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Cutting Cake. By Tanya H. To all of the wonderful trans people who have been hurt trying to just live free, and to all those who were taken to soon. I left home in Yorkshire, went to London and joined the Metropolitan Police as a cadet when I was sixteen years old. After thirty years service I walked out of the job cloaked by a deep, impenetrable loathing for my fellow human beings. After getting sick of the relentless white-noise of uniformed, borough policing, where my disgust at the levels people could sink to was firmly established, I decided on a move into plain clothes work. By then I'd realised the system was stacked against real people; the courts and prosecutors so overwhelmed they'd long since stopped caring. I'd learnt to throw out a little justice of my own, only where I could get away with it, you understand, always where the bruises wouldn't show. Fuck 'em, you can't judge me. Most days it felt like we were getting ground down by the conflicting demands of the public, politicians and managers. I regret nothing. I tried out for CID, but my face didn't fit; wrong colour skin and wrong genitals for that kind of prestigious job. Instead I ended up in a vice team immersed in the dirtiest excesses a person could lift from warped fantasies. That's where I had to call in some favours to avoid getting stuck on for GBHing some fucked-up pimp who'd carved the tits from one of his own whores. Good girl she was, an honest prostitute who'd kept me sweet once or twice; who'd pay for her without tits? With her too scared to talk, the bastard who'd cut her was laughing, so I found him, beat him and then smashed his hands to a pulp with a hammer. That cunt wasn't going to cut anybody ever again, he'd have been lucky to cut a piece of cake! Somebody must have talked, or grassed on me, and I found some of those slippery bastards from the rubber-heeled team trying to pin the GBH on me. Like I said, I called in some favours and it all went away. Not all my service was in London, though I did more than cut my teeth in its stench and corruption. Not long after my seventeenth year my missus, Vanessa of the magnificent tits, honey-blonde hair and scathing put down, gave me one of two ultimations she hit me with in our marriage. "If you don't get me away from London, Tony Flint I swear to God I will leave you." Well, I couldn't let that happen could I? Not after all we'd gone through. After all, we'd had our ups and downs and she'd put up with all the shifts and late finishes, missed dinners and cancelled dates. Not to mention she'd had me back after Chrissy and Bryony, Cat too; I think she'd known about Dawn, but hadn't said anything. Georgie I got away with. Anyway, I'm sure she'd had her moments too; Greg Pell from Vice had always had a sweet spot for her and I'm sure John Villiers from the robbery squad had been tucked into her when I'd been away on that course, while I'd been seeing to the barmaid in the training centre. The point is, I couldn't just ignore an ultimation like that, could I? So I had a look around, spoke to a few old boys who'd already given up on The Smoke and decided Lincolnshire would probably suit us. Lincolnshire's such an out of the way county that with the money we made from selling our flat we had enough to get a massive detached place in a nice village outside Lincoln. We felt like we'd become royalty! The county-mounties in Lincolnshire were a bit slow, and their criminals were a pushover, but I was ready for a slow down and Vanessa loved it. Then came the next ultimation. "I want a baby." God's truth, I never saw that coming. You should have seen my lass back then; a gym toned body, top-dollar hair, designer clothes and gold- plated beauty regime. I'd never have imagined her in crumpled loungewear pushing a pram, dark eyed from feeding and broken nights. I thought we were past all that nonsense. Apparently not. I made it clear I wasn't keen. I pointed out that she had her work, well placed with a well known insurance company, and her looks. Our lifestyle would change; we'd have to pause the winter holidays in Tenerife, the skiing. Nothing I could think of touched her determination. Even when I said no, absolutely not, Vanessa was Vanessa and with her having control over birth control there was an 'accident' and then Kieren turned up. Cynical, yes; bitter, yes; disillusioned, you'd better believe it, but I like to think I tried to be a decent Dad. I did all the Dad things, in between work and the like, you understand. Even so, Kieran and I were never particularly close; he preferred his Mum and I preferred to let the two of them get on. So it all ticked over. Retirement approached, 30 years done and a fat pension mine for the taking. I was a Detective Inspector by then, so the pay off and pension were going to be eye wateringly impressive. "What are you planning, boss?" they would ask, the tecs on my team. "Do? I'm going to do the square root of fuck-all, that's what I'm going to do." As well as some golf; maybe I'd buy a boat. Vanessa and I talked about a Spanish villa, a cruise every year, a big well appointed camper van. A big, gas guzzling Jaguar was a definite. Only when the commutation had been banked, when I'd barely recovered from my leaving do's hangover, Vanessa made her move. Bitch. No Jaguar for me. No villas, no boat; not even the fucking house I'd been progressively doing up for the last ten years. You should have seen it, a plum spot if ever there was one: gone. Half my pension gone! I worked bastard hard for that! You should have heard her in court, the libellous cow. What a list of names she had produced by her smug bloody barrister! (Turned out she did know about Georgie.) Then she told the court what a shit dad I'd been; typical bitch's trick of weaponising kids. So I got double hammered for Kieren's maintenance as well as keeping Mrs Fucking Gold-digging Hypocrite in the style