Title:         A long way from home
Pairings:      Bradford/Page, Bradford/OFC, Bradford/OMC
Rating:        R18?17
Warnings:      homo and het sex, mild s/m, violence, drug
               use, violent sexual fantasies, implied sex between
               minors, racial slurs, general horribleness.
Spoilers:      some, for season 18 & 19 episodes before ep 136
Length:        8223 words
Summary:       There was a time when Cathy Bradford was happy...

Disclaimer:    characters from The Bill and other TB bits
               are Thames TV's.  The other characters and the story
               are mine.  This is a work of fiction - any resemblance
               to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely
               coincidental.

March 2004



****************************************************************

A long way from home
by Viv Martella's Ghost


2003 - Sun Hill

Sunlight streaming through the venetian blinds falls
in thin stripes across her desk.  It happens
sometimes, at this time of day, in the right season,
with the right weather, that the brightness of the
light as she stares at it makes the rest of the room
dark.  And then, should someone in the back corner
laugh just the right way, or should she mistake a
plain English word for Cantonese, she's back there, on
the fifth floor, in the air conditioned humidity.
Half expecting a call from her guvnor or her dealer or
another of her snouts.  Waiting for her desk buddy
Alex to return from his long afternoon smoko with the
upstairs boys, armpits sweaty and fresh gossip issuing
from his restitched harelip.  Listening for the
evening thunderstorm to come rolling in, bringing with
it the night, and knocking off time, and her.

Then the light shifts, de Costa asks what she's
working on and she spins some line about this rape
case or that racist assault.  Some pissant nothing
waste of time that sends de Costa away happy.  Leaving
Cathy with a sour stomach and the urge to hit someone
because she's not back there, she's here, in this
cold, mean place.  And there's no Ness to go home to.
And no matter how many times she's willed Ness to walk
in the CSU door and announce in front of everyone that
she's come to take Cathy away from all of this, she
pretty much knows after four years that it's probably
not gonna happen.

"You all right?" whispers Pol from across the way.

"Fine," says Cathy, smiling saccharinely.  "D'you
fancy a drink after work?"

"Don't mind if I do," replies Pol with her crooked
tooth smile.

Just seeing those teeth fills Cathy with rage.  She
hates the pride these people take in their
bread-and-dripping ruddy-cheeked bad health and
poverty.  She wants to shove Pol's head ear-down on
the desk and grope her with a coarse hand between the
legs, rip her trousers open, fuck her like she's not
been fucked before.  Lecture her about the big bad
world outside the east end, emphasising each point
with a stab of twisting fingers, until Pol has learnt
it by heart.

She smiles at Pol again before excusing herself and
heading for the loo.


***


1983 - Lancashire

It's her worst start at a new school yet: her
thirteenth in seven years of schooling.  A peculiar
combination of lucky and unlucky numbers.  It's only
her second day when an unfamiliar dampness in her
knickers makes her think she's weed her pants.  But
there's no puddle.  When she stands up in the middle
of class to ask to go to the toilet, someone behind
her giggles.  The teacher, a young, idealistic,
nervous type, puts the teacher's pet in charge of the
class and walks Cathy to the nurse's station.  The
nurse takes one look at her and says, "Oh, shame," and
the teacher goes away without a word.

"Have you had your monthlies before?" the nurse asks
the 11-year-old Cathy.

"My monthly what?" Cathy asks.

"Your monthly visitor?  The curse?  No?"

Cathy shakes her head and wants to cry, having no idea
what she's talking about.

"Look," says the nurse, holding out Cathy's new
uniform at an angle.  "Have you ever had blood down
here before?"

Now Cathy does burst into tears at the sight of the
blood.

Her dad, Mick, is not on the phone so she has to stay
at the nurse's station all day until he comes to pick
her up.  Waiting at the front of the school with a
jumper around her waist, she is too ashamed to explain
to him the terrible thing that has happened.  The
nurse has given her a sanitary pad to wear with
instructions to change it for a fresh one later that
night.  When Cathy asked her where to get one, the
nurse told her to ask her mother, but Cathy couldn't
admit to her that she had no mother.  Now she doesn't
know what she will do.

Mick finds her that night in the bathroom, scrubbing
at the stain on her uniform.  He leaves the flat for a
while, then comes back, and when Cathy returns to her
bedroom she finds a packet of pads on her bed.
Neither of them ever speaks about it.  It isn't until
a couple of years later that Cathy finds out what
periods are and realises she's normal.

At school the next morning, Cathy is teased
mercilessly by the other kids until the teacher comes
in.  It is nothing new - the kids at the other twelve
schools all teased her for one reason or another too.
For being new, for being too tall, for wearing the
wrong type of pink denim miniskirt.  For her dad being
a no hoper, a beggar, a gypsy, even though in her
youthful naive loyalty she insists to them that he's a carpenter who
makes toys.  But this new thing to be teased about seems worse somehow,
because she doesn't understand it.  It hurts.

The class begins and Cathy can't concentrate on what
the mousy teacher is saying.  Until she hears the word `bleeding' and
looks up, and starts listening.  Being the seventh year of school, the
teacher is teaching basic genetics using the example of haemophilia in
the royal family.  She is overambitious and none of the students
actually learn anything about genetics that day, but the lesson changes
Cathy Bradford's life.
Come art class after recess, she tells her first ever
lie.

