think of no higher praise. If you will, let us pray”

There was more of the traditional stuff, and then the rattle of soil onto the lid, and after a slow tune from Annie’s flute it was finally over. Mam just sat throughout, staring at the grave as the council workers waited to fill it in, and held tightly to her husband’s hand. In the end, she shook herself as if waking, and drew a long breath.

“That’s done, now. Take me to the hall, pet. Life has to go on, aye?”

Neil and I took an arm each, and Raafie took my free one, and we walked so slowly round to the church hall, where there was food, and hot drinks, and people playing music, so many of them I was lost. So many friends. So many reasons I had never seen to stay on this world, and as I looked at my mother I realised my excuses were just that. Life had me, held me tight, and it was all so different to the way it had been such a short time ago. In the midst of death, we are in life. I let my eyes wander around the room as Larinda went to get teas for us, and there was indeed so much life. That tall girl, the frog, with her big man. Shan cuddled up to Darren, who looked so adult in his suit. Big men with beards, soldiers swapping stories, James and Bethy locked together, Hays talking animatedly to some of the Welsh, and Von doing her best to smile for her sons. She looked up at me, and then her gaze slipped to the side, and her expression hardened. I turned to look, and she was there. Ellen.

Von started away from her boys, and Will reached for her arm, but she jerked it free. The rage was there, now, and she was soon face to face with my brother’s ex-wife.

“And what the hell do you want here?”

There was a ripple in the crowd as several people, mostly women, pushed forward. Rachel, of course, and Ginny, and Kirsty obviously wondering where she had left her baton. Ellen’s face squirmed.

“Come for what I’m owed, didn’t I?”

“And what might that be?”

“Half the house, for a start”

Von was now snarling. “I paid you your share from selling mine, bitch. Not that you ever earned any of it, aye? Lazy fucking cow that you are”

“Yeah, well, my girls, I’m owed!”

“Your girls? Shall we ask them? Hays, who you shut away rather than talk to? Bethy, who cuts herself cause you made her feel like a piece of worthless shit?”

What the hell? Von looked round at Bethy, and then me, and sighed.

“Sorry, shouldn’t have said that. Sorry, love. But…”

Ellen bristled. “Still my girls, yeah? Still me who carried them. You ain’t got that, you never will now”

Ginny was there now, one hand holding Von’s wrist with no effort visible in her face but cords standing out on her forearm.

“You fuck off now, OK, and I won’t hurt you”

Kirsty was there too. “That is something I won’t promise, yeah? You fuck off now or I WILL fucking hurt you!”

What the hell had she come for? To gloat, or just to extort? Either way, she was clearly starting to see her mistake, and then Von turned to the Amazon.

“Don’t need to hurt her, aye? Got better than that for the bitch. See that man over there, that Eric? His doctors, they’re good, very good, innit? They did a lot for my man, and he’s not yours, not now, and we got married, and, aye, married couples, they have honeymoons. About two months, now”

Ellen’s eyes went wide. “You can’t be!”

“Doctors say I am, aye? Not so fucking special now, are you?”

A bread roll struck Ellen in her face, and I looked round to see Bethy with more food and a couple of plates in her hands. She screamed at her mother.

“Want the hard stuff next? Want me to cut you? FUCK OFF!”

Kirsty stepped past Von, Dennis now behind her. She smiled, and there was no warmth there.

“On your feet or on your arse, love. Your choice; ends in five. Four. Three…”

With a last look round, eyes wide with just a hint of tears, Ellen was gone. Kirsty looked up at her husband.

“Go out and see she don’t do no fuckwit stuff with the cars or the church?”

“Aye, pet”

Ginny was still holding onto Von’s wrist, but her mien was now completely different.

“You up the duff? Really?”

Von was sagging now. “Aye. We managed that, at least. I know, I know, older woman, all the risks, innit? But what’s the worst, aye? Down’s? Look over there and tell me that’s a worry”

Hays, smiling, oblivious to the shouting and absorbed in music with some of the Welsh lot. I took her point, and then her hand.

“Who else knows, pet?”

She grinned, and it was almost her old self. “Probably everybody here, after that little episode, aye? Come on, let’s see if your Mam’s OK with it”

And she was, indeed, very OK with the news, and it took the edge off her sorrow. There were smiles, now, warm ones, and we settled down to remember what he had brought to our world rather than what the cancer had taken away. I lay that night with my wife, and realised that I had also found my place. After all, I didn’t hate the extra bit, it had just got in the way of who I really was, and the reason I was alive and able to think about such things was snoring gently beside me.

I owed her one less hurdle to overcome. The next morning, I took myself off the waiting list for the surgery. Life went on, and it was in the people around me. All I had ever needed to do was open my heart and my eyes.

Von named him Ian.