‘Don’t change on our account,’ Larry said. ‘We’ve heard it all before, plus words you wouldn’t even know.’
‘I’ll still try to maintain my best behaviour,’ Deb said.
‘Your parents?’
‘Our father died five years back, a heavy smoker all his life, got to him in the end. Our mother died a few years earlier, both taken before their time. She had grown up during a difficult time in the north. Two bad years and the small farms were feeling the pinch, too many people going hungry. Even when our father met her, she was frail, and even later, when they were married, and in a good house, her health didn’t improve. She always came down with an illness before any of us. Eventually, pneumonia got to her. A blessed relief in some ways, as she was suffering, could barely walk.’
‘You didn’t grow up on a farm?’
‘We used to visit my grandparents when we were young, and I always loved it there. Out on the farm, there was a sense of freedom. Our father was a stickler for discipline, minding your Ps and Qs. Laughing didn’t come often.
‘I was rebellious from puberty. Mike was determined to be out of the house; a job in an office working for our father would have driven him mad.’
‘You both left?’
‘Mike, at sixteen, a stint in the army, fought overseas. He never returned, went to university on his return, and climbed at the weekends and holidays. You know his story from then on. Google it if you don’t.’
‘What about you?’ Wendy asked.
‘Rebellious, not so much against my parents, never hated them, nothing like that, but my father’s going on about finding myself a decent man and settling down. One day, I’m sitting in a café, not far from the house. A group of bikers come in. I’m sitting there, young and innocent. We get talking, and soon after, I’m on the back of one of the bikes, a biker’s moll, tattoos, all the antics they get up to.’
‘Bonnie and Clyde?’
‘I wasn’t Bonnie, and the man I latched onto wasn’t a Clyde, nothing gay about him. He was rough, swore, got into fights, but treated me better than the other men treated their women.’
‘Your parents?’
‘I’d phone them occasionally, never let on what I was getting up to, but I was having a blast, cruising the highway, getting drunk out of my mind, screwing around, and then there were the tattoos. Eventually, I got my own bike, ditched the man, shaved my hair.’
‘And bought a farm,’ Larry said.
‘In time, I grew out of the lifestyle, but I couldn’t go back to my parents, not even if I conformed, which I had no intention of doing. I like shocking people.’
‘You shocked Maddox Timberley, Angus’s girlfriend.’
‘I’ve no time for people like her, sticking their nose in the air, thinking that just because they’ve got a boob job and straight teeth, they’re better than me.’
‘You realise that your appearance is disarming,’ Larry said.
‘I do. Kate, you do want to know about her?’
‘We do.’
‘Kate never liked me, not that I worried. I kept out of the way, although I had met her down here at the farm.’
‘Polite to each other?’
‘For Mike’s sake. Not sure what he said about me to her, but I’m sure it was complimentary, even if he acknowledged my shortcomings. We’re very close, always were, always will be. In time, the two of them are married, and I received an invite to the marital home, not that it excited me that much, but Mike’s my brother, and she’s his wife. We get along well enough, talking about this and that, my lifestyle, my running with bikers, the shaven head, the tattoos. Kate’s a bit of a prude, old-fashioned ideas, not that it stopped her screwing Justin Skinner or sucking up to Angus.’
‘You knew Angus?’
‘Best friend of Mike, how couldn’t I? I liked him back then, although he wasn’t what he seemed.’
‘Bisexual?’ Larry said.
‘Not that. Who cares, not these days, but as I said, Kate’s a prude. She cared, not that it stopped her sleeping with Angus on one occasion.’
‘Some people believe Simmons to be innocent of all crimes.’
‘Some might, but I’m not one of them. When I was younger, I fancied Angus, that’s before I found motorbikes.’
‘You have somebody?’ Wendy asked.
‘Jock lives a couple of miles from here, has a farm, not as good as this; not too smart either, but he’s fun. Once a week, sometimes twice, he’ll come over here, or I’ll go over there. No talk of love or marriage, none of that.’
‘You were married?’
‘A biker’s wedding, vow to love and honour, to make myself available, to be traded for whatever.’
‘Were you?’
‘No, but they have strange ideas about fidelity. Most of the time trying to be anarchistic, to make sense of a crazy world, making a complete hash of it.’
‘Yet, you stayed?’
‘I’d been educated, good family values. I could see it for what it was, but I enjoyed the lifestyle for a few years, no intention of staying forever.’
‘The tattoos?’
‘They’re there now, nothing I can do about it, not that I want to, and as for the shaven head, get down here during the winter, mucking out stables, giving the animals their feed, wading through knee-deep mud to rescue a newly-born lamb, and you’ll realise the nonsense of what’s important. Put that Maddox down here, and she’d be in tears for a week, dead within two. Vapid, brainless, flat as a pancake without a couple of plastic bags shoved up her front.’
‘Silicone implants,’ Wendy corrected the woman.
‘I know what they’re called. A fancy name, charge twice the price to have them put in than they’re worth, three times to take them out.’
Deb got up from her chair, rushed into