"I'm a princess twice removed," she shouts back at the
kids teasing her from behind a pile of clay.  "That's
how come I've got hemiflebia what means you can't stop bleeding."

She picks up a stanley knife and gashes her arm.
There is suddenly an awful lot of blood.  A hush
descends over the room as gradually all the kids and
finally the teacher turn to look at her.  She faints,
and wakes up in the nurse's station with a bandage on.

The teachers assume it was an accident and ban stanley
knives from art class.

The students all know that it wasn't an accident, and
suddenly have a whole new respect for this strange new
girl who may or may not be a princess twice removed.

Cathy doesn't have much time to milk the situation
because her dad decides to move on again soon after.
But she never again makes the mistake of defending her
father or her family's lifestyle to the small-minded
people she encounters.  She finds that an impressive
well-told lie backed up with a bit of drama is worth a
whole bucket load of sordid truth.


***


2003 - Sun Hill

The toilets are mercifully empty, and Cathy takes a
moment to catch her breath, leaning over the basin.
Trying not to throw up into it.

She shuts her eyes and tries to get it back - the
feeling of not being here.  Imagines herself in the
bathroom of her old flat, leaning over the ancient,
chipped enamel sink.  Fat tropical cockroaches
crawling up her drain, crickets making music in the
long grass outside and the sickly smell of frangipani
wafting in on the breeze.  Opium behind her eyes, sex
on the brain, and Ness breathing down her neck, hands
creeping around the bare skin of her belly, sliding
inside the elastic band of her boxers...

Cathy has a vivid imagination but it's not easy to
conjure up paradise in a windowless linoleumed ladies'
room stinking of pine air freshener.

She catches her own eye in the mirror and stares into
it with pure revulsion for as long as she can stand
it.

Then her fingers caress the bruises on her belly, and
it comforts her a bit.  Pressing them, she tastes the
familiar sting.  They are healing.  She let them heal
for Brandon and she wants them to heal for Pol too.
Doesn't want Pol to see them.  They are her strength, diminished by
viewing.  And Pol would ask too many awkward questions.  Would worry
about her.  If there's anything she doesn't want, it's that.


***


1985 - East Yorkshire

It's hard to get the door to shut properly in this
flat, but Jamie Callaghan does it by brute force with
a slam, and Cathy laughs.

"Shhh!  Me brother'll wake up!"

She's pissed on wine cooler, as is he, and she giggles
some more.  Jamie plonks down on the bed next to her.

"How can he be your brother?" he asks suspiciously.
"He's twice your age."

"Me mam had two husbands," explains Cathy.  "First one
rich, second one poor.  Poor one - my dad - took all
her money and ran off.  Mam died of a broken heart so
now me and Mick have nothing but each other."

Jamie kisses her, his fifteen-year-old attempt at
facial hair tickling her chin.  "Doesn't he mind you
being with - with men?"

"He dun' own me," says Cathy, letting Jamie roll on
top of her.

"Have you done this before?" Jamie asks while he's
humping against her with his Y-fronts still on.

"Loads of times," Cathy lies.

Afterwards, when he leaves, Cathy stays in bed in
shock and in pain.  It is done, she thinks.  It was a
lot worse than she thought it would be.  But it is
done.  And with any luck Jamie will be back tomorrow
for a few more minutes of companionship.

The tinkle of a teaspoon in a mug tells her Mick is in
the kitchen, making a cup of tea.

He was up all this time, she realises.

He knew.

He knew and he didn't stop her.

She's not sure how she feels about that.

The next day, she takes his precious toy-making
jigsaw, the most expensive thing they own aside from
their bomb of a car, and throws it in the canal.  He
never mentions it, but hocks the black and white telly
and the good frypan to buy a new one.


***


1986 - Manchester

She is allowed one treat a fortnight.  It's all they
can afford.  This time it is a copy of a music
magazine with The Cure on the cover.  She is going to
cut the boys out and stick them on her school maths
book like she's seen the other kids do.

Or she was.  Until Mick put his tea cup over Robert
Smith and left a brown stain on his white face.

Upon discovering the damage, Cathy has an hysterical
fit, crying till she nearly pukes and screaming at
Mick that he doesn't care about her and never has.

He stands up and goes outside for a smoke.

"You're not listening to me!" she shouts, and he
ignores her.

She takes a glass and smashes it on the floor and he
ignores that too.  So she smashes another, and
another, until all the meagre crockery in the cupboard
is smashed on the kitchen floor and she is in tears
amongst it, howling loudly like a six year old, making
sure that there is no doubt in anyone's mind that she
is upset.  She sits there for an hour, while Mick sits
outside and smokes.

When he comes back, he says, "I do my best, Cath.
There's nowt else I can do."

Then he goes to bed.

Cathy hates him.  She picks up a piece of broken glass
to cut her wrist, but throws it back on the floor with
a whimper of despair without doing more than scratch
her skin.


***


1988 - Tyneside

They have put her in the maternity ward with the young
mothers.

To teach her a lesson, she suspects.

The girl in the next bed nursing a red-faced screaming
bundle of joy looks younger than her, and Cathy finds
out later that she's only 15.  Whenever the girl has
visitors she's all smiles and coos and `Oh, isn't she
lovely'.  The rest of the time she cries.  It teaches
Cathy a lesson all right.  That despite the perforated
uterus, the haemorrhaging, the near brush with death
and the humiliation of being discovered naked and
bleeding in the public lavatories with a bent knitting
needle inside her, she did the right thing.

