CHAPTER 81
The girls had recorded the news, of course, and once we had finished creating a new underwater hazard, we settled in as a crew to watch it a few times, although Jazz and Nell had made their apologies and driven home as we had finished, still being kind enough to fit some of the girls into their cars..

It was Paula who surprised me, her cheeks glowing pink with wind and effort, a smile seeming fixed to her lips. As the rest of us stumbled over the shingle back to the bus stop and Paul’s car, she squeezed my arm in delight.

“Whose idea was that, Debbie? Bloody fantastic!”

“Ah, Di’s friend, Bridget I think her name is. Night before her wedding”

“Whoever it was, I think my dearest has pulled a muscle throwing a few of those stones. More than one was called ‘Mo’, and the rest were all named after a councillor we all know and love”

I laughed at the image.

“I did think he was grunting a bit as he threw!”

She almost fell over as she laughed.

“That wasn’t grunting! You not hear what he was saying?”

“All I heard was ‘Unh! Unh!”

She absolutely twinkled, shaking her head.

“Na! Start that word with a C and end it with a T and you’ll have it. Think he was trying to strangle it so much he couldn’t relax, and that’s why he hurt himself”

“You going to rub it better later?”

Her head dropped, and there was a definite pinkness to her face. I stopped us both, laying my arm over her shoulder.

“You okay, love?”

She sighed deeply three or four times, then shook her head.

“Yes, and, well, no, not really. I was talking to Diane about it, you know: shop-soiled, she calls it. Hard thing, it is, not knowing… I was talking to Kim, same sort of chat, and she is smitten, really smitten, with Phil”

“He’s a good lad”

“Yeah, and he has done so much for me, and who am I, apart from some smackhead street whore that a man’s taken pity on, and that’s Kim’s worry as well, that some real girl will come along and he’ll be off with her without even a goodbye”

“You think that of Paul, love?”

Her head came up, a softer smile there now, and, slowly at first, she shook her head.

“No, Debbie. Really no. I think back, and I had so much as a kid, and well, I look at him now, and I don’t care about the past, about all the money and that. I’ve got him, and now, well, I KNOW I have him, but it’s just sometimes, like with Kim. Doubts”

“So it’s all worth it?”

“Not at all, woman. There is nothing that makes up for all those years, that fucking cunt Mo, all that… No. Dead zone to me, if you get my meaning. Happened. Finished. Move on”

Suddenly she was grinning.

“Really ought to work on my language if I am going to be living with a copper. Anyway, thank you for thinking of us today, and I do mean ‘us’. We needed this”

I pointed to Charlie and Tiff as they made jokes about all the elastic bands at the tide’s high point, the remains of Barry white fish.

“Sisters you are, so it’s what families do, or should do”

Another grin, and a much more relaxed one.

“I know that, Debbie, and yes, old jokes about picking friends not family, so you get my point”

We got back to the House in good time, and as a couple of the girls brewed teas and chocolates, the rest of us settled back to watch the news reports over and over again, Brian Dennahy impressing me with his steadiness as he was interviewed at the gates of what must have been a decent number of acres of private grounds. Football had clearly paid him well, although I did note he was plugging his new book rather forcefully. He obviously thought along the lines of ‘every little helps’.

There were catcalls and jokes, especially when the cameras caught me coming out of the court, my face pixelated, and Clara loudly remarked that if my hair was that bad, she knew a decent stylist, but there were cheers as Diane and Jon appeared, as well as some much worse noises when Cooper’s face was shown. A simple, sensible, family evening, and it did a lot to lift my spirits again. It was that ‘locked door’ thing; so long pushing at it that when it opened, I had no choice but to fall flat on my face.

Sort yourself out, girl. Once our guests were away and the rest of us fed, I found my paper diary, filled with shift pattern notes, and started working through the events to come over the next year and a bit, using the year planner pages at the back. Find a focus, find a date to work to, and forget that swinging door.

It was a few days later that the next little wave broke over me, as I watched Charlie after the girls had been out on a ‘student night’ in a city centre pub. It may have been a ‘student night’, but they had taken Paula, Jon and the Suttons along for the evening, and Jon had apparently brought his own partner, so the concept of academia was getting more than a little stretched. It wasn’t a night they needed me looking over their shoulders, especially as it was Gemma’s turn to show Marty off, so I had simply settled down once more with book and sounds, still sorting my diary. I caught Charlie in the airlock kitchen.

“Moping, love? Problems?”

She looked a little on edge, but she settled into a hug, as ever.

“Got a secret, Nana. Got to tell someone, but, well, just you, yeah?”

“If you really think you have to, love”

She nodded against my breast.

“Have to tell someone. It’s Diane. She’s… she’s having a kid”

I went to say something, but the tap was open now, and she was gushing.

“I didn’t mean to spy, Nana. Just went to the ladies’, yeah, for a wee, and she had the test kit, and she was really sweet about it, but it should have been Blake to know first, not me, so I said I would keep it zipped, but, well!”

You have your kids, Petrie, and they are and always will be yours, so put those thoughts away.

“Then we will keep it secret between us until she tells us, love. Now, change the subject, okay? Two of us know now, so it won’t be pushing you so hard. How was the evening, the rest of it?”

She pulled back, grinning slightly.

“That Jon, and Rhys, yeah? They was snogging after we came out of the pub”

“And? It’s allowed, I believe”

“Yeah, but so was Marty, with Gemma! We didn’t know where to look, the rest of us. He wasn’t holding back!”

