CHAPTER 64
That removed any traces of darkness from the table, Frank explaining what he had said as Deb sat chuckling.

“All I actually said, in Welsh, was that you will have to learn it. My family, or what’s left of them, are first language, so they will expect no less. Some of the courtesies, anyway. Rhod?”

“Yes, mister?”

Frank looked at me for permission, as Deb sat with another query clearly bursting to get out, so I held my hand out to her as permission.

“Rhod, Aunty Deb wants to ask something, so this nice man will speak to you after she does. Deb?”

She shook her head to clear it, then looked once more at her friend.

“A lot of assumptions there, Frank”

He shook his head.

“Not at all. I have waited a very long time to be here, like this, with someone I am very, very fond of. We’re both adults, we have both been through the wringer, and with all due respect, we are both in what the Good Doctor called the first flush of late youth. I think I have some good years behind me. I would like to see if the best ones are still ahead. So, girl, no assumptions from me. Just offers. That is why I am letting Di answer the question about Rhod, but waiting for you to say your bit, Aunty Deb”

She still had his hand, her face dancing through so many expressions and tells I lost track, so I just caught Frank’s eye and nodded. Deb saw, and slowly added her own sign of agreement. Frank turned back to Rhod.

“Little man, I am a friend of your Aunty Deb here. If you want, I can be Uncle Frank Or, you could say it in Welsh, which is ‘ewythr’, but they still say ‘uncle’. Just spell it differently”

Rhod frowned.

“Mrs Pugh says we have to learn Welsh. Is it hard?”

Frank shook his head.

“Not if you start young, Rhod. I am going to help Aunty Deb learn some, so maybe she could practise it with you?”

“Will she bring cakes and stuff again?”

What a mercenary little sod my boy could be! Frank looked back at Deb, a soft smile clearly meant for her, and her alone.

“So, as I said. No assumptions, no agenda, no cunning plan. And no ‘chaser’ here”

That one caught me blindside, and I waited as he weighed his words in consideration to a young man’s age.

“Chasers, Di, are men who show interest in certain types of lady, precisely because of the type they are. Their aim is… intimacy. Intimacy in private. I read a description the other day, and it said something that cut me. These people are desirous of immediate knowledge, little ears, but they… I can’t say this out straight, but the Yanks say ‘dating’, aye? They mean something else, but it’s a useful word here. Dating. Going out with, and the ‘going out’ bit doesn’t happen. So, Deb, my offer is ‘going out with’. Over to you”

She looked down at their linked hands, then at Rhod.

“If I learn Welsh, will you help me get it right”

He grinned.

“Aunty Lainey and Aunty Siân know it as well! Do you like tents?”

“Sorry, Rhod? What about tents?”

“We went in a big tent in a church at Christmas! It was all singing and planes!”

I realised I had better step in, if only to wipe away the confusion.

“Friends of mine, Deb. They’ve got kids as well, plus a lot of other friends, over in England, some of whom are my friends as well, and so on. They took us to a big event this year, at a church in Surrey. Camping in the grounds, but with proper loos and decent food. Some of them are into their music”

Deb laughed, tension breaking at last, but she still had Frank’s hand in hers.

“Not more… Not more folk music, Di?”

I thought about that one carefully.

“Um, sort of. Flute, fiddle, guitar, that sort of thing. Mostly folk, but they did get a bit mad later in the evening”

“How mad?”

“I am told it was stuff by someone called Jethro Tull”

“Oh. I can live with Tull”

“Yes, I thought you might. How about Metallica?”

She sat up straighter at that.

“Metallica? On flute and fiddle?”

“Absolutely. You wouldn’t believe how well it worked. Did you like it, Rhod?”

He was still looking down at his crayons, and his reply was casual in the extreme.

“Yes. It was good. Uncle Eric said Aunty Steph is barking. She wasn’t a dog, though, Mam. And I liked the nest”

I shrugged across the table.

“Lainey and Siân’s two bunked in with him, and we just gave them a big pile of duvets to burrow in”

“Mam?”

“Yes, son?”

“Sassie and Tone said there’s more camping there. In Summer. Can we go when it’s warm?”

My surprise must have shown, because Frank started laughing.

“Who is supposed to be the clever investigating copper here, then? You or the boy?”

Deb caught his mood, and simply said “Yes”

Frank looked at her, eyebrows raised.

“Yes?”

“Yes to going out. And yes to going camping with Rhod. So, I now have to ask Rhod: could Uncle Frank come as well?”

“Can you do music, Uncle Frank?”

Deb turned to appraise her
friend.

“I don’t know, little man. Shall I see if I can find out?”

They left us very shortly after that exchange, with promises of calendar and diary searches, and apart from putting on their coats, Deb didn’t let go of his hand. I kept my words as light as I could, not just for the sake of my old and newer friend, but for my boy. It isn’t a good thing for a small child to see their mother weep, even if it is with happiness.