Mick comes to see her, bearing flowers that he's
picked outside the hospital by all appearances.  His
dark suntanned skin is creased like leather.

"I just got message," he says quietly.  "What've thou
done, Cath?"

Cathy rolls over and stares at the wall.

She's been pregnant twice before but miscarried both
times.  Mick doesn't know that.  She's never told him
and he never noticed.  The one time he came close was
when she was throwing up a lot last year.  He stood in
the doorway of the bathroom, frowning at her in a
questioning manner.  She said she caught a bug and he
said something about the bad local water.  He packed
up their stuff and they moved on again the next day.
She lost the baby in a cheap hotel along the way,
doubled over in pain all night, silently cursing
whichever bony-arsed boy it was that did this to her.

"I'm sorry, dad," she mumbles into the wall, ashamed
in front of him.  He gives her the freedom usually
awarded only to adults but she can't ever seem to
wield it responsibly.  Keeps letting him down.

Mick pats her shoulder.

"We'll get going when you're well," he says.

She turns to face him.  "No, dad.  Can't we stop here
a while for once?"

Having left school six months ago, Cathy has landed
herself a job.  It may only be on the line at a fish
plant for two pounds an hour, but it's her ticket to
freedom.  She's saved seventy pounds so far.  But she
can't say that to Mick because then he'll know that
she wants to leave him.

"We'll see," he mutters, rolling a fag, and goes
outside to smoke it.


The doctor makes her stay in hospital for five days.
The disapproval on the nurses' faces as they pass by
her bed is obvious.  Only one of them smiles at her:
Susan is her name - a young thing who, it seems, like
Cathy has found one of the few paths out of the baby
factory destiny dealt to so many of their peers.
Cathy smiles back at her.  She'd like to make friends,
but doesn't know how.  She finds it difficult to
believe that anyone would want to be friends with the
real Cathy Bradford, trailer trash nothing from
nowhere.

"I'm so glad I lost the baby," she says to Nurse Susan
the next time she comes to give her a sponge bath.
"My uncle raped me, you know.  It was his baby."

Susan looks at her uncertainly, while pulling back the bedcovers.
"That's terrible," she whispers.

Cathy shrugs.  "He's rich, he thinks he can get away
with anything.  But I won't let it happen anymore.
I'm getting out.  I leave for India next month."

"India?  How exotic," says Susan, removing Cathy's
night gown.

"Oh, I've been there before.  I have an old boyfriend
there.  Might look him up, might not.  Might take a
friend instead."

Susan begins to bathe her arms.  "Sounds nice."

"Would you like to come with me?  I've money for both
of us."

The nurse stops mid scrub.  "Me?  Don't be daft."

Cathy takes Susan's hand and moves it onto her breast,
placing her own hand over the top.

"Why not?  We could have some fun."

She squeezes the soft white hand, pressing it down
into the flesh of her breast.  Susan looks
uncomfortable but unsure, and doesn't move.

"Don't tell me you've not thought about it.
Attractive girl like you."

Susan tries to pull her hand away, muttering, "It's
not right."

"Come on," insists Cathy, holding her there.  "When
was the last time you had a good seeing to?"

"Please stop," squeaks Susan, and looks over her
shoulder as if she might call for help.

Cathy drops her hand.  "You tell anyone, and I'll say
it was you," she hisses.  "I'm the invalid, don't
forget.  I'm completely at your mercy."

Nurse Susan nods.  She persists with the bath, quickly
and roughly, showing incredible discomfort and without
saying a word.  After that she doesn't smile at Cathy
anymore.

It's a small town and news travels fast.  When she's
discharged from hospital, Cathy finds she has no job.
Much to her embarrassment, Mick donates a grotesque
wooden sheep on wheels to the maternity wing before
they leave.


***


1990 - Hong Kong Island

Her new life begins with a mindfuck tour of south-east
Asia.  A month of mainlining Bangkok speed, another of Singapore
charlie, a long hot summer of Darwin weed and a horrible week drinking
beer in Bali.  Or so it is recorded on her passport; the details are
hazier.
Working here and there as a dish pig, factory hand or
labourer.  Always with some bloke for a week or two:
Australian, American, Thai, Indian, whatever.  None of
them hang around, but she's used to that.  Some of
them even pay her.  It's easier to dump a whore when
you've used her than the other kind of woman, she
supposes.  She doesn't care.  More where that came
from.  And cash is a useful commodity.

Somehow she ends up one dry season morning in a cheap
Hong Kong hotel room with an opium hangover, her
current boyfriend gone and no money.  She sneaks out a
back door into the Sheung Wan street without paying
and wanders around aimlessly, wondering where the hell
she is and how the fuck she got there.

Three surly yobbo tourists try it on as she's looking
for an English street sign.  She's had enough
experience with unwanted male attention to know what
she needs to do, and knocks one of them unconscious,
very nearly ending up under arrest.  But there's a
bloke standing in a doorway nearby who tells the cops
the guy asked for it.  When they've gone, he offers
her a job as a bouncer at his nightclub.

