[mid-morning in a riverside park. A homeless man is sitting on a bench looking at nothing in particular. A smartly dressed woman walks along the path and stops right by the man]
“Are you all right?”
Those four simple words dragged me out of my stupor. I looked up and saw the owner of the voice for the first time, a woman in her early thirties and judging by her clothes, she wasn’t doing badly for herself.
“Not really but you can’t help me,” I replied without even thinking.
“I’m sure that is not the case. You have been sitting there for more than an hour looking as if the whole world is on your shoulders. Are you sure that you don’t want some help even from the Police?”
The mere mention of the word ‘Police’ made me react. They were the last people I wanted to be seen with.
"Please… you don't have to worry about me. I'm a loser. Judging by the shoes you are wearing and the handbag that you are carrying, you aren't like me, so please leave me alone."
If I had hoped my words would make her walk away, I was wrong, so very wrong. It did totally the opposite. The woman sat down beside me. I could smell her perfume. Delightful. For half a second, I wished that it was me that was the one wearing it but that desire had been a big part of my downfall. Now I was at rock bottom.
The last thing I needed was a lecture about picking myself up and getting on with my life. That’s what I’d been trying to do for the last nine months. Nine horrible months since my wife had kicked me out. In that time, she had done everything in her power to strip me of my humanity. The news that I’d received earlier that morning was the final straw. I’d been served with another High Court Writ claiming that I owed people lots of money. This time it was for a mortgage on a property that I’d never heard of. Someone had borrowed almost half a million pounds to buy a house and had never made any repayments. I’d told the process server that they’d have better luck getting blood out of a stone and that I’d been homeless for nine months so I could have hardly been in a position to sign the documents agreeing to the loan. I was flat broke or as near as dammit. I didn’t need to ask how they’d found me. I knew exactly who was behind it.
“I’m sure that it is not that bad.”
“Worse. It is worse than bad and there is nothing anyone can do to help me.”
"That sounds very fatalistic?" said the woman.
“Want to share? A problem shared is a problem halved and all that.”
“Lady, I don’t know who you are but frankly, you really don’t want to have anything to do with me. I’m toxic to all those around me. If I were you, I’d run a mile right now.”
"When you have through what I have been these past months there really is no other way to think. Then today, I was served with a writ saying that I’d defaulted on a half million-pound loan to buy a house. A house that I never knew I’d seen let alone bought. How would you feel eh?”
“That sucks… to put it bluntly.”
“What did I say? I’m a loser and just being close to me is enough to get infected.”
"I'm sad to see someone as down as you but I'll take your hint and as you say, go run a mile. I'm on my way to the gym and I'll probably do more than five miles before I’m done.”
I looked at her once again. If I could ever have a fairy godmother then I hoped that she was like her.
With a sigh of resignation, she got up and left me alone. Alone save the noise of the Magpies and the distant laughs of children playing on the other side of the park.
I don’t know how much longer I’d been sitting on that bench by the side of the river but it must have been at least another two hours. From the position of a watery sun in the sky, I estimated that would be dark in a couple of hours and I could try to find a hole to crawl into for the night. I was flat broke until… sometime never. I’d finally taken the courage and signed on two weeks ago and the first payment of my benefits such as they were, was due at the end of the week. Then I’d be getting fifty-seven measly pounds a week. Thanks to being a sole trader before my very own personal disaster struck, it seemed that despite paying a full National Insurance contribution, I was not entitled to anything more than the absolute minimum. More fool me, I guess. I was sure that others in my position were able to work the system better than me but at the moment it was the best that I could do.
I know that I’m wallowing in self-pity. There really isn’t much else to do. Well… there is. Many of my homeless colleagues drowned their pity in large quantities of cheap cider. It takes money to live and even more to drink your life away and I don’t have any money and despite my predicament, I had no wish to die yet even though, some people would like that a lot.
The lack of money in my pocket or the bank was not my fault. Well… not directly. What I had was taken from me by my wife in a series of raids on my assets. It all emanated from the time that she caught me doing something she very much thought abhorrent. I wasn't doing anything illegal but she took it as a direct insult to her person and everything she said that she stood for.
The sun was just disappearing behind the Town Hall when I moved from the bench that had been my resting place for the last ten hours. On my way into town, I used the toilets just before they were closed for the day. Even after all these weeks and months, I was finding it hard to get used to living on the street. Knowing when vital services opened and importantly closed was as important as ‘The Knowledge’ that a London Taxi driver has to know in order to get their licence.
My next stop was the main square. A few other street people were hanging around when I got there. We were waiting for the Salvation Army Food Van to arrive. Good Samaritans like these are a lifeline to people like me. Getting some hot food and an even hotter drink was a real godsend on days like this.
Dead on seven, the shutters rolled up and an orderly queue formed amongst the homeless. This was the one time of the day when there were no arguments. If anyone argued then the van would simply close up and drive off. If that happened, it was not good for anyone.
With a word of thanks to the staff, I received my food and drink and sloped off to a quiet corner to have my one meal of the day.
I’d just left the square in search of somewhere out of the wind and rain where I could spend the night when I almost ran into ‘her’ again.
“Hello again,” she said.
“Hello.”
“Are you interested in a clean bed for the night?”
I almost jumped at the chance but I stopped myself just in time.
“What’s the catch? Please don’t say that there isn’t one. There is always a catch. No one does anything for nothing these days especially the Police. You lot are always on the lookout to get some poor innocent into jail while the people who steal billions walk around as free as a bird.”
She had mentioned the Police earlier but I’d never met anyone in the Police who was even remotely like her so I wasn’t convinced but I had to assume that she was with ‘the Plod’ and so far, she had not told me otherwise.
She smiled back at me.
“The people running that Food Truck seem to be doing just that aren’t they? Helping out without asking for payment.”
She had me there.
“Ok. Most people don’t get or do owt for nowt these days.”
“What if I’m not most people?” Came her confident reply.
She had me there again.
“Ok, you got me. ‘But… there has to be some ulterior motive for you coming back and talking to me.”
“All in good time.”
She paused for half a second.
“Now do you want a clean bed and the chance to get your clothes clean?”
“I suppose so.”
She smiled back at me.
“Good. My flat is just around the corner. Would you like to follow me?”
I grunted my agreement. I was still trying to work out why she was doing this and what sort of trap that I was walking into. It hurt me to think this way. Before… Before I’d been much more trusting of people in general. That was before.
Her home was modern and expensively furnished. What was stark was that not a thing was out of place. It was almost as if no one really lived there. I searched for the right word to describe how I felt about it. Then it came to me. Sterile. That’s it, the place was sterile. That made me think that it was rented rather than owned.
“The bathroom is in there,” she said pointing at a door.
I didn’t move.
“What’s up?”
“I don’t know who you are. I’m Craig Scott for what little that is worth these days.”
“Please don’t belittle yourself. Craig. I’m Jennifer Watts or Jenni for short for what it is worth. I know quite a bit about you but that can come later.”
“This place is worth quite a lot isn’t it?” I replied changing the subject slightly.
Jenni laughed.
“This pad belongs to a friend. He’s working in Dubai for the foreseeable future so he lets me use it when I’m in town which is about once a week at the moment.”
“Oh… You don’t live locally then?”
“I may,” replied Jenni.
“It all depends upon how my business develops in the area… But… that is for the future.”
“You mean catching innocents and giving them a criminal record? You are a cop aren’t you?”
She laughed.
“Far from it. I’m interested in some very nasty people.”
“That lets me off the hook for a bit then. As far as I know, I’ve never broken any laws that would attract the likes of you. Now… if you were in uniform and wearing body armour then that would be a different story.”
“I’m not just any Police Officer.”
She’d closed down that conversation very well.
“What can I get you to eat and drink? There is plenty to choose from in the freezer. By the look of you, you could do with a really good meal?”
I glared back at her but she was right. I’d lost a good bit of weight since I been on the streets.
“You choose something. No booze though. Almost everyone else like me is an alky. I might be down and almost out but I do have a little bit of pride left. That is something that can’t be taken away from me.”
Jenni smiled back at me.
“Why don’t you go and get clean. If you put your dirty clothes outside the door, I’ll put them in the washer.”
I managed a small smile.
Jenni guessed what I was about to say.
“Robbie, my friend who owns this place left some clothes here. I’m sure that he won’t mind you borrowing some for the evening. I’ll get some for you and leave them outside the bathroom door.”
“Thanks.”
I went off to get clean thankful that she'd not commented on how much I smelled. At first, it had bothered me but after a while and like most things, you get used to it.
As I let the hot water flow over my body, I tried to remember the last time I’d had a shower without a time or water limit. It must have been more than nine months ago. Yes, that was it. I’d spent a couple of days in a Motel after ‘she’ had chucked me out. It would have been longer but my bank and credit cards suddenly stopped working. I found out that my bank account had been emptied and my credit cards marked as stolen. At first, I was angry but I soon realised that this was all part of her plan to drive me into the gutter. That’s where I’ve been for these past months but I was determined not to give her the satisfaction of getting the monster pay-out from the life insurance policy that she had taken out on me shortly before putting her plan into action.
Gradually, my melancholy disappeared down the drain along with a lot of dirt.
Once I was dressed, I left the bathroom and went in search of Jenni. It wasn’t hard to find her. She was in the kitchen making something to eat.
"That smells nice," I said as I walked into the kitchen.
Jennifer smiled back at me.
“It is all straight from the freezer, tins or packets I’m afraid. Pasta with Tuna and Sweetcorn and a white sauce.”
“That sounds pretty good to me.”
"Your clothes are in the wash. I took the liberty of looking through your backpack. There are two more loads are waiting to be washed. I'll put them in the dryer after the wash. They'll be good to go by the morning."
My heart dropped. A padded bag in my pack contained all the gory details of what had happened to me financially and legally. I keep it as proof to others that I’m the victim not the perp despite what she might say about me. Even the Bailiffs have started to understand that I’m not the criminal mastermind and don’t have millions stashed in a tax haven. If I did why would I be living on the streets and sleeping rough. I labelled the bag ‘Blood and Stone’ more out of jest than anything.
Jenni saw the look of consternation on my face.
“I didn’t look at your papers but I have one question.”
“Fire away,” I replied as my stomach rumbled.
“Is your current predicament down to your wife, Imanuela Scott?”
I nodded my head.
“How do you know her?”
“We received a tipoff about some work her company did at the NEC two years ago. Just as we began to investigate it, she just closed the company down and opened up another company with a slightly different name. It is called ‘Phoenixing’.”
“That sounds about right. You’ll probably find that I’m… or was a director of those companies. I never knew anything about it until it was too late. One of those many pieces of paper in my pack is one informing me that I’ve been banned from taking any directorships for five years. That was news to me and to the person who served me with the order. He’d never ‘served’ a homeless person before. That pissed me off no end I can tell you.”
“Did you do anything about it?”
I nodded my head.
"I saw an old customer of mine. She owed me close to £100.00. I collected what I was owed and used the money to buy myself a train ticket down to London. I visited companies house and saw the accounts that had been filed. The signatures on the company accounts were close to mine but not mine, if you get my drift. I have copies of those accounts in my pack. You can see for yourself if you like.”
“This is just about ready. Hungry?” asked Jenni totally ignoring my last statement while
“I’m sure that I can manage a morsel or two.”
The food was while simple, like nectar from the gods. It brought back memories of better times. Times when I did most of the cooking for my wife. I mentally beat myself for continually harking back to the good old days. They will never return and the sooner I accept that fact the better.
“Penny for them?” asked Jenni.
“Sorry. I was miles away.”
She grinned.
“I could tell that. Thinking about happier times perhaps?”
“Something like that.”
Jenni ate some more of the excellent pasta.
“One day, you will explode. Keeping everything bottled up like that isn’t good for your blood pressure.”
I nearly choked on some tuna when I heard that.
“If anything, my BP is on the low side. Not eating regularly, doing a lot of walking and not drinking booze helps but only so far.”
“Am I right? About keeping things bottled up and all that?”
"Yes, but this is not the time nor the place and at this point in time, I don't know you from Adam and Eve to let it all come out. Besides, telling my tale of woe will take days if not weeks and you obviously have a life to lead and a job to do without me dragging you down to my level and risking your own personal safety. Believe me, the broken ribs that I have had since being on the streets is no joke.’”
"Oh, I believe you. It was your visit to the hospital some months ago that alerted us to your plight. One of our Officers was dealing with another case but heard your name mentioned by the staff. We'd been looking at your wife's business for some time and your disappearance had us worried."
“Why didn’t you contact me before now?”
Jenni laughed.
“We weren't ready too. Our investigations were at a very early stage. Things are a little more advanced now hence my approach to you earlier today."
I wasn't convinced. All I knew was that in a few hours, I’ll be back on the streets. Clean and moderately sweet-smelling but still homeless and broke and with no prospects for a future beyond the streets. I knew deep down that even if my wife was sent down for life, I’d be no better off. Life at times like this sucks, sucks big time.
[to be continued]
The luxury of a bed with sheets and pillows was now a foreign experience to me. Hard pavements and doorways had become the norm for me in recent months. After a few hours of tossing and turning, I ended up sleeping on the floor. It might have been hard but after wrapping myself in the luxurious duvet, I managed to get some sleep. The underfloor heating was a new experience for me. It helped me relax and get some shuteye.
As normal, I woke well before first light. At this time of year that is around 06:30. It is also the time that the town starts to come alive. If you have your wits about you, is it always good to get going before people start arriving at their own place of work. If your pitch for the night happens to be a doorway that business people wanted to use, you could often get a kick or two before you got out of their way.
After the last beating I took in early September, my ribs are still rather sore so the early morning kicking was something that I wanted to avoid at least between Monday and Saturday.
I crept out of my bedroom into a silent flat. Jennifer seemed to be still fast asleep. I collected my now washed and dried clothes and returned to my bedroom. After packing my rucksack, I stripped the bed and left the slightly soiled linen on the floor in the utility room.
My last task before leaving was to write a short note of thanks. Being on the streets has robbed me of almost all my dignity, but being polite and thankful was not one of them.
“Jennifer,
Thanks for the hospitality. I am an early riser so I hope that you don’t mind me leaving before you are up and about. Last night was a welcome change from a cold hard doorway so many, many thanks.
I hope that one day, I can return the favour. Yes, I know it is a long shot but it is my way of saying, ‘I owe you one’ even if you are the police.
Craig.”
I left it next to the coffee maker and as quietly as I could I left the flat and the building.
There had been a frost the previous night which made me even more thankful for being in the warm for once. The clear sky indicated that it was going to be a cold crisp late autumn/early winter’s day. I felt that I could do with a bit of a change in scenery so I headed out of town following the track of an old railway that had been turned into a cycle path some years before. I’d been this way many times since I’d become homeless.
As it was a weekday, the only other users of the path were dog walkers and a couple of joggers. They generally kept their distance from the likes of me which suited me perfectly especially those with canine companions. Dogs and I had never really gotten along.
Thanks to a relatively full stomach, I was able to make good time and had covered almost six miles before the autumnal sun started to warm my back. The old railway line ran through a tunnel which was where I’d last been beaten up.
After overcoming my nerves, I almost ran through the tunnel. Thankfully, there was no one about and I made it to the far end without incident. Not long afterwards, the path runs along the top of an embankment. It is very overgrown here and not very easy going. The lateness of the season meant that most of the nettles had died back so being thankful for small mercies, I carried on along the embankment instead of taking the long way down through the fields and over the main road and up the side of the next hill before I'd re-join the path.
The overgrowth was relatively thin where the main road passed underneath in a small tunnel so I stopped and sat in the sun for a while and ate the energy bar that the people at the 'Sally Anne' food truck had given me two days before. After washing it down with some water, I carried on along the path. My destination was just two miles away. There was a barn that was filled with straw. Thanks to a fellow ‘traveller’, who had made a hole in a wooden wall, there was a space inside for a person to sleep in relative warmth. A nearby chicken farm could be relied upon to give someone a day or so’s work in return for food and a little money. Clearing out a chicken shed is not most people’s idea of fun but I enjoyed the activity and they made sure that you were always well fed at the end of the day.
I cautiously approached the barn in the hope that no other 'traveller' was already in residence in the hidey-hole. Luckily, it was empty. There were signs that someone had been there recently but had not been there for several days. A previous occupant had left a welcome present in the shape of some excrement just inside the entrance. I guessed that it would keep the foxes away but I cleared it away and settled in for the night.
As dusk approached, I began to think back to the encounter with Jennifer the previous day. As much as I liked the attention, I felt that I could not trust her. She hadn't blinked or reacted in any way when I told her that I was toxic to everyone around me. That fact alone should have made me bail out then even if it meant leaving most of my clothes behind but I didn't. I'd just have to be more careful in the future. Like most homeless people, we regarded the Police as the enemy. They had their jobs to do and that was mostly to move us on in the hope that we became someone else’s problem. Being roughly woken up at four in the morning is not a way to make friends.
My temporary home had served me well for the past week. I’d been warm and dry despite the deluge that fell from the sky almost all day, every day. I’d been working at the Chicken Farm as ‘John Smith’ helping the owner Tom Mackay prepare his free-range chicken sheds for the next batch of young birds that were due in a week. Tom was a good boss. If you worked hard and had fun doing it, he was a happy camper. He paid me with a combination of three meals a day, a place to keep clean and get my washing done as well as £5.00 an hour. Adding it all up, it was about the minimum wage but I was happy with some money lodged inside my boot.
I kept it there just to make it harder to be robbed. People like me didn't 'flash the cash' without getting a beating for doing so.
I could have stayed on at the farm but I limited my time there to a week. Any longer than that and he might have had to get official with the records and that was the last thing I wanted to happen. It wasn't only out for my own self-preservation but his as well. He understood my reticence about staying longer. He was clear that because I was a good worker, I would be welcome back anytime. That was nice to know and I’d felt reasonably good with myself for a few days after that.
After a final breakfast at the farm, I headed back towards town along the old railway track hoping that my attackers from September were not waiting for me.
When I crossed the embankment, I saw a black Audi Q7 parked at the entrance to the field. I couldn't see anyone around but I wasn't going to take any chances so I retraced my steps for half a mile or so and took a public footpath that led off to the east. If it had been a muddy farm vehicle then I would not have bothered but this was very much a townie's car. The total absence of mud and grime on the outside made it stand out like a sore thumb in these parts.
From bitter experience, the country folk are far more tolerant to the likes of me than townies. Country folk know that we are passing through and won’t stay long. Townies assume that we are going to blot their bit of the landscape and thus reduce the sale price of their precious homes. A good number of verbal exchanges with townies had probably jaded my opinion of townies especially when out in the countryside. Many of them have very aggressive dogs that in my worthless opinion, need to have never been born in the first place. Many of my fellow travellers have the scars to prove their encounters with those beasts. So far, I’ve been lucky.
I missed one vital turning so it was close to 8 pm when I arrived in the centre of town. After buying myself something to eat and drink from a corner shop I went in search of somewhere to sleep. All my usual pitches were taken so I ended up heading for the old railway station. The place was now a museum at the end of a small preserved railway. With luck, one of the carriages that were stored there would provide me with a place to sleep for the night.
My luck was in and I stretched out on a bench seat inside my sleeping bag. I was dry and relatively warm. All seemed good as I fell asleep.
The next morning, I left the carriage early to avoid any chance of being found. I made sure that I left no sign of my visit as I might want to use it again.
I headed for the main road and a roadside van that mainly catered for Truck drivers and bought myself a coffee and a bacon roll. It was nice to get some hot food and liquid inside me again.
With some food in my stomach, I wandered back into town and found my usual bench by the river and watched people going about their business. It was kindly therapeutic. As it was market day, there were far more shoppers out and about even if it was cold and dank. Then I smelt it. I knew instinctively that she was behind me.
“Why don’t you sit down Jennifer?” I said without turning around.
I heard a sigh from behind me. That told me that I was right.
Jennifer came and sat down beside me.
"You don't need to wear so much perfume you know. Opium has a strong scent."
Jennifer laughed.
“What if I said that I did it deliberately?”
“Then I’d say that you were lying.”
“You are… correct. You are a hard person to find you know.”
"I've been out of town doing some casual work. I wasn't advertising my whereabouts on a roadside billboard you know. I told you that some people who don't like me around. I could be in more danger if they see me talking to you…"
“I don’t want to put you in any danger you must know that?”
I could see that this wasn’t going to go very far so I changed the subject.
“Didn’t you get my note?”
“I did but why? Why did you leave like that?”
It was my turn to sigh.
"Didn't you hear what I said about me being toxic? Anyone who tries to help me ends up regretting it big time. Ok, it might not be right away but they do. That's why I keep a very low profile. By doing that and staying off the booze has allowed me to survive this long. The last thing I want is to inflict my troubles on others. Please Jennifer: for your own sake get the hell out of my life. For your own personal safety, please find some other way to take my wife down but honestly, you have no idea what and whom you are dealing with. That’s all I’m going to say on the subject.”
I didn’t wait for her to respond. Instead, I picked up my pack and headed out of town. At least I was mostly alone in the countryside.
Anyone watching what just happened would think that I’m running away from the problem. I can’t run away from the problem because, in my mind, I am the problem.
In my angered state, I went the wrong way and ended up on the wrong side of town. I thought about going back but I saw a footpath sign about half a mile away so I bit the bullet and went that way. This path was not one I’d used before. It didn’t matter really. As long as I got away from the middle of the town I really didn’t care.
The houses soon gave way to the countryside again and I was able to relax a little bit. I convinced myself that going in a new direction would keep ‘them’ off my back. That was good. The bad was that the rain started coming down as if there was no tomorrow. I spotted a wood one field off the road and my luck was in, a footpath ran off in that direction. That was all I needed. I put my head down and left the road behind me.
The woodland offered some shelter from the rain but most of the leaf cover had already fallen so it only delayed my soaking. I carried on walking through the woodland towards the edge of the woodland. Gradually, the shape of a structure materialised. I hoped that it would provide some shelter.
Luck was with me and the structure turned out to be a hide. I’d stumbled upon a nature reserve. I have vague memories of the thing being opened some years before but we hadn’t ever visited it so it soon slipped my memory. To my eternal relief, the hide was empty and most importantly dry. Perfect.
Once I was settled into my new accommodation, I had the chance to reflect on what had happened that day. Why was Jennifer so interested in me? I would be next to useless in giving recent information that could enable a successful case against 'her'. Deep down I had this feeling that any information that I could give them could come back to haunt me thanks to her manipulation of the stupid ignorant fool that I once was.
I didn't believe a word the story that she'd told me about my wife reneging on a contract at the NEC. As far as I knew, her primary business was in recruitment and there was no reason for her to have anything to do with an exhibition or whatever going on at the NEC. Something about her story smelled to high heaven. Being that she was the Police, she might have had a good reason to tell me a porky-pie but I hated being taken for a fool or worse. I might be on the streets but I still have a working brain.
The mystery was no closer to being solved by the time I fell asleep.
Dawn was just breaking when I woke up. The wind had gotten up during the night which had caused me to put my dirty clothes over the bottom of the nearest door to the hide to stop at least some of the draft but otherwise, it had been a good night. The people who had built the hide did a really good job with the place. I made a mental note to use this place again in the future. There were many worse places to sleep.
Then I heard a noise. At first, I wondered if it was a rat or something. That didn’t last very long as the smell of coffee reached my nostrils. I sat up with a jerk and found Jennifer smiling at me from the other end of the hide.
"You are a very sound sleeper," she said.
“What the hell are you doing here? Can’t you understand that I’m not a person you want to be associated with?”
“I know all that but there are greater powers at play here,” said Jennifer as she got up from where she was sitting and approached me with paper cups of coffee in her hands.
“Here, take on before it gets cold.”
Grudgingly, I took the cup from her. The contents were not that hot but welcome all the same.
“Thanks,” I said once I’d finished the drink.
