Rough Sleepers

by Nem Rowan

  "Are you alright, Chris?" I inquired as I put a flagon of milk away in the fridge.

  "Yeah," she nodded, but she wouldn't look me in the eye. She folded up a carrier bag and patted it flat over her arm. That was all she needed, a little poke in the right direction. "Well, actually, I wanted to say, umm..."

  I paused what I was doing and turned to face her, which only made her all the more nervous.

  "If you're mad at Ceri, please don't be. Will ya talk to him?" she blurted all of a sudden.

  I sighed, placing my hand on my hip in a pose I hoped didn't look too threatening since she had obviously been building herself up to telling me.

  "Did he put you up to this?" I asked, but it was more of a statement than a question. She chewed at her lip and nodded bashfully. "How much did he pay you?"

  "He bought me a pasty."

  "It better have been a damned good pasty." I shook my head slowly, unable to stop myself from rolling my eyes.

  "Oh—it was, it was really good. It cost him nearly a fiver." she perked up a little, but my expression quickly caused her to go shy again.

  I grunted. "Look sweetie, if he wants to talk to me, he can come and see me himself. Next time you want a pasty or something, ask me or Mecky. Don't go doing Ceri's dirty work for him."

  "But you two, you did argue again last night." She hesitated as though she was unsure as to whether she should bring it up.

  "You're pretty good at eavesdropping, aren't you." I smirked as I reached for the last shopping bag and hauled it up onto the counter.

  "Yeah." She giggled, only to realise that in doing so she had confessed to eavesdropping in the first place, but I didn't much mind.

  Sixteen

  "Hey," I greeted as I peeked round the door.

  "Hey," Ceri replied, turning in his chair to look over at me. It was dark again, long past ten o'clock. Christine was downstairs watching a movie and Mecky had gone to bed early, which left me floating with nowhere to go. Ceri seemed surprised to see me there.

  "Listen, I..." I began, before sighing and entering the loft room. I shut the door behind myself and he lifted his head to meet my gaze as I approached him. I thought I detected some apprehension in him, or perhaps it was fear. I hoped it wasn't the latter.

  "I thought you wanted to be left alone." He made a wry smile as I stopped before him.

  "I did."

  The chair creaked as he leaned back in it, and I watched as his eyes roamed over me, observing the shape of my body in the dress I wore. Swiftly, he looked away again, seeming to find it painful that I was there, his teeth chewing at the scar in his lip.

  "Mecky talked to me," I began, but it was more of a declaration, and I wasn't really sure what to say after that. I took a deep breath. "I thought you and her were together, and you were, ya know, cheating on her or something."

  Ceri chuckled quietly as he rested his wrists on his knees. "No, I wasn't."

  "She told me all about what happened last night. Look, I'm sorry I even went up there and spied on you. I shouldn't have even done that in the first place," I confessed.

  "Don't be sorry. Your reaction was justified, and actually I'm relieved you reacted like that. It just goes to show you have a lot of integrity, and I like that in you." He managed a more positive smile this time.

  "Well, that's something, I guess." I raised my eyebrows at him.

  "Mecky isn't coping with her grief well, despite appearances. I know she always seems so happy, but that's only half of it. I guess you've seen all the pictures in her room?" he assumed, and I nodded slowly. "She's hungry for revenge. Her grief is all-consuming."

  I sighed, glancing down at my feet. "I feel like such a fuckwit."

  "Don't, it's not your fault. You saw what you saw. I was consoling her, like I have done since I come to live by yere. She's just afraid of being alone again," he explained, clasping his hands together in his lap.

  I contemplated what he had said, but then something else came to mind. "You said to her about another person. That you wouldn't leave her for him. I thought you were talking about me."

  "No, of course not." He let out a snort of laughter as his eyes rolled up to the ceiling.

  "So who was it, then?"

  "My mentor. He asked me to return to Wales," he admitted after a moment's pause. Now I understood what it meant, why Mecky was worried he might leave.

  "Will you?" I asked, but I wasn't sure I wanted to know the answer. We'd be screwed if Ceri left us; we needed him when the full moon came.