Work was back to normal after Wildcat’s polite expression of her utterly altruistic concern for canine welfare, but there was a resulting sharper edge to it. We were still running our surveillance operation, but now with a feeling that something was about to break other than the seals on cans of energy drink. I was praying for it to be soon, for while I fully understood Sammy’s good intent in splitting up couples, I missed my bigger man. I loved Rhod to bits, of course, but I was sick and tired of waking to an empty bed, even more so when the shifts worked so that I had also gone their alone.

‘Normal’? What exactly did that word mean for us? Please, Mr Organised Criminal, please do something, anything. Just do it soon.

More greasy bacon sandwiches. More sitting quietly as Alun described how the illness was taking his wife away from him, and I heard on the grapevine that a sleeping bag had disappeared from a certain room. He was breaking up as I watched, and there was sod all I could do, until a thought struck me one early evening as I sat in Costa’s with Deb and a hot chocolate waiting for Rhod to come back from the toilet (“I am not a baby, Mam!”).

He would always be my baby, though. He had prattled onto Deb about his new obsessions, his big-boy-not-a-baby’s top lip bearing a chocolate moustache. Welsh and camping; I realised we would end up back in the places Dad knew so well, and wondered if three generations of Big Boys would fancy a holiday in Snowdonia.

That was the moment inspiration struck. I held onto the thought so it could breathe and grow, spending a little while on the internet that evening before picking up the phone, Rhod safely in bed. It only rang a couple of times before it was picked up.

“Hello, can I help you?”

“Hiya, Lainey!”

“Di! You not on ops tonight? Thought you lot were all tied up, secret squirreling again”

“Speaks Bilbo Baggins sneaksy Powell! You taught us well, remember?”

“Well, you were apt pupils, as that book said, aye? Anyway, you don’t ring up at this time unless you want the boy to be safely in bed. What’s up?”

Too sharp by far.

“Your two have wound him up. On about camping and speaking foreign, isn’t it?”

“It’s not bloody foreign, woman!”

She said something in Welsh that sounded almost like the phrase Frank had come out with, and Rhod had recognised as one used by his teacher.

“What does that actually mean, Lainey?”

“You need to learn Welsh, and don’t say ‘just tell me’, because that is exactly what it means. Mae’n… never mind. Someone else say that to you?”

“yes, Deb’s new man, Frank, and apparently his teacher”

“Makes sense from the teacher, aye? Hang on. Deb? New man?”

“Yes. Long story, really; someone she has known for years, but because of---no breaking confidence here, but you know who she is, what she is, isn’t it?”

An absolutely flat “Yes”, then a deep sigh.

“Di, love, you know about my little sister Sar, don’t you?”

“Hard not to, really, given our taste in mutual fucking friends”

“Rhod is indeed safely in bed, then. Sarah’s story was like Deb’s, in a small way, it seems. Well, not small: vital, really. You’ve met Tony. They met years ago and had a long while apart. See what I mean?”

I will have to break myself of the habit of nodding agreement to a phone handset.

“I take your point. Not really Deb I’m calling about, though”

“Stay with her for a second, though. Is he sound, this man?”

“I think so. I also don’t want to get pushy with them. Let them find their own way”

She barked out a laugh.

“You are so unlike Sarah, then. She can never keep her nose out! What was it you wanted to ask, then?”

“Your two were nattering with my boy about camping and Welsh”

“You said, aye?”

“Well, he says he wants to go again, where the planes are, and when it’s warm, and I hear that your friends do a similar event in the Summer”

“Yes. It’s a bit different from the Christmas one”

“Er, obviously. Should be a bloody sight warmer, for starters!”

“No, Di. I mean yes, aye? But there’s more. It’s mostly outdoors, and it’s a community thing. They set up a dance floor in that big space by the church. Steph started it off, really”

“The barking one? Not my description, honest, though I don’t exactly disagree with it. Eric’s word, of all people. Rhod heard him, and of course discretion glands are a bit unformed at his age. Talk me through it?”

To my surprise, she was absolutely silent for a few seconds before a clearly audible and very deep intake of breath and sigh.

“Di, Steph started it up, or at least had a major hand in things with her hubby and the vicar. It started with a murder. Trans woman, aye?”

“Ah. Not…?”

“Yes, girl. One of Annie’s. One of the very nastiest, and I would rather not go into detail. Poor woman is buried in the churchyard. It started out as her funeral, and then Simon the vicar asked if it could be annual, aye? Done as a charity fund raiser. He does the usual collection stuff for the Christmas one, and that is usually local, but the Summer one tends to be a bit more specific. Local kids’ support group to one of Pat’s ideas, a facial surgery charity, aye? Always a point to be made, and Simon makes it well. What are you after?”

“A word with him first, if I can. See what he thinks of an idea I had”

“Got a pen handy?”

She rattled off a number for me.

“I trust you on this one. Something you’re not telling, but as I said, I trust you. Give Merry and him our best, please”