she'd become accustomed to. Anyway, my big plans for doing fuck-all, apart from golf, turned to ratshit and a pony job delivering groceries for Sainsburys. Was being married to me that bad? I suppose I had to sneakily admire her cynical exploitation of the police pension scheme and muggins's contributions to it. Though I would never have admitted that to the scheming bitch's face. Moving on, I rented for a bit then got sick of being back in the city and bought myself the kind of place you would call 'ideal for a DIY enthusiast'. I wouldn't have been able to afford it otherwise. It was a tiny signalman's cottage beside the railway line running from Lincoln to Grimsby, dating from an age when employees like that were expected to live on the job. It had been empty for three years, suffered from rising damp, dodgy electrics, intermittent sewage disposal and draughty windows. Best of all, in that state no woman I knew would be seen dead in it. After the first night in the place, once I'd realised the coal and oil trains thundered through the night, I was ready to be found dead in it. Roddie and Gwen, my glamorous neighbours in the old stationmaster's house, promised I'd get used to it. What made it worth persevering with, aside from the knock-down price, was its isolation. While the railway company had considered it a sound investment to build a station on the narrow lane to the village whose name it bore, the station itself had shut in the sixties. That left three buildings grouped around the lane and railway; my place, Roddie and Gwen in theirs and the signal box itself, occupied twenty four hours a day, except Sundays when we had some peace. Beyond that I had only fields, trees, wildlife and open skies for company without the stinking mess of humanity to bother me. If I didn't have to go to work and actually interact with people I'd have said my life was idyllic. Roddie and Gwen kept to themselves so we just passed the time of day at appropriate times, they never set foot in my cottage and I was never invited inside their place. I got to know the signallers who covered shifts in the signal box. Despite modernisation on the railway, they still had to venture down the steps from the box to open the wide, wooden level crossing gates every time a train needed to pass and would often stop for a chat. There were two types of signallers there; the three residents who covered the normal early, late and night shifts, the the reliefs who covered for the residents' time off. Of the three residents, Stan would offer unwelcome advice on where I was going wrong with the cottage rebuild while Kev just wanted to discuss the exotic swingers' parties he imagined Gwen and Roddie hosted. Kath loved plants, and her boyfriend did landscape gardening, so she offered tips for what I could do with my garden. And corrected me when I referred to her as a signalman rather than a signaller. "Isn't it traditional on the railway to call the person who works the signals a signalman?" I asked her, lightly so she'd know I wasn't really taking the piss. "I work the signals here, do I look like a man?" The answer that first came to mind went along the lines of, 'If you were my daughter you wouldn't go out of the house looking like that.' But I kept my mouth shut. See, I can learn. Kath didn't look like a man. She looked like Kath. Her hair fell down her back in scarlet and maroon dreadlocks, her arms were heavily tattooed and her face punctured in many places with rings and studs. However, she had bumps and curves in the right places, visible even through the orange suit she had to wear for health and safety reasons, and was most certainly a woman. "I always thought a signalman, sorry signaller, would be some grumpy, middle-aged, bald bloke with a pot belly," I said. "Like you," she threw back, with a grin. "I'm not bald," I retorted, running a hand through my greying hair, but I didn't have much space to challenge anything else. Life changed. I swapped my BMW for a van, which only had two seats and more space for picking up raw materials for the house and removing shite to the tip. Reasoning that the mile to the village pub was too far to walk and too close to drive, I bought a bike. Beyond that, drink driving was a line I never crossed and my cynicism told me that the locals would grass me up if I did, once they found out I was an ex-copper. Life changed, and while I might have remained bitter, twisted and easily triggered (particularly over marriage, divorce and women) I felt myself mellowing. Occasionally Vanessa intruded on my returning equilibrium. Usually she used the medium of a phone call to drive herself back into the forefront of my thoughts. Mostly it was asking for money. Even though she was doing well herself, Vanessa considered herself a principled woman and one of her principles was that I should pay my way with Kieran. School trips, ski trips, driving lessons; anything out of the financial ordinary. Mostly I just paid up: guilt money. Kieran and I drew further apart after the divorce. I didn't like the role of Weekend Dad and we didn't have much in common. He stopped coming to the Lincoln City matches with me as he got into basketball and hockey instead. I sometimes went to watch him play, he had height and a talent, but there never seemed much for us to say to each other and I told myself he'd prefer it if I stopped making awkward attempts with him. One afternoon, while I was digging a new soakaway for the ever troublesome septic tank, the phone rang. As much as I didn't really want to pass the time with Vanessa, I was blowing a bit with heat and exertion and ready for a break. "It's Kieren," she said, once the pleasantries were done; about three seconds into the conversation. She sounded unusually agitated, even in the context of talking to me. "What's he done?" "She. We have a daughter, she's called Rebecca." At the time I decided she was being deliberately blunt for the maximum emotional