The club is tucked away in a grotty part of Victoria
and is the sort of place where ninety nine percent of
the clientele are foreign white men.  It's far better
pay than she's used to, and all the speed she can
snort, plus drinks and spinning shit with the girls
after work in a clumsy pidgin of English, Cantonese
and Tagalog.  With the added bonus of getting to thump
sleazy men on a regular basis.  She likes it.  A
decent whack of her pay goes on martial arts lessons
and Cantonese language classes.  This not only makes
her more employable but makes her start believing for
the first time since infancy that she has a future,
and choices, and skills.  It almost, but not quite,
makes her believe she has intrinsic worth.

One job follows another, and she stays on Hong Kong
Island.  As she earns a reputation along with the
boss's trust, she's asked to work at ever more
exclusive establishments and functions, where the
clientele are government officials and business people
and the occasional shady character who looks like an
underworld boss.

It's only then that she begins to take a real interest
in the city.  It acquires a romantic grandeur that she
didn't see before.  A significance.  It is not merely
a place to run away to and get off her face, but a
place in which Things Happen.

The fact that it's an English colony becomes more
interesting too: Cathy feels an inordinate sense of
pride in this, as if it were her own doing.  Up until
now, who-owned-what only mattered if it stopped her
from getting a work visa, but now it gives her a sense
of ownership of the place.  In the evenings spent in
Victoria dressed in her flash security uniform,
checking invitations and dealing with drunks and
trouble makers, she comes to realise that Britons in
Hong Kong have their fingers in almost every pie that
is remotely lucrative.  In her time off, when she
sleeps off the night in her dingy, ugly, haphazardly
built apartment with its smell of resident garbage and
smog, or when she jogs along the foreshore at Aberdeen
Harbour, building up her strength, it is very clear
that Britons are not the people sleeping plank by
plank in unseaworthy houseboats or queueing up for
water at a communal tap.  They are not those living in
high rise resettlement buildings with bamboo poles out
the windows to dry their washing.

Cathy feels for the first time ever that she is better
than someone.  That if there's anywhere she has a
chance to make something of herself, it's here.


***


1993 - Kowloon

The auditorium is like cheap function centres
everywhere - bad seventies decor, gaudy glass
chandeliers, a ladies room with mirrors on all the
walls, dreadful acoustics and terrible lighting.
Cathy only realises all this later; it's her first big
work do, a huge joint stations party, and it's all a
bit too exciting to complain.

It's Christmas so she's been thinking about Mick and
how she should ring him.  If she knew where he was.
The bastard.  It's been years, and she never wanted to
ring him before, but now she has her new career to
tell him about.  Proof that she's not completely
worthless.

As a substitute for ringing him she's drinking too
much champagne on a vinyl couch and telling lies to
her new colleagues about her life back in England.
She's not doing a good job though and can't hold their attention, and
they gradually drift away to other conversations.  All but one:
Detective Inspector Tham Wei Jun, Vanessa, it says on her name tag.
Chin on her hand, dressed in an expensive sleeveless blouse and skirt,
but with bitten down fingernails, no makeup and an almost boyish casual
slouch inside her clothes.  A few strands of black hair have come loose
from her untidy chignon, drawing attention to the smouldery cheeky eyes
staring out at Cathy.

"It made sense for us all to go our separate ways,"
Cathy's saying, wondering at this Inspector Tham's
intense stare.  "I mean our John was always causing
trouble for Dad.  He's a stock broker now of course,
in New York."

The inspector holds Cathy's gaze, and the gaze goes
straight to Cathy's libido.  She's not used to women
looking at her like this.  It goes on for long enough
to make her nervous, and she considers politely
looking away.  But she doesn't want to.  She's
intrigued.

The woman lifts her chin from her hand with a smile.
"Sin ka lan," she drawls, and sips her drink.

"Sorry?" says Cathy, wide eyed and insulted.

"It's bullshit.  What you were saying."

Cathy wants to slap her but restrains herself,
remembering the constraints of her new job.  Her eyes
fix on the `Inspector' on the name tag, and she says
nothing.

"But go on," continues Ness.  "I like your stories."

Cathy eyes her warily.  "Actually I'd finished."

"Tell me another then."

Cathy hesitates, feeling like the woman's eyes are
seeing right through her.  It's everything she fears,
to be known.  It sends a chill down her spine that
terminates somewhat disturbingly in the pit of her
belly as a wing beat of desire.

"I'm being a bitch, sorry," says Ness, shifting to the
seat next to Cathy and taking off her name tag.
"Forget I'm an inspector, we're off duty.  I'm Ness."

And she holds out her hand for Cathy to shake.  Cathy
takes it, and holds the strong grip for a second
longer than she usually would.  "Cathy."

Ness's thumb seems to shift slightly in an ambiguous
caress before she lets go.

"Where you working, Constable Cathy?"

"I've just been posted to Kowloon City, but I'm hoping
to move into the Crime Wing as soon as I can.
Narcotics Bureau.  That's where my interest really
lies."

"That so?" asks Ness with a raise of one eyebrow.

Cathy nods.  Ness nods, her gaze not leaving Cathy's.

"You know," says Ness, sitting forward on her seat and
letting a droplet of condensation from her glass drip
onto Cathy's thigh.  "I did a stint in the Narcotics
Bureau last year.  I could put in a good word for
you."

"That'd be great," says Cathy, smiling.  She puts her
hand down on the vinyl between them next to Ness's
stockinged knee, and brushes the knee ever so slightly
with the back of her finger.