  "No. Too many ghosts wait for me there," he murmured, his eyes half-closing as he looked down at his clasped hands. He stroked a callous on his knuckle with the pad of his thumb.

  "Good. We need you here, with us, to help us find Wallace. You've brought us all together, and I'm grateful for it. I'd still be out there, sleeping in the snow if it weren't fer you. No wonder Mecky was upset." I finally managed to smile but it was a muted one.

  He nodded, acknowledging that I was right. Satisfied, I stepped closer and he flinched when I reached to caress his face. His cheek was cold under my palm, and I stroked my thumb over the bristles of his stubble, petting him like he was a sad old dog.

  "Let's give it a rest, eh? What did you find out at the library?" I changed subject suddenly. I could feel myself becoming needy and wanting to kiss him again. After everything that had happened recently, I figured I had better stop while I was ahead.

  "Oh, we found out a few things. Christine is a dab hand with a computer," he answered, his eyes opening again as he came around. He turned in his chair and took up one of the piles of paper from the desk before spreading it out before me. "I found some more news on Darnel Williams. Still missing, no longer being searched for by the police, as far as I'm aware. He was declared a runaway and that was that. Found nothing on Kelly Hayfield, and I'm taking that as a good sign that Wallace Reed hasn't got to her yet. Hope not anyway. Apart from that, all I could find for Edith is an article about the Bristol Quilter's Guild published online as she had retired from her position as a chairman for the club."

  He slipped the page out and placed it before me, allowing me to see the photograph of the elderly lady standing before a row of colourful patterned quilts hung up on a gallery wall. She had slightly uncontrollably white hair and rosy cheeks, a pair of big spectacles perched on her button nose as she smiled for the camera jovially. I got the feeling from her picture that she was probably a sweet, friendly old bird.

  "Other than the article, I've got an address for her," he continued, thumbing through the pile and taking out another sheet.

  "Greyfriar Place," I uttered as I looked at the printed letters on the page.

  "You know it?" He glanced up at me, his eyes intense like they usually were when he thought he was on a lead.

  "Yeah, I lived there once. After I got out of prison, the council put me up there. I wasn't there long, mind. Only a few months, before I got a better place on the Dings with Slater. Last I heard, it got demolished and rebuilt, though. It's not called Greyfriar Place anymore, it's umm..." I pressed my hand to my forehead as I struggled to recall the new title. "I think it was Brunel—no, not Brunel, it was St. Stephen's House, or something like that."

  Ceri swiped his notepad from the other side of the desk, knocking over a pile of newspaper clippings with his jumper sleeve before sitting back down and hurriedly scrawling this information on a fresh leaf.

  "I'm guessing the original tenants got moved elsewhere," he said as he looked up from the notepad, pen poised in his hand.

  "Yeah, probably got moved to other council flats somewhere. Hmm, looking at the date on this article—" I gestured to the sheet he had shown me. "That was a good few years before the demolition, though. They only started knocking it down about six months ago."

  "That soon?" Ceri raised his brows at me.

  "Yeah, it's all been rebuilt but no one lives there yet, not as far as I'm aware anyway." I nodded.

  "Which means we don't have an address
for Edith after all." He sighed and slapped his pen down on the notepad.

  "If we don't have one, perhaps Wallace doesn't have one either. Maybe that's a good thing," I reasoned, but I could see the cogs in Ceri's head were turning nevertheless.

  "I hope so. Oh, and we also found this." He took up another sheet and put it before me.

  "Scott Penderton," I answered when I saw the photograph. It was a picture taken from one of the articles about his death at the flats on Bath Road, so Ceri had blown it up in size a bit. He was young, early twenties perhaps, with short black hair in a styled quiff, hipster glasses on and a plaid shirt buttoned at his throat. His neck was pretty long; he was probably quite tall and skinny, looked a little on the dorky side but I dunno, kind of cute in a way.

  "Yep. Totally throws your theory about Wallace taking women. So does Darnel Williams. I can't find a connection between any of you, no matter how deep I scour for information. Nothing links any of you," Ceri stressed, his chair groaning as he leaned back in it again.

