James took a step to the side. “Eddie,” he whispered. I muscled in front of Stephen.
“I’m sorry,” I offered. “I was so surprised I didn’t think about being overheard.”
“Accepted,” he grated, his throat bobbing. I could sense anxiety coming off him like a dense pea-souper fog from the olden days and felt miserable for him. “What can I do?”
He exhaled heavily. “My mum always told me never to let folk see. She said they’d make my life a misery.” He scoffed. “Barely remember owt about her, but I remember this.”
“Nobody here will judge you.” Stephen made it sound like a vow. I’d spent so little time in his presence over the past few decades, I’d forgotten how his voice had been one of the things that had originally attracted me to him.
“He’s right, you know.” And there hell went, freezing over as for the second time in a minute, one of us said something decent about the other. “Will you show me, love?”
James sighed, but lifted his hands to his head. He scraped back the heavy fall of hair and held it behind him. “There.”
Dalziel’s low whistle echoed my own thoughts. Stephen was less delicate. “Bloody hell, you’re Fae.”
James looked like he was about to cry. Was he seriouslysurprisedabout this? I supposed he must be. Oh, yes, he was trembling, poor baby. I hastily wrapped myself around him, smoothing down his ruffled hair and turning him into my chest to offer him the protection of a safe place to shed any stray tears. We’d all know if he cried anyway, but he deserved a semblance of dignity. I glared at Stephen. “Don’t be an arse. His ears are way smaller than your average Fae. He can’t be full Fae. We’d have sensed it. He smells human. Doesn’t he, Dalziel?”
“Who smells human? Hello, what’s going on?” Baxter took in the scene in an instant, coming to a reasonable conclusion.“James? Has someone upset you? Said you’re not human? How can I make ’em hurt?”
“James has some rather pointed characteristics that suggest he could be Fae.” Stephen, back to being the pompous twat I was used to.
“Don’t be fucking dense, Ste. James smells totally different to Isher. He ain’t Fae, are you poppet?” Baxter somehow slid her arm under mine and chucked James under the chin. His watery gaze snagged on her curious brown one. “You might have an itty bit of Fae flavouring, lawd knows, plenty of folk do, but you ain’t the full deal, babes. We’d have smelled it. What’s got everyone in a pickle?”
James showed her. Her mouth dropped open in an O.
“Blimey. Didnotsee that coming. God help us all if you ever get a haircut. You’ll be beating boys, girls and everyone in-between off with a stick. You’re so fucking adorable, it should be illegal.” She glowered at Dalziel and Stephen. “You two, eff off out of it. The boy’s had a shock. Eddie and I’ll take him down to the office and see what we can find out. All right, lads?”
With me holding James firmly as we watched Baxter’s fingers fly over her keyboards, his breathing slowed to an acceptable rate. Baxter brought up numerous screens, then asked him for his full name and date of birth.
“James Valentine Wilson, fourteenth of Febr?—”
“Your birthday’s Valentine’s Day?” I said, filing it away in my brain.
He scowled. “Yeah. Hence the stupid middle name. Being a ginger kid, with that name, the bullies had a field day. God knows what my mum was thinking.”
“It’s a gorgeous name, sweets.” Baxter typed it in. “And you’re twenty-four next birthday, right?” He confirmed that, and his place of birth as somewhere he explained was on theoutskirts of Bradford. “I’ve got my birth certificate somewhere, I think.”
“No matter. I can go far deeper than you usually can on the main records office.” Baxter paused, then enlarged a screen. “Mother, Shirley Wilson, aged twenty-two when you were born, machinist for Bleddoe & Minster Textiles. Father, unknown. Is that true, James? Did your mother ever talk about him? Any clues to who he might have been? Old photos she kept tucked away?”
“I don’t know. I don’t remember much. She kept me away from other kids. I got sick a lot. She always kept my hair long, told me my ears had to be covered. They weren’t so pointy when I was little though.”
“They weren’t?” I held him tighter and kissed the top of his head.
“No, but she always seemed worried about it. Like it was some huge secret I had to keep. When I went to school, they had hearing tests and stuff. I used to scream if anyone came too near me, so they backed off and let me put the headphones on by myself. That’s when they discovered I was hard of hearing.” He sighed. “Everything fell apart after that. Accusations flew. I had to see loads of doctors. Mum cried a lot and was really defensive. Social workers came. They said she neglected me.”
Another sigh. “She probably did, but she was my mum. She was trying to protect me. She loved me. Well, she said she did.” His voice wobbled. “I think she did, in her own way. They took me away from her anyway and put me in foster care.” He shrank back against me, pulling my arms even closer around him like a shield. “She didn’t come to see me often. When I got a bit older I did wonder if she might have had depression or been on drugs. Or p’raps she was just happy to see the back of me. I wasn’t an easy child.”
Baxter swivelled her chair around, her gaze stern but kind. “I weren’t neither, doll, but my parents didn’t abuse or neglect me. And given the era I lived in, nobody would’ve blinked if they’d had me committed to an institution or had me dumped at the workhouse.”
James gaped at her. “Why would anyone do that? You were a child.”
“Like I said, I weren’t easy to deal with. The whys and wherefores ain’t important right now. My parents followed their hearts instead of acting like a lot of folk would’ve in the same circumstances.” Her tone was fond. “Anyhow, that ain’t the issue here. So, little James got carted off to foster care. I presume it broke down at some point? Eddie said you’d been in children’s homes, plural?”
James filled her in on the dates he could dredge up from memory. Baxter typed and typed, switching screens with a focus I could tell had her in its spell. I nudged James. “We might as well leave. She’ll be gone down some deep rabbit holes for a while yet.”
“Nah, you’re good. Fetch the boy a cuppa and leave him with me. He can help if I get stuck.” She leaned into one screen and glared at the grainy image of a census page. “The hell does that say?”
I did as I was told and made James a mug of tea in the oversized mug Baxter seemed to have allocated to him, proud of myself that I could now make it the way he liked it.
