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Location: 13 Waverly Drive, Dudley
Radio station: Free Radio Black Country
Track playing: ‘Hanging on the Telephone’ by Blondie
Miles travelled: 153.7
Miles until Captain Poldark: 389.8
Fifteen minutes ticked by as Lisa sat outside 13 Waverly Drive looking at @I_Am_Demelza’s house, trying to assess it for risk. It was a nice, neat semi-detached house with bay windows and fresh white net curtains. The garden was nicely done, and when Lisa rolled down the window, the scent of the roses in the front border drifted in through the window. It didn’t look like the house of a serial killer, she thought. Then again, what was she expecting, a massive flashing sign reading ‘ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK. I QUITE LIKE CHOPPING PEOPLE UP AND WEARING THEIR HEADS AS HATS’?
‘Lisa Murray was the fifth victim of the Head Hat murderer,’ Lisa muttered in Crimewatch style. ‘She had been totally unsuspecting on that bright summer’s day as she approached his lair of doom.’
‘Here goes nothing,’ she told Troll. Troll didn’t even blink.
Getting out of the car, she locked it and checked the handle three times. She clutched her car keys in her fist, went up the white painted steps, and rang the doorbell. The first few bars of ‘Amazing Grace’ sounded.
It was nearly enough for Lisa to turn on her heels, run down the steps, then leap into the car and press central locking. Except that the door opened almost at once, and her mum had brought her up to be much too polite to just run away, even from someone she thought might be criminally insane.
‘Hello love, you must be Lisa?’ A woman of about seventy smiled at Lisa.
‘Demelza?’ Lisa asked, because if she was honest she had rather been expecting a pretty young woman with a mass of red curls and stunning figure to open the door. Possibly carrying a chainsaw. But this was cool. She was pretty sure she could take this old lady in a fight.
She followed her into a neat and airy living room. China cats pranced on the mantelpiece and a bronze carriage clock ticked neatly on the sideboard.
‘Oh dear me, no,’ Not Demelza chuckled. ‘No, no, my Demelza days are long over, sad to say. I was a fan the first time round. No, no, it’s Ray you’ve come to pick up, but he’s not quite ready yet, I think he’s having trouble with his scar.’
Any one of the words in that sentence would ordinarily have sent fear pulsing through Lisa’s veins, but all of them at once almost stopped her heart in instant dread. Ray. He. Scar.
‘I’m sorry, I’ve got to go,’ Lisa said.
Get out, get out, get out, get out, was all she could think, scrambling for the front door. Danger, danger, danger!
‘Lisa, dear!’ Not Demelza called out. ‘Please, wait. You don’t understand. Ray, he needs this. Please don’t go!’
Lisa stopped at the front door, flung it open, and stepped outside onto a welcome mat that read ‘Home Sweet Home’. In that place of relative safety she felt a little calmer. After all she could always gouge out an eye with her car keys before making a dash for the car, pressing central locking and calling the police. She turned around to face Not Demelza.
‘The thing is I didn’t know that @I_Am_Demelza was a man,’ she explained. ‘He never said. Which is classic creep behaviour. And I don’t really feel able to drive several hundred miles with a man that I don’t know. You can see where I am coming from, right? Unless you and him have the whole Norman Bates thing going on.’
‘Norman who?’ Not Demelza’s face crumpled into a picture of sadness, and instantly Lisa felt sorry.
‘You’re right. Of course you are,’ Not Demelza said. ‘Ray should have told you who he was. I told him. “Ray,” I said, “you need to tell them you’re a fella. They aren’t going to like finding out at this stage.” But he thought that, if you found out before today, you would have uninvited him.’
‘Well, he was right,’ Lisa said.
‘The thing is he’s really been looking forward to this trip. He really needs this. He’s been so down since he got out of the army, and he hasn’t got many friends …’
‘So you’re telling me he’s an ex-army loner who lives with his mum?’ Lisa said. ‘You’re not exactly selling him.’
‘But if you think about it,’ Not Demelza replied, ‘who better to protect you on your journey than a soldier?’
‘We’re going to Bodmin, not Mordor,’ Lisa said. Although, in truth, to her both destinations seemed equally scary.
‘Lisa, hi, great to meet you …’ Ray said as he arrived at the bottom of the stairs, wearing a frock coat and knee-length leather boots.
Lisa decided not to try to eye gouge. Instead she raced straight for the safety of her Micra and locked all the doors. She’d already dialled 999 when Ray arrived at her window. Her finger hovered over the call button.
Ray crouched down outside. ‘Lisa? What’s wrong?’
Lisa stared at him through the window.