impact on me. Looking back, she more likely knew how I'd react and just kept it short. I didn't disappoint. "What shit have you been filling his head with now?" "Tony, get off your high horse a minute and listen, she -" "He! God's sake, Nessa, don't let him do this to himself. It's just bollocks, a stupid load of made up shite." There was more too. Apparently I was unreasonable, uncaring, pig-headed and a shit father, while she needed to get a grip of our son before he completely fucked up his life. Which signalled the end of that phone call. Normally I'd have sounded off about stuff that was winding me up. The barmaid down the pub might have got an ear full of it over a pint, Stan or Kev, even Kath might have got the edge of my feelings about gender-benders, maybe even some of the old sweats from work I kept in touch with. Not this time. I kept quiet about Kieran, gagged by something new; shame. The thought of my son sneaking into his Mum's room to perve around in her clothes made me feel sick. He'd have been wanking in her knickers, prancing around like some kind of nonce, maybe even dolling himself up with her slap. It was her fault for sure, for doing the dirty on me and kicking me out. If I'd been there showing the boy what it was to be a man this wouldn't have happened. I should have been showing him how to fix things, make things, dig things. Fucks sake, even after we split up I should have brought him to the railway cottage and had him help me on the rebuild. Imagine the dad and lad bonding we could have done together bringing the old heap back to life. He could have made his own space in the little bedroom, we could have made something proper and manly and real together. Not some fucked up idea that he could call himself Rebecca! Who the fuck was going to fall for that? He was supposed to be going to university once his A levels were done. What kind of life was he going to have there with the bullying and shit he'd opened himself up to with this perverse delusion! So I kept the shame to myself while the contact between me, him and Vanessa dried up. I still paid the money on time when needed, but it felt like a whole chunk of my life had been wasted and I worked to blank it from my thoughts. About a year after I moved in, when the cottage was starting to look livable, I was in the signal box with Kath having a brew and moaning about my shit bosses at work. She let me finish, then casually announced that with Stan leaving there was a vacancy coming up in the signal box, Network Rail were looking for external applicants and why didn't I apply. So I did, and I got the job, though the medical report was a bit worried about my waistline and blood-pressure. My GP had said the same, prescribed statins and blood pressure tablets telling me I was a heart attack waiting to happen, but I reckoned I was active enough doing up the house. After getting the job I cut down on the beer and steak for a few weeks, went away to signalling school then came back to learn the box under Kev and Kath's expert tuition. Only a few weeks later I was passed out to operate on my own. If that sounds like a massive achievement, don't delude yourself. The line might have been relatively busy, with passenger trains clattering between Lincoln and Grimsby, dwindling coal movements and oil heading away from the Humber refineries, but my job was only to open the wooden gates and clear the signals to show I'd done it. The signals themselves were all electric and their controls comprised a short line of switches on a panel that looked a hundred years out of place in the old, wooden signal box. In fact the whole thing was such a mixture of old, relatively modern and state of the art that it reeked of the financial difficulties and making-do that characterised the UK's railway system. "If you had a top hat, a long coat and some old-fashioned goggles the whole thing would look very steampunk," said Zosia one morning. After watching me open the gates for the cars after an oil train had thundered past she had silently followed me up the steps into the signal box and paused in the doorway, eyes wide behind her round glasses and she took in the mis-matched technologies in the place. "Did you not see the sign saying 'private' on the door?" I asked. "Well, you ignored it so I thought I would as well." Zosia was the daughter of my new neighbour, Magdalena who took on the station house when Roddie and Gwen spectacularly broke up and she set fire to his Range Rover. The 'To Let' signs were only up outside the old station for three days before they went down again. A week later a big pantechnicon was cautiously reversed into the station house's yard. I pretended to be repointing my chimney as a pair of silent men unloaded the vehicle under the supervision of a wild-haired blonde with a high- pitched, Central European accent and a sleek, red Audi. A tall, long haired girl took photographs of the activity and magically avoided getting in the way. Once the pantechnicon had been emptied and driven away, I made a big pot of coffee, added it to a tray with some milk, sugar and bourbon biscuits before heading to meet the neighbours. Not out of any great rush of empathy for my fellow humans, you understand, but out of my old copper's curiosity. And because I had already decided the blonde was the mistress of an extravagant Russian mobster who'd moved her out of the way of his scheming wife. Shortly after introducing myself I discovered she was in fact a consultant gynaecologist from Lincoln County Hospital. Magdalena, Lena to her friends and me after I helped with a broken tap on day 2 of their occupation, was taller than me, thin to the point of skinny and didn't seem to own a hairbrush for her very wavy, shoulder length hair. She had interesting teeth and a exotic accent, I'd have said she was in her mid forties. Zosia, the daughter, had straight brown hair, glasses and wide, almond shaped eyes. She never seemed to