CHAPTER 49
I needed to think. So many people were pushing, and I dreaded waking up one day and discovering that my feelings weren’t so much my own as donations from well-meaning friends. Tom spoke of ‘gaining’, but I had already lost, and if I were to do so again, it would be myself I would lose. I needed space to think, space of my own, because every time I was with Amina, I was not thinking at all.

My next run of rest days, I booked a bed and breakfast in Pembroke Dock, which is a dump but one surrounded by glorious countryside, and spent my time walking along some of the cliffs or simply sitting on the sand watching the sea as it came and went, came and went, sometimes leaving behind lonely, broken pieces of other lost things as waves slid back over the sand.

In essence, I was doing that thing Tom described so well, listing my shudders. I knew at least one thing for certain, and that was a brutal one: if I had learned anything from the time I had been allowed with Angela, it was that I was not suited for a single life. Ever since the first arguments with my family, I had assumed that the natural state of the unnatural, as they saw me, was a solitary one. Angela had shown me how badly wrong that idea was, how completely I had got my ideas screwed up.

I didn’t go to the nearby pub on my second night as some white knight arsehole decided to follow me into the ladies’ and tell me why I shouldn’t be there. Angela would have had his balls, or more, but not in any manner that he would have appreciated.

We were back on early turn on the Monday after I had returned. Nothing special, apart from a boy with greenstick fractures to both radius and ulna in a boy who had decided that it was sensible to ride his bike on its back wheel alone. That was a little bit of a wake-up call for me, because Tom was the one who spotted the broken collar bone, fortunately before we pulled away from scene.

“You’re not with it today, Jen”

“Sorry, butt. Doing a lot of thinking, I am”

“Have you spoken to Amina?”

“Not yet”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake. What did you do on days off?”

“Went away for a couple of days”

“Where to?”

“Pembroke Dock”

“Why there? It’s a hole. Much nicer places around there”

“No car. It’s got a station and it had a B and B, and the coast’s nearby”

“And what did you do? Pub?”

“Not after some arsehole man followed me into the loo and told me to fuck off out”

“I despair, Jen. It not occur to him that he was doing what he was accusing you of? I assume it was the ladies’ bogs”

I nodded.

“Yeah. Second night I found a sit-down Indian place. No licence, but they let you bring your own bottle in. Spent the days on the coast”

“Doing what?”

“Thinking, that’s what. On my own, so I could”

“You come to any conclusions?”

“No, not really. Was that a call for us?”

He turned the radio back up, and yes, we were being tasked, to a three vehicle RTC near Radyr station, which had closed the road. Bryn and Barry, our favourite double act, were already on scene, and I let Tom go for a look at the casualties, considering how switched on I clearly wasn’t. Barry talked me through the circs.

“The white Peugeot there was waiting to enter the main road. The Focus, for reasons we are dealing with, went into the back of him, pushing him out into traffic, where he was hit by that blue Peugeot. Driver of the white one therefore has been thrown in two directions sequentially. The blue car’s driver has what looks like bruising to his shoulder and face, from seatbelt and airbag, but nothing major. Concerned about neck on white driver, sort of double whiplash”

“The Focus driver?”

“Not a scratch, probably as he smells completely relaxed. If you’re happy with him, we want to get him blowing”

Tom had locked onto the driver of the white Peugeot, triage on the blue one’s driver taking no time at all, so I went over to Mr Focus, who had nothing more than a red mark on his nose from kissing his airbag, partly explained by the seat belt fastened across his back. He was, indeed, bladdered. I dragged my work head back on, doing my best not to miss anything that time.

Nothing found, apart from a sniggering remark that I need to “get a better shave, son”, and so I left him to the tender mercies of Bryn. Five minutes later, he was being cuffed after his arrest for ‘driving with excess alcohol’, and another three saw him ‘further arrested for driving while over the prescribed limit for controlled drugs, being cannabis and cocaine’, and then two minutes after that, ‘for possession of Class A and Class B controlled drugs’.

Oh dear how sad never mind.

One thing I knew for sure about the two coppers was that they really, REALLY hated drink drivers. As Barry stuffed the driver into the back of a local van, I called over to Bryn.

“What’d he blow, butt?”

“Ninety-six. Limit’s thirty-five. And at half past one in the afternoon, too”

He started to walk over to their car, then turned on his heel to return to the Focus.

“Barry, hold the van a sec. Just spotted…”

He reached down and wrenched at the number plate, which came away to reveal another underneath.

“Cheeky fucker! Pop the boot for me, mate”

There were two more sets of plates under the mat in the boot.

“Nick him for fraudulent use as well, mate. Going to call these numbers in, and the VIN”

The big man chuckled.

“Aye, and get him off for the evidential as soon as”

“I think he’s that far over he won’t slip off the bottom”

“I want to be sure we get him on the coke and wacky charges as well, butt”

“You nicked him for seat belt yet?”

“Fair point, Constable!”

Once the van had gone, the two crawled around the Focus, another traffic car turning up with a Crash Scenes Officer to plot everything out before recovery and clean-up. Tom and I took the driver of the car sandwich filling to St Dai’s for an X-ray, just to be on the safe side, and then Tom and I signed off, and I simply went home, via a Chinese takeaway and an off-licence. I looked at my collection of DVDs, wondering what to watch, and spotted the ones Amina had left with me, which brought my mind back to the drawer in my bedside cabinet she had claimed, and I started to fold a little, realising it wasn’t just work I was screwing up.

There was a knock at my door, and my heart lurched. I stumbled to the hall and flung the door open, but it wasn’t Amina.

“Can I come in, Jen?”

Iwaved Hira past me to the living room, and she took in my scatter of foil dishes and full bottles in one sweeping glance.

“My daughter doesn’t want to call on you in case she comes across as pushy. I, however, am happy to be as pushy as necessary. Hot and cold, Jen. That’s you, and it is hurting my child badly. I don’t like that”

I started to waffle, and she just put a finger to my lips.

“I spoke to Tom as well, you know, and he is another stubborn little sod. You’re his current sick puppy project”

“They lost a dog recently”

“He told me. I think he’s the sort of man… He needs a project, something to make better. You’re that, for now”

I tried to make it a joke about my being a right bitch, but she simply said, “Yes, you are”

That sat me down, and she mirrored me, taking the other armchair.

“I don’t mean deliberately, Jen, but you are so messed up at the moment that you’re hurting her. Not deliberately, because if you ever did that, I would gut you. You’re not like that, though. Will you please, please speak to Amina? Get your heads sorted out before one or both of you gets really hurt?”

“What should I do, Hira? I’m lost”

“Tom said you’d spoken to Angela’s family”

“Yes”

“So did I”

“Shit!”

“We’re all in this together, love, all of us. Family is family, with the obvious exception of my ex-husband. Don’t ever forget that”

“My own family aren’t exactly with me”

“That’s their bloody loss, and, sod it, you’re a huge thing to lose. I don’t want to lose you, but Amina comes first. Will you talk to her? Talk WITH her?”

There was no other answer I could give, so I nodded, and Hira rose to her feet.

“Good. I’m off, then. She’s waiting in the car; I’ll send her in. She’s got food with her”