“But why are you really here? Who are these ‘greater powers’?”
Jennifer smiled as she reached into her pocket and showed me a Police ID. Until then, I’d had to take her word for it.
“You are actually a real cop then?”
“You told me that I was but until now, I never confirmed the fact that I really am a cop. Detective Chief Inspector Jennifer Watts at your service.”
Those few words completely deflated me.
“I guess that you are here to arrest me for multiple counts of fraud and even worse?”
Jennifer laughed.
“That’s the last thing I am going to do. We are not dumb. We can see when someone is being stitched up.”
“Really? Somehow, I have my doubts.”
Then I had an idea.
“Do you know why I chose that particular bench to sit on by the river?”
Jennifer thought for a moment before shaking her head.
“It is because ‘her’ office is just on the other side of the river. She can see me from her desk. Despite her taking out a court order that prohibits me from coming within 100m of her, I can sit there knowing that I’m only 50m from her desk. A judge said that as long as there was a river between us, there was no danger of me giving her a beating which is what I was accused of. The same goes for her charge of stalking. For the record, I've never laid a finger on her nor have I stalked her. There is just no point in trying to argue the toss. She has money for lawyers and I don't.”
Jennifer didn’t move.
“I’m probably guilty of all manner of nefarious crimes. Or rather the evidence that you have before you M’lady shows clearly that I’m guilty and should be sent down for at least ten years. If you think that I’m being sarcastic then I am. Being made homeless and every time I manage to get a job that might get me off the streets, I get slapped down again big time. The last time was over in Shrewsbury, where a 'tip-off' accused me of being a child molester. The time before that it was that I was dealing in child porn. Naturally, no evidence was produced but it was enough to get me shown the door right there and then. Since then, I've worked a bit but off the books, casual like.”
I put the empty cup down on the nearby bench and stood up.
“Time for me to do the perp-walk as they say on US TV shows. I’m guilty as charged.”
“You haven’t been charged yet?”
“Give it time Detective Chief Inspector, give it time.”
“I’m not so sure but I would like you to come with me to York which is where I’m based. I’m part of a serious crime task force. As I said, there are bigger forces at play here. ‘She’ as you put it is just one of the people we are going after. I had my doubts about how genuine you were but seeing you up to your neck in chicken droppings convinced me that you are not the criminal mastermind that the local Police seem to think you are. My guess is that ‘she’ has tainted the waters with her claims against you.”
She let that sink in for a moment.
“Shall we go? My Sergeant has a car waiting for us back on the main road.”
“Why do you want me? I know very little.”
"You would be surprised at how much relevant information you have picked up. Why not get a roof over your head, three meals a day and help us to get even with her?"
"It seems from here that know very little about her business," I argued.
“Until we pool our knowledge, we won’t know who is telling the truth will we?”
“This roof over my head? I take it that will be in the cells?”
Jennifer shook her head.
“No. There is a fairly decent hotel almost next to where my unit is based. For security reasons, we keep out operations well away from local police buildings. If they did a search on my car, it would show that it is leased to a company in Southampton who deals with container shipping. When you are investigating serious and organised crime, it pays to keep a low profile.”
“Ok, I’ll come but reluctantly.”
“Understood.”
I packed my things and we walked back through the wood to the main road. I wondered just what I was getting involved with. I had this feeling of impending doom. At least I’d be well away from here for a few days which could not be all bad or could it?
[to be continued]
Jennifer did her best to talk to me during the nearly three-hour journey from Shropshire to York. I wasn't in the mood to talk. My rumbling stomach soon alerted her to one of the reasons why I was fairly uncooperative. She took pity on me after an hour or so and we stopped for a late breakfast which made me feel a good deal better, but not enough to engage in anything other than a casual conversation with her. I wanted to know more about why she and her colleagues thought that I could be useful in their investigations.
These past months had changed me from a pretty extrovert sort of person into someone who is pretty introverted and very comfortable with my own company. A lot of it is down to trust. I’d learned the hard way about trusting people on the road.
When someone betrays your trust in them, you lose most if not all of your ability to trust others for a long, long time. It is going to be a long time before I trust anyone anywhere near as much as I’d trusted my wife. I'd trusted 'her'. If you can't trust your wife then who can you trust? The fact that she earned the megabucks when compared to me hadn't been a problem for most of our marriage. She earned the money while I managed our home and did most of the cooking. She could come home and there would be food ready for her if she wanted it. That trust is worth a lot but it and many other things became nowhere near enough for her.
The prospect of strangers digging deep into my past did not please me one little bit. Eventually, 'it' would come out. It was something that I'd always been very private about but that wouldn't last very long if their investigators were anywhere close to being half-decent. Given how easily she’d found me was a big hint that she had access to some top shot investigators.
The very thought of ‘it’ coming out could make my future very bleak. I’d had to promise ‘her’ that I’d never tell anyone about ‘it’. She’d lose a lot of face or that is what she’d told me in no uncertain terms when we parted. Even though she was no longer directly in my life I’d promised her certain things when we split up. Despite everything, I was going to do my best to honour those promises. That’s who I am. Naive? Probably but that was the least of my worries at the moment.
I audibly sighed as I realised that my life as I currently had was over.
“Did you say something?” said Jennifer.
“Sorry,” I mumbled.
“I was just wondering what disaster would happen to me next. This year has been one disaster after another and it isn’t over yet.”
“What could happen?”
“Oh… the earth could open up and swallow me whole. That would put an end to my own ‘anus horriblis’.”
Jennifer laughed.
“Somehow, I don’t think that will happen. It can’t be that bad can it?”
“Worse. Much worse.”
Wisely, she shut up and let her Sergeant carry on driving. I did see him chuckle. At least my demise as a human being was providing some entertainment.
“Here we are,” said Jennifer as the car drew up outside an identikit factory unit on the outskirts of York.
It was identikit because it looked like all the other seven units in this small industrial estate on the eastern outskirts of the beautiful city of York. None of the cars that were parked outside this unit shouted ‘Police’ which pleased me no end. If this place was being used for an undercover investigation, it seemed perfect.
“Grab your rucksack and follow me,” said Jennifer.
She held the door open for me. For a moment, I wondered where her bags were but that wasn’t my concern. I was more concerned with getting a shower or even better, a long hot bath in a tub where I could stretch out but neither of them would happen in the short term. I felt that I’d be here for a long time before they’d let me go so that I could return to the streets.
I went inside and stopped still. The entrance looked like any other small business. A reception desk with a receptionist who was filing her nails just like many others did around the world.
“Hello Sandra,” said Jennifer to the receptionist.
“Go on through Jennifer. They are expecting you,” replied Sandra.
“Thanks.”
Jennifer turned to me.
“You can leave your pack here.”
"I'll keep it with me if you don't mind. Force of habit I'm afraid."
She just shrugged her shoulders and opened the door that led into a corridor.
I followed her into the depths of the building. I could hear people talking but all the doors were both solid and closed tight. Jennifer stopped almost at the end of the corridor.
She punched in a code onto a keypad. The door clicked open and we went inside.
Six people were sitting around a large table. One of them hurriedly covered up some documents and charts that were being worked on.
“This is Craig Scott. He is here to help with our problems.”
“I’m Detective Chief Inspector Eastwood,” said the man sitting at the head of the table.
“Glad you could make it. Please take a seat.”
“Sorry DCI, I really didn’t think I had much choice.”
“DCI?” asked DCI Eastwood.
"Sorry, Sir. I know how important is to get Mr Scott on board."
"Welcome, Mr Scott. You will get to know the rest of us during your stay with us."
"Chief Inspector, I don't know how I can help you that won't get me locked up. If I was in the USA, I'd be asking for my lawyer and pleading the 5th but we aren't. As I am sure that you are well aware, it is my name on some of the company documents."
“Mr Scott… Can I call you Craig?”
I nodded my head.
"That is one thing that you do not have to worry about. Those signatures look genuine at first glance but in reality, they are not very good fakes. Our handwriting people are sure about that so you can breathe easy."
I tried not to show any emotion at the good news but I failed. I smiled.
“Why don’t you tell us what you know about your wife’s businesses and business dealings,” said the DCI.
“Former wife Chief Inspector.”
There were some strange looks around the table.
“What is wrong? I signed the papers. I have my copy in my pack.”
I didn’t wait for them to respond. I dived into my pack and retrieved my stash of documents. A short search revealed the divorce papers that I’d signed to end my marriage.
“Here… Look for yourself?”
The papers were passed around the table and then back to me.
“Is there something wrong?”
“Your wife has failed to submit them to the court. Legally, Mr Scott, you are still married.”
That news knocked me for six and then some.
“Why would she do that? She was so keen for me to sign the papers almost as soon as I was… was thrown out of our home.”
“Mr Scott?” said one of the other people in the room.
“Detective Sergeant Murdoch. If I may, I think I have an explanation.”
Everyone turned to look at her. She was drop-dead gorgeous. Even with her long light brown hair up, I could tell that she'd break a lot of hearts of both men and women just by walking through a room.
“Please explain Sergeant,” said the DCI.
“Sir, one of the early surveillance reports on Mrs Scott showed that she visited the City of London offices of the Marine Life Assurance Company. If I may, I can retrieve the dates from the computer.”
“Please do Sergeant.”
She opened up a laptop and after signing in, she swiftly searched the records.
"She visited them on the 5th of February and again on the 26th of April.”
“She threw me out on the 24th of April,” I said in response.
“Sir,” said the sergeant.
“Could it be possible that Mrs Scott took out a life insurance policy on Mr Scott and once he was not part of her life, she cancelled it?”
“Or increased the sum assured?” suggested Jennifer.
“Mere supposition,” said the DCI.
“But one that needs following up.”
He turned to the Sergeant.
“Sergeant Murdoch, I think that someone needs to chase this up. As you seem to know more about this particular theory than anyone else, then put this at the top of your list for tomorrow.”
“Sir.”
I knew about the insurance policy. The policy documents had been delivered to my old home address two days before she threw me out. They were addressed to ‘Mr & Mrs’ so I opened them and saw the sum insured. For some reason, I’d kept the letter. It was buried in a plastic container in a wood near the railway tunnel where I’d been beaten up. I hoped that my wife didn’t know that I knew about the insurance policy.
Letting the Police find out for themselves would ensure that I could not be accused of lying about her intentions.
It was nearly 22:00 when I flopped down onto my hotel bed. I was mentally exhausted. We'd spent almost six hours going at it. I was surprised at how they'd interrogated me about things I thought I didn't know anything about but it turned out that I did. As I thought about the day, I had to tip my hat to how they were able to get lots of information out of me without me feeling that I was giving lots away. That takes skill, lots of skill.
Jennifer had ducked out at one point to get us all some food. She returned with an Indian meal. My stomach had lost its tolerance of spicy food and for the last hour or so, I had been suffering. My obvious discomfort had been the reason we called it a day when we did.
I had the distinct feeling that I was going to be up and down to the toilet all night.
In the hours that I was awake, I had the chance to think about how things might go the next day. I had to assume that it would be more of the same, a gentle interrogation with what I knew or didn’t realise what I knew coming out in dribs and drabs. There had to be a better way but what?
The ‘but what’ came to me just before three in the morning. With my mind settled, I was able to at least get some sleep between trips to the toilet.
After eating breakfast in the Hotel Restaurant, Jennifer and I returned to the industrial unit. I didn’t feel at my best due to the lack of sleep. I hoped that would work in my favour when I pitched my idea.
Just before 09:00, we all assembled in the same room as the day before. I wanted to ask about the other people in the building but I refrained from doing so. I didn't want to appear too nosy.
“I was knackered last night but I couldn’t sleep. I kept going over everything we covered yesterday,” I said to the others.
“Did you think of anything else?” asked the DCI.
I shook my head.
“That’s just it. I didn’t and I really can’t go through yesterday again. I had an idea. Could I float it?”
“Please, go ahead. What we discovered yesterday will take us several days to follow up,” said the DCI.
"Good. My idea is that I work one on one with one of your officers and we get my whole story down on paper. That should then provide a jumping-off point for further discussions. What do you think?"
There was silence in the room. After a few seconds, Jennifer spoke up.
“How good are you at typing?”
She’d got me there.
“Strictly one finger I’m afraid.”
“Boss, why don’t I help Craig get it all down. It can be used as his statement.”
The DCI thought for a few seconds.
“Good idea. We’ll review things tomorrow afternoon. Let’s say at four?”
No one disagreed with him so the meeting broke up soon after leaving Jennifer and myself alone.
"Do you think that we can get it all down in time? There is a lot to tell isn't there?"
I managed a smile.
“Yes, there is. Shall we get started?
“Let me get my laptop from my desk and we can get going,” she said with a smile.
Our last act of the day was to review what I’d said and what Jennifer had captured.
“This bit about your first meeting with your wife. I’m still confused.”
“Ok, let me tell you this bit again. I was on holiday in Romania. Not the most obvious of holiday destinations but I’m not an obvious sort of person. I flew to Bucharest and rented a car. After one night in the capital, I headed for the Danube Delta where I’d arranged to stay on a converted barge for a week. This was in early June and there are millions of birds in the delta but you need a boat to even get close. Being a delta, there are only a few roads. I rented one and for a couple of days, everything was great. On the third day, it sprang a leak. Luckily, another boat was coming down the same bit of the river as me. They rescued me that was when I met Imanuela. The boat she’d been on was owned by her family. The family treated me like royalty and she sort of took me under her wing for the rest of my holiday. She showed me all the best places for birds like Bee-Eaters.
While I was being entertained by them, I learned that her family were and still are for all I know small-time smugglers. They use their knowledge of the delta to bypass the border guards and take all manner of stuff in and out of Ukraine. They were very proud that they’d evaded the Germans in WW2 and supplied the anti-fascists inside Romania. They boasted about the fact that they had been doing it for centuries even when Ukraine was part of the USSR. There was not a lot of love lost between the Romanians under Ceausescu and the Soviets. Ceausescu was a communist but wanted to do things his own weird way much like Tito in Yugoslavia. They tolerated Ceausescu as long as they didn't show too much favour towards the west. What complicated matters because they are the only country with a border on the Black Sea apart from Turkey that does not use Cyrillic Script. That is a hangover from Roman times. Imanuela's family was proud of their independence from the USSR and now Russia and Ukraine.“
“Ok,” said Jennifer.
“I got that. What happened next?”
"At the end of my holiday, I said goodbye and returned home as scheduled."
“That’s it?”
“Yep. I finished my holiday and came home.”
“But…” said Jennifer as she referred to another part of my story.
“It says here that you met again three years later.”
“I had been made redundant from my job at the Ironbridge Gorge Power Station. The thing was well past its use-by date and was slowly being closed down. I saw this ad in the paper for this Recruitment Agency. The ad said that they were looking for semi-skilled labourers. That was me so I phoned them up. As I was in the area, I dropped by with a copy of my CV. That’s when I met her again. We were married in Romania eight months later.”
Before she could respond, I added,
“I didn’t get the job but she suggested working for myself. That’s when I became a window cleaner. That’s what I did and I enjoyed it… until my world disintegrated around me.”
Jennifer spent a few minutes making changes to my story.
“That leads us very nicely to what happened to get you thrown out.”
This was the bit I had been dreading.
“You don’t strike me as a ladies man,” said Jennifer confidently.
"I had this habit. Nothing illegal but some people don't like it."
Jennifer sat back in her chair. I could tell that she could see uncomfortable I was.
“Ok, ok. I have always liked to dress up in women’s clothes. That good enough for you? I was dressed up and doing some ironing when she came home and found me. All hell broke loose and to cut a long story short, I was thrown out of the house with just the clothes on my back and the little bit of cash I had in my pocket.”
Jennifer just sat there. Slowly a smile broke out on her face.
“Yes, it funny. Well, it isn’t to me. I was born feeling like that and there is nothing I can do about those desires. It is part of me, warts and all.”
“I think that it is enough for one day, don’t you?”
I couldn’t agree more.
That evening I had a Chinese delivered to my room. The last thing I needed was to have to face her with that smug grin on her face at least until the next day.
As I tried to put the day into some sort of context, I wondered why Jennifer had not reacted to the news that I like to wear women’s clothes. The only thing I could think of was that she already knew and that the whole day had been staged just to get me to admit that I was a tranny. Something did not add up.
[to be continued]
[the next day]
Jennifer escorted me into the anonymous building once again. She sat me down in the same room that we’d used the day before.
“I’m sorry about my reaction yesterday. What you said took me by surprise and… I couldn’t help myself smile. I’m afraid that it is a trait of mine that goes back to when I was a child. According to my shrink, it is my way of deflecting unexpected news.”
I didn’t respond. Frankly, I didn’t believe one word she’d said but I was going to hold my counsel for the time being.
"Can we get on? I just don't feel comfortable here. I've grown used to always being on the move."
Jennifer sighed.
“I can’t pretend to understand why this is but I have seen the same behaviour when I was on the beat. Many of the homeless couldn’t stay in a hostel for more than a couple of days no matter how bad the weather was outside, they just had to be on the move.”
“Yeah. I call it wanderlust. The lust to be out wandering the highways and byways and not penned in by four walls. I never thought that I would become like other ‘people of the road’ but I seem to have fallen in with some bad company like that. I've not been sleeping in the bed in my room but on the floor. It is what I've become used to."
“It is your room so you can do as you please in it,” she replied.
I did notice a slight shake of her head as she spoke.
“As long as I don’t wreck it?” I answered smiling.
“There is no chance of that. I don’t want to burn my bridges and all that but it seems that a couple of days is all I can manage inside at the moment. My dirty laundry has been washed but some of it is well past its use-by date."
Then I realised what I’d said.
“Sorry, you don’t need to know that sort of stuff.”
We got down to finishing up documenting my story. She was very good at teasing information from me especially the things that I didn't think were that important. It didn't take long to realise that even the smallest snippet of information could prove very important in the long run.
We wrapped up just before lunch, at which point, I said,
“How do I get back to my home turf?”
My words seemed to take her by surprise.
“Is that what you want?”
"It is the area that I know. Yorkshire is like a foreign country to me, I'm afraid. I'm much more comfortable back in Shropshire.”
Jennifer thought for a few seconds.
“I’ll see what I can arrange even if it means that I’ll take you there myself.”
“Thanks. I appreciate that.”
Jennifer disappeared leaving me alone in a featureless room. The decor was very bland in that it was all beige. There was no natural light. That was something that I'd grown to really appreciate over these past few months. I'd made a vow to myself that if I got myself back to something approaching normality, I'd make sure that natural light would flood my homes in the future but that was very much wishful thinking at the present time.
I spent my idle time thinking about the times in my life when things had been different and mostly a heck of a lot better than what I was going through at the moment.
Jennifer smiled at me when she came through the door carrying what appeared to be lunch in a large paper bag. That was both good and bad. Good in that I was getting hungry and bad in that it indicated that I'd be here for a good few hours yet.
“Do you want to eat now or on the road?”
Her words surprised me for a second or so.
“Does this mean that I’m going back to Shropshire?”
“Yes. I’m done here for a few days. I have some inquiries to do based upon what you and others have told us.”
I smiled back at her.
"On the road, if you don't mind. I'd like to get back before it gets dark so that I can find a place to sleep tonight."
She looked a bit offended.
“You could stay at the flat of my friend if you like? That’s where I’ll be staying.”
"And that is exactly why I need to go back onto the streets. As I told you, I know that my wife is having me watched. not all the time but often enough to know that if I disappear for too long, then she'll send out the dogs. The first time I worked at the chicken farm for a week, I was beaten when I returned to town. They demanded to know where I'd been. I know that they check up on me. There was a black Audi parked in a field near the farm a few times the last time I was there. I've seen that same car around the town."
“I remember you telling me that.”
She thumbed through her notes.
"Here it is. We ran the plates and discovered that they are cloned from a Renault Clio that has never left Scotland."
“Why don’t you get your people to stop it and… you know arrest those in the car? Who knows what you will find in the back?”
“One day perhaps but we don’t want to tip our hand.”
I was about to say, ‘I understand’ when Jennifer picked up the paper bag and opened the door for me. That was a clear statement of intent. I took the hint.
“Why here?”
"The Nature Reserve where you found me is just over that hill. That's where I was last seen heading. It would seem a little suspicious to appear in town coming from the other direction."
Jennifer stopped the car at the entrance to a field. She smiled at me.
"It seems to me, that you are more than a little paranoid overall about this thing with your wife, aren’t you? From the help you have given, it won’t be difficult to persuade my bosses to hide you somewhere well away from here.”
“And have her wondering where I’d gone. I’m far safer being where I can be seen as if nothing has happened. I fully expect to be paid a visit from certain people when I get back in town tomorrow. They’ll want to know where I’ve been. I can tell them the truth and explain that I have slept in the hide for a few nights. I can even tell them where I buried my excrement. It is the little details like that, that make all the difference.”
I went to open the car door but stopped.
“To be honest, I don’t know why she hasn’t had me topped. Then all that lovely money from the insurance will be hers free and clear. After all, the local ‘plod’ won’t put much effort into investigating the death of a homeless man especially if it is made to look like a suicide.”
Jennifer nodded.
“That thought has crossed my mind once or twice.”
Then she said,
“You have my phone number. If you feel at risk, then call.”
“Yeah. I have it written in anagram form in my pack. I’ll call provided I can find a public phone that works. They are few and far between these days.”
I didn’t wait for her to reply as I got out of the car.
“Thanks for the hospitality Jennifer but please keep your distance from me. If you need to speak to me in future, please get the local uniforms to pick me up and arrest me. Plain sight and all that."
She grinned.
“Are you sure that you shouldn’t be doing my job?”
I laughed.
"Reading far too many crime novels as a child is my excuse, and I'm sticking to it."
I shut the door and stepped away from the car. Jennifer gave me a little wave and left me in the gathering gloom of the evening.
The light lasted long enough for me to reach the Nature Reserve. The 'hide' wasn't locked or occupied by another homeless person, so I settled down for the night.
I still had a little money left from my work on the farm, so I bought myself some food when I returned to town the next morning. I made a point of sitting on my favourite bench to eat my breakfast. I washed it down with a paper cup of now lukewarm tea. I sat with my back to her office on the other side of the river. She'd seen me sitting this way before. I could not be accused of being a peeping tom or a voyeur. All I could see was the public park and a children's playground on the far side. That was over 100 metres away, which I hoped was far enough away to not be accused of suspicious behaviour although I'd not put it past her to do something like that just out of spite.
A couple of the other homeless people stopped to pass some time. I knew that they were hoping to get some booze from me. Once they understood that I didn’t have any, they quickly moved on.
The day passed without incident. Towards evening, it came onto rain. That was my cue to look for a shelter for the night. All the usual places were already taken so I headed for the preserved railway and the railway carriage that had served me so well in the past.
My luck was in, and the last compartment of the carriage was open. It seemed that no one else had discovered the place since I was last around. I was soon settled in for the night. My last task was to lock the door. All this needed was a square section key. I’d made one when I was last working on the Farm. The manager was kind enough to find me a piece of 10mm square steel rod. I spent one lunchtime filing it down into a taper so that it would fit the carriage door. The last thing I wanted was someone else bursting in on me while I was sleeping.
I was very thankful that I had this little hideaway that night. The rain lashed down until shortly before dawn.
Drinking hot strong tea on an empty stomach is not always a good idea. Today was one of those, and it ran right through me. I needed to find a decent toilet and in a hurry.
I knew where the available toilets were in town, and they were all too far away given the pains coming from my intestine, which left me with no choice, I had to hope that Jennifer was staying at her friend's flat.
I made it to the front door, pressed the intercom button and prayed, prayed that Jennifer was at home.
The seconds passed by and there was silence. I was about to decide to either press the button again or leg it to a back alley and do my business when…
“Yes?”
“Jennifer? It’s Craig. I need to use your toilet and quickly.”
The door buzzed, and I was in.