Ness leans to put her drink on the floor, inching the
knee a little closer.  Her shirt rises as she leans,
exposing a segment of smooth flesh at her waist.  At
the sight of that taut skin dipping down into her
tight skirt, Cathy's insides turn to jelly.  Ness
licks her lips as she sits back up again.

"I do like your stories though.  Will you tell me more
if I ask you to have a drink with me?  Somewhere else,
I mean."

"All right," says Cathy, almost breathless, eyes
flicking from Ness's right to her left, trying to read
the motivation behind it all.  Ness smiles with a
little bit of smoulder, a little bit of cheek.
Cathy's lips part in impatient anticipation.

They get out of there, Ness much shorter in her flat
heels than Cathy in her boots.  To Cathy, Ness's
presence looms large though.  In fact, she's
captivated.

The Mongkok street is bright with neon and people and
food smells and street vendors flogging pirated
Madonna tapes and Calvin Klein fakes.  The night and
the bigness of the city are full of promise and work
their magic on Cathy and Ness.  Pupils dilate.
Adrenaline pumps.  They are released to walk with a
spring in their step and talk crap for the pure joy of
it, because nothing in the world matters.  Cathy helps
Ness out of someone's way with a hand to the shoulder;
Ness returns the favour with a hand to the waist;
their hips and arms bump, their legs shake.

Ness leads down this street and that to the tune of
crowd noise and traffic and thumping loud music.  When
they're a block or two from the night markets, she
takes Cathy's hand and slips down a tiny dark alley
between two old buildings.  There's an alcove in the
brick wall a few metres from the road, and she leans
back into it, pulling Cathy to her.  Cathy presses
against her, kissing her breathlessly, making a big
mess of her chignon as it scrapes against the coarse
mortar, pulling the skirt up her legs and working a
hand into her pantyhose as Ness undoes the buttons of
her jeans.

Cathy's not been with a woman before but it's all so
easy and right and good that she doesn't remember
that.  She covers Ness's mouth with her own to stifle
the groan as she slides inside Ness, and Ness slips
inside her.  And they fuck slowly and deeply in the
darkness of the alley, at the penultimate gasp of the
twentieth century, in love with the filth and noise
and frenzied chaos, feeling utterly alive and free.


***


1994 - Kowloon

Mates' rates make it cheap.  And he doesn't care if
she goes in stoned, doesn't blink at the limp
staggering that passes as a walk.  Ness, shorter than
her, holds her up and talks to him about what she
wants.  There's a drawing she did - three elm leaves
falling, one making ripples on water.  He takes it and
spends a half hour working it up, then lies her on her
front on the reclining chair.  He pulls the singlet
halfway up her back, and through the drugs she feels
him rub his cock against her body.  Subtly, of course,
all under the guise of getting the right angle.  It
doesn't faze her.  It doesn't faze Ness.  It's not
that unusual for either of them and he gets away with
it.

The buzz of the needle is all she feels.  Others talk
about the pain but the opium dulls that for her.  And
it only takes an hour.  Afterwards she feels even
higher than before - must be all the endorphins.  Ness
gives him cash and helps her into a cab.  When they
get home the nod has worn off, and she's alert, awake,
aflame, hot for Ness.  Ness is up for it; they don't
even make it to the bedroom, just fall over on the
wooden floor and kiss, Ness's body pressing into hers, clambering for
her singlet, biting her nipples and fucking her into the floor with such
force that she pushes Cathy all the way from beneath the coffee table to
against the wall before they're done.

Hours later, when she wakes with hunger in her veins,
she finds a smear of blood down her back where the
floorboards scraped the fresh scab of her tattoo,
blurring the design.


***


1995 - Kowloon

Cathy's head is on Ness's shoulder as they slump in
front of the telly.  There's yet another current
affairs program about the possible consequences of the handover; it's
boring as bat shit but they're recovering from a public holiday spent
off their faces so it doesn't matter.  Cathy's drinking beer.  Ness has
a fag in one hand that they're sharing.  Her other hand is snuggled
inside Cathy's bra.  It's pissing down rain and muggy outside but very
cosy in their apartment.

"It's gonna be crap for us," says Cathy, "all that
riff raff from China sneaking in with no way to make a
crust except thieving and dealing."

Ness scoffs.  "Like the English never did that."

"Hardly.  We came here to maintain order, not to make
trouble."

"Lai yow mow low gah?" exclaims Ness in disbelief.

"Fuck off," laughs Cathy, thinking she's joking.

"You ever hear of the Opium Wars?"

Her tone of voice makes Cathy realise she wasn't
joking: she really does think Cathy's stupid.

"Should I have?" Cathy asks defensively, feeling
stupid herself.

"That's how the British got here," explains Ness.
"They were selling the opium they grew in India to the
Chinese.  The Chinese government tried to stop them,
so to continue the trade Britain had to find a port
away from the government's reach.  So they invaded
Hong Kong Island, stole the land from the people and
forced China to sign it over to them forever in the
Treaty of Nanjing.  That was the first Opium War, and
after the second one China ceded Kowloon.  British
riff raff, thievin' and dealin'."

More than merely feeling stupid, Cathy feels like
she's under personal attack.  "That what they taught
you at your poncy Australian university?"

"No, Cathy.  That's history.  That's how the world got
to be your people's personal playground.  You smoke O
like it's exotic and romantic but it's as English as imperialism
itself."