blink and watched the world carefully without appearing to miss much. Having recently turned fifteen she was clearly growing towards her mum's height and build, you might have called her a late developer, but was a pretty girl with the potential to be a heartbreaker once she'd grown into herself. Contrasting with her Mum's accent, Zosia sounded very middle England, having been born in Chelmsford and only experienced Poland through holiday visits to family there. She enjoyed taking photographs, football and kicking her football into my garden. "When I was your age, girls didn't play football," I told her after returning her football again. I was thinking of building a glasshouse so I could get properly annoyed about the ball's regular trips over my fence. "Was that because the girls didn't want to play or weren't allowed to?" she asked. Sometimes you had to listen carefully to hear what she was saying, she spoke so softly. "Or nobody asked them if they wanted to play because nobody was interested in their opinion?" Which was too deep for a bloke like me. "Who do you support?" was safer ground. "Manchester City." "And who's your favourite player?" "Jill Scott." Who I'd never heard of, but everybody knows her name now. A few weeks later, when the home had been unpacked and the two of them were settled in, they invited me for dinner; a kind, but unnecessary thought as I'd only done what anybody else would have done to help them get settled. By then I'd learnt that Mr Wojcik wouldn't be making an appearance after making an earlier, discreet question about Lena's circumstances. She cocked her head on one side as I asked, fixed me in her very direct eyes and scratched her hair into further disarray. "Mr Wojcik has a terribly fragile version of masculinity I have finally realised I cannot fix, despite many years of effort in trying." She raised her eyebrows. "And Mrs Flint?" "Same issue," I said, casually. I kicked myself, mentally, as soon as I'd said it, having forgotten myself around this very interesting and not unattractive woman. I had to remind myself not only was I older than her, but I was through with women and did not want any kind of involvement with a potential teenage stepdaughter. Me and the cottage were all I needed. Though I took her wine and chocolate when I went for that dinner I just mentioned, and picked a posy of flowers from my garden for Zosia. She grinned with delight, though they were nothing special, then hurried away to find a vase giving a quiet thanks over her shoulder as she went. Instead of her habitual Jill Scott football kit she wore a simple dress and her skinny legs blurred with the speed she hurried away. Lena smiled fondly to see her go and thanked me too. They were better neighbours than Roddie and Gwen had been. I did some jobs around the house and garden for them and she sewed my forefinger up nicely when I sliced it open making leek and potato soup one evening. Zosia had to keep away, she fainted at the sight of blood, though she needed an running commentary of how it was going from a safe place hiding behind the door. Lena partially numbed me and the finger with ice and whisky before she set to and the first time I winced she pursed her lips and glared at me. "I have some spray for that," she said. "Now you tell me!" "It's called 'man up'." So I did. Lena worked some horrible hours at the hospital leaving Zosia alone some evenings when the school bus dropped her off. She always kept her head down as she walked away from the bus, never looked back or waved. Sometimes she'd let herself into the station house, sometimes she'd cross the tracks and sit quietly on the box's spare easy chair doing her homework until her Mum came home. If Lena was going to be really late sometimes I'd do dinner for us all. You could have categorised their company as undemanding. Whatever shadows lurked behind them were never brought to my attention and neither of them pressed me about my own life. Zosia had a fascination with the railway and liked to photograph the trains, though as she made clear, "I'm not taking pictures of the trains, I'm taking pictures of them being trains." I didn't understand the difference, being a thick ex copper, but it didn't matter. Once she found out I'd once lived and worked in London her eyes widened slightly; she had a mystical fascination with the city of the kind that you can only retain as long as you never live or work there. I told her one or two funnier or lighter, age appropriate anecdotes about my time and that seemed to satisfy her. Like I said, she was gentle undemanding company who never asked anything of me and I sometimes wondered why Kieren couldn't have been more like that. One February afternoon, when the sun and budding daffodils promised spring and the copse just along the railway was already thickly carpeted with Snowdrops, I had not long taken over the late shift from Kath and waved to her as she headed home in her jolly, pink Fiat 500. While the kettle boiled for my first coffee a taxi pulled up outside the station house and Zosia got out. Aside from it being much earlier than her usual time to get back from school she normally came on a minibus and there was a hanging, defeated look about her I was unfamiliar with. Undemanding company she might have been, but she had a knack of remaining positive no matter the weather, or the news, or the news about the weather. As the taxi drew away I stood at the signal box door and called out to her, asking if everything was okay. She hesitated by her front door, one hand ready to turn the key in the lock, as if deciding what to do. "Kettle's on, lass," I said. "I can do some hot chocolate while you nip into me kitchen and dig out the marshmallows so you can get some de-lux hot chocolate down your neck." I know, you're thinking Tony's gone soft in his old age, or he's trying to offset some of his guilt over Kieren with the girl next door. Or maybe that cloak of disgust