She met me at the top of the stairs, but I dashed right past her and into the bathroom.
I’d just made it before the tea caused my bowels to erupt.
I felt like shit, but I cleaned the toilet once I was done and opened the window to let it air. The place stank, and she didn't need to clean up after me. As I kept telling myself, I do have at least a little pride left.
I stood for a few seconds in front of the open window and took a few deep breaths. I could see right down the street to the river and beyond. I knew where I'd rather be at the moment but I was here, and I had to say thank you to Jennifer before I left.
As I went to turn away, I noticed what was unmistakably a camera lens pointing at me. I froze for a second as I closed my eyes and took stock of the situation. It was clear that someone was keeping the flat under surveillance.
I took a few more deep breaths with my eyes closed before closing the window and leaving the room.
Jennifer was in the kitchen nursing a cup of something.
"Sorry about that I said. Drinking a mug of strong tea on an empty stomach ran right through me."
She smiled.
“Glad to be of service.”
She'd been writing out a shopping list, so I grabbed the pad and wrote,
"There is a camera pointed right at the flat. I opened the window in the toilet, and there it was. There might be a bug in here…"
The smile disappeared from her face in a flash. She took the pen from me and wrote.
“Gotcha.”
“Thanks for the use of the facilities. I’ll let you get back to your day. Sorry for bothering you.”
“No problem.”
I picked up my rucksack and headed back to the street. I had to get out of town.
I tried my hardest not to look back to see if anyone was following me, but I did a slow and steady walk down to the river, along the path past my favourite bench, and after crossing the river, I carried on along the main road to the south. I'd been this way a couple of times, and I knew of a footpath that went off in a south-westerly direction about a mile from town.
As I walked along the footpath by the side of the fairly busy road, I tried to remember where the footpath eventually ended up. I'd spent a good number of hours in the public library pouring over large-scale maps of the area when I first became homeless. It is surprising what you can learn from large scale maps.
Slowly, the memory of the map came back, and I recalled that if I took the right turns and didn’t rush, I’d end up over the border in Wales not that far from the border town of Knighton in a couple of days. That seemed a safer option for me at the moment.
I still didn't look back until well after I'd turned off the main road onto the footpath. The first half mile or so was very boggy. In the end, I had to stop to try to remove some of the mud from my boots. As I wiped them on the wet grass at the side of the path, I looked back along the way I'd come.
Parked right at the entrance to the path was a black car. I guessed that it was the same black Audi that had been following me recently. It was parked facing back towards the town and had the passenger window wound down. I could make out a figure inside, but that was it. I had to assume that I was being photographed. There was nothing I could do about it, it was a public place after all.
There was nothing I wanted to do about it. The ‘ugly duckling’ was getting out of town. I’d finally taken the hint and left. Seeing that camera lens pointed at me from across the street had been the last straw.
I returned to fighting the muddy path. At least the weather was dry and looking at the clouds to the southwest, it seemed that I might get through the day before it rained again.
It was around midday when I emerged from a small wood where I came to a junction with a major footpath. The signpost said that this was the 'Offa's Dyke' Path. Luckily for me, there was a small section of the local Ordnance Survey map attached to the path sign. I could see that if I headed along the path, I'd pass through a couple of small hamlets before crossing a disused railway. I’d found that sleeping under old railway bridges generally kept me pretty dry. The downside was that the wind could whip through them making them not only draughty but very cold. Cold and dry was preferable to being cold and wet.
The mere fact that I was also heading in the general direction of Welshpool, made the decision about which way to go an easy one. It wasn’t Knighton but was just as good in my opinion. I managed a small smile as I remembered that there was a narrow-gauge railway in the town. Railway carriages were fast becoming my favourite places to sleep.
The rain held off, and there was no sign of that black car so my spirits were high as darkness approached. My good luck was holding as I descended onto the old railway track. The farmer on the other side had blocked the bridge using a pile of earth and other rubble. That gave me a decent windbreak.
As I settled down for the night, my rumbling stomach told me that I’d not had anything to eat for more than a day. I would need to find a shop the next morning so that I could purchase some food. It would be even better if there was a Post Office nearby. I could draw my benefits from one using my card. I fell asleep thinking that things might just be starting to look up.
The next morning, I walked into the village of Pant. Sure, enough there was a shop plus Post Office. I drew some money and stocked up on food that could easily be consumed while on the move.
As I left the shop, I saw the front of the local paper. It was the latest edition. The headline attracted me. It read,
“Police Officer Attacked. Homeless man suspected.”
I bought a copy of the paper and left the shop.
The story made two things clear to me. Firstly, the officer concerned was Jennifer and the second was that it was me that they were after. I hadn't done it, but people put two and two together and made five thousand. The report said that the officer was in Hospital in Shrewsbury in a serious but stable condition. I had to hope that she pulled through.
The more I thought about it, the sadder I became. I spent another night under the railway bridge trying to decide what to do.
The next morning dawned cold and wet with a biting wind from the north. As the Scots say, it was a 'dreech’ day. I knew what I had to do and hoped that eventually, people would believe me.
I carried on southwest towards the town of Welshpool. I kept to the paths and minor roads. It was late afternoon when I entered the town. I found the Police Station and buzzed on the door.
"I think I'm the homeless man, that you are looking for in relation to the attack on the Police Officer on Oswestry."
Two uniformed officers came out of the building and took me inside.
At least it was warm and dry inside the building. Plus, there was the prospect of getting a hot drink, and with a bit of luck, something to eat.
[to be continued]
Don’t-05
The next few hours were very much a blur. I was searched several times before I was taken to Shrewsbury Police Station for questioning. My requests for something to eat were ignored.
"These could be evidence," said the detective who was assigned to question me as he held up an unopened pack of six energy bars. From the look of him, Detective Sergeant Saunders was a rookie in the Plain Clothes world. He had no dress sense at all and trying to wear shirts that were at least one if not two sizes too small for him, did not present an air of confidence or authority
I just shook my head. Numbskulls.
“Evidence of what? Do you think it is possible to attack someone with a granola bar?”
The Detective’s colleagues all laughed heartily. He was not amused.
“You will get what’s coming to you later.”
“What is that Detective Sergeant?”
“What you gave our colleague… That’s what.”
“What happened to innocent until proven guilty?”
“You were seen leaving the Officers home.”
“Yeah, I was there. So what? I’ve been helping her with her enquiries.”
“Pull the other one.”
“Why don’t you check with her superiors? She took me to a place in York where I spent a couple of days telling her and her team members.”
He just shook his head.
“Don’t believe me eh?”
“It isn’t a question of me believing you rather than you proving it…”
“Give me my rucksack and I will.”
Reluctantly, he left me alone for a few minutes.
When he returned, he had my rucksack with him.
I looked inside. Everything was a mess. I prided myself on keeping it tidy. After all, it held all my worldly possessions. The padded envelope with all my papers in was missing.
“Where is the padded envelope? The one with all my papers in?”
“Was there one?”
“If you check with the Desk Sergeant, you will find that there was. It was listed in the contents when I was booked in.”
He took the hint and went to check. I wondered if it had ‘gone missing’ but a couple of minutes later, he returned with it.
“Sorry about that. The Sergeant had put it in the safe because he thought that it was valuable.”
“It is valuable. To me at least,” I said as I emptied the contents onto the desk.
I found the item I was looking for.
“Here it is,” I proclaimed.
I pushed it over the table to him.
“That is a bill from a hotel on the outskirts of York. As you can see, it is for two rooms last week. The credit card slip shows that DCI Watts paid for the rooms.”
“So, it was a lovers tiff then?”
“What was?”
“You beating her senseless that’s what?”
“I didn’t do that.”
“Why did you visit her home the other day?”
“I needed to use her toilet in a hurry. I’d drank a large mug of hot strong tea on an empty stomach and it had run right through me. I did my business, cleaned up the bathroom and left. If you check the CCTV, you will see me leaving around twenty minutes after I arrived. When I left, she was about to make a phone call following something I’d told her during my visit. I’m sure that if you check the times from the CCTV and her phone call, you will see that I’d left well before the attack.”
“How do you know that?”
“Know what?”
“When the attack took place?”
I sighed.
“The newspaper said that it happened just after ten in the morning. I was long gone by then.”
He gave me a look that said ‘pull the other one sunshine’.
“Have you checked her phone?”
“What phone? There was no phone found on the premises.”
“Then what are you doing to find it? It is an iPhone so it can be pinged remotely.”
“You seem to know a lot about this stuff… I notice that you don’t have one.”
“I’m homeless remember.”
“What’s all that money we found on you then?”
I dug into the envelope and pulled out two receipts. I gave them to him.
“What am I supposed to do with these then?”
“Errr… Look at them.”
He glanced at them and pushed them back to me.
I sighed.
“One is for a withdrawal of my benefits payment at the Post Office in Pant. The other is for the supplies I bought also in Pant. Take the cost of those supplied plus the cost of the newspaper and subtract that from the amount of cash I had on me when I arrived here and you should get to a big fat zero.”
He didn’t even bother to look at the receipts again. I gathered them up and put them back in my envelope. As I did so, I shook my head.
“Don’t give me that. Don’t try to be some sort of smart ass with me. I know your game.”
“What game is that Detective Sergeant?”
I could tell that he was getting a bit riled.
“I’d like something to eat now. I have not had a proper meal in four days.”
I sat back and crossed my arms. As far as I was concerned our conversation was over.
“Why you….”
“Oh, and I’d like a lawyer. Please.”
He left me sitting there for all of 10 seconds. He came back into the room and took my Rucksack and Document Folder with him. Then I was left alone.
I don’t wear a watch I’ve learned to tell the time from the cues around me. That is all well and good for the countryside but I was sitting in an office with no natural daylight at all. I had been left alone without any food or water for several hours. Now I needed to use the toilet.
“Hello!” I called out.
“Is there anyone there? I need to use the toilet.”
No answer. I left it for a few minutes before repeating my plea.
I was about to call out again when the door opened and a detective walked in.
“Hello, I’m Detective Constable Khan. I have some good news for you.”
That got my attention in a flash.
“The DCI has regained consciousness and has given us a description of her attackers. When we told her that we had you in custody, she got very agitated. I have spoken to her superior about what you said about helping with an investigation. He confirms your involvement. The DCI is adamant that it wasn’t you who attacked her.”
I smiled.
“Does that mean I am free to go?”
“You are but… The DCI’s boss would like to speak to you on the phone first.”
"Ok. I'll talk to them but I need to use the toilet and I'd very much like something to drink and if possible, something to eat. I've not had a proper meal for four days. I did mention it to DS Saunders but he made a point of ignoring my requests.
She smiled back at me.
“If you would come with me, I’ll show you where the toilets are.”
“Thanks.”
“Thanks for paying for this.”
She smiled back at me. Her white teeth making a great show against her light brown skin. That skin was flawless. ‘Oh, I wish…’ I thought to myself.
“I’ll get it from the petty cash later. We have a duty of care to people and DS Saunders has… shall we say, a bit of a reputation for ignoring it. He has this big chip on his shoulder because he’s been passed over for promotion to Detective Inspector… twice.”
Those few words explained a lot to me about his behaviour. His hard man act was that… just an act. I had to hope that my one encounter with him was just that, one.
I ate my fill and started to feel a lot better for it. I missed doing the cooking… before. I let out a sigh as I thought back to my kitchen. It was my kitchen. She never cooked if she could get out of it.
“What was that sigh for?” asked DC Khan.
Her words brought me back to reality.
"Oh sorry. I was… I was just thinking back to before when I did all the cooking. I miss that sort of thing even if it is pretty mundane. It gave me a chance to be creative. That was not something I could do with my job."
“What was your old job?”
“Nothing special. I was a self-employed window cleaner.”
She did her best not to laugh.
“See… nothing special.”
The phone conversation with Jennifer’s boss, Chief Superintendent Collinson, was very illuminating. He thanked me for filling in a lot of missing blanks into his investigation into my Wife and the company that she worked for. He didn’t say much about what was useful but I came away from it with a good feeling.
I did get the impression that things were coming to a head. That made me wonder what was going to happen to me then? My future looked unsure, to say the least. That was what I'd come to expect since she'd thrown me out.
DC Khan was waiting for me when I ended the call.
“Are you ready to go?”
“Eh? Go where?”
“To a safe place to sleep?”
“I don’t understand?”
“Oh? I thought that would be explained to you?”
“I’m in the dark. From here, it is pitch black. But honestly, if someone could arrange a lift back to Welshpool, I can find somewhere to sleep on my own.”
DC Khan shook her head.
“DCI Watts said that you were an independent sort of person.”
"You have to be pretty independently-minded sort of person to survive on the streets despite a good few people wanting you dead or at least out of action for the foreseeable future."
“You seem remarkably stoic about it all?”
“Stoic? Hardly. I was thrown out of my home and have been made to pay for my mistake many times over. Jennifer… Detective Chief Inspector Watts told me a lot about my wife and her family that I was blindly unaware of. Still… If what I just heard is anything to go by, it will all be over very soon."
“That’s why we have secured a place for you to stay for the time being.”
I wasn’t convinced.
“At least come and have a look at it?”
“Are you going to be my chaperone?”
DC Khan laughed.
“Something like that. At least for a couple of days.”
There was something about her that made me not want to argue with her one little bit so I followed her out of the Police Station and to her car.
“Climb in. We have a good way to go tonight.”
“Where are we going?”
“You’ll know when we get there…”
If there was one thing I hated as a child was people talking down to me. She was doing that right at the start.
"Please don't treat me like some child. I'm far too old and grumpy to be one so please don't play games with me."
"Sorry, but I was under orders not to tell you until we got there."
“If you had said that then I wouldn’t have argued but…”
"Sorry, Mr Scott."
“Apology accepted and if you are to be my chaperone, please call me Craig.”
Then I tried again.
“Look Detective Khan, I don’t have a phone so how am I going to tell anyone where we are going if you drive all the way there in one go?”
“Dolgoch. We are going to Dolgoch.”
I smiled.
“On the Talylylln Railway. A lovely part of Wales. The waterfalls are a tourist attraction.”
“You know the area then?”
“Oh, from a long time ago. The Scout troop that I was in went there for our summer camp. We had several trips on the train down to Tywyn when we went swimming in the sea.”
The Detective relaxed.
“I’m not the enemy you know.”
“Sorry,” she said again.
“I’ve only just become a Detective. This assignment is a bit strange to me. I asked for some time off to complete my dissertation and I get this.”
“What are you studying?”
“A Masters in Criminology.”
I chuckled.
“On the fast track then?”
She sighed.
“Not you too.”
“The answer is no… Or it isn’t my wish to be singled out. The more I can remain in the background the better.”
“Why? Aren’t you any good as a detective?”
She remained silent. That told me a lot.
"I don't think I am. I'm good with the theory and things like forensics but I seem to fail miserably on the deduction part. I'm certainly no Sherlock or Miss Marple."
I laughed.
“There is a lot more to Policing than on the front of the newspapers.”
She didn’t answer that but I saw her nod her head.
She parked the car in front of a house. There was another car already parked there. I wondered if the place where we were staying was supposed to be a secret just how many others knew about it?
I grabbed my rucksack and followed the Detective into the house. The front door wasn’t locked which surprised me.
“Go on through to the kitchen. I’ll lock up,” said the Detective.
“Thanks.”
I went into the kitchen and smelt something familiar. For a second, I could not place it but then I realised that it was the perfume that Jennifer wore. I heard a noise behind me and there she was. Wounded for sure but it was a great relief to see her up and about again.
“But… you are supposed to be in Hospital?”
“Yeah. Sorry about that but the one who is in Hospital is the one who tried to attack me. I tasered him and he knocked his head falling down. He’s going to be fine but is a person of interest to us regarding many other crimes.”
“I’m confused?”
“Things are coming to a head sooner than we’d planned. An anonymous caller said that you had been seen fleeing the scene of my attack. They gave us a very accurate description of you. That was suspicious in itself because people generally only get a few details on someone they see in the street. When you were leaving, I made a call to my team who raided the building opposite and arrested two people. They had been watching the flat for over a week. The two things together caused us to change our plans.”
“But why are you here?”
“I’m supposed to be in Hospital, aren't I? I can't be seen anywhere around for the time being neither can you? Your apparent arrest is in the media so the Chief Constable will be issuing a press release tonight. This is all because we found a lot of evidence that the man who attacked me was going to go after you next. That's when my boss decided to use this place for a few days.”
It all started to make a bit of sense now.
“Where am I supposed to sleep?” I asked still confused by what was happening.
“The room on the left at the top of the stairs.”
"Thanks. Then I'll bid you goodnight. Perhaps by morning, I'll have worked out exactly what is happening and is going to happen to me."
I left them together in the kitchen. My last words had been more bravado than anything else.
I did feel a bit bad for bailing out like that but I was tired and in need of some sleep. I have a tendency to get decidedly grumpy when I am very tired.
My mind was no clearer the next morning when I went downstairs. Both of them were in the kitchen having breakfast. To my surprise, I saw DC Khan eating a bacon sandwich. She saw my surprise.
“It isn’t proper bacon, it is Turkey Bacon but I’m not a Muslim, my family are Christians and we left Pakistan after Partition in 1947. My great grandfather saw that life would get difficult for people like us so he left with his family.”
“Sorry. I just assumed that you were with a name like that.”
She smiled.
“People make that assumption all the time. Mostly I let it ride.”
“Tea?” asked Jennifer.
“Please and a bacon sandwich if there is any left.”
I heard her sigh.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
“I thought I bought enough food for all of us for the rest of the week but it is clear that I didn’t.”
“That’s ok. I’ll go down to Tywyn later and get some more,” volunteered the DC.
As Jennifer poured some tea for me, I asked.
“Detective Constable, as we are going to be stuck here for several days at least, wouldn’t it be good to be on first name terms?”
She looked surprised.
“Sorry. It is Jasmine.”
"Thanks, Jasmine. That is a very pretty name."
Jasmine left a little later to go shopping. I did the washing up while Jennifer worked away on her laptop. I’d just about finished when she said,
“I saw that twinkle in your eye when you were talking to Jasmine.”
"I wasn't flirting with her. I'm very much not her type and besides, I have nothing to offer her."
"Don't you believe it?"
“What is there to believe? Everything I had is gone and when my wife goes down, the Government will take what is left as the proceeds of crime. As I have said many times, I’m not worth thinking about.”
“That isn’t true. You are a decent person.”
Then she thought for a moment.
“You never really said what ultimately led to you being thrown out? The gory details I mean.”
“My wife found me wearing her clothes when she came home from a trip back to Romania a day early. I later found that she’d put a web-cam in our bedroom and had watched it all from a thousand miles away. She threatened to post pictures of me all dressed up with nowhere to go all over town. That was just the start. From what I have discovered since she has been having an affair with one of her business partners. My guess is that she'd known about my dirty little habit for some time and I walked right into their trap."
“Wanting to dress up like that is not a dirty habit. Many men do it from time to time.”
I shook my head.
“It is more than that. As much as I’ve tried, I can’t stop it. As I told you before, it is part of me and that part won’t go away. I was once a semi-skilled labourer. Latterly, I was a self-employed window cleaner and I used to look after the house. You know, cooking and cleaning. I used to dress up almost every day. It was my one chance to be me, the real me.”
“So, you are transgendered then?”
I let out a big sigh.
“If you say so, then I am.”
“There must be someone out there who would let you be the real you all the time?”
“Who’d be interested in a penniless, homeless failure like me eh?”
“You would be surprised.”
I just shook my head. As if living here was not hard enough, but to be cooped up in this out of the way spot with two very good-looking women just made it even more unbearable.
[to be continued]
Jennifer didn’t say much after my confession but I could tell that she was intrigued by what I’d said. I even caught her looking at me a couple of times with a wry smile on her face. That made me even more uneasy than ever.
My day went from bad to worse once Yasmine returned from shopping. As she was putting the food away, Jennifer said,
“Do you think that Craig here would look good in a skirt?”
Yasmine almost dropped the bottle of milk she was carrying before bursting out laughing.
“Is… is that why you are on the streets?”
I just glared at the two of them.
"There is no need to take the piss you know? I'm as ugly as sin and that's a fact. No amount of slap can fix that.”
Yasmine finished putting the groceries away with a huge smile on her face. Jennifer looked pretty smug. More than once, I wondered if they had some sort of telepathic link between them. At the very minimum, I was a source of entertainment to them both.
I gave up worrying about it and returned to reading my decidedly tatty copy of the complete works of Dickens. Not the full versions but an abridged version. It was one of the few things that I’d managed to take with me then I was told ‘get out right now and don’t come back’.
I had tried to go back to collect some more things but she’d changed the locks the next day. That sent a clear message to me. A message that said ‘this is not your home now so piss off’.
I never went near the old house again which was rather sad as I kind of loved that house.
The trials and tribulations of the likes of John Podsnap and Dr Marigold put my plight into some sort of perspective. At least we don't have workhouses anymore. If we did then that’s where I’d be that’s for sure.
My daydreaming was brought back to earth with a bang as Yasmine plonked a mug of tea down in front of me.
“You were miles away,” she said calmly.
I managed a small smile.
“I was mentally saying thanks that we don’t have workhouses any longer.”
I held up my book so that she could see the title.
“Ah. I get you. Surely it can’t be that bad?”
I just sighed and shook my head.
Just then, the front door slammed in the wind. I looked at Yasmine.
“Jennifer has gone to make a phone call from down on the coast. She said that she needed to speak to her boss about something.”
“Do you know what it was?”
“No. She read something on her laptop and left here with a smile on her face.”
A feeling of dread spread through my body. If it was about me then I was well and truly doomed.
“Want to try your hand at cooking tonight. That is some fresh Hake. I bought it in Porthmadog.”
“Porthmadog? That’s miles away,” I asked.
“Yeah. I wanted to make sure that anyone tracking the calls to our unit has a lot of distance to cover before they find us. I took the train from Barmouth, made the call, bought the fish and caught the next train back. No sense in making it easy to be followed is there?”
“What about the Internet?”
“That’s all done by a VPN. Anyone tracking that will think that we are in Aberdeen.”
Then I asked,
“What was so important that you had to speak to your boss in such a hurry?”
I’d put Jennifer on the spot. She could either claim that I didn’t need to know or spill the beans.
“Why don’t you think about what you are going to do with that fish? I’m going to take a shower.”
“What about…?”
“I’ll tell you over dinner,” replied Jennifer with what I took for an evil grin on her face.
I made dinner using the ingredients that I had available. I would loved to have had some fresh capers for the sauce but I couldn’t. There wasn’t even any vinegar to add a little acidity to the dish.
The Poached Hake with a light cheese sauce and fresh veggies went down well with the two women. My mind wasn’t really on the meal. All I wanted to know was what Jennifer had said to her boss.
I made some tea once everything had been washed up and cleared away.
After serving the tea, I sat down with my arms crossed and said,
“Well?”
Jennifer looked at Yasminee and smiled back at me.
“I found something very interesting in a report from the Foreign Office about your wife’s family. I went looking at some more documentation and what I found was a real humdinger.”
“Your wife lied on her application to become a British Citizen. She used the name of her cousin.”
“Eh? I’ve always known her as Imanuela Iordanescu?”
“Imanuela is correct but her real family name is Toba.”
“I don’t understand?”
“Her part of the Toba family is very well known the top group of smugglers from the Danube Delta. The Toba’s and Iordanescu’s are linked many times by marriage. The records discovered by the Foreign Office show many marriages between various family members from both sides going back to well before the Romanian War of Independence of the late 1870s. Russia declared war on the Ottoman Empire. The Russians allied with the Romanians took on the Ottomans whose empire ended at the Danube which is basically modern-day Bulgaria.”
“What does this mean?”
“You aren’t legally married. There are moves afoot to strip of her British Citizenship and is therefore a prime candidate for deportation back to Bucharest in view of the criminal activities that we have uncovered so far.”