Cathy's nerves bristle.  "You smoke it with me."

"Oh, for god's sake.  Don't take it personally."

"Well you do."

"And your point is?"

Cathy bites a nail.  "So you think we should be under
Chinese rule then?"

"No.  I think we're grown up enough to govern
ourselves.  I don't want to be anyone's trinket to be
traded back and forth between colonial parasites.  The
Hong Kongese know what's best for Hong Kong."

"So does that include us or do you think we're just a
pack of gwai idiots with no clues about how society
should be run?  We live here too, you know."

At that Ness sits up and removes her hand from Cathy's
shirt.  "I'm not saying resident Britons don't have a
role to play.  But a colonial government's not what we
need."

"This place would be nothing without Britain."

Ness laughs briefly, then responds very calmly.
"Don't show your ignorance, Cathy.  If you want to
have this argument with me, go and do some reading
first."

Cathy's mouth draws firm, her eyes glaring at Ness,
challenging her.  All this has set the alarm bells
ringing in her brain, that she is once more going to
lose everything she's fought so hard to hold onto.
Just when she thought she knew what she had to do,
someone has moved the goal posts again.

"I'm sorry to inflict my ignorance on you.  If you
don't want me around, you only have to say.  I'll go.
I'm nobody's parasite."

Ness meets her gaze with a cool, affectionate smile
and a licking of the lips.  "Chill, Cathy," she says,
kissing Cathy on the lips.  "I want you around.  Don't
worry about that."  She sucks at several juicy spots
around her neck.  "I want you here... and here... and especially
here..."

"No but do you really?" asks Cathy, gripping Ness by
the shoulders, wanting to believe it.

"Yes," says Ness, looking into her eyes.  "Ngo oi nei,
Cathy.  I love you," she says lightly, as if it's self
evident.

Cathy is rendered momentarily speechless.  No one's
ever said it to her before.  Far from finding herself
back on solid ground, she feels like flying.

"Oh, Ness," she replies in a whisper, "I love you
too."

"But you gotta ditch the attitude, girl."

"Hong Kong for the Hong Kongese," says Cathy.  "Got
it."


***


1998 - Kowloon

It's the new transfer inspector from Lantau Island
that kicks it all off.  Cathy and Ness have never been completely open
about their relationship at work, but the colleagues who suspected
generally left them alone.  This guy Zhou is a prick though.  A bully.
He cottons straight away and starts harassing Cathy.
First it's just name calling and rubber band flicking,
school kid stuff that bounces off.  Then one morning
she arrives at work and finds an upturned bucket of
tofu on her desk - the Cantonese equivalent of `carpet
muncher' being `mo dau fu': tofu grinder.  Cloudy
water is spreading everywhere and dripping onto the
carpet.  And there's a polaroid of herself and Ness at
the centre of the stack.

Alex and a gay colleague Liang help her clean up the
mess.  She has to explain to her boss why the ink on
her case files has run.  He's good about it and gives
Zhou a bollocking, but Zhou, the smug shit, takes it
all in stride and it has no effect whatsoever.

Telling Ness what happened isn't fun.  As Cathy
relates the story, she grows pale, and when Cathy
mentions the photograph, she nearly goes green.  She
seems distant that night, lying in bed under the
sheet, very quiet.  Cathy has a bad feeling about all
this.

Later that week, Cathy and Ness are walking home
together through a park at night.  They both hear the
rustle of leaves behind them and swing around, and
Ness is immediately knocked to the ground unconscious.
 Cathy sees the bat and kicks out at the attacker, but
doubles over when she's whacked in the ribs and then
kicked in the head several times.  She feels warm
blood on her face and surrenders gratefully to
unconsciousness.

Alex helps investigate the case while they're in
hospital, and by some miracle he gets enough evidence
to charge Zhou.  They're out of action for a while
though: Ness has a broken jaw and can't speak and
Cathy has two broken ribs and eyes so black she can't
see.  They're put in separate wards by the sadistic
matron so it's a week before they see each other
again.  Cathy despairs all that week: frightened,
lost, lonely and powerless.  When they do finally meet
up, they both cry, with tentative, shaking fingers
testing that each others' wounds are real.

When they get out of hospital, Ness announces she
wants to drop the charges against Zhou.  She makes
excuses to Cathy about the lack of evidence, but
eventually Cathy gets her to admit that she doesn't
want their relationship all over the newspapers.

"Are you ashamed of me?" Cathy asks her.

"Don't be ridiculous."

"Then what?"

"I don't want people getting the wrong idea."

"About what?"

"I'm no Lan Kwai Fong Street tongzhi.  I don't want to
be a crusader."

"You don't have to be."

"They'll make us into one.  We're exactly the sort of ammunition they're
looking for to make their point about anti-discrimination laws.  We'll
have no choice."

"But the guy's a criminal - we can't let him get away
with it."

"Look, Cathy," sighs Ness.  "I don't want people to
know about me, okay?  In a few years I could make superintendent.
Something like this could fuck it up.  The police force isn't exactly
known for its tolerance of alternative lifestyles.  You should be
worried about that too."

She hadn't thought of that.  It's never occurred to
her that anything could taint this wonderful life
she's found.  Ness is right though: she'd do anything
to keep the job she loves, the woman she adores, the
home she's made in this golden land of opportunity.
When the head of her Formation agrees to discipline
Zhou and transfer him elsewhere, they drop the
charges.