  "Have you thought about going back to the house in Westbury?" I inquired.

  "No, not worth it. He knows we infiltrated the house; he won't go back by there just in case we're waiting in ambush. Anyway, we tore that place apart and there was nothing. It seemed like he was just using the place to house Christine in the meantime." He grunted, pulling open a drawer in the desk and taking out a cigarette packet. He offered one to me, but I declined.

  I yawned into the back of my hand and drifted to the window so that I could look down on the empty street below. When was this cold weather gonna let up? I just wanted some warmth, some summer sunshine.

  "It's late. Are Mecky and Christine asleep?" Ceri spoke after a moment of silence.

  "Mecky's in bed. I think Chrissy was watching a film or something," I answered over my shoulder before standing upright again.

  Ceri fiddled with his cigarette packet, the fag hanging from his lips letting off a trailing wisp of pale smoke. He cleared his throat.

  "So, umm... You still sleeping downstairs?" he asked, his voice barely a murmur.

  "What?" I was unable to stop myself from grinning as I stepped towards him, standing in his line of sight so that he was forced to look at my skirt and the heels on my feet. He looked up at my face begrudgingly before taking his cigarette from his mouth and blowing a puff of smoke through his teeth.

  "You still tamping with me?"

  "Tamping? What do you mean?" I made a small frown.

  "Are you still mad with me?" he rephrased. "I just wanted to know, that's all. Since you found out that I'm not so bad and all that."

  "No, I ain't mad at ya." I shook my head.

  "So, like I said a minute ago." He tried to shepherd me into answering his previous question, but I wanted to hear him say it again. When I didn't speak, he sighed and tapped some ash into his near-to-overflowing ashtray. "Well, are you gonna go sleep down in the living room with Christine tonight?"

  "That depends. When did you last shower?" I grinned as I bent at the waist, my hair creating a shimmering curtain as it slipped from my shoulder. He grumbled as I bowed to his level and brushed the end of my nose against his.

  "Yesterday," he told me grumpily.

  "Oh, that's not so bad then. You must just normally smell bad," I jested as I stood upright again. "I suppose I'll stay up here and keep you company, then."

  "Thanks." He smiled at last, and I thought I saw a brief glimpse of misery in his eyes. He blew out some more smoke and gestured to me, patting one of his legs, so I carefully moved to sit down on his lap, my arm going round his shoulders to keep my balance.

  "What?" I tilted my head as he turned to look at me.

  "I just want you to know, I've never cheated on anyone my whole entire life. I might have done some terrible things in the past, but cheating wasn't one of them," he told me, allowing me to take a drag from his cigarette as he spoke. "I was loyal to one woman for twenty years, even when she went off with another bloke. She wasn't for me, as it turned out. So you know, if you're wanting to go with me, it's for long term."

  "Who said anything about me going anywhere with you? All we did was kiss," I retorted as I let the smoke plume from my nostrils, my tone mockingly cynical.

  "Leon..." he grumbled.

  "I was just joking! No, it's nice to actually hear you say something about yourself when I don't know jack about you as it is."

  "There's a reason for that. I just wanna let go of my past. I don't want what happened to me to cloud your judgement of me," he mumbled, unable to look me in the eye again.

  "Ceri, I ain't gonna judge ya. Did ya really think someone like me would do that? A bloody drag queen werewolf, of all people?" I reasoned, and he nodded in guilty agreement. "I've done time in the lockup, I've done shitty things, too. Nobody's perfect."

  He said nothing; only the nod of his head told me he had listened.

  "So what happened with this woman, then?" I changed subject, mainly out of curiosity, but also because he was choosing to be so generous with his personal information and I didn't know how long it was going to last.

  "Well, we were friends when we were teens. She dated me awhile. Eventually she picked my best friend over me and moved away." He shrugged like it didn't matter. "I hadn't loved anyone else in my whole life. She was my first girlfriend, and also my last."

  "Really?" I leaned closer in fascination. "Were you... Ya know. Still...a virgin, when you got together?"