“I feel like a fool.”
Jennifer smiled.
“You aren’t a fool. Everyone was fooled by them.”
That didn’t make me feel much better.
“How do you know all this?”
“We sent her fingerprints to Bucharest. The State Police have her prints on record from her arrest for trying to smuggle stolen cars to Sebastopol in the Crimea in 2008. She was just sixteen so the charges were dropped but her prints were kept on file. More recently, her family and the Iordanescu family have been under investigation for smuggling arms stolen in Poland into Russian occupied Crimea and Moldova.”
A sinking feeling spread through my body.
“The investigation into your former wife’s recruitment business is just about complete. The Crown Prosecution Service is formulating charges relating to her business and her involvement with Gangmasters.”
“Gangmasters?”
"Yeah. The people who manage teams of workers mostly in the Agricultural Industry. There are also some involved with people picking cockles from the seashore. There was a disaster in 2004 when a load of mostly Chinese workers got caught by the tides in Morecambe Bay and drowned. After that, the laws relating to Gangmasters were tightened up considerably. Your former wife is involved with the trafficking and exploitation of agricultural workers throughout the North West of England and South West Wales."
“I remember reading about that. It was a nasty affair.”
The word ‘trafficking’ made me very fearful.
“The good news is that because she used a false name when becoming a British Citizen, your marriage is void as is her name on the deeds to your house.”
Not for the first time I said,
“I don’t understand.”
“There is a lot to take in but in essence, there is a very good chance that she has no claim over the house even though a lot of her money both legal and illegal went into its purchase. The CPS is trying to work out a deal with the HMRC to leave the house and your assets alone should they go after your former wife’s assets. That is in return for helping us out.”
“If they don’t then I’m still up shit creek without a paddle?”
“You have a good claim against her legal wealth.”
“Only if I can afford a lawyer which I can’t.”
No one could refute that fact. My last statement effectively ended the conversation for the evening.
“I’m going for a walk over to the Falls and up onto the hill behind. Then I’ll swing up towards the end of the railway and make my way back here through the woods.”
I didn’t wait for them to get their thoughts together.
“Wait, we’ll come as well,” said Jennifer.
I shook my head.
“I need some time alone to think if that’s allowed? Unless we were followed here and are under surveillance, I’m pretty safe, aren’t I? Besides, given what you said last night, I don’t think I’m going to be needed for any trial… should there be one that is.”
“Why do you say that?” asked Yasminee.
“If my former wife is the master criminal as you make out then she’ll have an exit plan already in place… won’t she? You make a move and somehow don't get your hands on her then she'll simply disappear. I know from spending time with her family in Romania that they are very good at both hiding and disappearing from view when the law comes knocking. They've survived for centuries, haven't they?"
Neither of them could argue against that so I carried on getting ready for my walk.
“Promise me that you won’t do a runner?” asked Jennifer as I headed for the door.
“I promise. I’m not taking my worldly goods with me, am I?” I replied pointing to my rucksack that was lying on the floor near the back door to the cottage. I’ll be back for a late lunch.”
Yasmine started to say something but stopped so I zipped up my coat and headed out of the cottage.
As I returned to the cottage, I had to negotiate a small ford. The stream was in full flow thanks to the rain of the previous few days so I retraced my steps and took a longer way. I ended up on the hill above the cottage. I could see right into Jennifer’s bedroom. That’s when I got a shock. I saw Jennifer and Yasmine embracing.
I sat down onto the peaty soil in a state of shock. I hadn't suspected that they were lovers but then it all started to make sense. I wondered if it was allowed for a Detective Chief Inspector to be in a relationship with a Detective Sergeant?
A few things that hadn’t registered before seemed to click into place. Yasmine was not deferential to her superior officer at least since they had been here. It might have been the surroundings but they acted as equals or as I knew it now, probable lovers.
That hurt me like a punch in the gut. I could not tell myself that I didn’t fancy Jennifer any longer. I had hoped that she might see something in me or enough of something to give me a chance once this was over. She’d given me enough hints or… I wondered if it was all a bit of a come-on just to get me to talk a lot more freely? Either way, I’d have to have it out with them even if I lost two possible friends in the process. Keeping those sort of secrets never really works out in the long run as I’d found out to my cost.
My walk had made me quite peckish so I was looking forward to lunch. The kitchen was empty when I returned to the cottage. I guessed that they were still upstairs. I decided not to disturb them so I kept the door closed while I made myself a cheese and pickle sandwich.
I felt good having had some exercise without lugging my rucksack along with me. I'd gotten used to this over the past months and despite the hardships of living rough, this was one part of the life that I was not willing to give up easily.
I’d just finished washing up the dirty plates when I heard some noise from upstairs. I tried to think of a good way to tell them what I’d seen earlier but nothing came to mind before the kitchen door opened and Yasmine came in.
“You’re back?”
“About half an hour ago. I fixed myself a cheese and pickle sandwich.”
“Oh. Why didn’t you call out?”
I gave her what I hoped was a small smile.
“I really didn’t want to interrupt you.”
Yasmine gave a little start. She now knew that I knew.
“I’m not one to blab so you don’t have to worry about me.”
Yasmine sat down with a look of resignation on her face.
“Wha… What did you see?”
"I saw the two of you in a passionate embrace. If that makes you happy then go for it.”
“Really? Do you mean that?”
I nodded.
“I do. Besides, I’m not family, am I? When this is over, we’ll go our separate ways and that will be that. I'm not the sort of person who spreads gossip. You are both consenting adults and, to be honest, I have more important things to worry about.”
Yasmine started to say something but stopped herself. Instead, she left me alone.
I heard voices from upstairs. There were a few raised tones. It was easy to guess what was going on. I knew that I’d hear all about it very soon.
“Did you see us kissing?” asked Jennifer.
“I did. I came back the long way round because the water in the stream opposite had submerged the stepping stones in the Ford. I came up the hill behind the cottage and saw you both. Don’t get me wrong… I don’t have a problem with that. What you two do is your business.”
Jennifer sat down opposite me. She pulled out her laptop and after a bit of keyboard wizardry, she swung it around and showed something to me.
“This is what we were working on this morning.”
I was looking at a letter of resignation with Jennifer’s name at the top.
“Yasmine has one as well. We can't agree on which one to send.”
"That's your business. I just don't want to know. All I want to know is when is my former wife that wasn't going to be arrested and deported?”
"That will happen very soon, Craig.”
“Good,” I said.
“I’m going to take a shower.”
After my shower, I felt a lot better. Not being able to shower after a day spent pounding the footpaths, bridleways and disused railway tracks was one thing that I would not miss but deep down inside, I knew that whatever was going on with me here was very temporary.
Once Imanuela was in custody, I’d more than likely be back on the streets.
With that to look forward to, I started to think that it might be advantageous to move location. Getting away from the area that I’d lived in for all of my adult life was going to be a wrench, a very big wrench but at that moment, I had very little idea about where I should go.
I remembered a book that my dad had when I was a child. He used to show me bits of it when we went off on Holiday. He loved exploring old railway tracks.
I felt a tear well up inside me as I thought back to our last holiday together. We’d all gone to North Norfolk for a week. It had been great until the 3rd day. Mum had gone with the car into Sheringham to do some shopping leaving us at a small village called Melton Constable.
Dad had been very disappointed to find very little remaining of what was once a major junction of several lines. That’s when he just keeled over and died. His heart had given out. I found out later that he’d been on borrowed time for well over a year and my Mum had demanded that I was kept in the dark. That had pretty well destroyed any relationship could have with my Mother.
Then it came to me. The name of the book was ‘British Railways Sectional Diagrams’. Dad would mark every station that he’d visited. He had a photo album that he’d started as a child. It had pictures of all the stations he’d visited that were no longer in use. The last few dozen had included me. I wondered where that Album was now?
I wished that I had a copy of the book right now. I could think about planning a new location to explore. Dorset or Somerset sounded good. Then it hit me. There was a railway called ‘The Somerset and Dorset Joint Railway’. I remembered Dad lamenting at its closure due to what he called ‘that Bastard Beeching’ and the lovely terminus that they’d had in Bath that was now a supermarket.
The day after my eighteenth birthday I simply packed a bag and walked out. I sent a postcard from Margate telling her why. I never went back. There was nothing for me in Southend anymore. Margate is around 30 miles from Southend as the crow flies or over 100 by road but it might as well have been a million for all I could care. I left Margate the next day and never looked back.
Now, twelve years later, I was at yet another crossroads in my life. I’d had five good years with Imanuela until… she’d gone rogue.
The voices from downstairs had stopped. I wondered what they were doing? There was nothing else to do but to go down and find out.
[to be continued]
I wandered downstairs to find Yasmine and Jennifer looking at a road map.
“What’s up?”
“Look at this,” said Jennifer passing me her phone. A text message was there for everyone to read.
“Urgent. Position compromised as of 13.45. Evacuate. Urgent.”
“Do you have any idea as to what happened?”
Jennifer shook her head.
“None at all. All I know is there in the text which comes from my Commander. By my estimate, we have to leave inside the next twenty minutes.”
I thought for a second before replying. I remembered the map that I’d seen at the railway station. It was large enough to show all the ‘Little Trains of Wales’ and other tourist hot spots. All the major roads in the area were highlighted. There were not many routes in and out of this area.
“I’ll go south-west with Yasmine. We are boxed in by Dolgellau and Machynlleth. Once we get past them, we have a greater choice of route. It is going to be tight.”
“I agree. You need to get packed right now.”
“What about the two of you?”
“We can replace everything if needed. You, on the other hand, are carrying everything you own with you so you'd better get packing. Please try not to leave anything behind or any sign that we left in a hurry," said Jennifer.
“True. I’ll be ready in a few minutes.”
That was the signal for everyone to spring into action.
I sat in the back with my head down. The rear windows were tinted making it harder to see who if anyone was travelling in the back. They’d both switched off their phones and wrapped them in kitchen foil just in case.
We’d arranged to meet late the following afternoon at the Service Area on the A1 at Grantham, Lincolnshire. What we did in the interim, was down to each of us and us alone. Radio silence was the order of the day except for the direst emergency.
Yasmine and I stayed that night at a B&B a few miles north of Chepstow. Yasmine spun a good tale about me being a witness at a trial in Reading. A flash of her Police Credentials was good enough for the landlady, a Mrs Williams. She was even persuaded to cook us something simple for dinner.
I retired to my room a little later to give a blister on my foot a little bit of first-aid.
My small but functional first-aid kit was at the bottom of my rucksack so I took the opportunity to fold everything properly as I took it out of the pack. Our hasty exit that afternoon had resulted in a certain amount of stuffing instead of packing properly.
I retrieved the kit and treated the blister that had sprung out of nowhere on my heel. As I was packing it all away, a small object fell out of the elasticated ‘crepe’ bandage that I used to treat sore ankles. Instinctively, I knew what it was. Suddenly, all sorts of things started to fall into place.
I put the object to one side and re-packed my rucksack before I went in search of Yasmine.
She was downstairs talking about policing to our host, Mrs Williams.
“I thought that you had turned in for the day? How’s the blister,” asked Yasmine.
“The foot will be fine but I found something rather more serious in my pack.”
I handed her the object.
“Is this what I think it is?”
“If you think that it is a tracking bug then yes.”
"That chip is a GPS device. I know because I have repaired a few crashed drones for friends in the past. One of them used to disable it because he lived under the flight path to Manchester Airport which is a restricted area for flying of any sort. I made sure that they were enabled when I returned them to him.”
“Then this is the source of the leak?”
“You got it in one Sergeant.”
She sank back into her chair.
“What’s the matter love?” asked Mrs Williams.
"The opposition has planted a bug on us. They have been tracking our every move for the past two days," replied Yasmine.
She stood up and let out a sigh.
“I’m sorry Mrs Williams, we are going to have to leave right now. Do you have somewhere that you can spend the night?”
“My sister is in Chepstow.”
“Good. We’ll drop you off.”
“Why?”
“These people can be violent. We don’t want anything to happen to you.”
“I’d better call her.”
“Please don’t. We'll drop you off and disappear into the night. That way, they can't track you down not that you have any idea where we will be heading other than over the bridge if you get what I mean?”
Mrs Williams was clearly not very happy with being told what to do by someone who could have been her granddaughter but she held back any complaint.
"I'd better pack an overnight bag," she eventually replied.
"Ten minutes max. Please," said Yasmine who seemed to have switched up several gears. She was very much alert and on the ball. I guessed that it was the adrenaline kicking in but for how long? She needed to rest and it was up to me to make sure that she did just that but where? That was the next big question to solve.
Yasmine shook her head. Her eyes were alive and focussed on the road ahead and behind.
“We stop at the second motorway services that we come upon and find a truck. One of those with curtain sides and if possible, empty.”
“I get you loud and clear. Which way are we going? M4 or M5?” I said as we went under some signs that reminded me that there was a big motorway junction just ahead.”
“M4. I think? What about you?”
“Sounds good to me. This is your operation. You are in charge.”
A brief smile appeared on her face.
As we crossed the car park, I saw a driver wandering back to his vehicle. It was branded with the logo of a well-known international freight company. I checked the number plate. The ‘PL’ mark was all I needed to know.
“Lets’ try that one?”
I nonchalantly walked along the side of the vehicle as the driver was getting into the cab on the other side. I noticed a yellow fire extinguisher container. Perfect. I didn’t even break stride as I dropped the bug into the container. Perfect.
I met up with Yasmine and took her arm.
“Look pleased to see me.”
She took the hint and came close.
The truck that was carrying the bug moved off as we hugged each other. As it disappeared out of view, we both breathed a sigh of relief.
“What now?” I asked as we walked arm in arm back to the car.
“We need to get some sleep. We can stay here for a few hours. Then we can move on to the next service area.”
“What if the bad guys come looking for your car. It is in plain sight in the car park isn’t it.”
“Good point. Suggestions?”
“Get off the beaten track and stay out of sight. Something like a rural railway station car park not too far off the motorway perhaps?”
Yasmine laughed.
“That sounds perfect. There is a road map in the pocket behind the seat.”
“Yes, madame captain pilot!”
“Before you get any ideas, I was playing a role back there. I’m spoken for in case you have not forgotten?”
“I know. I’ve seen how the two of you look at each other. Good luck to both of you.”
Yasmine carried on driving east while I searched for a suitable place to park up for a few hours.
“There is a place near junction 12. Theale to be exact. It has a small station plus some office or business parks. That should do us for a few hours at least.”
“Sounds like a plan. How far?”
“About forty miles give or take a bit. The signage at the next junction should help. Junction 12 is the one for the west of Reading.”
“Good.”
We found a place to park up for a few hours. From the sighs coming from Yasmine, I could tell that she was tired. I wished that I could drive but it was her car and I’m not on the insurance so there was no point in even asking.
“Feeling better?” I asked as Yasmine rubbed the sleep from her eyes.
“Ugh!”
"I'm not much of a morning person."
“Then some coffee is called for, isn’t it?”
She shook her head.
“Tea. Strong Tea.”
I smiled.
“Ok, Reading Services is a few miles away. A quick dash for me to get some hot drinks while you fill up then we can be on our way.”
“Do you have a route in mind? I saw you looking at the map last night?”
“Yeah. M4 to Maidenhead then north to High Wycombe, Aylesbury and then Bedford before joining the A1.”
“Why not use the M25? It seems a lot more direct.”
"I used to have the radio on when I was a Window Cleaner. The daily reports of traffic jams on the M4 and M25 have put me off going that way during the week for life. The other way is a lot slower but I'm sure that there will be places we can stop to get something to eat. Besides, we aren't due to meet Jennifer until four this afternoon are we.”
“I’d sort of forgotten it was that late.”
She started the car and pulled away from our resting place.
“You are navigator in chief. I’m relying on you for this.”
“I’ll try not to lead us astray,” I replied half-jokingly.
We arrived at Grantham Services half an hour early. There was no sign of Jennifer's car so we went inside in search of something to eat and drink. I wasn't that comfortable with the place. Compared to the M4 Services that we'd visited the previous night, this was very, very quiet indeed. My unease was dispelled by the arrival of two tour busses. Safety in numbers and all that seemed to be a good idea at the moment.
When we emerged, there was a large black Jaguar parked right next to Yasmine’s car. For a moment, I was on edge as one of the doors opened and Jennifer emerged. I felt Yasmine relax.
“You made it then,” said Jennifer.
“We arrived half an hour ago and went in search of some refreshment.”
“Good trip?”
Our faces told a different story.
“I found a tracking bug in my first-aid kit. That’s how they knew where we were.”
This shocked Jennifer. Her initial reaction was very much out of kilter for her but she soon recovered her composure.
“Where is it now? You got rid of it I hope?”
"We did get rid of it. I transferred it to an HGV that had Polish number plates. It is probably at Dover or somewhere in foreign parts right now. I don't know and frankly, I don't care."
“Good for you. Do you know how it got there?” asked Jennifer.
“I can only think that it was when I was working at the Chicken Farm. One day, I went with the manager on an egg delivery. He’d put his shoulder out playing Rugby that weekend so I did all the carrying. I left my rucksack in the farm office all day.”
“What made you look in the kit in the first place?”
“I was wearing the wrong socks for my walk yesterday and paid for that with a blister on my heel. I have some medication for blisters in the kit. The bug was hidden in an elasticated bandage. It fell out as I was re-packing the kit.”
Jennifer thought for a moment.
“You did the right thing although our tech people would have loved to get their hands on it.”
Then she smiled.
“There is someone I want to introduce you to.”
Without waiting for our reaction, she opened the rear door of the car. A man stepped out. Right away, I saw a family resemblance between him and Jennifer.
“This is my Father, Assistant Chief Constable, David Hawkes.”
His coat fell open to reveal a Police uniform.
“Pleased to meet you both. I was at a conference in Norwich when my daughter called. Her car is in Peterborough being examined by the forensic team. She was worried about her car being bugged but from what I heard from you just now, the source of the problem had been identified.”
"Pleased to meet you, Sir," said Yasmine.
“Please call me David. Jennifer has told me all about the two of you. I wish you both every happiness but you do need to decide who is going to remain in the force.”
I saw Yasmine visibly relax.
David turned to me.
“I’ve heard a lot about you Craig. You do seem to have had a lot of bad luck in recent times. From what my daughter has said, things are coming to a head. I've seen many, many cases over my career where someone totally innocent and largely unconnected to a case is royally shafted by it. It seems that you are pretty resilient so I can only hope that you come out of this in a better position than you are right now."
Before I could answer, a marked Police Car drew up alongside us. A Sergeant and a Constable got out.
“Sir! Inspector Griffiths asked us to collect a car for forensic examination.”
“Ah yes Sergeant,” said the ACC.
He turned to Yasmine.
“Detective Constable, if you and Craig could remove your things from your car, these officers will take it for examination. You don’t want to be driving around with people tracking you, now do you. Your car should be returned to you in the next two days along with the DCI’s vehicle.”
I was amazed at how he’d made it all so impersonal and official. The ability to switch like that was impressive.
Yasmine and I removed our things from her car and loaded them into the Jaguar. She gave the keys to the uniformed Constable. After some formalities, her car and the patrol car drove off.
The four of us got into the Jaguar with Jennifer at the wheel. We left the service area and headed north on the A1. I assumed that we were heading to York but when we passed the A64 turning for Yorvik, I began to get worried.
“Where are we going?” I asked quietly.
“Quebec,” said the ACC.
“Eh? That’s in Canada…”
I heard Jennifer chuckle from the front of the car. She looked across at her father.
“There is a small hamlet in County Durham called Quebec. Less than a mile away is a place called Greenland. My home is between the two. I’m offering the three of you a safe place to stay until this case moves to the next phase,” said David.
“What about your wife?” I asked having seen a wedding ring on his finger.
“Shirley is in total agreement. She’s not Jennifer’s Mother. She and I divorced almost twenty years ago. Pressures of the job and all that but they get along fine.”
“Dad!” said Jennifer from the driver’s seat.
“Ok, ok. It was Jennifer who set me up on a blind date with Shirley about five years ago.”
I began to see a lot of him in Jennifer.
Shirley was waiting for us when we arrived. Shirley seemed a very down to earth sort of woman and we were made very welcome. She certainly didn’t seem the type to be the wife of an Assistant Chief Constable but who was I to make judgements about that sort of thing eh?
I slept very well that night. After a night in the car, a nice bed was most welcome especially after the frankly excellent meal that Shirley served up.
Shirley left the three of us alone after Breakfast. David had left much earlier to attend a meeting in Newcastle. Shirley volunteered at a local Hospice. It turned out that she was a former nurse so it all seemed to fit together.
“What do we do now?” I asked after we’d cleared the dishes away.
Jennifer looked at Yasmine who replied with a small nod.
“We have a proposition for you.”
I let out an involuntary sigh.
Jennifer laughed.
“A case of ‘been there, done that and paid the price’ eh?”
“Something like that.”
“This proposal is a little bit different. Well… we hope so.”
I sat down at the table and waited. Yasmine came and sat beside me.
"As you know, we are a couple. I'm going to give up the job and take up a position in industry. There are some good jobs for people with qualifications in Criminology and experience in the Police, said Yasmine."
“So? Where do I fit in?”
“We’d like you to come and live with us and be our housekeeper.”
“Eh? Why me?”
Jennifer smiled at Yasmine who said,
“Then you can be the real you.”
“The real me? What the hell does that mean?”
“Didn’t you say that you used to dress up in your wife’s clothes at home? Well, you can be that person full time. Live the dream.”
“W… Why? Why are you doing this to me? Don’t you have a frigging clue what it is like to have been born in the wrong body? No, you don’t. You can’t.”
Jennifer sat down on the other side of me. I was hemmed in. My last avenue of escape had been cut off.
“Please… both of you just listen.”
I think my directness temporarily stunned them. Good!
“I didn’t dress in my wife’s clothes for some sort of kick or thrill or even to jack off. I should have been born a woman. I’ve known that since I was five. My first day at school when Marty Jones called me a cissy just because I didn’t want to take part in their pissing up the wall contest. That label stuck until I was eleven when that very same Marty Jones scragged me in front of the whole school to prove that I was wearing knickers. I wasn't but the deed was done. Then when I was sixteen, my parents went off to a wedding leaving me alone. I took the opportunity to dress up for the weekend. Then there was a major gas leak and we had to evacuate. I had to go out of the house fully dressed. Who should I meet in the street but one numpty called Marty Jones. He tried to pick me up until he saw who I was. The rest of my time at school was horrific until our last day when I kicked him hard right in the balls as my way of saying thanks for the horror stories. However, I truly never lived down my now very public reputation as a gay cissy so I moved away and hoped that the urge to dress would go away. It did but only for a while. Well… until I was married. That was my fatal mistake. How could I know that my bitch of a wife… sorry not my legal wife but the woman I had thought that I married, had installed spy cameras all over the house. Being thrown out while dressed was the final straw. If you think that I’m going to dress up only to be exposed once again? Never in a month of Sundays will I fall into that trap again.”
There was silence in the room.
“If you will excuse me, I have a rucksack to pack. I’ll be on my way in a few minutes. Please give my thanks for the hospitality to your parents.”
I ran upstairs to my room whereupon I burst into tears.
[to be continued]
Don’t-08
I had no idea how long I sat on my bed with my head in my hands. It was only a quiet knock on the door that stirred me.
“Go away.”
“Craig, please.”
The voice belonged to Jasmine.
“I don’t want to speak to anyone. Please just go away.”
She didn’t go away. Instead, she came into my room and sat on the bed next to me.
“We are so sorry Craig. We just didn’t know how to speak to you. Then… it all just came out. It came out all wrong. There is so much more that we wanted to say to you but we got it wrong. All so very wrong. We are both very sorry for that.”
I didn't answer. I was so wrapped up in my own thoughts and my own failures.
Yasmin then took me by surprise. She kissed me. Not just a peck on the cheek but a full-on kiss on the lips.