I'd worn between me and humanity was finally starting to wear thin now I didn't have to spend so much time with people. Either way, ten minutes later both of us were seated in the signal box nursing mugs of thick, milky hot chocolate heaped with pink and white marshmallows. There were probably too many for me and my doctor's warnings, but it was a higher cause, you understand? "How come you're home early with a face like a smacked arse then?" I asked when the next Lincoln train had gone past. There was a gap of fifty minutes before the next one would trouble us. "I don't want to burden you, Mr Flint," she said, with chocolate across her top lip. "Aren't we friends?" "Yes we are." "And friends are supposed to help each other and your mam's at work." She took another sip, looked out of the window thoughtfully and tucked her legs under her bum as though getting comfortable. "I have been excluded from school, Mr Flint," she said slowly and her eyes glistened as she said it. From frequently seeing her busy with her homework I knew Zosia was a committed student with aspirations towards engineering. Engineering wasn't a girl's trade in my book, or at least my old book, but times were changing. The last technician they'd sent out to fix a fault with the box's electrical mysteries had been a bubbly lass with a sinuous plait going right down her back. I thought Zosia would make a good engineer, she had that curiosity and a way of looking at things that suggested she was halfway to working out a solution. "That doesn't sound like you, lass." "No, I don't think it sounds like me either, but there we are and here I am. Sent home." "Do you want to tell me why? Not that you have to, you understand." "I tipped paint over a boy's head." I whistled appreciatively while she pointed to her right ankle where there was, as evidence, a smear of blue paint on her black tights. "Now that doesn't sound like you either. I imagine you were grievously provoked." "You know, I was," she said very seriously. "They're always provoking me, calling me names, being horrible." "Names. What names are they calling you to get blue paint tipped over them?" She fixed me with her direct eyes then while I considered all the ways school kids could be horrible to each other. It was likely Zosia got her bullying from her foreign names, or her height, maybe because of her tiny boobs and skinny legs; kids didn't need much to seize upon to get stuck into a victim. God knows I'd seen some bad examples while I'd been a cop, bullying that went much further than blue paint and ended up with knives and body bags and prison. After the silence dragged on and I thought I ought to change the subject, she looked at the floor and said, "Peter. They call me Peter. And It. They call me It. All the time, Mr Flint and the teachers don't do anything, some of them think I'm an It as well. I know they do because the other children tell me." Our eyes met. I looked past her, through her. Peter? It? Surely not? "You're one of them?" I said, before I'd really had a chance to think about what I was saying. She put her mug down and her eyes glistened some more as she unfolded her legs, adjusted her skirt's hem then stood up. "I'm not one of them, Mr Flint. I'm one of me." Her head went onto one side with an inquiring gesture so similar to the way her mum looked a question at me it was like looking at the girl Lena must have been. "Does this mean we're not friends any more?" she asked. I felt like I'd been punched. A good, hard slug right into the belly followed by a slap around the face and then a bucket of cold water over the head. Or a pot of blue paint. "It absolutely does not mean we're not friends any more, Zosia," I said, standing too. Surprise creased her face a moment so she stopped looking like her mum. Then she looked puzzled as she tried to work through what I'd just said, but my thoughts were a long way from her and me; they sat with another girl. "I've been a complete cunt!" I blurted. Colour rose in her cheeks. "Mr Flint!" "Sorry! Really sorry, don't tell your Mum I said that in front of you." "Mum says one of those, that word beginning with C you used, is a wanker with an agenda," she said evenly. "Generally when she's talking about dad." "She left him over you?" Her mouth went down at the corners so I knew I was walking on her difficult ground. "I was the final straw, but she insists I'm not to blame for wanting to be me." "No you bloody aren't!" "You've gone a funny colour, Mr Flint." "I've had a revelation, thank you. Thank you, Zosia." She smiled then, laughed suddenly and burst into tears. Like any of the girls I'd ever known would have done when emotions got the better of them. Plans spun and whirled in my head while we sat quietly, undemanding company again. She teased out her laptop and looked into some homework while I scrolled through contacts on my phone until I got to V. I kept glancing at Zosia sitting there, she was humming as she worked, and wondering why I hadn't seen through her, then telling myself I hadn't been able to see through her, because everything about her I needed to see was there in front of me. The Grimsby passenger train went by with a friendly toot from the driver, then a Kinsgbury bound oil train. As she asked and there wasn't anybody to see her, I let Zosia go down and open the level crossing gates. Just as she got back to the top of the signal box steps, two kids on mountain bikes came around the corner from the village, still in their school uniforms. I knew them both; Cole Gray and Rhea Pooley, boyfriend and girlfriend if village gossip was anything to go by. I sometimes had a pint down the pub with Rhea's dad, a sound bloke who worked at the piggery down the road. Cole was compact and spotty, Rhea wasn't as tall as Zosia, but had more around her bust and hips. Without looking at the signal box, both of them lent their bikes on the fence around Zosia's place, went through the gate and