CHAPTER 25
I was a little off for the next few weeks, even though it was Annette and Carole who did the down and dirty with the body. We gave them a hand with it, of course, but they were the ones who had to process it for the morgue and secure a blood sample for the inquest, that is, a sample of the blood that wasn’t already outside the body. The police had brooms in their cars, and station staff had buckets of soapy water for the necessaries once the photos had been taken.

I was in Marlene’s alone on my next day off, not in the brightest of moods. Lil was just trying to cheer me up, a move doomed to failure, when my mobile rang. Angela.

“Where are you, Jen?”

“Smugglers”

“Not heard from you, woman”

“Sorry. Work, and, well, we had a bad one. I don’t have that much resilience yet”

“Jen, girl, that’s supposed to be my job, ey? I’m off. If I say I’ll see you in ten minutes, would that be a problem?”

Thank you, you lovely woman.

“No, not in any way. Text me when you’re nearly here, and I’ll get your drink in. Just talking to Lil at the moment”

“You got enough in for a very late breakfast?”

“I do believe so”

“See you in a few, then”

Lil simply said, “Angela?”, and I nodded.

“Jen… was it that fight down by the station? Lad off the scaffolding?”

I just nodded, not trusting my words.

“She’s on her way over, then. Good. You need a bit more than just a mate tonight, I think”

“Lil?”

“Yeah?”

“You are more than just a mate, aye? Just not, well, you know”

“I do, love. That’s two of us fallen on our feet, then. When’s Tom next in?”

“No idea. He and Connie have got a house full of dogs, Lil. They seem to ration their nights out. Self-sufficient, aye?”

“Joined at the hip. That your phone?”

“Oh, yeah---can you pull a pint of the Gold, please?”

“Refill of Thumper as well?”

“Yeah, please”

Ange was by my side just after Lil set the glasses down, and simply kissed me hard before burying herself in my embrace.

“Missed this, I have. Heard some gossip at work, so I’m taking a guess: building site fall, by Central?”

Once again, all I did was nod, and she hugged me again.

“Well, that shit can go bugger itself, is what I say. Got a proposal for you, in May, so time to think”

“What is it?”

“A music and literary festival. Camping. In Pembrokeshire”

“What sort of music?”

“Mixture, but that’s not the point. It’s a lesbacious affair”

“Sorry?”

“It’s aimed at what they call queer women. Lesbians, bi, trans, all that. I wanted to go last year, but couldn’t face it, you know, just me? And yeah, Lil? You and your girly fancy it?”

“Might do. I’ll ask, but we’d need tents and shit”

“I’ll leave Jen with the details, then. Cheers!”

The evening was immeasurably better, just by her presence, and I remembered those thoughts that first morning together: she’d be back.

Half an hour later, Marlene was compering a ‘new faces’ set of drag acts, four newbies whom she seemed to be awarding marks for how well they responded to her snipes, which grew progressively more acid until she declared her winner.

“But I KNOW exactly what you arseholes will say, so we’re now having a vote. Hands up for Laura Legs… Cleo Vadge… Titzi Bums… and finally Britney Ferris. See? How could Moi ever be wrong? Cleo Vadge it is. Your gig’s on Thursday, girl, be there or be hunted down for sport”

I had looked round as she finished, drag not really being my thing, and as I turned back to Lil, Debbie appeared on the side of me that wasn’t enveloped by Angela.

“Hi, Jen. Heard about the nasty. You okay?”

“Getting there. Helps when, you know”

I indicated Angela.

“Debbie, Angela, my other half”

Something flitted past behind her eyes, but she smiled, said a few more sympathetic pleasantries, then headed back to her table. Three young girls were there, one the hair monster from that evening in Splott, one a girl with collar-length hair and a beaming smile, one with spikier hair and a prominent nose, not as outgoing as the other two. With them was Maisie, in a simple skirt, pink T-shirt and pinker fleece.

