CHAPTER 34
I returned with the three parcels, and caught my wife’s eye as I approached. When I reached them, Hays was partway through a declaration of how old she was and what age Santa was meant for. Ian had been absolutely spot on: she had found a route to grow, to become a person, rather than something left out of sight in a bedroom so as not to irritate her mother.

CHAPTER 33
In the end, it was Eric who came through with a result. Kate knew the right administrators to approach, but it was a man I hardly knew who moved and shook the right people to find Ian his bed.

Annie rode over to see us with the news that weekend, and I had to ask how her husband had managed it.

“Think about it, aye? He runs the path lab. Every surgeon, every oncologist, they all have to come through him, so he gets to know them, aye?”

CHAPTER 32
It was Larinda who reacted first, once again showing who was stronger in our partnership. Ian had cut me off to ring Ralph, Neil, any others who he could find the strength to tell, and my wife just took the phone from my hands, looked through a small notebook she pulled from her handbag and dialled a number. We were still in loudspeaker mode.

“Brains’r’Us Undead Deli!”

CHAPTER 30
It seemed my lover had moved things on beyond what she had admitted to me, and rather presented me with a fixed and fully prepared package. She had been in touch with just about everyone involved, tweaking the details and filling in little boxes where necessary.

“Why not somewhere closer, Pet, like Holland?”

CHAPTER 29
“And what exactly are we planning? “

She almost whispered, “It’s me that’s been doing the planning”

“Aye, well it’s ‘us’ now, OK?”

The wind was a sod. Why did she have to pick February? It blasted across the church yard, swirling past the corner where the new wing was glued inappropriately to the old, concrete to stone. My raincoat flapped around my legs, the tails whipping my calves, as I watched the coffin slowly lowered down into the damp and dripping slot.

CHAPTER 27
I looked at his expression, and sighed.

“Bethy, Larinda’s in the kitchen sorting some food, so…”

“Yeah, yeah, let the olds talk”

As soon as she was gone, and the door shut, I turned to my brother.

CHAPTER 26
Unless you are peculiarly lucky, work is something that serves to highlight the pleasure of what you prefer to spend your time doing. If it weren’t for work, you think, I could do whatever it is all day and every day. You know, though, in the back of your mind, that it would be like bathing in chocolate. Kinkily nice for thirty seconds or so before it would cloy and repel.

CHAPTER 22
Of course, we had to make the introductions to the others, and that was when I realised how sharp Ian’s focus had been on me and Mam, as he hadn’t even noticed the Forster brothers. So many explanations, so much history, and so often his eyes would drift as his mind processed such things as Alec’s presence at John’s side.

“My middle brother Ian; John Wilkins, retired colleague and life-saver”

“Oh, don’t, Jill!”

“Well, it’s true…and Von you might have heard Mam talk about. That’s her boy Will over there with Nelly”

CHAPTER 20
Ian was back in a couple of minutes, his wife turning up with the wayward offspring a few seconds after. She peered at his face, seeming to spot the red in his eyes, and then turned her gaze onto me.

“That’s not really your colour, Rob”

CHAPTER 19
It was a crisp Autumn day, the freshly fallen leaves mixed with the confetti that Neil had insisted on and the sun warm through the net of my headgear once out of the soft wind. It was Neil who had stood up with Ralph, and it was Neil who had spoken to the vicar at High Usworth to arrange my mother’s second wedding in the same church that had celebrated her first.

CHAPTER 18
The meal was no wonder of modern cuisine, but it was properly cooked and filling, and I noticed that it wasn’t just tea being consumed by some of the older sorts. People were happy, that was the overwhelming thing. Mostly in pairs, mostly touching, even Von’s earlier pain seemed to have left the building, as she came to life discussing her baby’s college plans with Kelly and Mark as if Will wasn’t even there.

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

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

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

“All rise”

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

CHAPTER48
I stood in the sunflower house, watching the dust dancing in rays of light that shone through the new windows. In just a short time, the damage done that night was vanishing into the house’s history. My neighbours, perhaps shamed by the way they had hidden from the mob, had helped in small ways, and the money that the Blanchards and others had been directed to pay me as compensation had done the rest. Maggie was sitting in my kitchen, her son at her breast, and Matty and Elle were to join us with their small package later that day for a meal in the Spring sun in my garden.

CHAPTER 46
Once more it was Marck who saved my life. Whatever debt he had ever owed my brother had been repaid in full and more given besides, it seemed, but this was not a payment I had desired. Not to wake, that had been my hope. I had managed to get the cut across the left forearm, but it was hard to use that hand on the right, and the blood made the handle slippery, twisting in my grip. I had to be satisfied with the flow from one arm, and it was painful, of course, but that was the price for my peace.

CHAPTER 44
It had started again. Marck told me a few days later that they had found nothing in the way of fingerprints, and so nothing could be taken further. Matty was around the day after that, and he began work immediately, with visits from Elle and my god-daughter, to install a system of television cameras connected to a recording device, as well as some strong external lights that would respond to any motion near them.

They were coming, and Salamander was trying to break free of Ridley’s grasp to seek the safety of her burrow. It was Night, and they mostly came out at night. Mostly…

CHAPTER 42
I remembered my behaviour the last time, that time Benny had departed, and with those memories came certainty. I was not alone; Rollo, Margot, even my parents in the deep South, they were not lost to me, nor me to them. There were Matty and Elle, and sweet Pascale. I astonished myself, because I did not go indoors to weep over the destruction but instead rang my brother.

CHAPTER 9
“All rise !”

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

“Aneurin Wynford Prentice, you are charged…”

CHAPTER 40
The talk in that class began after that next Christmas had passed. It was nothing that was immediately noticed by myself, but when one looks back to an earlier time the vision may often be clearer than it was at that initial moment. It was later that I saw, later in my years that I could place a marker on my calendar and say, yes, that was the instant, that was the beginning.