headed towards her front door. "I'd better go and see what they want," she said, with a hopeful edge to her voice. I guess they might have been her mates, come to show some solidarity; surely not every kid at the school could be a pig headed dinosaur (like you, Tony). I heard her offer a bright, hello as she scampred over the road, hair streaming behind her and busied myself tidying away her mug in the sink. Raised voices made me look up. A boy shouted and Zosia screamed, backing away and looking like somebody had splashed tomato ketchup across the school shirt. Only it wasn?t. A sharp, glinting object, dulled with claret protruded from Cole Gray?s fist as he stood and watched Zosia stumble backwards and slump against her house. Rhea Pooley shouted something nasty. For a moment the sheer impossibility of what I?d just seen rooted me to the spot. This was the dictionary definition of rural backwater where nothing ever happened, not the gates of some inner city school where a knife could get pulled for looking at the wrong kid?s girlfriend the wrong way. This was Zosia with red spreading obscenely over the front of her shirt. I shook my head and moaned, "No, no, no, no, noooooooo!" Then I was running from the box, vaulting down the last three steps and practically flying over the tracks towards her; like I was an eighteen year old probationer chasing down a mugger who?d just rolled over somebody?s Grandma. Two faces turned to me as I ran, bellowing. Shock and surprise override whatever they?d been feeling as they watched Zosia bleeding. "I see you, you cunts," I roared as I ran. "I see you, I saw what you did, you fuckers, you spineless bastards. I see you!" They ran, foolishly dropping the knife and leaving their bikes, going out the back of the garden towards the village. I barged through the gate, practically taking it off its hinges, tugging out my phone and calling Zosia?s name. She?d fallen back against the house, head drooped forward, hands limp to each side and that awful leaking waste of her lifeblood soaking into her shirt and skirt. "Zosia!" No reply. She?d fainted, from the sight of her blood; that was it. Sausage fingers took too long to stab 999 into my phone. "Talk to me, Zosia!" "Which emergency service do you require?" I lifted her chin. She was still warm, but deathly pale, her eyes closed and glasses askew. She had a long cut along her left forearm, another to her chest, but the worst was in her belly. Her blood gave off a warm, copper stink. "Ambulance." "Come on Zosia, talk to me. This is no time for a nap." "Hello, this ambulance control. What?s your emergency?" "15 year old girl, two stab wounds, one to her chest, one to her abdomen. She?s unresponsive. Hang on..." Laying her onto her back, as gently as I could, I looked into her mouth then tilted her head back. "Where are you?" I barked out our address while watching her chest. After ten seconds it hadn?t moved. She wasn?t breathing. A horrible clamp went around my chest as I looked down on the dying shape of the girl I?d called girl and my friend. "Sorry, lass." I tore her shirt down the front, buttons flew. An inch long slit under her ribs oozed staining the lower lace edge of a bralette. I left her that, put my phone onto speaker and dropped my hands into the right place on her sternum then leaned down onto her. "She?s not breathing, I?m starting CPR," I reported. The ambulance controller concurred with my decision and encouraged me while I pumped Zosia?s chest and wondered about there being any blood left in her to make the chest compressions any good. I?d had to do this three times before, all in London; first, a heroin overdose. She hadn?t made it. Second, a motorcyclist who?d chosen to overtake a car just as it turned right in front of him. He?d been pronounced dead at the scene. Last time, an old boy who just keeled over in front of me in a bus queue. One minute he?d been sitting there, gasping for breath, the colour of dead people and moaning about the terrible chest pain, then he?d gone and I hadn?t saved him with CPR either. "Come on, Zosia. You?re tougher than this." "We?ve got a vehicle close by, we?re diverting it to you," said the controller. What her definition of close by probaby wasn?t much use to me or Zosia. Four or five minutes had passed, but it seemed like an age of bearing down on Zosia?s fragile ribs and her not coming back to life. I was struggling to breathe , sweat dripped from my nose and my face felt cold. I really needed a rest or for somebody to come and take over, but I couldn?t even find the energy to shout. My chest really did feel worse than tight, maybe I was getting too fat, but I couldn?t stop. Pain shot along my left arm and I knew with dreadful finality that I couldn?t keep going long enough for the ambulance to save her. Colour bled from my vision, my heart felt like it was trying to jump from my throat and I could hardly overcome the vice around my chest to make another half- hearted attempt to compress poor Zosia?s poor dead heart. I closed my eyes. Somebody made an awful groan and then I was falling forwards. And standing watching my body slump forward, narrowly avoiding Zosia, my hands still on her chest, my face in her hair as it blew away from her white skin and still eyes. My orange work clothes looked stark beside her. Hair blew across my face and I brushed it away. Something whispered against my thighs and I looked down, frowning at the white shirt I?d somehow acquired though it was heavy and glistening red with fresh blood at the waist above a flared black skirt catching the wind and blowing around my skinny legs in thick black tights with a spot of blue paint against my right ankle. I was dead and so was Zosia and I was dressed like her. With her thin arms and lanky legs and glasses and black varnished fingernails, her long hair blowing around my face while I stared at dead Tony and dead Zosia and wondered about things. Like, am I a ghost? Of