She was smiling, I realised, engaging with the others in what was clearly some friendly teasing of the hairy girl. When she looked across to the bar, I raised my glass in a little salute. Her response wasn’t what I had expected, and I realised she hadn’t recognised me. Five minutes later, she was at the same spot on the bar that Debbie had vacated.

“Do I know you?”

“You do, girl, but I can understand why you might not remember. You were in a lot of pain”

“Oh! The ambulance! Tom, and… Jen?”

“That’s the one. How are you?”

“Um, walking a lot more easily now. Paul, our policeman, he got the doctor to visit us, just to be sure”

“Paul’s a friend of ours, Maisie, as in friend of me and Tom, not me and my girl here”

“He’s a very kind man”

“We think so too. How are you being treated?”

Her smile was like the rising sun.

“It’s like all my wishes, not just three. They’re sorting a college place for me and everything”

“You feel safe, out and about?”

“I didn’t, not really, not at first, but Marlene’s been lovely, and… And Cathy and Nell are at college, and I’ve…”

She looked around for inspiration, finally a long and thoughtful stare over her shoulder towards her friends, then back to me.

“I’ve got a home to go back to now. A home for ME to go back to. That makes the real difference, Jen. Better get back; thanks again to you and Tom”

She hesitated a second before giving me a quick hug and then scampering back to her new friends. Angela looked up at me in silent inquiry.

“Sorry, Ange. Can’t talk about patients”

“Jen, I know what that woman does, who she takes in. I also live in Splott. I see some of the pros in daytime; shout them a cuppa every so often. So I suspect I know who that was. Nicely done. I think you got to her in time, anyway”

“What do you mean?”

“There’s a lot of shit goes on round there. You probably don’t see it. Like a bloody mafia there, the barbers and minimarkets, not just the prostitutes. And their owner, fuck. He’s even got scouts out at the cycle track”

She sighed, shaking her head slowly.

“You surprise me, Jen. What you see in your job, then what you miss outside it. Mo, they call him. Tiger Bay boy, which I am told has a lot of Somali roots, and that’s him. Drives a bloody Merc sports car, ey? But his other businesses, he needs to be low profile, so he uses kids. Kids on pushies---bikes. Gets them through the little shops, grooms them, the fucker”

She sank most of her pint in one long pull.

“When I first came down here, Jen, I saw a fight. Kids, really, fifteen, sixteen, not much older, and the little shits had knives. Two different drugs gangs, I learned, keep your mouth shut, walk away, but the thing is that they weren’t the actual gangs, they were the groomed kids. That Mo has a turf war with some other Mister Thinks He’s A Big Man, a Romanian I’m told, but they each send out their kiddies to do the bleeding… Sorry. It was meant to be me doing the cheering up, and that shit is pure downer. Pint?”

She waved at Lil, and as I took my first sip, she whispered, “Sorry again, Jen. But I do have a way of trying to cheer you up properly”

“Which is?”

“Go back to yours and have that late breakfast. Well, after taking off all our clothes and really messing up your bed”

How could I possibly say no? In fact, I soon got very, very used to not saying no, as Angela and I continued to take our friendship, as Tom had put it, to a series of other levels, rather like one of those video games. And, of course, I bought some camping kit.

Sod loneliness; it could stay locked away.

Amina had a ‘borrow’ of her mother’s car for the weekend, and we rolled off along the M4, passing Morriston Hospital, a regular haunt of mine, before the scene of that awful day with Adam Price, and the end of the M4. Lil was jovial, pointing out as we approached Carmarthen that when she had first travelled that way, the dual carriageway had ended much further east, at Crosshands.

Eventually, we turned off for South Pembrokeshire and shortly after the unfortunately named Broadmoor, Amina turned onto a much smaller road that led to a glamping site on a farm. Ange was apologetic.

“If I’d known about this earlier, we could’ve booked one of the glampers, bell tents with beds, ey? Anyway, I’ve got all the tickets ready—hiya! Four of us, love, all got tickets. Where do we pitch?”