She smiled briefly; that smile that busy professionals give when they know you’re hurting and there’s nothing they can really do to help.
“Give it half an hour and then you can ring the ward direct for any updates,” she said, writing a phone number on a piece of paper. “This is the direct line to the ward.”
Moments later, there was a new bed rolled into where Billy had been and the three of them had to move away. They regrouped with Linda in the relative’s room with the dead woman.
“Graham is on his way, Carrie; do you want to come and stay for a while?” Linda asked.
“I don’t know what I want. I think I’d rather go home, but I’m not sure I want to be alone just now. It’s closer to the hospital where I am, and then there’s Compo. I can’t just leave him.”
“I’ll come and stay for a day or so, if you’d like, Aunt Carrie?”
“Won’t your mother need you?”
“As Mum said, Dad’s on his way home, so he’ll probably get there before us. I’m on school holidays, so I’ve got my iPad, so I can revise and stuff just as easy with you than at home.”
“I’ll follow you back to Cookham, then,” said John. “I can collect your stuff and take you back to Denham before going home.”
“Are you sure, John?”
“It’s the least I can do. I’m on holiday too, or as much as a headmaster ever can be.”
So, as Billy slumbered in a drug-induced sleep, his family tried to deal with the double whammy of a bereavement and serious illness. Of all this he was blissfully unaware.
Carrie did not like to admit it, but she was grateful that young Kenneth had come home with her. He was a nice young lad: easy-going and not difficult to deal with. Billy often said he was a bit wet or a bit of a poof, but she found Kenneth a nice-looking boy who was polite and respectful.
Their eldest son, David, was working for a company in Singapore, in the Far East. He’s been there for three years, and adored the life. He was a computer genius, having sailed through his university doing IT and system management. To be perfectly honest, Carrie had no idea what he did. He just worked with computers; that’s all she knew.
Melissa, two years younger than David, had recently left University and was in America. It was supposed to be a six month break, but it had been over a year now. She had gone as a tourist, but was offered a job in LA. She was a designer, specifically in fashion, but had been prepared for a struggle to find a job in the UK, which was why she took a break when she could at least afford it.
She had fallen into the job by accident. She’d been staying with a friend she had met skiing in Colorado. This girl’s mother was a fashion designer for some of the rich and famous. Melissa had seen some of the designs and obviously started talking shop.
Having a portfolio on her laptop meant that Georgia (the mother) was able to see what Melissa was capable of.
Two months later she applied for her green card, having been sponsored by Georgia and was now working for her in one of the most prestigious companies in California.
Carrie had spoken to both the children, and told them emphatically not to come home. Billy would be devastated knowing that they’d had to drop everything for his sake.
“If things get bad, then I’ll call, but in the meantime, just watch and wait,” Carrie had told them on Skype, when they last spoke.
Kenneth sat on the floor of his bedroom at his aunt’s house playing with Compo. He liked it here, as it was away from his mother for a while, and he adored the dog. The feeling was quite mutual, as no one paid as much attention to him as did Kenneth.
Kenneth and his parents had a Jack Russell called Basil, who was a litter-brother of Compo. Their friends, the Standens, had a Jack Russell bitch called Lucy who had a litter of six, and the two boys were slow in finding homes, so Linda and Carrie took one each.
Recently, both his parents had been ‘on at him’ for various things. In the main he felt they were anxious for him to fulfil their expectations of him, rather than encourage him to explore and attempt to fulfil his own.
He felt quite melancholy, which was not uncommon. It wasn’t the fact his grandmother was dead, as he had not been that close to her. He saw her at family gatherings, and that was about it. He had not been that close to his uncle, who now lay ill in hospital, as he actually found Uncle Bill rather a dinosaur in his attitudes.
Kenneth was a slender youth, with rather too long hair and a definite effeminate air. He was an arty child, much to his father’s disappointment. Graham was a rugger-chap, who had only just stopped playing it due to time constraints. Kenneth was not into team sports, enjoying swimming and partaking in badminton, if pushed.
Although he dearly wanted to, Kenneth was unable to pursue his own fulfilment, for that would require a complete change in gender. He was as convinced now as he had been when aged just four that he should have been a girl. When however, one is the only child of ambitious parents, it is tougher than tough to voice one’s feelings.
He had, in the naivety of youth, expressed just such a desire when he was around five.
He had been laughed at by both his parents, and the idea pooh-poohed as being the ‘silly notions of a child!’ he had tried again when around nine, and then again at twelve. Each time both parents became quite cross and told him he was being ridiculous, as boys just didn’t become girls, unless they were very sick. Kenneth didn’t feel sick. He hadn’t voiced the feeling again for a while, despite it taking over almost every waking moment.
It was so ever pervasive that he had no particular desire to formulate any form of ambition, as it was all so irrelevant somehow. If he couldn’t be a girl first, then nothing else mattered.
He tried dressing in his mother’s clothes when alone in their home. He received a little thrill, that aroused him, but it was the image of what he could have been rather than the clothes or their feel on his skin.
He had not repeated the experience, as it just brought it home what he was really like and what he was missing.
He had few friends. The boys tended to call him names and treat him like something odd, which he admitted that he probably was. The girls didn’t like him because he wasn’t what they looked for in boys. A few of the odd-ball girls saw in him the lonely and sensitive person that they were, and because they were on the fringes themselves, they tended to band together for a bit of companionship.
Now he had the house to himself, as his aunt had set off early for the hospital. Left in charge of Compo, Kenneth was almost happy.
He liked their house; it was big and rambling, with many places to explore. Today, he decided to explore the one place he had never managed to get to, the attic.
It took him a while, as there was a lot of junk in this house. But, in a small wooden box, which had once brought fruit from some distant part of the Empire, he found a really odd collection of bits that intrigued him.
The small box of old .303 shells was of not much interest, and neither was the old bomb-sight. The bayonet and helmet were in quite good condition, so Kenneth idly wondered how much these were all worth.
There was a small box of metal soldiers, lead probably that pre-dated even his grandparents. They looked to be WW1 soldiers marching.
He almost ignored the strange ‘c’ shaped object, but when he put the box back, it fell out and landed with a thump at his feet. He picked it up, surprised as to how light it was.
As with everyone who saw it, he wondered what it could be. It was rather like a torc that one of his RPG characters wore in one of his games. She was a thief and sorceress, and she wore the magic torc that gave her invisibility.
Kenneth was only truly happy when being in character as the girl. None of his on-line co-players suspected that he wasn’t a real girl, and that really pleased him.
He turned it over in his hands, disappointed that he could see no Celtic runes on the item.