who? Me or Zosia. A tinny voice sounded from the phone on the floor beside me. Dead me? "Can you hear me?" I asked, walking over and squatting down beside the phone, a most unladylike position in a short skirt. "Who?s there, what?s happening now? The ambulance is only a few minutes away." "He?s had a heart attack. The bloke who was doing CPR. I think they?re both dead now." "Who are you?" she asked. "I?m not right sure." Zosia looked peaceful now. I hoped she wouldn?t open her eyes and see me looking down on her. Or her looking down on her. I brushed at her hair again, it kept getting in my face. Her lips parted. I stared. Fell to my knees, lay my ear close to her mouth, all the time trying to ignore the impossibility of what I was doing. Ghost hair draped across her face and I listened. There! A faint hiss. She breathed! Shallow and fast, but breathing the way you might expect a girl who?d been stabbed in the chest to be breathing. With good skills for a dead bloke wrapped somehow in the image of an injured girl I rolled her over into a recovery position, then turned to my body. With a grey face and staring eyes I?d clearly gone somewhere else (right there you daft twat!) "Fucking hell!" said an awed voice from the roadside behind me. When I looked there was Cole Gray, wide eyes and shocked staring at me as I knelt beside my apparent twin and a dead bloke. "You!" I growled. You wouldn't have thought such a noise could have come from Zosia?s throat. He shook his head, mumbling nothings as he stared. "You can?t be you," he whined. Without stopping to think through what was happening or what had happened, I locked onto his terror and it lifted a laugh; a cruel mocking laugh Zosia would never have made. I took a step towards him, measuring the distance between me and the gate, then the gate to him. He?d come back for his bike, the stupid bastard. I heard it rattle as he lifted it from the fence, still watching me, eyes like the proverbial dinner plates and colour draining from his face like it had from Zosia?s. He hefted the bike and turned it round, trying to mount it as he did so. As I got to the gate he wobbled and almost fell, got the front wheel straight as his foot slid off one of the pedals and almost toppled him. By then I was on him, grabbing a handful of his school blazer by the collar and almost overbalancing him. He?d shrugged it off and stood on the pedals again, leaving me to throw the blazer aside and get after him. He pedalled desperately, wailing like the demented, as though all the demons from hell were after him. Maybe they were, one of them at least. I laughed again at the notion. Zosia?s legs could really cover the ground. Her scuffed school shoes barely touched the tarmac as I ran, taking the centre of the road as he pedalled faster and faster, but he couldn?t get away. Whatever I?d become was more than just a lanky girl. His tyres hummed along, his chain clattered with the speed he pushed, but he couldn?t draw away. Closer and closer I got, laughing again; unwinded by the speed I?d achieved, untroubled by fatigue of breathlessness or sweat or anything that might slow an actual living breathing human being. "No, no, please!" he pleaded, red cheeked and blowing, making the mistake of looking over his shoulder as I drew alongside, still laughing, and pushed against his shoulder. He wailed again and the bike hit a telephone pole, he made an untidy cartwheel and collapsed with a flurry of limbs into a heap amongst the gravel and weeds down the road?s edge. Blood trickled from a graze on his brow, his right arm flopped with a new joint introduced between wrist and elbow. "Please, I didn?t..." "Yes you did. You stabbed her. You stabbed me!" He shook his head, lifting his good arm as though he could fend me off. "You can?t be you," he babbled. True enough, I supposed. I had no more idea of what was going on than he did, but wasn?t about to waste an opportunity like this. Only a few feet away, minding its own business on the verge I spied a handy, rounded stone the size of a good cooking apple. I picked it up with one of Zosia?s thin hands and took it over to the weeping Cole Gray. He tried to fight me off, really he did, but the fall had left him too dazed to fight back, even if I had been just an ordinary girl like Zosia Wojcik. Ignoring his pitiful efforts I knelt on his forearm, first the good one, then the broken one, but he hardly noticed the pain by then because I?d already methodically pounded his left hand into a bloodied crumbled pulp with my rock. A couple of minutes later I?d done his other hand and he?d never be able to cut a slice of cake ever again, never mind a bright young woman. Sirens sounded from the direction of the station house as I stood from my grim work. Cole moaned and sobbed, snot running from his face as he tried to comfort his ruined hands. Conscious of the bloodied weapon in my hands, I carried it with me, back the way I?d come, wondering what I was supposed to do now. Find Rhea? Smash her up? Her abandoned bike still leant against the fence, almost hidden behind a big, bright ambulance; blue lights sparking all over it as a pair of paramedics hurried towards the house and the casualties. Hopefully they?d be able to save Zosia. I?d had my time. The stone I dropped into the culvert running under the road just there, it was busy with last week?s rain and would clean away any forensics even if a search time ever happened to find the right one amongst all its muck. A phone rang and rang from the signal box, there?d be a Lincoln train due but nobody to answer and the train would have to wait. Voices crackled from a radio, one of the paramedics asked for the helicopter and another unit, the police too. She reported seeing a knife, with blood all over it. With the bikes, knife and Cole?s blazer the evidence was coming together nicely. Hopefully Zosia would name her attackers herself, even if I couldn?t. Suddenly heavy after that