Things are different at home, then.  Tense.  They
don't fuck and rarely kiss.  Ness flinches when Cathy
touches her, and spends a lot of time out of the
house.  They've had counselling though and both
dismiss the tension as the shock after assault.

"It'll be fine," Cathy frequently says to herself or
to Ness, as if by saying it often enough she can make
it be true.

It's a relief to go back to work where things are
relatively normal.  Normal, aside from everyone
tiptoeing around her.  She stops being asked to social functions as
often as she used to be, although the change is so gradual as to be
almost imperceptible.
She thinks she's being paranoid and laughs it off, and
turns up to parties anyway.

It's when Liang can't look her in the eye that she
senses something is really up.  They've been mates for
years.  She and Ness have counselled him numerous
times when some bastard boy has broken his heart
again.  Now, a couple of months after the assault, it
seems like he takes the long way back to his desk with
his morning coffee, avoiding her.

"Something's up with Liang," she says to Ness while
painting her toenails one evening.  "I've not done
anything wrong, I don't know what his problem is."

Ness is squeezing oranges and says nothing.

"I mean it's not as though I've got loads of friends
in the office anymore.  You'd think he'd stick up for
me if no one else would."

"Cathy," says Ness eventually.  "Liang and I are
getting married."

Cathy laughs.

"Seriously," says Ness.

Cathy frowns at her dubiously.  "What?"

"It's better for you too.  We've been going out for a
few weeks now so it won't look strange."

"What are you talking about, Ness?" asks Cathy, the
hint of hysteria entering her voice.

Ness shrugs.  "He's scared and so am I.  It's not just
that lahn kai dei Zhou.  You know what the Chinese
government thinks of queers."

Cathy shakes her head.  "Am I hearing right?"

"I thought we'd be okay," says Ness, "but now that
this has gone public I have to protect myself.  I
don't want to lose my job."

"The Chinese government's no worse than anywhere
else," says Cathy shakily.  "Anyway, this isn't
China."

"It's okay for you, you can go home.  This is where I
live.  I have to think about the rest of my life."

"I don't want to go home.  It isn't home anymore."
Cathy goes to Ness, tries to hold her but finds her
wooden in her arms and lets go.  "Don't do this.
It'll be all right, it'll be fine, stop worrying so
much."

Ness shakes her head and chops another orange.
"Sorry," she whispers.

"What about me, then?  What am I supposed to do?"

Ness shrugs.

"That's it?  That's all you can say?" screams Cathy.

"You're going to have to move out."

Cathy gapes at her.

"It was fun, Cathy.  Don't get me wrong."

"Fun?" exclaims Cathy, shivering all over.  "It was
perfect."

Ness puts her knife down and looks at Cathy.  She
takes a few deep breaths, thinking about what to say.
Cathy tries to read the emotions in her body language
and her eyes, but she has shut them down.

"Never bullshit a bullshitter, Cathy.  You know I've
been with a lot of other people since we've been
together."

No.  Ouch.  Cathy shakes her head slowly.  "Well that
doesn't matter," she forces out bravely.

"It was never perfect," says Ness, "except in your
head."

She resumes her juicing.  Cathy feels a great black
hollowness in her guts.  She backs away, her face
still stunned with disbelief.  Goes back to her seat,
puts on her shoes, picks up her keys and walks to the
door.

"Diu hai lei, hai yeung gai!  Fucking hum jhew lahn
dou!" she spits at Ness, clutching at the rudest words
she knows.

"Dai gut le si," says Ness, dismissing the insults
flippantly.

Cathy hovers by the door, afraid to go through it,
waiting for the moment when Ness says don't go, come
back, we'll work this out.  But it doesn't come.  Ness
turns her back and washes her hands at length.  Cathy
sighs.  "I'll be at Alex's then.  I'll come back
tomorrow for my stuff."

"I'll be out," says Ness.

And Cathy leaves, blinded by tears.


***


1999 - New Territories

The New Territories are quieter than Kowloon and
there's not a lot of work to keep a detective
inspector busy.  Sitting at her desk for long spells
waiting for a shout lets her mind drift to other
matters.  Knives peeling flesh, batons bruising,
garrottes, razor blades, fists, boots.  She cultivates
her dark thumping anger at being fucked over and
betrayed, taking it out on villains during the day and
her own body at night.  Never enough for anyone to pay
it much attention.  No villain could yet prove it, and
no one's come close enough to her to see the intricate
scabs and purple lesions on her thighs and belly.

She's luckier than many of her expat colleagues
because she's lived in HK long enough to get an
automatic work visa and a transfer with minimal red
tape.  Others have been leaving in droves over the
past three years, trickling out one by one in a steady
stream.  It illustrates how Cathy feels and has always
felt: that control is slipping through her fingers
like sand.  She's one of only two Britons at the Yuen
Long nick.  The other is a detective senior inspector,
a large grey haired man who gives the appearance of
having grown like mould into his office chair and
who'll probably never leave until he drops dead.
Cathy struggles to find anything in common with him.