“No,” I said after a few seconds.
“This is not right. You are spoken for.”
“I am and so are you.”
I broke away from her grip on me.
“I’m not. I’m a freak as well as a loser. Always have been. Always will be.”
Yasmine shook me hard.
“Stop it with all that self-pity. You have been wallowing in it for far too long. Can’t you step back from that version of you for just a moment and try to think objectively?”
She didn’t wait for me to answer.
“We… that is Jennifer and myself would like you to come and live with us as a woman and… well help us raise our children.”
The word ‘children’ really got my attention.
“Yes, children. Your children.”
“What? No way. There is no way in hell that I’m going to be your housekeeper, cook, bottlewasher and to top it all, mother to your offspring all while you swan off to whatever job you have leaving me virtually a prisoner in whatever tiny cell you deem suitable for me.”
Just for good measure, I added,
“The answer is no, no way in hell so fuck you.”
No matter what they said, I remained resolute on the matter.
The last thing I wanted at that point in time was to be tied down. The prospect of being the third wheel in a relationship didn't rock my boat one little bit.
After a lot of discussion, I persuaded them to put the matter of the future on hold until after the trial. With that all agreed, I went back on the road. They being the Police and CPS needed me to be a good witness and one that had no more dirty little secrets to be revealed in court. Being exposed as a closet tranny was bad enough but manageable as long as I remained a non-person.
I pointed out to them both that it would not be good for the prosecution for me to be seen to be living with two of the Police Officers involved with the case unless I was officially in protective custody but as I wasn’t… they eventually saw the light and agreed to let me go back on the road again. I did agree with their suggestion that it might be better not to return to Shropshire instead, I moved over to the other side of England such as the county of Norfolk.
The winter was wet and I never knew how cold that part of the country could get when the wind came in off the sea. I found a few odd jobs to keep me solvent but other than that, I was on my own except when Yasmin came to visit.
Waking up next to her warm body was very nice but it was hard when she went away again. We had to be careful because I'd been followed a few times by a Private Eye whom it turned out had been employed by Imanuella’s legal team. I was sure that he was there just to try to trip us up.
Yasmin and I met at an old station that had been turned into some holiday lets. It was perfect for us. I would be seen walking an old railway track before and after our secret liaisons. The three of us got together at another holiday home over Christmas. This was miles away from my Norfolk beat. I travelled to the location in Kent under the cover of darkness.
For me, the trial was a total non-event. The CPS decided not to call me as a witness. So much for being essential to the success of the case? That pissed me off no end.
Imanuela was charged with slavery, people trafficking, tax evasion and ten counts of involuntary manslaughter a week after our little journey to Wales. Her organisation was bringing in workers and paying them around £1.00 an hour after all sorts of bogus deductions. Some were forced to work seventy or eighty hours a week and made to live in terrible conditions.
After a two-week trial, the jury spent a little over four hours considering their verdict. Guilty on all accounts. She’d been sentenced to twelve years in prison and stripped of her bogus British Citizenship. All her assets apart from our home had been confiscated under a ‘Proceeds of Crime’ order.
She’d appealed against the verdict but had lost and at the same time had her sentence increased to fifteen years, to serve at least ten years and with a recommendation that she be deported when she was released from jail. To cap it all, the authorities in both Moldova, Ukraine and Romania had all applied for her extradition.
Once it was clear that I was not going to be called, I was able to watch the proceedings. The whole thing brought up a lot of very mixed emotions in me. To see the woman that I loved and who I thought loved me, systematically try to destroy me in open court hurt, especially without being able to respond. Thankfully the prosecution barrister kept objecting. Nevertheless, they dragged what they called my ‘perversion’ up at every opportunity until the judge shut them down.
As soon as the jury was sent out, I took my cue to prepare to hit the road. I made it very clear that there was no long-term future for us as a unit. My problem was that I was currently staying in a Hotel in the middle of Manchester. The trial was being held at the Crown Court. I hated being amongst all those buildings and people and pollution. I had to get away from people and the smell of the city.
That night, I packed my things and after ‘borrowing’ £60.00 from Yasmine’s purse and writing a note explaining what I had done, I left them alone in the Hotel.
The streets were pretty quiet as I stepped out of the Hotel. They should be for 04:00 on a Wednesday morning. I walked the short distance to Manchester Piccadilly Railway Station and looked at the departure board. There was a train for Sheffield at 06:15 where I'd change for the local train to Lincoln. That would do perfectly. I purchased a one-way ticket to Lincoln. I wasn't intending on going that far but I’d decide on the journey where I’d get off.
Once the train had left Stockport, I breathed a sigh of relief. No one other than the ticket inspector had bothered me.
Sheffield Station was a lot busier when we arrived not long after 07:10. I had time for a quick cup of tea before my onward connection left.
I watched the countryside go by and each stop come and go until we reached Retford. That seemed to be a crossroads of some sort which made it a perfect place to get off the train and disappear even though I had a ticket that would take me to Lincoln.
I picked up a copy of the free newspaper, ‘The Metro’ as I walked out of the station. I noticed the date and smiled to myself. It was one year exactly since I’d been told ‘get out of my home and don't even think of coming back'. I'd changed a lot in that time. Being homeless does that to you. While the company of the two women had been good, there was just no way that I could ever see myself with them long term. Everything had been about their wishes. Hardly any mention of mine other than being able to live as a woman had been discussed. I wanted more than that. What that was I didn’t know but I was sure that I’d know it when I found it.
I put the paper into my rucksack and started walking out of town. I chose a south-westerly direction. I knew from my history lessons at school that there were once a lot of coal mines between Retford and Nottingham. That meant lots of old railway lines. On my way out of town, I bought some tins of food and a couple of apples from a supermarket. Those would keep me going for a few days. I topped up my cash reserves with a stop at a Post Office and that was me done.
[three weeks later]
I'd left the small town of Southwell with its magnificent Cathedral or as it is called locally, the 'Minster' early that morning when I was confronted by an immovable barrier. This was the River Trent. After consulting with a man who was cleaning windows at the 'Ferry Inn', I discovered that the nearest bridge was in the direction of Nottingham and that the ferry had ceased operation in 1939 for obvious reasons.
Still feeling slightly disappointed at not being able to cross the river, I carried on along the river bank towards the next crossing that was close to the village of Gunthorpe.
I stopped at the village shop and bought some food before crossing the river. I’d seen a sign for ‘Margidnvm Roman Town’. That seemed as good a place as any to stop for Lunch.
The Roman Town proved to be quite an interesting place. It straddled the old roman road ‘Fosse Way’ which runs from Exeter to Lincoln. After I’d eaten my lunch, I spent a few minutes looking at a map and trying to decide which way to go next when a voice behind me said,
“It won’t get any closer just by looking at it.”
After nearly jumping out of my skin, I turned around.
The voice belonged to a woman.
I managed a smile.
“I saw you in Southwell yesterday.”
I resisted the urge to tell her not to spy on me.
“I was there. Do you have a problem with that?”
She chuckled.
“I’m sorry. I’ve just started a new job as a tour guide for the Council. I need to know all that there is to know about all the places on my patch.”
I relaxed.
“Sorry.”
“There is nothing to be sorry about. I could tell by watching you that you are not the normal man of the road so to speak.”
“That’s my business lady. I’ve had my fill of do-gooders trying to tell me what to do thank you very much.”
She shook her head.
“What I mean to say is that you don’t seem to be drowning yourself with cheap cider. I know that you passed by what the locals call ‘alky alley’ in Southwell yesterday. I’d just left the Minster after talking with the Verger. You walked right past the other homeless people who were drinking themselves silly.”
I knew exactly what she was talking about.
“I have to be going,” I said.
“Where to next?”
“Where are you walking to next?”
“Somewhere away from nosy parkers.”
She laughed.
“Touché. Consider me slapped on the wrist.”
I just glared at her. There was something about her that was very easy on the eye even if…? I told myself not to be silly. The moment I come within three metres of a woman I’m thinking about having a relationship with her. I wasn’t like that before…
I didn’t say another word. Instead, I slung my pack onto my back and walked off. I resisted the urge to turn around.
The nearest road away from the Roman Town headed south. That seemed ok by me. That worked out pretty well as the small town of Bingham was not that far away.
As I walked into the town the rain that had been threatening all day started with a vengeance. The roads were soon awash and I was really glad that I was wearing my waterproofs. I’d put them on about an hour before when I heard the rumble of thunder. I took that as a warning of bad weather to come.
I crossed over the railway close to the local station just as a freight train passed below. Something made me look beyond the town and to my surprise, I saw an overbridge. It looked like there was an old railway right there for me to walk along. That cheered me up no end as I went to the Post Office to get my benefits. £57 a week does not go far if you are drinking it away but I was managing quite well. I bought some fruit and a litre of milk in a small supermarket and headed out of town.
There was an old disused railway just waiting for me to explore and it was going south. Perfect!
For some reason, I turned around only to find that an old Transit van was sliding across the road and it was heading directly for me. There was no time for me to even attempt to get out of the way I briefly felt a lot of pain as it hit me. Then it went dark.
[to be continued]
The throbbing in my head told me that something wasn't quite right when I regained consciousness. I felt something soft under me. That said 'you are in a bed'. The bleeping of a monitor told me that I was in a hospital. That in turn meant official records which leads to questions and possibly awkward ones at that.
I slowly opened my eyes. I was in a room lit with harsh fluorescent tubes. With my aching head, the prognosis for a swift recovery wasn’t good. I tried to turn over. All I got was a searing pain in my left shoulder. That wasn’t good. So far everything was pretty bad.
"Lie still Mr Scott. I'll get the doctor to see you now that you are awake," said a voice from somewhere out of my view.
“Can you do something about those lights? Florescent lights give me a migraine.”
“You will have to wait for the doctor to see you,” said the voice. This time I identified the owner as being a woman.
“Can you at least put a towel over my eyes until then?”
There was no reply but a few minutes later, a face appeared in my view. It was the owner of the voice.
“Let me put this over your eyes. I know what you mean about the lights.”
“Now Mr Scott, you have been through rather a lot haven’t you?” said the Doctor
Talk about telling me something I don’t know.
"Your shoulder was a bit of a mess but we have fixed it now. However, four steel plates are holding it together. Another crash like that and I can't hope for the same outcome."
"Thanks, doctor. But what happened? I have no memory of whatever it was?"
“It seems that you fell off an old railway bridge.”
I shook my head.
“That can’t be right?”
“That what it says here in your records.”
I shook my head.
“That is wrong. Plain wrong. I just know it is.”
“That’s for another day. The immediate thing is to get your wounds healed then you can get into rehab. With a concentrated bout of physio, you can get back almost all the movement in your shoulder and arm.”
“When and where?”
“What do you mean?” asked the doctor.
“When do I go to rehab and where will it be?”
“Normally, we like to get the patients transferred to somewhere near their home.”
I laughed and immediately regretted it.
“Careful with that shoulder. I’d like for you to not even try to move it until the stitches are out and there is some strength to the skin before you stretch it.”
“That’s not going to be easy but I’ll try.”
The doctor thumbed through my notes.
“It says here that you come from Oswestry in Shropshire?”
“Once upon a time, that might have been true. Not now.”
“Oh. Where do you live then?”
“I’m homeless. The road is my home. Old railway bridges are often by bedroom.”
That seemed to throw him a bit.
“Oh. That makes things a little more complicated.”
“Why? Are there no places near here where I can get some rehab?”
“Well… normally, the rehab involves several sessions of physio a week. That’s why we prefer people to live at home.”
“Ok. I understand. I guess I’m on my own then. When will the stitches need to come out?”
“Four or five days. Why?”
“Then I’d better get out of here. Then this bed can be used by someone more deserving.”
“Mr Scott! That’s not what I’m trying to say. You need to stay here at least until we take the stitches out and we can see what sort of movement you have in your shoulder.”
I sank back into the bed. At least I wasn’t going to be turned out onto the street for a few days.
"Ok, Doc. You are the boss. I'll do whatever you say."
About an hour after the Doctor had left the first of the painkiller tablets, he'd prescribed for me was starting to take effect. I was feeling pretty happy when the staff nurse came to my bed and said,
“Are you up to having a visitor?”
Because of the drugs, I didn’t argue.
“Sure.”
The nurse took one look at my face and laughed.
“Those happy pills are really working aren’t they?”
“Yep!”
“I think I’ll get the doctor to adjust the dose.”
I wasn’t going to object. I was feeling good, very good.
My visitor was a Police Officer, a Constable Barnes.
“Mr Scott, are you up to answering some questions?”
I grinned back at the officer.
“I’m on some pretty strong painkillers at the moment. Please take that into consideration but otherwise, I’m ok. As far as I know, I’ve not broken any major laws recently.”
He didn’t argue so I asked,
“Could you tell me what happened? The doc said that I fell off a railway bridge.”
"You didn't fall. You were pushed over the parapet by a van. The van had been stolen and it'd front offside tyre blew out as it was crossing the road. It hit you with its side mirror and lifted you by your pack straps over the parapet. You fell over the parapet and down onto the old trackbed. That seems to be when you damaged your shoulder.”
“Bummer!”
“What happened to the driver of the van?”
“He was only thirteen but has been charged with TAWOC.”
“TAWOC?”
"Taking away without the owner's consent. It isn't his first offence so he'll probably get a custodial sentence this time. The van is a write-off. It didn't have any Insurance, MOT certificate or Road Tax but the owner had declared it as being off the road so he’s in the clear but is mightily peed off because he’d spent a lot of time and money restoring the vehicle.”
“Can’t he sue the parents?”
The officer laughed.
“They are a well-known family of ne’er-do-wells. Whenever we investigate them, they appear to never own a thing, not even the clothes that they wear nor have any visible income yet…?”
I used to know someone just like that.
“So that’s a no-no then?”
He nodded.
“Now Mr Scott. What were you doing in Bingham?”
“Walking.”
“Walking where to? Where did you come from?”
“Is being homeless and on the road a crime now?”
"No, but you are a person of interest to us."
“Person of Interest?” I replied laughing.
“Really? I must be an axe murderer or something equally bad.”
"This is no laughing matter, Mr Scott."
“It is to me. I’m sorry but Constable… I’m homeless. I don’t have a home. Before coming into Hospital, the last bed I slept in was over a month ago. Since then, I have slept wherever I could.”
“I’ve grown to like being on my own and free to wander the countryside.”
I closed my eyes and began to think happy thoughts. I was done asking questions. I smiled to myself at my mistake.
My next visitor was… well unexpected. After the visit from the Nottinghamshire Constabulary, I thought I might have been visited by Yasmin or Jennifer. But I was mistaken.
“Hello again,” said a cheery voice two afternoons later.
I’d been taking a welcome post-lunch siesta when my visitor arrived.
I opened my eyes and was surprised to see the woman whom I'd spoken to at the site of the old Roman Town. Her very presence immediately aroused my suspicions.
“Hello,” I replied trying not to show any enthusiasm for her presence at my bedside. My shoulder was throbbing now that I was no longer on the happy pills. All I had to dull the pain were over the counter medicines but even those were strictly rationed.
“My name is Penny Griffiths. I guess you are wondering why I’m here?”
Talk about the obvious, I said to myself.
“Yeah, but it is a free country or something like that isn’t it?”
“A good friend of yours asked me to keep an eye on you.”
“I don’t have any good friends so I know you are lying.”
“Ouch. I was told that you were direct and suspicious of anyone prying into your life.”
“Whoever it was that said that is perfectly correct. I’m just one of the thousands of homeless people plodding around the country trying to survive. I didn’t ask to be here but I am through no fault of my own I might add.”
“I know. Constable Barnes told me that you had been quite short with him.”
“You’re a cop then? I knew that I smelt a rat when you said that you were a tourist guide.”
“Not cop but I work with the Police from time to time.”
“That can only mean that you are a social worker. The last one that I encountered tried to get me into a hostel. The same hostel where a man was knifed to death over a spoonful of sugar the week before. Say what you came here to say and then leave me alone.”
She just gritted her teeth.
“If you are the ‘social’ then you must have had people give you the finger before now?”
I was done speaking. I reacted just like I’d done to the Policeman the day before by turning over onto my right shoulder. It was painful but at least she was out of my field of view. I closed my eyes and thought about cleaning out chicken houses. It might have been smelly but at least they didn’t answer back except with a few loud clucks.
It was only some considerable time later that I remembered that I hadn’t asked her who this so-called friend of mine was. It had to be either Jennifer or Yasmin but as far as I knew they had no clear idea as to where I was since I’d bailed out on them in Manchester.
There was no use worrying about it. I was sure that I’d find out who it was soon enough.
“Well, Mr Scott,” said the Doctor after my latest set of X-Rays.
"The bones are starting to heal nicely. I think that you will be ready to start some gentle physio in a few days. Nothing much at first. Just get the shoulder moving at least a bit. Now, as I've said before, shoulders are like ankles. The joint moves in many directions. The muscles that control this and the operation of the shoulder are complex, to say the least. We have to bring them back into working order altogether. That's where the right regime of physio is essential. Continuity is the key."
"Thanks, Doc but that's the problem. As you know, I'm homeless, jobless and flat broke since some scumbag stole what little money, I had on me after my accident."
The doctor smiled.
“We may have a solution to that. I know someone who knows someone would provide you somewhere to stay while you get that shoulder back into working order.”
I sensed a catch.
“What’s the catch? What do I have to do in return for this free room and board?”
“You are a suspicious person, aren’t you?”
“I’ve learned the hard way not to trust anyone. If I had not been so trusting then I would not be in this mess. She took everything except the clothes that I had on my back. Now she’s serving jail time and as far as I know, the Government has taken the lot instead of fines. Then there is the fact that no one does owt for nowt these days. Am I right to be suspicious?"
“When you put it like that, then yes, yes you are.”
He didn’t add anything so I asked,
“Who is this good Samaritan? Or, am I not supposed to ask?”
“She is the sister of the Prosecutor who tried your wife.”
I shook my head.
“She was never legally my wife.”
“Ok, the woman who appeared to be your wife.”
“How did she get involved?”
“From what I’ve been told, the man from the CPS[1] was impressed by how you had managed while homeless and how you stood up to some intense questioning. He saw your name in a news report about your accident and contacted the local Police to offer his help.”
“It seems that is all signed and sealed without any input from me?”
“Craig, please try to loosen up a bit. Some people are willing to help you get back on your feet. What you do then it up to you. Can’t you trust a few people for a month or so?”
My mind went back to Jennifer and Yasmin. They'd decided my future and… that was it. That had led indirectly to me being in the wrong place at the wrong time. There was a difference in that this was temporary while the other one wasn't.
“Ok. Ok, you don’t need to labour the subject.”
“So? You are going to go along with this idea then?”
As if I didn’t need reminding, my shoulder gave a big twinge.
“Ok but this is just until I get signed off by the medics.”
The doctor just grinned back at me. I could sense that he was pleased. I had to guess that getting me into some form of Rehab would allow him to wash his hands of me sooner than he might have done.
I was discharged from the hospital two days later. My shoulder was starting to function but doing simple things like getting dressed was still a PITA.
The host for my rehab had arranged for a Taxi to take me to my home for the next six to eight weeks. I would have preferred to have met my host on the neutral ground of the Hospital but I wasn’t in much of a position to argue.
“Can you stop at a Post Office on the way to wherever it is that we are going?” I asked the driver as we left the Hospital.
“I was told to take you directly to your destination.”
“But if we happen to pass one what problem is there?”
I could see the driver smile.
“Yes. If we happen to pass one then I’ll stop.”
“Thanks.”
I wanted to get another slice of my Benefits money. Being in Hospital had managed to build up a few weeks of money in the bank so even though I’d withdrawn some on the day of my accident. If I didn’t like my new albeit temporary home, I could at least do a runner with a few quid in my pocket.
“There is a Post Office just ahead,” said the driver a few minutes into my journey into the unknown.
"Thanks. Some tea-leaf robbed me while I was waiting for an ambulance."
“That is not right but that’s what it is like these days I’m afraid. I was robbed last year. The guy was really, really high on something so I didn’t argue.”
“Am I expected to pay for this trip to wherever it is that we are going?”
“No charge. This trip is prepaid along with the tip. My instructions are to get you there in one piece.”
“Fair enough,” I said as the taxi came to a stop outside the Post Office.
“Where are we? Exactly?”
“Wartnaby. We are just over the border in Leicestershire.”
“I know. I saw the signs. You seemed to know your way here. Have you been here before?”
“This is my second visit today. I brought the lady of the house home from the airport.”
His words threw me for a few seconds. Then I thought that this arrangement must have been set up in a hurry. I'd have to wait and see what happened.
The taxi came to a stop.
“Thanks for the ride.”
He didn’t reply so I got out of the car remembering to take my rucksack with me. It was hard not to use my left hand or arm.
I shut the door and turned towards the house. I heard the crunch of tyres on gravel from behind me as the taxi left me alone.
I looked around. I could just go back to the lane and… the open road would be there waiting for me. Then I heard a noise behind me.
I turned around to see the front door of the house opening. Then a woman emerged. I knew right away that I’d seen her before but I could not remember where it was. She smiled at me and came down the steps to greet me.
“Craig. Welcome to my home. I’m Serena Garrett.”
That was it. She’d been on TV a lot. She had co-hosted some game show until her co-host had been ‘a naughty boy’ and had been caught fixing the game with a contestant in return for sexual favours...
“Hello. I remember you now.”
“Oh.”
“It wasn’t your fault that your colleague was a sexual predator.”
“Thanks for that, but mud sticks. Once tarred it is next to impossible to get it removed if you are a woman that is. But I digress, please come inside.”
I followed a frankly stunningly beautiful woman into her home and I didn’t even have to ask first. The alarm bells started ringing in my brain as I crossed the threshold.
I followed her into a kitchen that wouldn’t look out of place in a restaurant. She saw my eyes bulge at all the equipment.
“I can see you like the kitchen. This is all part of my plans for the house.”
I didn’t know how to answer that without seeming to be a nosy parker.
“What can I fix you? Things are a bit of a mess today; I’ve just returned from shooting an Advert in Spain. It overrun by two days so that’s why I’m not prepared for your arrival.”
“Nothing special. A cup of tea with a dash of milk would do fine.”
She smiled back at me.
“That I can do. I’ll need to do a supermarket run later today. I’ll need to know what sort of food you like but that can wait. Please take a seat and relax. Please consider this your home until we get that shoulder of yours functional. From the records the Doctor emailed me, you banged it up pretty bad.”
“Thanks,” I replied as I pulled out a chair and sat at the island counter.
Serena put the kettle on to boil and then sat opposite me.
"I'll expect that you have lots of questions about everything that is going on. I can see that you have sized up the exit. I won't stop you if you do decide to bail out. I do know that some of the exercises I have planned for you won't be easy or pain-free. Feel free to stop me at any time ok?”
"Thanks. I'll remember that. The Physio at the hospital gave me an overview of the sort of torture that lies ahead."
She laughed.
“Brian was always the joker. He and I qualified as a physio at the same time. I wanted him to join me here but as he's working in the same hospital as his wife, he said no."
“What exactly is here?” I asked just as the kettle came to the boil.
“Let me pour the tea and then I’ll tell you.”
A minute or so later, Serena put down a mug of tea in front of me. Then she sat down opposite me as before. For some reason, I got the impression that she was giving my body a scan just like those machines in the hospital.
“This place is intended to be a place where people who need an intensive course in Physio can go to get it done. Having one appointment a week at the hospital or clinic is not enough for the majority of people. I know from first-hand experience that it seems to take forever to get the injury cleared up. The idea is that people come here and stay until they want to bail out or are healed. That's why the kitchen is so well equipped. There is room for eight residents at present. That’s all I can handle on my own plus a couple of part-timers."
“Intended? Isn’t this place up and running yet?”