That turned the flow of the chat onto safer ground, and I got a typical teenaged girl’s flow of meaningless anecdotes that were still important to her, and yet again thought of two names attached to flying pebbles. Cooper’s mauling in court had eased so much of my life, and here was evidence that much the same had followed Ashley Evans’ trial. The human wreckage that had landed in the House when Charlie and Tiff had been found was now blooming, their personalities shining out, and I was finding out how much I actually liked them as people rather than victims to shelter.

It was only a few weeks later when Jon confirmed the news about Diane’s pregnancy, as he was becoming a regular visitor to the House in his own right, even if he was the man who had taken Rhys off the market. I found myself laughing a couple of times, as all the rules I had set up in my life crumbled. Letting men into the House? Fail. Getting to like a copper? So big a Fail I was losing count of the number I now counted as friends, and that was when I realised that they had friends of their own.

I realised that particular truth even more completely when we block-booked a sizeable chunk of seating in Aberystwyth for another two of my girls, as they received their degrees, a First for each of them, and then they managed to top even that, as each produced the third of their four gifts, a small piece of paper from the government that was so much bigger in its effect than physical size suggested: a Gender Recognition Certificate.

Number four was the news that they were both on a waiting list for surgery, and number one… Number one had been shining from each left hand. I had broken my congratulatory hug of Cathy, asking simply, “When? When was this?”

She had waved at the other three, grinning with absolute joy.

“We found a really romantic place, Nana, and the boys did it together. Halfway across Dream of White Horses”

“Sorry?”

“Gogarth”

“I don’t know where that is, love”

“Route on a big sea cliff, near Holyhead. Seals in the water watching as you climb”

“They proposed on a bloody clifftop?”

“Er, no. Goes across, so in the middle of a cliff face, sort of thing”

What on Earth had happened to the shy girls I had first met? Shining out now, just like Charlie and Tiff. All four of them had followed our minibus north after the ceremony, and there were the mountains, and a smiling Pat, as well as Alun Wallis, whose initial comments were about his new guitar, before he turned a little more serious as we sat beneath the Perving Slab with a flask of tea, a buzzard overhead and meadow pipits parachuting tweeting to the grass.

“Finding a lot of things out up here, Debbie”

“Such as?”

He shrugged.

“Obvious one is my daughter, and it’s not just meeting her at last, getting to know her. Getting to love my child all over again, isn’t it? It’s loads of other stuff”

He waved an arm over our surroundings.

“I was in a rut, Debbie. My wife, well, everything had to work around her. So many things I missed, like who our child was, and so many other things I missed, in the sense of not getting to do them. She’d never go anywhere, because the Parch might need her, or, I dunno, she might get infected by the wrong interpretation of some verse of other. I missed playing my music. I missed all this”

Once again, he indicated the mountains around us, and then pointed at Alicia as she scrambled up an easier part of the Slab at the end of a rope held by Cathy.

“I could never get her to do anything energetic, and I think that was because it was always a boy thing. Doing it as a boy, I mean. Now look at her”

His sudden, broad grin was entirely natural.

“Winning all round, aren’t I?”

Another golden Summer. I was surprised when the two boys squeezed into one car with Nell, for their drive up to the Lakes and then Scotland, while Cathy followed us home in the car that Rosie and the Club had found for them.

“Something I need to do, Nana. I’ll catch the others up at Wasdale Head afterwards”

It all became clear a couple of days later, as I came down for breakfast on a day off to find Cathy already up and dressed, and in as elegant a manner as she had demonstrated for her graduation, in a dove-grey suit over a cream blouse, along with modest heels. She saw me looking at her shoes, and smiled shyly.

“Can’t drive in them, Nana, but they are part of the look. Once you’re sorted, we’ll get off”

I had worked out where we were going by then, and once I was fed and then dressed as neatly as I could, Cathy drove us east, and once we had parked up in Overmonnow, Cathy changed from her slippers back into the ‘part of the look’ heeled court shoes. We called at the reception desk, and Cathy asked in her polite way if Mrs Hughes was available. The woman smiled at us, confirming that Hughes was indeed in.

“Who shall I say is calling?”

A winning smile from Cathy.

“A couple of old friends on a surprise visit!”

A nod and a grin in reply.

“Shall I sort out a tray of tea for you all?”

Once again, my own woman’s smile.

“That would be lovely. Thank you”

Five minutes later, I spotted Cathy’s former carer walking towards us, the receptionist pointing her our way, and she looked a little puzzled.

“Hello. Jenny said you were old friend, but… do I actually know you?”

Cathy indicated me.

“This is Debbie Wells”

Mrs Hughes peered at me, clearly at a loss.

“How do I know… Oh. Do you drive a Transit van normally?”

I nodded back.

“Normally, yes, unless it’s a lorry or my bike. Cathy drove us over today”

Her jaw dropped slightly, as her head turned ever so slowly to look at my girl.

“Cathy? My… my girl Cathy?”

Another happy smile, with a nod, and then Mrs Hughes simply said hello in the same way she had said goodbye, with a forceful hug. As she pulled away, she was still holding Cathy’s hands, and there was another moment of surprise as her fingers felt the ring.

“Oh, my word! We must talk. Jenny, do you have time to make us some tea?”

“I’ve already offered, Peggy. I take it these are indeed old friends, then?”

‘Peggy’ laughed happily.

“The very best kind, Jenny! The very best!”