She never felt this alone before in Hong Kong.  It's
not home anymore.  She's back to feeling like just
another white face in a foreign country.  The quiet
mutterings in cafes about self rule, the
demonstrations, the flyers pasted on light poles all
make her uncomfortable.  Not that people treat her any differently; it's
her perception that's changed.
She's become paranoid, thinking her Chinese colleagues
resent her, and she picks a fight with one, who tells
her simply that he doesn't know her and doesn't give
her enough thought to care about her ethnicity.  That
just makes it worse.  If there's anything more
depressing than being hated, it's being irrelevant.

But it's more than that making her despair.  It's also ex-junkie
nostalgia: every inch of her wants to go back on drugs and it's only
sheer self-punishing bloody-mindedness that stops her.  It's the shock
of moving from the hub to the backwoods, from the centre of the known
universe to nowhere.  And it's not knowing whether she's going to get
her head kicked in again.  No one here has heard about her and Ness yet
but she's certain it'll only be a matter of time.

As revenge for what the world has done to her, she
drives into Kowloon one night and scours the seedy
bars until she finds someone, an ugly businessman in a
suit showing off about some dodgy import scam.  She
takes him home, strips him and throws him on the bed.
"Trust me," she says as she loops his tie around her
bed head rail and then around his neck, climbing on
top of him.  While he fucks her she pulls at the tie,
half choking him, which excites him terribly.  As he
arches up into her, she yanks as hard as she can and
he chokes and splutters and goes red in the face,
having a great old time.  He comes, she doesn't let
go, he struggles, she grits her teeth and pulls
harder, wanting to watch the bastard die.  His
flailing arm scratches her and she smacks him hard
across the face.  Then she thinks about her DNA under
his fingernail and loses interest.  She lets him go,
kicks him out and threatens to arrest him if he
bothers her again.  He goes quietly.

She doesn't last long in Yuen Long.  New Year's Eve is
spent alone, drinking, watching the fireworks on TV
and counting down the minutes to midnight, hoping to
be blasted into smithereens accompanied by the grand
chorus of civilisations falling.  But her apartment
building doesn't collapse, the Daya Bay power station
doesn't melt down, the digital clock on her video
ticks over to 0:01 without a hitch and everybody in
the flats around her cheers.

The following Monday she puts in her resignation and
buys a ticket back to merry England.


***


2003 - Sun Hill

They have a shout - a dull domestic that Cathy
couldn't care less about.  She's driving and Pol's
watching her drive very carefully.  If Cathy was
paying any attention, she'd see Pol's foot frequently
slamming into the passenger seat floor in ineffective
back seat driving.  But she's not watching Pol, she's
got that same bee in her bonnet about de Costa that
she's had for weeks and can't seem to get rid of.

"I mean, the woman's got nothing on me," she's saying.
 "I was an inspector for two years.  It's about time I
got some recognition for that."

"I know, Cath," says Pol politely.

"Haven't we got enough refugees from the colonies over
here without them being promoted ahead of us?"

"She's hardly a refugee, Cathy.  She's been in the job
longer than you have.  And she's passed her sergeant's
exams."

"You're too nice, Pol.  It's because of the colour of
her skin, there's no denying it.  That's the only way
to get anything at Sun Hill these days."

"What, like Brandon getting posted to CID?" says Pol,
rolling her eyes.

"That was different," says Cathy defensively.  "He
deserved it, he's a good copper."

Pol sighs, sick of this conversation.  She leans her
head to the right to try and avoid hitting parked cars
with the side mirror.

"All I'm saying is, the British know what's best for
Britain.  We're old enough to govern ourselves, we
don't need these people coming in and telling us what
to do."

"Ramani is British."

"You know what I mean."

"No, I don't, Cathy.  You can't go around saying
things like this, it'll get you into trouble."

"I'll say what I like, Pol."

They pull up a few doors from the house and get out of
the car.

"You have to listen to me, I know what I'm talking
about.  I've lived abroad; I know these people and
what makes them tick."

"Oh, you've lived in Sri Lanka now too, have you?"

Pol's aggressive tone stops Cathy in her tracks.  She
tries to stare her down.  "You don't know what you're
on about, Polly."

Pol can't hold the angry stare and looks away, sighing
in frustration but ruffled.  "I think I do, Cathy," is
all she can think to say.

Cathy makes sure she's satisfied that Pol has backed
down before continuing to walk along the street to the
house.

"She's probably a dyke, too.  Just look at that vest
she wears."

"Cathy, do you have to talk about people like that all
the time?" says Pol in a hushed voice as they turn up
the path of the house.

"I'm only saying - "

"Yeah well I'd appreciate it if you didn't say."

Cathy looks at Pol with an expression of concern.
"Sorry, Pol, I had no idea.  It's all beginning to
make sense now - why you didn't sleep with Owen, why
you're defending Ramani - "

"Cathy, enough!"

Cathy rings the doorbell.  "Don't get me wrong, I
don't care what you are.  It's what other people think
that I worry about."

Pol looks fit to explode when the door opens.

"Yes?" says the woman who answers it.

Cathy puts on her authoritarian PC attitude and
flashes her warrant card.

"PC Bradford and PC Page from Sun Hill.  Can we come
in please?"

The woman lets them in and Cathy smiles at Pol.  The
surface part of her mind is satisfied at having got
the last word.  A bit deeper in, she's thinking Ness
would be proud of her.  While in the dark, tangled
part of her mind where she stores her most private
imaginings, she leaves off tying a naked Polly Page to
a chair, high fives the sky and shouts, "Yes!"



The End