She smiled at me. Her smile was very pleasant but I guessed that there was a heart of steel behind it.
“You are the first patient. A trial run so to speak. That’s why I agreed with my brother to do it at no charge.”
My shoulders visibly sagged.
“There is an upside you know?”
“I don’t see one from where I’m sitting. All I see is a lot of pain.”
“It won’t be all bad. Any feedback from you about how things are going will be most welcome even if it is just to tell me to go to hell and beyond.”
I couldn’t answer that. Whatever the future had in store for me, it wasn’t going to be plain sailing. Nothing had been remotely plain sailing since I’d been thrown out onto the streets.
[to be continued]
[1]CPS = Crown Prosecution Service. Much like the office of the District Attorney in the USA.
“Cat got your tongue?” asked Serena.
“Not really. I was just thinking back to how I got here. To be honest, I’m not sure if I can properly accept all this kindness and stuff.”
“You must have gotten used to fending for yourself while on the road? My brother told me about what had happened to you.”
“He only knew what was needed for the trial but that is all in the past,” I retorted.
Before she could answer, I asked,
“Your brother… if you don’t mind me saying, is as white as me.”
To my eternal relief, she laughed.
“I’m often asked that question. We both have the same father but he is more than ten years older than me. His mother died and a few years later, his father met my mother when he was working in Kerala. That’s in southern India where they were married and came to this country where I was born. They moved back to India after my little problem on the game show. They now run a Hotel there.”
"That wasn't your fault, was it? You weren't to blame if your co-host couldn't keep his trousers zipped up."
She smiled back at me.
“Guilt by association I’m afraid. Once I was tarred with his brush, my name was dirt. That’s what you get for blowing the whistle on him I guess.”
“That’s not right.”
“True but at least I had a career to fall back on. Many ‘Z’ list celebs are all in on the celeb career. If it goes wrong, then they are up shit creek without a paddle. I’ve seen far too many nearly make it but end up much like you in the gutter. Their delusions of grandeur destroyed mostly by the press of a few keys on some hacks computer. They tried hard to make me the person responsible for him having a series of affairs. One even went to print blaming me for enticing him to have an affair.”
"I remember that. You sued the paper, didn’t you?”
She grinned back at me.
“And I won big time. The damages from that case paid for what you see here.”
“Sounds like a good investment what with property prices these days.”
“Possibly. That all depends. If I can’t make this place work then I’ll have to sell up.”
“I hope not. From what I’ve seen so far, this would be a nice place as a home.”
“Thanks for that. It is my home as well as my place of work.”
Before I could respond, she said,
“Come on, let me give you the tour.”
“Come on Craig, one more length,” shouted Serena.
I was in the swimming pool. I’d just completed one mile of a swim. One length of front crawl using only my left arm followed by one length of breaststroke. Rinse and repeat until my slave driver allowed me out of the pool.
The last length was horrible. My slave driver had been increasingly brutal with the tasks she’d set me in the last week. As my shoulder healed, she’d increased the work I’d been doing. Not only did she concentrate on my shoulder, but she also made sure that my whole body had a workout. Plenty of exercises and good food had meant that I was probably fitter than I'd ever been.
I duly completed the extra length and climbed out of the pool.
“I think that you are done.”
I nodded my head.
"I hope so. I've never swum that far before."
“I did say that I’d test you to new limits.”
“You did and my whole body aches as a result.”
“Go and get showered. There is something I want to talk to you about over dinner.”
That sounded decidedly ominous. As I showered, I had visions of me being out on the roads and tracks of England once more. I had to admit to myself that the prospect of being homeless again was not that attractive. I wondered if I'd gone soft in the time that I'd been here but if I was being honest with myself, the need for me to be on the road had gone away with the jailing of my former wife. I'd not completely accepted that I didn't need to be homeless any longer. It was only being relatively settled here for these past weeks that those thoughts had started to rumble around my mind.
Freshly showered and shaved, I wandered downstairs. There was something nice cooking so I headed into the kitchen. Serena was busy chopping veggies. She looked up and smiled at me as I entered the room.
“Can you open the wine?” she said pointing at a bottle that was sitting on the counter near the fridge.
“I’ll just put these onto steam. Everything will be ready in about 15 minutes.”
“It smells good. What is it?”
“I’m roasting the leg of lamb that we bought at the farmers market last Sunday.”
I nodded my appreciation as I walked over to where the wine was sitting on the counter.
The label told me that it was an expensive bottle. I’d not seen it when we’d done the shopping in recent weeks. Whatever it was that Serena wanted to talk about, it must be important. The only thing I could imagine that it would be about would be when I’d be leaving.
I had to admit to myself that I’d been thinking about this very thing in the past week. As my shoulder healed, I had to think about what I’d do next. Without a proper home, the only real alternative was to go back on the road. I'd heard nothing about the status of my former home in Shropshire. One message had said that it was being confiscated and another one was that as it had been my home then it was mine. I hadn't pressed the matter simply because there was nothing there for me any longer. If I never saw the place again, it would be far too soon.
I opened the bottle of wine and poured her a glass. I held back on pouring myself one. I’d managed all the time I was on the road not to get drunk like all the others and I’d refrained from drinking any alcohol since I came here. If I was going to have a drink then it would be with the food and not before.
I put Serena’s glass of wine down close to where she was standing. All her attention was on making the gravy. She looked over and smiled. Then the smile disappeared.
“Still dry then?”
“Maybe. I might have one with the meal.”
I saw her sigh. I knew what that meant.
“Don’t worry, I’ll soon be out of your hair.”
Serena didn’t respond but I saw her jaw tighten. I wondered if I had got this all wrong after all?
“Thanks for the compliment but please stop that and sit down. We need to talk.”
I sat down and looked at her right in the eyes. She hesitated for a second so I said,
“I’ll be leaving tomorrow morning if that’s ok with you. I don’t want to put you out any longer than necessary.”
What I said clearly surprised her.
“That’s not what I wanted to talk to you about.”
I had no idea what it was if it wasn’t about me leaving.
“Ok, then why don’t you tell me what it is?”
“Have you been watching the news?”
I shook my head.
“Nah. I gave up on that when I went on the road. Why? What’s the problem?”
“There is a virus spreading around the world. It seemed to originate in China but large parts of Northern Italy has been in a state of lockdown for a couple of weeks and all the rumours point to the whole of the UK following suit very soon. By soon, I mean a few days or at most a week.”
"That would be good. With everyone staying at home it would mean fewer people on the footpaths."
Serena shook her head.
“What the experts are saying is that travel is the major source of how it has been spread from China to just about everywhere. Lockdown means stay at home and don’t go anywhere unless it is really important.”
“Oh! I had no idea.”
“I don’t want you to leave. It seems that I’m going to have to put my grand opening on hold until this is all over. I can’t very well open and close right away. That’s plain silly.”
“How long? When do you think that it will be ok again?”
Serena shook her head.
“I don’t know but it is not going to be a few weeks. My gut feeling is about a year.”
“That’s a bummer. Can you manage financially?”
“I’m going to have to, aren’t I? At least I don’t have any staff to pay. If you hadn’t come here when you did, I might have had a few people on the books.”
I was stuck for words.
“I’d like you to stay here with me for the duration. All the time you have been here, you haven’t come on to me so I’ve begun to trust you.”
Her words stuck a dagger right through my heart. With every day I’d been here it had been harder and harder not to tell her that I fancied her something rotten. Before I knew it, I’d reacted in a way that made it clear that I wanted more from our relationship,
“Oh!” she remarked.
"Sorry, Serena. I didn't mean to react like that. Virus or no virus, I'll leave in the morning."
“No, you bloody well won’t.”
“What? What do you mean?”
“These past seven weeks have been hard on me as well.”
"Hard how? You have been slave-driving me pretty, hard haven't you?"
“I have but you took whatever I threw at you with almost zero complaints.”
I managed a smile.
“If I stayed and there is a lockdown, what would we do all day?”
Serena sat back and grinned at me. Something inside me said that I would not like what she was going to say.
“This place will need maintaining and everything. We could do it together… as a team. Work in the mornings and then use the pool or gym or outside in the afternoon. With spring and summer ahead, using the outside facilities will be good. Besides, I need them tested out before I have paying guests.”
I didn’t know what to say. I could not decide if she was saying that she liked me in a more than just friends way or not.
Then she grinned at me again.
“I wondered if you’d like to spend the time… of the lockdown living as a woman. As there would only be the two of us then…?”
“You’d have a lot of fun at my expense?”
She shook her head.
“That is not what I meant at all. I’d help you in any way I could. If I take the piss of you, you have my permission to throw me fully clothed into the pool.”
“There is one little problem. That is the subject of clothes and shoes and everything?”
Serena nodded her head.
“Then I’d better hit the supermarket then, hadn’t I? That would be a start.”
“We’d better hit the supermarket… That’s if I say yes that is.”
“Haven’t you already decided?”
“I have not. I’ll need to think this through,” I said defiantly.
Serena smiled back at me.
“Don’t take too long about it. Why don’t you watch the news on TV? That might help you make up your mind?”
She was right. I needed to see what was happening in the world and more importantly, closer to home.
That evening, I watched the news with disbelief. This virus was spreading everywhere and it seemed that governments were powerless to stop it. Even the total lockdown in Northern Italy was not stopping the spread.
I switched off the TV when I could take no more.
I sat silently for a few minutes as I tried to collect my thoughts. It seemed that Serena’s offer was the best I could hope for given the spread of the Pandemic.
It was then that I heard Serena talking. She was in what would become the residents dining room when and if the place opened up.
From the one-sided nature of the conversation, I guessed that she was talking on the phone to someone. That in itself was unusual. I couldn't remember the last time I'd heard her on the phone this late at night.
As I was not in the habit of listening in on other people’s calls, headed up to bed.
The images that came into my mind of me being trapped into doing something against my will. All sorts of what if’s rattled through my mind but nothing settled.
The first birds were already announcing the arrival of a new day before I finally stopped thinking of my impending doom and gloom and fell asleep.
My mind was none the clearer when I got up. I was much slower than normal but I put that down to lack of sleep more than anything else. It wasn’t until I wandered downstairs and found the kitchen strangely silent that I looked at the clock.
I was surprised to see that it was almost 09:00 and there was no sign of Serena. I wandered over to the Coffee Maker and gave it a feel. It was still warm. Then I saw a slip of paper under the mug that I used for Coffee.
“Craig,
I’ve gone grocery shopping. There were stories of people clearing the shelves of things like loo rolls and tinned tomatoes. We don’t need any of them but I’m going to see what I can get. I should be back by lunchtime.
Serena
“
I made myself some coffee and toast for Breakfast, After that... then what? I was at something of a loose end. Every day until today, Serena had been putting me through her version of hell to get my shoulder and the rest of my body into some sort of physical shape. Life on the road had taken its toll on me. Sure, I could walk miles every day while I was on the road but the rest of me had gotten rather soft. I knew that from my stints at the chicken farm. The first few days were absolute agony but the exercise had started to make me all-around fitter by the time I came to leave.
Now, I was as fit as I’d ever been but I had nothing to do.
As I drank my second cup of coffee, I began to think once more about her offer and all it entailed. That depressed me no end so I began to think about the place that Serena was trying to create and all it entailed.
There was no doubting her talents as a physiotherapist and psychologist. She’d done wonders for me. That was only part of the resources that this place would need.
I cleared the things away and went exploring. I soon found the staff changing rooms. There, all hanging up like the kit that a sports team might wear for the game ahead was the uniforms for the domestic staff. Every one of them was for a woman. That sort of made sense.
I was about to take one down to look at in more detail when a voice from behind me said,
“The next one along would fit you… If you want to try it on that is?”
I almost jumped right out of my skin. I turned around to see Serena grinning back at me.
She was still wearing her coat which said loud and clear that she'd just returned from the shopping trip.
“Serena! I didn’t hear you return?”
“I did call out. I wanted some help with unloading the car. When I got no reply, I came looking for you. For a moment, I thought that you had done a runner but then I saw the door to this part of the house was open.”
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to pry.”
“You aren’t prying. Far from it.”
Serena sighed.
“I guess I’d better bring the shopping in on my own then?”
“Eh?”
“While you get changed…?”
I knew that I’d walked right into that one.
“No. I’ll help you. I can’t stand here all day.”
Serena muttered something under her breath that I couldn’t understand so I ignored it.
Serena must have bought out the whole store if the volume of the shopping was anything to go by.
"No toilet rolls then?" I said half-joking.
"There were only bare shelves besides, we have several hundred in the storeroom."
“But what is all this stuff?”
“If the news reports are true and we go into lockdown, it won’t be for a few days. My guestimate is July at the earliest. Everything here is for us to have some fun in the kitchen.”
I didn’t believe a word that she’d said. Somehow, I had become even more suspicious of her good intentions.
“Sorry Serena, I just don’t believe you. I watched some TV this morning. They were saying just a few weeks at most.”
“Was that Sky News by any chance?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“That channel is full of shit if you don’t mind me saying so. Murdoch controls it just like Fox News over in the USA. President Trump is downplaying the ‘China Virus’ as he puts it. They are mouthpieces of the US right.”
The way she said it made me think.
“I’ve been out of things remember. I think that yesterday was the first time that I’ve watched any TV since I’ve been here and for months before that if I’m being honest.”
Serena smiled at me.
“That’s ok. I’ll let you make up your own mind but my opinion is that this thing is going to get a lot, lot worse before it gets any better. If the stripped bare shelves in the supermarkets are anything to go by, then I’m not alone in that thought.”
I felt a bit foolish. I wasn’t like this before… Before… That was so long ago now. But back then I’d look for more than one news source.
“I’m sorry for doubting you. I’ll certainly look at some other news channels but they made it seem so convincing. They said that it was like a mild dose of the flu and not very dangerous at all.”
"Please make your own mind up about the virus. From the information I have so far, I think that it will affect everyone on the planet and that includes us does it not?"
“If you put it like that then yes, it does.”
Serena smiled at me. This was not her normal smile. I’d seen that many times in the past weeks but this was something special. I decided to change the subject a little bit.
“If we do go into lockdown what had you planned for me then? You know, what is my sentence and do I get time off for good behaviour?”
Serena looked at me for a second and then burst out laughing.
“That’s a good question. I spent a lot of time last night thinking about me, you and this place. What became clear to me was that I was in no way ready to open for business before you came. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I’d done all the hard stuff but the icing on the cake was missing. One of the ideas I had was that we could work together on them while you learned the ropes… as manager of this place.”
It took me a second or so to digest what she’d said.
“Me? Manager of this place? Are you mad?”
Serena smiled back at me again.
“Not in the slightest. I’ve gotten to know you over these past weeks. You are an intelligent person who should not be homeless and destitute. Your dedication to the tasks I set you proved that you can stick at a task through thick and thin.”
“Bollocks!”
Serena laughed and shook her head.
“Not ‘bollocks’ but the truth and you know what your problem is?”
She didn’t wait for me to answer but gave me one anyway.
“Your problem buster is that you are afraid of your own shadow. So, you got hurt by your ex but she’s behind bars now but you can’t put that ‘I’ve been hard done by’ attitude behind you and as a result, you push anyone who wants to help you away. If you keep on doing that then you will be alone forever and you will be a bitter old man.”
Serena had unloaded both barrels and then some at me. They’d hit me right in the stomach, the heart and everywhere else that mattered.
The problem was… she was perfectly right.
The time for running and self-pity was over. Now I had to move forward and become the person that I had dreamed about becoming for decades.
[to be continued]
Serena’s broadside at me had hit home hard. I tried hard but failed to stop myself from bursting into tears. I screwed my eyes shut. I could not face seeing her face with the inevitable ‘I told you so smirk’ on it.
My episode of self-loathing carried on for a bit until I felt a hand on my hair. Someone was removing the elastic band that held my ponytail in place. Before I could protest, that person started to brush my hair.
No one had ever done that before. It was very smoothing if not downright relaxing.
“Thank you,” I said as I wiped the last of the tears away.
“It feels nice doesn’t it?”
“It does.”
“Perhaps it is time for a little pampering?”
“What do you mean?” I asked suddenly all ears.
Serena carried on brushing my hair before answering.
“Isn’t it time to drop the hard exterior that you present to the world? Not everyone is out to do you down, put you in jail and worse. There are some people out there who care for you. That includes me. I wasn’t sure at first but being with you these past weeks… I’ve seen that you are a nice and very kind person. That’s totally the opposite to how you were portrayed by your wife’s legal team during her trial.”
“You know about what happened in the Trial?”
“My brother told me all about it. We must have spent hours on the phone talking about you.”
I shook my head.
“I can’t.”
“Can’t what?”
“I can’t let myself be fooled again.”
“Oh! You mean Jennifer and Jasmine?”
I got up from my chair and moved away from Serena.
“How do you know about them?”
“My brother silly. He saw what was going on between you and them at the trial. Then you just upped and disappeared as soon as the verdict came in. You went off the radar entirely until you ended up in hospital just before Christmas. He told me that they went mad looking for you. He told me that Jennifer got a reprimand from her bosses for abusing Police powers searching for you. She managed to get around it by giving her bosses a picture of your mental state. I’m sure that she went a bit OTT but it is clear that she was worried about you.”
“Do they know where I am?”
“As far as I know, they don’t. But why the angst?”
“All they wanted was for me to be a father to their children and then to stay at home looking after them while they carried on with their careers. I wasn’t having any of that. In some respects, they are just as bad as my former not so legal wife.”
“Ouch!”
“Yeah. Ouch.”
Serena sat down all the time looking at me.
"It all begins to make some sense now. It seems that you did have had feelings for them but you had been abused by your ex-wife and you weren’t going to be used again to let a pair of women have careers and all that.”
“Something like that… yes.”
“I’m not like that. You do know that don’t you?”
I shook my head.
“I’m not sure.”
“As I said before, I’d like you to be the manager here. That would let me be free to work with clients just like I have done with you these past weeks. I know that you can do it. We have time with this lockdown thing to get all the processes and procedures in place before we start taking fee-paying customers."
“What about me?”
“Oh, the thing about you living as a woman?”
“Yeah. That little one thing. The one that won’t go away.”
“Why not give it a go. Just the two of us. Loosen up a bit. Have some fun?”
I looked at this wonderful woman. My eyes became all watery once more.
“How can I? How can I when I fancy you something rotten? Answer me that one?”
Serena smiled back at me and laughed.
“Ok laugh but you have no idea how hard it is. How hard it has been these past weeks.”
Serena came over to me. Then she leaned over and kissed me.
“Now will you shut up about being the victim all the time?” she said when we came up for air.
Serena had me right in a corner with those words.
“I’ll try but it won’t be easy.”
She smiled at me.
“That’s at least a start.”
Then she added,
“There is a long way to go but I think that we have plenty of time.”
I could not argue with that. Getting me even half passable was not going to be easy.
“Where do we start?”
“Easy buster. If this is going to work then you will have to forget how you operate as a man and then learn to be a woman.”
“Oh?”
"Yes, oh! As you found the staff uniforms, why don't we start there? From now on, the only time you will appear as a man is to get your benefit from the Post Office."
“I was thinking about that. If everything is going to close down then it might be nice to get what I have outstanding before it becomes impossible?”
“That is a good idea. Why don’t we go now and I can see if I can get a few more supplies? I’d like to go to the butchers. There is one close to the Post Office.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
“That’s it then. We are in lockdown,” said Serena as she switched off the TV.
“It seems so final,” I said with a sigh at the end.
“It is going to get a lot worse. That American doctor that was on earlier tonight said some things that scared me.”
“Me too. This won’t end until there is a vaccine and then he said that it might not be enough to get rid of it entirely. The number of people who are saying that they won’t take it scares the shit out of me. We only got rid of Smallpox by vaccinating people all over the world,” I replied.
Then I added,
“If this goes on until the autumn, it is going to fuck up your business plans. No income but all the outgoings. The business rates for this place must be huge. I’d expect that you are not alone in that. There must be businesses all over the country in a similar state.”
“You mean ‘up shit creek without a paddle’?”
“Something like that.”
“I have some savings left but it is not going to be easy.”
“You are more than welcome to my fifty-seven quid a week.”
“You will need that for makeup and stuff.”
“Then I’d better speak to your brother tomorrow.”
“Why? Why would you want to speak to him? The trial is all done and dusted isn’t it?”
"Not quite. There was still some question over who owns the house that we… that is my fake wife and I lived in. Some of the CPS wanted it included in the asset forfeiture under the proceeds of crime act but your brother was trying to make sure that I got at least half of it because I paid the mortgage each month until we went our separate ways https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=pakman+david. I would like to know, what if anything has been decided. If I am the owner then perhaps I can get it sold? After paying off the mortgage there should be around fifty grand left over.”
“Wait a moment, their sunshine? Are you saying that you want to put some money into the business?"
“Yep, at least in the short term. If I was an investor then I’d want to doubly make sure that whenever we open up, it is a success, now wouldn’t I?”
“I don’t know what to say?”
“How about nothing. It is all ‘if this and if that and if something else’ at the moment isn’t it? Besides, a sale could take six months or longer to come to fruition if we lockdown for any length of time.”
Serena smiled back at me.
“I knew that you were a good person to have around.”
Then she gave me another kiss.
“That’s nice,” I said when we broke apart.
“That’s all you are going to get for now. It is time to get to work.”
“What’s first on your list?”
Serena smiled.
“Day 1 of living as a woman. Clothes.”
I knew that she meant the staff uniforms that I’d seen before.
Thanks to the various government support schemes and especially the relief on business rates Serena was able to manage the finances. For that, I was very thankful as it soon became clear that getting any sort of answer about the status of my old home was going to be next to impossible before the cows came home.
As had become the norm, we sat and discussed the plan or rather her plan for the day ahead over breakfast. I’d become ‘Head Cook and sometimes Bottlewasher’. To her credit, Serena helped prepare ingredients for the food that I cooked for us and did most of the washing up by hand despite there being a perfectly good dishwasher in the kitchen.
For my part, I enjoyed having a professional kitchen to play in. There were plenty of ideas for meals on TV and I’d even ventured a few times into using a water bath to cook the meat we were having very slowly.
“What about a French theme for tonight? It is Bastille day after all…” suggested Serena.
“What sort of theme did you have in mind? I could whip up a Salad Nicoise from things that we have in stock or was it something else?”
“Soup de Poissons perhaps?”
I thought for a few seconds as I mentally went through the sort of ingredients we’d need before replying.
“Then I’d better make a list for you to go shopping then?”
Serena sat back and grinned at me.
“How about you do the shopping? If we go over to Leicester, you can get your benefit payments at the same time?”
“Me?”
"Yes, you. Isn't it about time that the new you went and did something without me by your side?"
I’d been dreading this inevitable step for several weeks now. Now, I knew why she'd insisted that I did my roots the previous day. Then she'd had a disaster with her hair colouring and it had gone horribly wrong. I wondered for a moment if the hair disaster was all part of her plan for me but then I rejected it. No sane woman would mess up her hair deliberately. It was so bad that it would take weeks if not months to sort itself out. I knew that Serena was very proud of her hair so I dismissed that idea in a flash.
“I suppose so,” I replied reluctantly.
“Good. You make the list for today and I’ll be in the office. I have a few bills to pay.”
Serena had been very coy all along about the money situation. All I knew was that she had zero income and a lot of expenditure. The government reliefs were all fine and good but her business had not really gotten off the ground before lockdown. The only thing that was of much benefit to her was the virtual axing of business rates. Even with that, it was clear that the current situation could not go on forever. I was due over £500 in benefits so I decided to get the cash and after doing the shopping, I’d put the remainder into her account at the bank. I’d made a note of her account numbers a few weeks before more out of interest than anything else and certainly for no nefarious reason.
An hour later, I got into her car and headed for Leicester. She’d added me to the insurance as a temporary employee of her business a few weeks before.
I shut the car door and sat there for a moment. I checked my makeup and clothes. Once I put on a face mask, I should be just one of the crowd going about their business.