  "I was still a virgin when she left me," he confessed awkwardly.

  If I had been drinking coffee, I would have sprayed it in his face, but instead I gasped loudly, which made him all the more embarrassed.

  "Are you still, ya know?" I whispered, but he frowned, shaking his head quickly.

  "Bloody hell, no! I'm 51 years old, I ain't a bloody virgin." He huffed, and I felt him moving beneath me, giving me the impression that he wanted me off his lap so that he could escape the conversation.

  "Oh come on, I was just teasing you!" I grinned at him. So, the tough guy wasn't quite as tough as he made himself out to be. Actually, this was a side to Ceri I hadn't expected to see, and it endeared me to him. He was everything my previous boyfriends hadn't been: dedicated, loyal, and perhaps just a teensy bit obsessive.

  "Don't be so grumpy, daddy bear." I stole his cigarette for another puff before sticking it back between his lips.

  "Don't call me that." He grunted, continuing to frown at the floor in front of us.

  "You're over the age of 40, that makes you a daddy. Get used to it." I laughed as I slipped from his lap and rose to my full height. "Now come on, if you expect me to sleep up here then you're gonna have to get my bedding ready for me. Better start treating me like the queen I am if you want any kind of affection from me."

  He smirked as he blew some smoke through his nose and stubbed the cigarette out in the tray, before making a rough groan as he hauled himself to his feet.

  "As my diva commands," he answered, heading for the door.

  I watched him go, relief washing over me, relief that I didn't have to run away again. I didn't want to leave, but the fear that I had been wrong about him was enough to make me consider it. I wanted to give Ceri a chance. I felt there was some chemistry between us; I felt it could work if I put in the effort. He fed off of my fire and I was fuelled by his placid nature. The fact that there was a fifteen-year age gap between us meant nothing to me; I had dated guys older than he was, and actually his mature, more experienced demeanour was quite attractive to me. Okay, now I'm just being generous. Before I had tried to restrain myself, but there was no point in doing that now, not when both Mecky and Christine knew what was going on. It was safe to charge ahead, and that was what I intended to do.

  Seventeen

  Ceri did as I had asked like a well-trained butler, and while he waited on the bed for me, I went to defrock and wipe off my makeup; actually, I had the impression that he was disappointed that I had, that he would have preferred me to jump right
onto him as I was. When I was younger, Leona Valentine had been a strong, fast-talking, sharp-witted caricature of myself, but as time had gone on, she had become fifty percent of my being. She had become the yin to my yang, and I realised that I was Leona, just as much as I was Leon. I wasn't ready for Ceri to love Leona yet, and instead he had to contend with the male version of me, because if he couldn't accept Leon then there was no way he would be able to handle Leona.

  Leon was the reason I couldn't transition. I needed that male part of me, on the days when I woke up and just didn't feel Leona was in the mood to come out, instead Leon took her place, handled the bills and the boring, adult things that my female party animal had no patience for. I used to think I had multiple personalities or something. Until I realised that both of the personalities were just me as I was. I called myself a drag queen, I even paraded my female self on stage, but I wasn't like some of the other girls I spent time with. They put on a costume to become their drag selves, whereas Leona simply put on her regular wardrobe when she felt she was needed in the world. When Amy needed her. She was always there.

  "You're still beautiful," Ceri remarked as I stood beside the bed in the feeble streetlight, raking my fingers through the ponytail I had draped over my shoulder. I could already feel the pinpricks of hair beginning to emerge through my skin, on both my face and torso.

  He was laying on his side like a Buddha in y-fronts, and when I sat down on the edge beside him, he leaned closer and nuzzled my arm with his nose and lips, gently kissing me there.

  "You like me in a dress then, huh?" I smirked down at him. When he glanced up at me, I saw some poorly disguised lust within.

  "In a dress, and outside a dress, too," he agreed.

  "Well, big boy, it's getting late and I need my beauty sleep." I gave him a little push on his shoulder to get the message across.

  "You don't need beauty sleep," he murmured against my skin. I turned, topless under the light from the windows as I bent to him and nudged my nose against his.