magnificent sprint I slumped down with my back to the fence, just ahead of the ambulance, and closed my eyes while enjoying the tickle of windblown hair around my face and neck. She?d be okay, I was sure of that; you didn?t tough it out turning yourself into yourself without having some steel in your core. In the meantime I yawned and thought maybe I?d have a little sleep. To wake up in a hospital. Just a minor heart attack it seemed. A shot across your bows, the cardiologist summarised. Nature?s way of saying eat less, do more exercise. True enough, but more like fickle Lady Fortune?s way of giving Tony Frost a substantial kick up the arse and reinforcing the message Zosia had unwittingly handed me. She and I ended up in the same hospital, by the way; Queen?s Medical Centre in Nottingham. A surgical team sewed her up while Lena paced up and down outside no doubt torturing herself with all the professional insights of where open chest surgery and abdominal stitching could go wrong. I was up and about before her, wheelchair bound of course as I wasn?t supposed to over exert myself. Nor was Zosia supposed to get over excited, but we both pushed medical boundaries at our reunion while Lena wept and tried to hug us both at the same time. I told the police my story, leaving out the bits I couldn?t explain, and Zosia told them hers. Cole Grey went to Derby Royal Infirmary where they had a specialist hand unit, but they were never going to be able to do much for him. He babbled about Zosia having done the damage, but that story never stacked up against the actual, real evidence or anything to implicate a mysterious vigilante. He went to a young offender?s institution hardly able to pick his own nose then to a proper prison when he turned eighteen. Rhea went too. Fuck them But that was in their future. Mine had a different direction to go. When Kath came to pick me up from hospital and take me home (you?re a fucking hero for saving that girl, Tony Flint) I exerted my new hero power on her and made her divert away from Lincoln. We headed further South to a nice new house on the edge of a nice new estate beside the nicely central town of Sleaford. There, outside a house my police service and pension had paid for, I crept timidly up the path to the front door, noting the neat garden and gleaming Golf Gti on the drive which I had probably paid for too. Or Vanessa had earned by putting up with me all those years. "Jesus, Tony. You look like shit," she said when she opened the door to me. Or half opened the door, making herself an obstruction which practically crackled with pent up aggression. She looked pretty good, I?d heard she was dating, in nicely fitted jeans and a low cut top. Her hair was still perfect and well coloured. Gold dangled from her ears and around her neck. I hoped she?d find a good one to settle down with. "Mid-life crisis," I said, waving off her concern. "Don?t tell me she?s your -" she said, looking past me to the scarlet haired Kath looking interested from her car. "Colleague." She sniffed like she didn?t believe me and I didn?t protest because I?d given her the cause to think that. "What do you want?" "I want... No, I would like, very much, if I can, to see our daughter. I?d like to see Rebecca please." She looked surprised, like I?d just puked up on her step. "Are you pissed? I?ll call the cops if you are." "Nessa, I swear I?m not. I?m not here to cause no trouble, just to see her, to say hello." "Rebecca? Our girl?" I nodded. "Our lass." "She?s out, and you can?t come in," she said, looking aggressively down her nose at me and folding her arms. What I really needed was a cup of tea and a sit down, not to be standing on her drive arguing, but she had all the cards and all I had was a half rehearsed speech I could hardly remember as my heart pounded and I wondered if nature might be about to deliver another warning. "Will you tell her I?m sorry? Please, Nessa. I don?t want no more than that. Just tell her that. Tell her I?ve been shit and I?m sorry. Tell her I?m right proud of her for making it right for herself, tell her I?ll..." "What, Tony? What will you do to make it up to her? What will you do to make up for all the years you?ve missed?" "Nothing, I can?t do nowt about that and you know it. But I?ll try and be a dad now, stand by her and be proud of her. Will you tell her? Nessa? Please?" Somebody moved in the shadows behind Vanessa, somebody she?d been trying to screen from me. As my legs gave notice that I?d been asking too much again I saw a swirl of red come into view beside Vanessa?s legs. Under that long, light skirt I saw a pale foot with purple toenails and a beaded turquoise bracelet about its ankle. A hand appeared on Vanessa?s shoulder, with many rings and gleaming plum coloured nails, then a face under an artfully tangled pixie cut; a face dark with mascara and eyeliner, her lips lit with red and a hoop through each nostril. "I heard," she said. "Hello, lass... Rebecca. I?ve been such an arse." "You absolutely have," she agreed, her face stony and expressionless. More than I?d expected to be honest. I?d half imagined the local plod would have been on their way with the blue lights on by now. "I just... I thought... maybe..." "Yes you can," she said. "Becky?" "It?s alright, Mum. Look at his face. When did you ever see him like that? Something?s changed and I want to know what it is. Yes, you can. And if it works out, you can be my dad again. But not today, my girlfriend?s here." I nodded and despite the overwhelming need to have a lay down and a snooze I grinned. "Thank you. Both of you." "I?ll message you," Rebecca said and then she was gone. "I wouldn?t have given you the steam off my piss before now, Tony Frost," Vanessa said, curling her lips to emphasise the point. "But I?ll message you too." Which would have to do. For now. "Where to now?" Kath asked as I flopped back into her car, wheezing pitifully. "The future, lass. And it?s looking up."