With a deep breath, I started the car and drove away. I could see Serena watching me as I turned out of the drive. She’d put a lot of effort into today’s expedition. I had to hope that I didn’t let her down.
I returned to Serena’s place almost two hours later. My trip had taken me longer than I’d hoped because the first supermarket didn’t have all the ingredients for me to make the ‘Rouille’. After a bit of searching, I found the Harissa in an Indian Supermarket so I was all set.
“I was about to send out search parties,” said Serena when I came into the kitchen with all my shopping.
I smiled.
“I couldn’t find all the ingredients in the first place so I had to try elsewhere. The good news is that I have everything I need.”
“Well, you are back. How did it go?”
“No problem. I used the self-service checkouts.”
Serena smiled and shook her head. I knew that meant ‘you chicken you!’. In some ways, she was right but at least I’d been out on my own wearing women’s clothes and no one had screamed ‘that’s a man’.
“That was very good,” said Serena after she’d finished a second helping of the fish soup.
I had to agree with her, it was good and the final result had justified all the effort it took to make the dish properly.
“It was pretty good but the Rouille needed more garlic, lots more.”
“Speak for yourself. I thought that it was great.”
I got up and started to collect the dishes.
"Leave them. You worked very hard today. I'll clear up."
I just smiled back at her. I’d already cleared up the kitchen so there was little left to do.
“Ok,” I said smiling as I left her and went to relax in front of the TV for a bit.
That night, I had a nightmare. That wasn’t all that unusual but this one was different from all the others. I dreamt that I’d been exposed as a total fraud on TV and that everyone was laughing at me especially my former wife who'd for some reason had been released from prison on a technicality. It wasn’t nice at all.
I lay there thinking about my life and what had gone right and what had gone wrong. The latter list was at least double the length of the first. Then I remembered back to 2008 when on this very day, I’d set out on a trip around northern Europe that had been more than good. It had been memorable. I thought back to the episode with Marta Olson in a cabin not far from Narvik in Northern Norway. That was the night that I’d lost my virginity. For the first time in years, I wondered what had happened to her. We’d met on the train that wound its way over the mountains from Kiruna in Sweden. It was clear to both of us from the outset that we were sexually attracted to each other. After we’d had sex for the first time, I told her about my other desires. After laughing herself silly, she found some women’s clothes for me to wear. The days that followed were bliss.
Those pleasant thoughts allowed me to drop off to sleep and not have another nightmare.
“I’m done with this hair.”
“What do you mean done?”
“I’m done trying to live with it. It is a total disaster and there is no way that I’m going out looking like this.”
"What are you going to do? Get a wig?" I asked half-joking.
“Nope. I want you to cut it all off. Right now, today.”
There was a look of determination on her face that I’d only seen a few times before. The first was when we’d met and she’d told me what lay in store for my rehab. I knew that it was over and above what normal people would have expected but I knew that trying to argue with her was a non-starter.
I sighed.
“What’s that for?”
“I sighed because I know that there is no hope of trying to get you to change your mind. You have that look on your face.”
Serena laughed.
“I suppose I do look a bit severe at times…”
“At times? Usually when there is some more torture that you want to put me through.”
She laughed again
“But this time, the joke is on me, isn’t it?”
“It is a big step to take.”
“What would you do then?”
She had me there but I felt that I had to respond.
“If I were you, I’d probably cut it short. Two or three centimetres and then let it grow out.”
That didn’t go down well. Her mind was made up and that was it.
One hour later, Serena was bald. By bald, I meant close-shaven smooth not just cropped close to the scalp. For some reason that told me that she was going to be like that for some time.
Even with all the distractions over her hair disaster, the memories of that holiday just wouldn’t go away. It was like an itch that needed scratching. My problem was how to tell Serena that I was going ‘Walkabout’ very soon. I was sure that she noticed my distraction.
I waited until she’d gone shopping the next Wednesday before using the computer in the office. I mentally planned my route before my accident. I was going to follow the path of the A46 South/Fosse Way and west until I reached Bath. Then I’d head towards Taunton and Exeter. There was someone I had to see if only I could remember how to find their house but that would come later.
That night, I decided to leave the next night. My biggest problem was how I was going to appear normal to Serena. I fell asleep thinking that it would be my downfall.
I went to bed the following evening feeling pretty pleased with myself.
At a little after 03:15, I crept downstairs carrying my backpack. The house was silent so I felt confident that Serena was fast asleep in her room on the other side of the house.
As I opened the back door, the room was suddenly flooded with light. Serena had been waiting for me.
“I thought we had gotten beyond this but apparently not.”
For once, I was lost for words.
Serena stood up and put on her coat.
“If you are going walkies then I’m coming along too.”
"Sorry, Serena. There is something that I have to do for me.”
She just glared back at me as if to say, ‘tough’!
[to be continued]
Seeing Serena putting on her coat hit me hard. All my plans just disappeared in an instant.
“Serena?”
“Yes, that’s me.”
“I…?”
"Yes, you are a bit stuck for words, aren't you? I can't say that I'm surprised by what you are doing. Your mind hasn't been really here for a few days now. Why don't we make ourselves an early breakfast and talk over what it was that you were going to do? Then we can do it together because believe it or not, sunshine, I'm here for the long walk."
“You can’t understand?”
"Try me? Go on. For once let down your guard and let someone into your life again. I thought that we'd got beyond these walls, and for a while, they seemed to be coming down, but two days ago, they went up again. What happened? Was it something that I said or did?"
I shook my head.
“It wasn’t you. I… I remembered a holiday that I’d had over ten years ago with my Uncle Wally.”
“Uncle Wally? You have never mentioned him before? Why didn’t you go and find him when you were on the road?”
"My wife's so-called friends made it clear that I needed to be seen and not heard. I remembered this from my visits to her family in the Danube Delta. They would go hunting deer. They'd terrify the animal by making themselves visible but silent. The poor thing would run around in circles until it dropped to the ground exhausted. Only then would they go in for the kill. Now, do you understand?"
“Sort of. Why don’t we get some coffee and you can tell me all about Uncle Wally and this holiday of yours? I guess from the tone of your voice, that it was a pretty special trip?”
There seemed to be no alternative but to go with her and tell her everything about Uncle Wally.
While it seemed an age but was probably more like five minutes later when Serena put down a mug of coffee in front of me.
“Right sunshine. Who is Uncle Wally?”
I just looked at the mug and wished that I was a million miles away.
“Great Uncle Wallace Scott, Royal Navy Retired was the second cousin of my father. He was always there in the background during my childhood. Well, when he wasn’t at sea. He retired with the rank of Captain the year I left school. I sort of lost track of him for a few years. My parents divorced while I was failing miserably at University. I didn’t make it past the first year. PPE [1] was not my thing despite the previous three generations of Scott’s all taking it, getting a 1st and going into some sort of Politics. The fact that I could not lie through my back teeth in debates probably sealed my fate. As the joke says, ‘how do you tell when a politician is lying?’ He opens his mouth.”
Serena laughed.
I looked at her feeling slightly bewildered.
“So… you are the son of Sir Charles Scott MP and former Minister of something not very important?”
“Obnoxious lying bastard pratt who could never keep his dick out of sight. I disassociated myself from him a long time ago. He was probably glad to see the back of me as it was clear that I was nothing more than an embarrassment to him and his ilk. The members of ‘the Bullingdon Club’[2] are amateurs when compared to him and his cronies.”
Serena sniggered.
“That’s no way to talk about your father?”
“It is… For starters, he screwed every nanny that was ever employed to look after me, every housekeeper, every secretary he has ever employed and a few more besides. That's why he was forced to resign after being in his minister's job for less than two weeks. One of his conquests had become very pregnant and sold her story to the News of the World shortly before Rupert Murdoch was forced to shut it down.”
“I think I remember that.”
“He was deselected by his constituents a few months later and he buggered off to some tropical island without my mother who divorced him but the old bugger had shifted all his money to foreign parts so she got nothing. She gave me a right slagging off and blamed me for everything. The last I heard of her was a letter from her lawyers telling me to never try to contact her again otherwise, I'd be reported for stalking. I found out about two years ago that she'd had a mental breakdown and was institutionalised in an asylum or whatever they call it in South Africa for trying to kill a Police Officer with a Machete."
“Some family you have then?”
“Bunch of tossers.”
“What about Uncle Wally?”
“Probably the only sane one of the whole bunch. The story goes that he joined the Navy just to get away from the rest of the family.”
“That does not seem to be that difficult?”
“Nah. After I failed miserably to follow in my father’s not so esteemed footsteps, I was at a loose end when I literally bumped into Uncle Wally in London.”
“That’s some coincidence, isn’t it?”
“I’d taken a job working in a pub on Charing Cross Road. It paid minimum wage but there was a tiny room up in the attic that gave me a place to stay for free. Anyway, I’d been out for a walk one Sunday before my shift started, and I was passing Stanfords' Map shop when Uncle Wally emerged and… after a few shrieks, we had a big hug."
“That can’t have, been it?”
I shook my head.
“I told him where I worked and that I had to run because my shift was starting. He came by a few days later armed with a load of maps and this thick volume that turned out to be a European Railway timetable. He said to me…. Right, now Craig, fancy a little trip?”
“How little a trip?”
“Six weeks in the end. Quite memorable really.”
“You lost your virginity then?”
Her directness was startling.
I nodded.
“In a farmhouse near Narvik, Norway. It was snowing hard which I thought was strange for the middle of August. I later found out that it is an odd year if they don’t get their first snowfall of the year in August.”
I looked at the mug of coffee. I had not even touched it.
“That was the first time I’d been truly happy. I spent a whole week in the bleak north living with an incredible Norwegian woman as a woman.”
“What was Uncle Wally doing while you were bonking this Norwegian woman?”
“He’d met up with some old Norwegian Navy pals in a bar near the port, and had gone by sea up to North Cape. Some sort of Viking ritual he said but it was more like the chance to smuggle a load of Russian Vodka given how much lower in the water their ship was when it returned.”
“Sounds like you had a whale of a time on the trip?”
“We did. Wally met a lovely woman at a topless beach north of Copenhagen. They were married a few months later. Sadly, she died less than six months later. Wally knew that she was on borrowed time and he made what time she had left, the happiest and most enjoyable period in her life. I rather lost touch with him after that due to becoming involved with a Romanian crook who… well, you know the rest.”
“A case of out of sight, out of mind until something brought him back into your mind?”
I nodded my head.
“I was thinking about the future, my future. I’d had some thoughts about going to visit him just before I was sideswiped by that Transit.”
“And that isn’t here?”
“I’m truly sorry but I just can't see myself working here in any role that involves responsibility. I think that being my own boss as a window cleaner and then on the road, I… I just feel more comfortable without the responsibility of what being here would entail.”
“Don’t keep doing yourself down. You are better than that,” exclaimed Serena.
“It is not that. It is more of being happy with what I’m doing. The last thing I want to do is be doing something that is not really me. As I've gotten into this living and moving and acting like a woman, the less I've liked the idea of me running the day-to-day activities of this place. Sorry."
“I think I understand. I know that you could do the job but if it makes you uncomfortable then there has to be something else.”
Then Serena stood up and started getting some food out of the fridge.
“What are you doing?”
“Making us some breakfast. If you are going to go walkabout again then at least leave on a full stomach. Perhaps I can take you to the station? No sense in walking all the way into Leicester is there?”
I looked at Serena as I tried to fathom what she’d just done.
“Are you letting me go… just like that?” I said as she poured out some orange juice.
She stopped mid pour and thought for a moment.
“It is not the case of me letting you go. I decided a long time ago that I would not stop you if and when you decided to leave. My brother tried to warn me about your itchy feet but I laughed it off but it wasn’t long after we started on your rehab, that I caught you simply staring out of the window. It was clear that your mind wasn’t completely on what we were doing. That’s when I decided to not try to stop you. In recent days, your mind was once again was on being here with me but I didn't want to wake up one morning and find you gone without an explanation. Does some of what I have said make sense?"
“It does and… and I feel rotten for trying to leave without saying goodbye. I should have not been so cowardly.”
Serena smiled back at me.
“Apology accepted.”
I looked at Serena and felt rather sorry for her.
“You seem very languid about me leaving?”
"I don't have much choice, do I? I have… I have to be thankful that you have been here as long as you have and I do apologise for trying to force the responsibility that you clearly don't want onto you."
Serena laughed.
"My old Sociology Professor used to tell me off almost every week for trying to force people into positions or situations that they very much don't want. Will I ever learn?"
She smiled and said,
“Don’t answer that.”
“Where does your Uncle live?”
“South Devon. He was based for most of his career based at Plymouth but spent a year or so teaching at Dartmouth Naval College. That’s then he bought the house as somewhere to retire to. It wasn’t far from the coast and he talked about buying a boat and sailing off into the sunset.”
Then I remembered what it would be called.
“He was going to call the boat, ‘The Black Pig’. This was from a TV cartoon show that he used to watch as a child.
That remark went right over Serena’s head. For a moment, I felt such a fool for mentioning it.
“Here we are,” said Serena as she pulled up in the 20-minute waiting zone outside Leicester Station.
She'd been so good and kind to me since she'd discovered me trying to leave in the middle of the night. That made me feel rotten to the core. A rat leaving the sinking ship more, but I had to see Uncle Wally before I decided one way or the other about living as a woman full time, I hoped that Serena would eventually accept that I had to get this off my chest. I owed her so much but my mind wasn’t on working with her. More than once I wondered if I talked things over with Wally that I might change my mind but at the moment I just could not see any light no matter how dim and distant at the end of the tunnel.
“There is a train to Birmingham New St in fifteen minutes.”
“I know,” I replied.
“Having second thoughts?”
I nodded my head.
“There is always a bed here for you. You do know that don’t you?”
“Thanks, and yes I do know that. These past months have been great…”
“I sense a but coming?”
"Not really a but… but things might have been different if I had let myself become very involved with you. I didn't, and that is all water under the bridge."
Serena leaned over and gave me a brief kiss.
“I know that there are things inside your head that have prevented you from giving me your heart. Your head won that battle, and I'm adult enough to realise that you need to work those issues out first."
“Thank you. For everything.”
“Those words seem so final,” replied Serena with a sad voice.
“Not final, but goodbye for now.”
There was a silence between us. Neither of us could look at the other.
Then I said,
"How about I promise you that whatever I decide to do, I will come and tell you in person?"
“Thank you,” she replied in almost a whisper.
I got out of the car, almost wishing that I wasn't going, but the wanderlust in me kept tugging at my heart.
I squeezed her hand and left before I burst into tears.
Five and a bit hours later, I felt very relieved to walk out of the station at Totnes in Devon. For the first time since I’d left Serena, I was able to take my mask off. That was by far, the longest time I’d ever worn one continuously. I didn’t envy the Nurses and Doctors who had to wear them and worse day in, day out. Once again, I cursed the effing virus for turning the whole world upside down and inside out.
My relief was short-lived as I had to put it on again for the bus journey to the village where Wally lived. I was lucky in that due to the pandemic, the number of buses had been cut from four a day down to just two. The last one of the day was due to leave in less than half an hour.
I felt happy as I walked down the lane towards Wally's home. The sun was shining, and the birds were singing. My joy was short-lived when I saw a sign saying 'Sold' tacked onto a tree at the entrance to the driveway. I tried hard to get my head around the fact that Wally had sold the house that he always said that he'd only leave when he was taken out in a wooden box.
I saw some movement outside the front of the house. After a moment's hesitation, I started to walk up the drive. A woman was strapping a child into a child seat of a BMW 5 series.
“Excuse me?” I said from a respectable distance away.
My voice startled her for a brief moment.
“Can I help you?” she asked when she had recovered her composure.
“Do you know what happened to the man who used to live here? He’s my uncle.”
"I think he died some time ago. We purchased the house at auction six or seven weeks ago. It had been already cleared of everything that the owner had when we viewed it before the auction."
“Oh.”
My mind was trying to grasp what she’d just told me.
“Do you know the solicitors who put it up for Auction?”
“I think it was the firm with an office on Station Approach in Totnes.”
“Thanks for your time. I’m sorry to bother you.”
The woman managed a smile.
“Do you have a car?”
I shook my head.
"The busses are a bit of a mess these days due to COVID. You won't get into Totnes tonight unless you walk."
“I thought that might be the case. Thanks again. Sorry for bothering you.”
I instantly regretted not getting something to eat before I caught the bus. Serena’s breakfast was a long time ago. I mentally berated myself for going soft while I was with Serena. There were many days ‘before’ when I didn’t eat for a couple of days.
The road back to Totnes was pretty narrow. The high hedgerows on each side made it even more closed in. That meant that I had to keep my eyes peeled for vehicles coming along on the wrong side of the road.
I’d only gone about half a mile when a tractor appeared coming the other way. It was towing a huge piece of machinery. Instinctively, I knew that there was nowhere to go but into the ditch.
The tractor driver showed no signs of slowing down for me. I wondered if he’d seen me?
That question was answered almost immediately when he sounded his horn. He’d seen me alright. He wasn’t going to stop and I had to act.
On the left-hand side of the road was a 3m high hawthorn hedge. That was pretty well impenetrable. That left the ditch to my right. I had to move quickly, otherwise the tractor with its monster tyres would be on top of me.
I dived out of the way of the oncoming tractor and immediately regretted it. The ditch was full of stinging nettles. I swear that I heard the driver of the Tractor laughing as he went past. I returned a string of swear words that gave me a few seconds of respite from the nettles. As it was a nice day, I was wearing a short-sleeved shirt. That was a mistake. Both my arms and my head and neck were starting to sting. I regretted stuffing my jacket into my backpack. Too late to worry about that now.
Once the tractor had passed by, I stood up and cursed the mechanical monstrosity loudly. I gave the driver the finger, but the intensity of the stinging was increasing rapidly.
I heard another vehicle sound its horn from behind me. Still feeling angry, I turned around and glared at the driver. Immediately, I felt rather foolish because the vehicle was not another tractor, but was a car that was driven by a woman. She brought her car to a halt and climbed out.
“Are you injured?”
“Just my pride, but those nettles are getting their revenge on my body.”
"Get in. I have some anti-histamine cream at my home. It is about a mile up the road."
I didn’t hesitate. Where had this saviour come from? That could wait as I put on my mask and got into the car. I didn't even bother to put my backpack in the back. Instead, I just cradled it on my lap and to hell with it.
“Here we are,” said the woman as she turned off a narrow lane into her home. I was impressed by the neatness of everything.
I got out of her car and followed her into the cottage. Inside was delightfully cool compared to the outside heat.
"I'll be back in a moment with some lotion then we can take a look at those stings."
I wasn't in much of a position to argue with her. A few stings from nettles is one thing, but to have both arms itching like hell is another kettle of fish entirely. So far, I had resisted the urge to scratch my arms, neck and hands.
The woman returned less than a minute later with a bottle of calamine lotion and some anti-histamine cream.
“Let me put the lotion on your hands, arms and neck and the cream on your face but don’t go touching your face for a few hours.”
I didn’t argue. I wasn’t in much of a position to complain.
“Thanks.”
"I saw what that driver did. He must be a contractor from outside these parts. The local farmers are generally rather more polite. AFAIK, those contractors only get paid by the hectare that they cut. They’d work all day and night given half a chance.”
"I wondered about that, but he didn't stop. If I ever come across him again, I'll give him a good seeing too."
“Good for you,” said the woman smiling.
"There. That should start to take effect pretty soon," she said as she spread the white lotion over my arms.
“Thanks again. I’m starting to feel better already.”
“Tea?” asked the woman.
"Thanks. Just a dash of milk, please."
“Great. I’ll put the kettle on.”
"I am very thankful that you came along when you did."
“I got stuck behind that maniac just after I left Totnes. Is that where you were heading?”
“Yeah. I…”
"I don't want to pry so I won't ask you any more questions. We can have some tea, and if you are fit to travel, I'll take you back to Totnes if you would like a lift that is?"
"Thanks, that would be great."
Then I realised that I hadn't thought things through very well. It was getting late, and it would be highly unlikely that I'd get back to Leicester tonight and… I didn't have a place to stay that night. Then there was the little question of money. Funds were a little tight.
“Penny for them?” asked the woman who had just poured the tea.
“Sorry… I was miles away.”
“Do you have somewhere to stay tonight?”
Instinctively, I reacted with a shake of my head.
“Then stay the night here. I could do with some company.”
“Aren’t you afraid that I have the virus?”
She smiled.
“I had a mild case of it two months ago. The docs seem to think that I have at least some short-term immunity due to the medication, that I have to take, but I don't think they don't have a clue if you ask me. It seems to me, that the medical people are just treading water until a vaccine becomes available.”
I didn’t wait for an invitation. I removed my mask. She did the same.
“I’m Maxine, Maxine Forsythe. Welcome to my home. Sorry for the mess. I wasn’t expecting visitors,” she said smiling.
“I’m Craig. Craig Scott.”
She was about to say something but didn’t.
“Are you going to be hungry in a couple of hours?”
"Yes. I haven't eaten anything other than a chocolate bar since very early this morning."
"Good. I have a Chicken that needs sorting out. My neighbour delivered it this morning before I went into Exeter."
“What do you mean sorting out?”
“Plucking and taking the giblets out. Can you do that?”
“I can, but it has been a while since I did that."
Maxine just smiled back at me. I was beginning to warm to this woman. I sensed that there was a cold side to her, but she was at least being nice to me. I got the distinct impression that if you crossed her you would not come out of it very well.
“This was a really tasty chicken,” I said as I cleared my plate.
"All free-range and organic. My neighbour raises Chickens, Ducks and Geese. The salad comes from him as well. I’m just getting my garden organised. Next year, I hope to be almost self-sufficient in veggies.”
“It must be really nice to have friends like that.”
"That sounds very downbeat?"
"Sorry. I didn't mean to be like that. You have been very, very hospitable to me."
"I guess we are all suffering a bit mentally from the lockdown. Being alone does things to people if they are not used to it.”
“That’s very true.”
“I’ve made up the bed in the spare room for you. It is up the stairs on the left.”
“Are you wanting me to head off to bed?”
Maxine laughed.
“Your whole-body language has changed this last half hour. Your shoulders have sagged. My guess, is that you are pretty bushed?”
She’d nailed it perfectly.
“Thanks for everything. I’ll see you in the morning.”
As I lay in bed, I wondered about this mysterious woman named Maxine. It was clear that she had some money, but there was no sign of a man about the house yet, she wore both an engagement and wedding rings. My pondering didn't last very long as I soon fell asleep.
“Good morning Craig,” said Maxine as I reached the bottom of the stairs.
“Morning Maxine. That Coffee smells good.”
“Can you pour me a cup as well? These eggs are just about done.”
Maxine dished up two perfectly poached eggs on toast.
“This looks fantastic,” I said smiling.
“Thanks.”
“I did a bit of searching last night. Your name rang a bell.”
“I’d better leave. Thanks for everything,” I said as I stood up leaving my eggs untouched.
“Craig, Please, stay for at least a few minutes. At least eat your breakfast before doing a runner, but I have something to say.”
I sat down. Maxine waited for me to start eating. I sighed internally, and opened the 'brown sauce' and put some on the eggs.
“I read the reports of the trial of your former wife. You didn’t deserve the slagging off that her Barrister alleged about you in court. For the judge to threaten to declare a mistrial because of them shows how serious it was. Things must have been very difficult for you since she kicked you out."
“Why? Why are you interested in a loser like me?”
Maxine laughed.
“Back in 2010, I was branded a loser by my family. I couldn't hold down a job and was frequently unemployed. Then the dice fell my way for a change, and I met two people who changed my life."
“What’s that got to do with me?”
“Before I met those two people and trusted them, my name was Tom. Your body language has been telling me that you have a similar problem to me in that inside you, there is a very different person inside just chomping at the bit to get out. With the right help, a new butterfly can emerge and prosper.”
Those words hit me right in the heart. I tried hard but failed to stop the tears.
Maxine came and sat next to me. She gave me a handkerchief and gave me a big hug.
I cried my heart out but she sat right there with me. I felt her cradle me as you would do with a small child. I didn't complain. It felt nice.
[To be continued]
[Authors Note]
This is indeed ‘Maxine’ from ‘The Forsythe Saga’.
[1] PPE = Politics, Philosophy and Economics.
[2] Bullingdon Club = Most members went to Eton Public School. Former Prime Minister David Cameron and the current one, Boris Johnson and a few other MP’s were members at one time or another. Upper-class twats IMHO.
“Have you ever talked to someone who really understands what it is like to be the real you?” asked Maxine when I had recovered at least a bit of my composure.
I shook my head.
“Then welcome to the club. I knew that I loved being a woman and when someone took a chance on me…”
Maxine laughed. It took a moment for me to grok why she laughed. I managed a smile.
“They took a chance on me and it paid off. Then I met the man who became my husband and things became settled but I didn’t get anything in the way of counselling until I came to fully transition. By then it was too late.”
“My guess is that you have had a few encounters with people who try to understand what it is to be trans but because they aren’t they… Well, they just can’t understand that being trans is not a passing fad but something that is ingrained in your soul. Nor can they grasp how alone you feel because of that lack of understanding. Am I even close to the mark?”
“Yes. Yes, you are. People who have been trying to help, try to mould me in their image of what a trans person should be like or to make me do things that I just don’t want to do.”
“I can understand that resistance to how other people want to mould you. I walked into my current life knowing most of the risks including falling flat on my face but l am like you in that I resisted doing things that I didn’t want to do. I was lucky in that my mother helped me with adjusting to living as a woman in the early days. From what I remember of the trial reports, you were very much on your own and probably still are?”
I shook my head.
“There is someone who I love dearly but…”
Maxine smiled back at me.
“She wants you to do something that is totally outside your comfort zone?”
“Yeah.”
She laughed.
“I had several instances where I was totally out of my depth but I had someone trusting me and supporting me until I got the confidence to go it alone. Does this woman understand that?”
“I don’t know and that is part of the problem.”
“Why didn’t you tell her?”
“I thought I did but I couldn’t seem to make her understand what I was feeling inside me.”
“Would you like me to try to help you convince her? By the sound of your voice and how you reacted, I think that you love her a lot but there are some barriers in the way of the two of you moving forward. If you don’t then I’ll say no more about it.”
“Thanks for the offer. I need to think it over.”
Maxine surprised me by standing up and taking my hand.
“Good. While you think it over, lets’ go for a walk and you can tell me how you came to be on that road when that tractor nearly ran you over. How does that sound?”
“Seems like a plan?”
She laughed.
“Not a plan but a possibility. Why don’t you get your boots and I’ll meet you outside in a few minutes?”
“What about the breakfast things?”
“They can wait.”
The way she said it, I knew that she wasn’t going to let me clear away let alone do the washing up. All that reinforced my view that this was not a woman to be trifled with. I’d never met many real women with such an air of confidence and that she was a transwoman made it even more unique. From where I sat, it appeared that she knew exactly what she wanted from life and that troubled me as I just could not picture myself in her shoes.
As I put on my boots, I wondered if she was going to be an interfering busybody or a valuable friend. There was no way I could answer that at the moment so it would be safer to go with the flow for the time being.
“I’ve only been here for seven months. I looked at a number of properties before deciding that this place was right for me,” said Maxine as we looked down the valley.
“Didn’t you say that you have some friends living close by?”
She smiled back at me.
“I did and they live down the valley and to the right. Most of that wood is part of their property. Michel is a very self-sufficient sort of person and he recommended this place to me but wanting to take the first place I saw, I looked around.”
“It is very beautiful here,” I remarked. The silence was deafening.,
“It is. The old cowshed is what swung the deal for me.”
“But you aren’t going to keep cows or any livestock, are you?”
“No, but the roof is south facing on the other side. I have over sixty solar panels installed on it. I’m off the electricity grid here. They came and disconnected me just before lockdown.”
“Oh. I didn’t realise.”
“That’s the point. With all that solar and a lot of batteries, I am self-sufficient in energy and that includes charging my car.”
“It seems that you have an idyllic life here?”
“When I get everything related to my business moved down it will be.”
“Business? What do you do for a living?”
She let out a little laugh.
“It is not really a living. It has become more of a vocation. I invest in businesses and become more like a partner than anything else. There is a hotel down near the coast that I’ve owned at least a third of for several years. I work with the owners to improve the business both financially, ethically and sustainably. The last part is now the most important part of my work. But enough of that. How did you come to be walking towards Totnes yesterday afternoon?”
“I came to find my Uncle Wallace but his house had recently been sold. The new owners seemed to think that he had died.”
“Then we must get to the bottom of that before you return to where your friend is…?”
“She’s near Leicester. I came down on the train yesterday. I was going to walk it but she…”
“She had other ideas?” suggested Maxine.
“She did.”
“She sounds like an interesting woman. She seems to know her mind even if it gets a bit cloudy when looking in your direction?”
I laughed at her description.
“I’ve never heard it described that way before. I must remember that.”
“You are more than welcome but remember the old saying… ‘Love is blind’. I think that many of us tend to put on rose-tinted glasses when trying to see our loved ones clearly.”
“You are right there. I couldn’t see what my fake wife was doing even though it was right under my nose. Even after she kicked me out, I could not believe it.”
“Don’t berate yourself. Many people are like that when it comes to those to who they are closest too. You think that they can’t be doing what they are doing. Love is a strange thing. Why else do so many women put up with their partners using them for a punchbag eh?”
She shook her head. I knew only too well what she meant.
“Are you sure that you aren’t a trained counsellor?”
She laughed.
“Not me. But I’ve seen it happen right in front of my eyes. One of the businesses that we invested in, was a family-run thing but the wife was very much in the background. Her husband made some really crass decisions and ignored his wife’s protestations. My husband agreed with her and together, they voted him off the board and out of the company. He didn’t like it and took it out on her physically. He’s now in prison. “
“He sounds like a good man? Your husband that is?”
“He was.”
She sighed.
“I miss him every day.”
She smiled at me.
“Are you going to tell her what you really think about her and what you want from her in return?”
She’d hit me right in the stomach. This woman was getting right into my inner sanctum. Fuck her but she was right.
“I want to say things but I can’t then… then the only thing I can think of is to get the hell out of town.”
To my surprise, she took hold of my hand and gave it a squeeze.
“Isn’t it time to get beyond that?”
“You make it sound so simple…”
She smiled at me and gave a small laugh.
“The first time I was let loose on my own I felt like such a fraud. I didn’t have any qualifications apart from some common sense and an inquisitive nature. I wanted to exit stage left at the speed of sound then my Adrian said to me, ‘they won’t bite. Those two women are good people’. But… I stepped forward and introduced myself. Inside I was virtually pissing myself but it all worked out in the end. Those two women are now two of my closest friends.”
“Are you up for giving her a call? Why don’t you get her down here so that you can have it out face to face at a neutral venue? Tell her how you feel about her and how you don’t want to be put in a bottle but you need her support to help you find your way in your new life? As a woman that is.”
“Do you think that I could do it?”
She laughed at me.
“Darlin’, every move you make screams woman. I saw that the moment you dragged yourself out of that bank of nettles. If that is the result of her education then she is one hell of a teacher.”
Then she tossed her phone over to me.
I gave her a great impression of a statue for well over a minute.
She was right but at that moment I hated her and just about everyone else I’d met since I was turfed out of my safe and very cosy existence at home.
“Hello Serena,” I said hoping to sound hopeful.
“Yes, I found his house but…”
“Uncle Wally died. I have not got to the bottom of when and how yet.”
“No. That’s not the reason for my call. Can you come down to Devon?”
“Yes today. We have things to discuss and… and I’d rather do it here.”
“No, I’m not going to piss off again. I met someone who has helped me put things into perspective.”
“She’s… she’s like me but different if you know what I mean.”
“Yes. She is here. I’m using her phone to call you. I left mine in my bedroom.”
“I do need to see you. There are things that we need to talk about.”
“You will? Thanks. I’ll text you the address where I am now.”
“The reason is… is that I honestly don’t have a clue apart from the fact that I’m not far from the edge of Dartmoor.”
“Ok. Let me know if you have any problems.”
“I love you. Bye.”
I ended the call without waiting for a response. I’d told her how I felt about her but I was still feeling unsure about how it had gone.
Maxine had given me some space to make the call. I waved at her to tell her that I was done.
“How did it go?”
“Ok… I think.”
“Is she going to come down?”
“She is. We need to text her the address.”
Maxine smiled back at me.
“Good. I’ll do that. My guess is that it will take her getting on for five hours to drive down here.”
“Yeah. That was my guestimate.”
“Perhaps we could find out what happened to your Uncle in the meantime?”
“The lady who lives in his old house gave me a clue about the solicitors who sold it at auction.”
“Sounds like a plan. Do you have enough ID with you? Solicitors are the cream of the crop when it comes to doubting what people tell them.”
“Is that experience speaking?”
“Not directly but I was witness to some gross misconduct when it came to denying what it clearly said in a will but you never know. My company lawyers are good people but they don’t handle personal cases.”
“That’s me all over I’m afraid. I’ve always been a bit of a wimp at times like this. At least in the past two years.”
“That’s understandable given what you have been through. Putting that aside, what do you think?”
“I’d rather have Wally in my life but from what the reports say, we went out doing what he loved and to have his last wish granted like that was a fitting end to him.”
“And?”
“I didn’t expect to get what he left me in his will.”
“What are you going to do with the money?”
“I haven’t got it yet. It could be weeks before they are satisfied with my identity. Apparently, seeing my picture in the local paper after ‘her’ trial with my name on the caption isn’t enough.”
Maxine sighed.
I was beginning to read her. She was obviously displeased with me. She was frustrated with my avoiding the subject. That’s another of my traits.
“It will all work out for the best in time. You gave them the details of the CPS lawyer who prosecuted your ex. If they vouch for you then even that load of stuffed shirts will have to give in and let you have the money.”
I could not disagree with that argument.
Maxine continued,
“I think that we should head back to my place and think about something for the three of us to eat tonight? Do you agree?”
“Where is Serena going to stay?”
“There are four bedrooms at my home. All we need to do is make up another bed.”
“Are you sure you don’t mind? We seem to be imposing on you rather a lot?”
“Poppycock. I have the space and the lamb I was going to cook is really far too big for one.”
“You seem to have all the bases covered then?”
“Most of them. Any that aren’t can be kicked into shape at the appropriate moment.”
“I wish I had your confidence.”
Maxine took my hand again. Internally, I sighed. I was in for a bit of a lecture.
She laughed.
“I’m not going to give you a telling off. All I want to say is don’t be so down on yourself. From what I’ve seen of you, you are better than that. You aren’t a loser. Surviving out on the streets the way you did is something to be proud of. Far too many others would have given up and turned to drink or drugs or both. You didn’t. That is a huge plus in my eyes.”
She’d read me yet again. I had to admit to myself that this woman pretty smart indeed.
“Stop pacing up and down. Serena texted us to say that there was a delay just the other side of Exeter. She’ll be here soon enough.”
“I know but I have so much to say and… I don’t want to fuck it all up.”
“I’m sure that you won’t.”
Her words of support were scant comfort. She didn’t know me like I know me, the loser wimp king.
Serena arrived over an hour later than we’d expected. This didn’t faze Maxine one little bit which made me rather mad. Was there anything that could get under the skin of this woman? I very much doubted it. I’d never met anyone like her and probably never would again.
Maxine made herself scarce when I went out to welcome Serena. She didn’t look very happy with life.
“I hope that this is going to be good? The last hour and a half were about the worst traffic I’ve ever been in.”
“Sorry about that. I sort of forgot that everyone and their dogs would be on the road today.”
“Our host has a meal ready for us. Let me show you to your room. Then you can freshen up before we eat.”
“I’m staying here?”
“Yes. I stayed here last night after Maxine rescued me.”
“Rescued you?”
“Yeah, I had to escape a marauding tractor and the only place for me to go was a bank of nettles. I’ve been stung before but this was something else.”
I led her upstairs hoping that my day would not go TITSUP [1] at this late stage.
“This is your room. It has a lovely view down the valley. My room is next door.”
“Thanks.”
Then Serena looked at me and smiled.
“Sorry for tearing you off a strip just now.”
“That’s ok.”
She took my hands in hers and smiled.
“There is something different about you. I can’t put my finger on it but there is something.”
“Bollocks. I’ve only been gone 36 hours.”
“Yes, it has only been a short time but you have changed.”
“I hope it is for the better?”
Serena just smiled.
Serena was a little hesitant to go out onto the terrace where Maxine was sitting in the late afternoon sun.
“She won’t bite you know,” I said hoping to reassure her.
“But what you have told me about her seems incredible.”
I smiled and took Serena’s hand in mine.
“I’ll let you make up your own mind.”
We walked out onto the terrace holding hands. I felt that at least Serena wasn’t giving me a real big cold shoulder at least for the time being.
“Maxine, this is Serena.”
Maxine stood up and gave Serena a hug. I smiled. Hang the virus.
“Welcome. I’m glad that you made it. Craig was driving me mad telling me how nice a person you are.”
I felt myself going a bit red in the face.
“Thanks Maxine. I don’t want to put you out.”
“That is one thing that you aren’t doing. You two are the first real visitors I’ve had here since January. Other than that, I’ve been on my own other than my neighbours.”
“It is nice that you get on with them. So many people don’t know who lives next door to themselves,” remarked Serena.
Maxine laughed.
“I was the one who introduced them to each other. Four and a bit months later, they were married.”
“Oh!” exclaimed Serena.
“Please pour yourself a glass of wine. I’ve setup the table out here. It is a glorious evening so I think that we should enjoy it. I’ll go and get some nibbles to tide us over until the meal is ready to serve up.”
“Thanks Maxine,” I said.
Maxine disappeared into the house.
“She seems nice,” said Serena.
I tried hard but could not stop myself from laughing.
“Nice? Is that all?”
“What do you mean?” asked Serena.
I looked at her right in the eyes.
“She’s… She’s like me.”
It took a second for Serena to register what I’d said.
“Oh shit.”
“Yes, my darling. That’s what I said when she told me.”
“She told me. The why is all down to you. What you hammered into me these past months about how to move and all that? Well, it worked. Maxine sussed out what I was almost instantly. At first, I felt like running, but she very gently talked me around, and we spent a lot of time talking last night and again this morning. I didn’t know that I needed help from someone like her but suddenly, things became clear about what I need to do.”
“That sounds awfully final?”
Those were the words that I had dreaded hearing.
“Not final but we need to make some decisions together.”
“Together?”
“Yes, my darling, together. No more of this trying to dictate to me about what I should do. If we are truly going to be a couple then it has to be as equals.”
“What are you trying to say?”
“What I’d like is for us to live together as a normal couple but not in the spa. Just us and without the problems of the spa ever present.”
“But… I have all my money tied up in the place.”
“I know. That’s where it gets hard.”
I gripped her hand tightly.
“If you can sell it to that company that has been sniffing around recently then do it. Yes, you might lose some money but that’s where I can help.”
“You? How?”
“Uncle Wally left me just over two hundred grand provided I wasn’t married to Imanuella. I’m not married so all being well then in a few weeks, I’ll have a nice nest egg to put into the kitty for us and our future. If you want to that is?”
“Oh!” exclaimed Serena.
“How did he die?”
“Apparently due to heat stroke and dehydration. He’d taken his 45ft ketch, the ‘Black Pig’ to the Caribbean. She was found drifting off of Barbados by their Navy. There was no water on board. The investigators found a small leak in the water tank. He’d left Jamacia three weeks earlier bound for Tobago.”
“A sad way to go.”
“It was but at least he died at sea. He was cremated and his ashes scattered at sea by the Barbadian Navy. That was in his will along with what should happen to his house and possessions.”
I leaned over and kissed Serena. At first, she resisted but she soon responded.
“Do we have a deal? Be ourselves for the duration of this pandemic and then decide what we are going to do with our life?”
Serena leaned back. I could see a tear forming in her eyes. The spa/clinic had been her dream but the sodding virus had got in the way big time. At least that was what I was hoping that she was thinking.
“I don’t know,” she muttered.
“We have a bit of time to think about it don’t we? But time will be of the essence if you are going to sell up and lot lose a lot more money.”
“What do you mean?”
“A second wave of the virus in the Autumn and Winter. That coupled with a lack of any approved vaccines could lead to an even longer lockdown.”
“Where did you hear all that?”
“Radio 4 Today programme this morning. I did a bit of searching after we came back from Totnes and the Solicitors. That’s what the experts are fearing.”
“I hadn’t thought that something like that is a possibility?”
“The simple fact that people will be indoors more in the winter will make spreading the virus a lot easier. Until we get the majority of the population vaccinated there is just about zero chance that we can get back to normal.”
Serena didn’t look very happy.
“I know it hurts but sometimes the things that happen in the real-world sucks.”
“Ok. Ok.”
I let her think some more. All I could hope for was that she’d come around to my way of thinking.
We didn’t get the chance to resolve it there and then as Maxine appeared with our evening meal.
“I hope the two of you are hungry, I’m afraid that I have gotten out of practice of cooking for more than one person.”
When we’d finished eating and chatting, Maxine stood up and said,
“Don’t worry about clearing these things up. I’ll do it in the morning. I’ll let you carry on talking. I’m going to watch some TV and then go to bed.”
“Thanks for the food Maxine, it was delicious.”
“Glad to hear it. Good night to you both.”
I waited until Maxine had gone inside the house before turning to Serena. She appeared to be in a world of her own.
“A penny for them?” I said quietly.
She didn’t react for over a second.
“Oh! Sorry. What did you say?”
I smiled back at her and said,
“I asked if you had a spare pair of knickers I could wear?”
For half a second, she looked surprised then she saw the funny side of what I’d just said.
“You nearly had me there.”
I leaned over and kissed her. I could taste the garlic from the roast lamb that we’d just eaten. It… it tasted nice.
“Good Morning,” said Maxine as she entered the kitchen carrying a tray of eggs.
“Where did you get them?” asked Serena.
“From my neighbour down the valley. I regularly go for an early morning walk and pick up some eggs on my way back. Michel suggested that I give you a dozen or so to take back to Leicester with you.”
“Are you wanting to get rid of us?” I asked.
Maxine laughed.
“Not in the slightest. As these were laid overnight, they’ll keep for a couple of weeks. The real question is, have you two come to a decision? If not then you are more than welcome to stay. I have a meeting in Tavistock later this morning otherwise, I am free until next Wednesday when I’m going up to London for a few meetings and to get my hair done.”
She didn’t wait for an answer but immediately began to prepare breakfast.
“How hungry are you both?” she asked once the coffee percolator was on and the kettle on the range warming up.
I looked at Serena. She was still half asleep which was most unusual for her.
“Coffee and toast for me. Sleepy head here will have Tea and toast if it isn’t too much trouble?”
“Not in the slightest. You are my guests so…” said Maxine smiling.
“The bread is in the bin behind you Craig. It was made the night before last just three miles from here.”
As I turned to get the bread, Serena said,
“Is everything you eat local produce?”
Maxine smiled.
“I try as much as possible to shop and eat local. We have some of the best food in the world right here in the Southwest. I support local businesses as well as invest in them. The meeting I’m having later is to discuss a project to produce bio-diesel from cow and pig slurry. The farmer brings a tanker load to the plant and leaves with a few hundred litres of bio-diesel.”
A few minutes later, we sat down to eat breakfast. I looked at Serena. She gave me a little nod.
“Maxine, we have decided to go back to Leicester together. Serena is going to try to sell her place ASAP even if it means a loss. We talked until the early hours about all sorts of things and we agreed to sit out any possible second wave over the winter. In return, my slave driver here will finish schooling me in the art of living as a woman. Then I’ll change my name and carry on from there.”
Maxine smiled.
“Good for you but from my own personal experience, I’d get the name change out of the way sooner rather than later. Have you decided on a name yet? I changed mine almost the first day that I started living as a woman.”
I nodded.
“Sara Scott.”
Then I asked,
“Do you ever have any regrets about your transformation?”
“Not really. I guess that I was lucky in that I had a wonderful man in my life helping me all the way and my Mother was right there for me when I had moments of panic. Here I am today, relatively happy with my life and doing things that I enjoy. Do I ever ask myself what would have happened if I had said ‘No’ at any one of a dozen points in my journey? Not really. I’m here and it is up to me to make the best of it along with my partner Hayley who is as I said yesterday away at the moment. Does that answer your question?”
“I think so. I guess that we should just accept that the journey to who we should be is not easy but it really helps if you have the support of a good person who will stand by you all the way.”
“That’s about it,” confirmed Maxine.
“Look, if either of you ever need to talk things through with someone who has probably been there, done that and got the ‘T’ shirt then just pick up the phone. Ok?”
“Thanks Maxine. It is good to know that there is someone out there who can and is willing to help.”
Maxine smiled.
“Just a bit of advice. If you start taking Hormones, they can really mess your brain up. For a while I was a right state. I said and did things that I regret. Once the doc had sorted out the right dose things got a lot better. However, there are many transgendered people who don’t go the whole way. They can and do live a happy life still with functioning male parts if you get my meaning. From my limited experience, this is especially true if their partner stays with the person transitioning. They have needs as well if you get my drift?”
“We do. We have talked about that and that decision is still up in the air.”
“Take your time and make the decision together. That’s what Adrian and I did. At first, I wasn’t sure about how far I’d go but after a couple of years, it became clear in my mind that I had to do the job properly. Adrian helped me all the way,” said Maxine.
I saw a tear well up in her eyes. It was clear to me that she missed her husband. What I didn’t get was why she was having a woman as her next partner? That was a mystery that I might never understand. I looked over at Serena and thought myself lucky to have met her.
“Remember, you know where I am if you need to talk,” said Maxine as we climbed into Serena’s car.
“Thanks Maxine. I can almost forgive that tractor driver because it meant that we met you.”
Maxine went a bit red in the face but smiled all the same.
“Drive safely,” she said as Serena started the engine.
When we arrived back and had unloaded the car, I decided to bare my chest.
“Serena, I want to apologise for being such an idiot. It wasn’t until Maxine… until she told me straight to my face that I was being a total idiot and that I should make up my mind about us and then she said in no uncertain terms that if I didn’t get my act together then I was… The words she used to hurt me hard but to hear the truth from someone like me was to put it bluntly, a nasty shock.”
Serena smiled.
“She’s quite a woman, isn’t she?”
“She is and… well, I can’t imagine her as a man.”
“You got really lucky when she rescued you. She was able to tell you things that I could not imagine.”
Serena smiled at me.
“She changed you.”
“For the better, I hope?”
“The jury is still out. Only time will tell on that but so far, the signs are good.”
“I know one thing.”
“Eh?”
I smiled at her before saying,
“I’m done going walkabout…”
Thanks to Maxine kicking me up the backside, Serena and I became a lot closer and more open about our problems. I made Sara a legal entity a few weeks later. On that same day, Serena’s business was sold. Although she made a small loss, the experience would be useful in the future whatever and wherever that might be.
Maxine had shown me that there was a way forward for me as a woman. It is now down to me with the help of Serena to take it.
We had time to be together without a lot of pressure from others because of the pandemic. Serena was a hard taskmaster when it came to getting rid of the rough edges that Sara had in so many places. When we finally were able to return to something approaching normality, I felt a lot more confident in the role that I was being asked to play in society.
With Serena at my side, I was no longer a down and out but someone on the up and ready to face whatever brickbats society might throw at me or rather should I say ‘us’?
[The end]
[1] TITSUP : Total Inability To Support Usual Performance