What’s wrong? Lisa thought. You’re a man whose fan-forum username is ‘I Am Demelza’, and who turns out to be six-foot tall. You’re also built like a mountain, dressed in full Captain Poldark uniform, complete with a fake scar down one cheek – the wrong cheek, by the way – and you want to know what’s wrong?
But she didn’t say any of that. She just sat in her car, with the windows rolled up, staring. Maybe if she stayed very still he would just go away. And the police were just a call away – although she couldn’t be sure how much of a threat they would see in a Captain Poldark tribute act.
‘Lisa, just open the window, just a crack,’ Ray said. One of the black curls from his nylon wig trembled in the breeze. ‘Hear me out, please?’
Lisa looked at Troll, and Troll stared right back at her.
‘Fine,’ she said, pressing the button that lowered the window a couple of inches. ‘I am Demelza? I don’t bloody think so. Look, I’m sure you’ve got reasons. We’ve all got reasons, but this was a bad idea, a stupid idea. I’m going home.’
‘I’m sorry.’ Ray crouched down and took off his hat, and with it came the wig revealing short reddish-blond hair. ‘I know I should have said. I should have made it clear that I was a guy …’
Lisa raised an eyebrow. ‘Oh you think?’
‘But I never said that I wasn’t. You lot just assumed I was a girl. And after we’d been chatting for weeks, I thought if I bring it up now that’s just going to seem even weirder. And I really looked forward to talking to you on Poldarlings. Then you came up with the idea of the trip. I thought, if I mention it now, they definitely won’t want me to come, and then I thought … I don’t know what I thought. I suppose I’d hoped it would just work out in the end.’ He shrugged and looked so sad that for a moment Lisa felt sorry for him.
‘Why not I_Am_Poldark?’ she asked him. ‘Why Demelza?’
‘I thought you’d be even more freaked out if I turned up dressed as Demelza.’ Ray half smiled. ‘I’ve got that costume in my luggage. I do a pretty good accent too.’
Lisa stared hard at him, and then suddenly she saw the truth.
‘Oh I see,’ she said. ‘Yes, I get it. Why didn’t you just say?’
‘About me being a bloke? Well, because …’
‘I mean, no one cares anymore if you’re gay. Although I suppose maybe in the army it would still be tricky …?’
‘Um.’ Ray took a breath. ‘Look, cards on the table. I got out of the army over a year ago. Medical discharge, depression, some other stuff. I haven’t had any luck getting a job. When I came out of the army I thought there was someone waiting for me, someone who really loved me. But I was wrong. I got home and well … let’s just say they didn’t invite me to the wedding.’
‘Oh,’ Lisa said, then lowered the window another inch or two. She knew something about heartbreak and betrayal. She knew how it could make a person different, make it so they didn’t even recognise themselves any more. ‘I’m sorry. The person you loved married someone else?’
‘Er … yes,’ Ray said, after a very slight pause. ‘That pretty much covers it.’
‘Was it very hard, being in the army, being gay?’ Lisa asked, thoughtfully.
‘Well, I mean, yes, and no,’ Ray said, lowering his gaze. ‘Lisa, I’m just a sad bloke who lives at home with his mum and has a Demelza wig in his bag. That’s the person you’ve been talking to on Poldarlings all this time. That’s me. I’ve never written anything that isn’t true about me, or what I think about the series, or the characters, or actors, or the books. And I thought you and me, we got on pretty well, had a laugh. It will be just the same, over the next few days, I promise. Except we won’t need Wi-Fi to talk.’
Lisa opened her window a little more and looked into Ray’s brown eyes, which were warm and steady and sweet. Once, Lisa had been able to trust her own instinct about people. Once, she’d been able to look into a person’s eyes and decide whether or not to get to know them. That was until she’d got it so completely wrong that she never trusted herself or her instinct ever again.
Was Ray as nice and as kind as his eyes seemed to suggest? She had no idea. What she did know was that she had two options. She could turn around now, go back home and let everyone down, and give up on looking for Captain Poldark. Or she could go all in, and take a chance. At least she was ready for it all to go wrong. That was the one upside of living in a state of constant anxiety – she always had an exit plan.
What’s the worst that could happen? Lisa thought, looking at Troll. Apart from becoming a murder victim in a lay-by, that is.
After all she had prepared herself for setbacks like this along the way. She had known from the moment that she’d suggested the trip that there would be times when she would be frightened, and would want to give up and go home. She just hadn’t expected one of those times to be so soon, and dressed in a white ruffled shirt.
‘So am I going to have to fight you for Captain Poldark then, hey Demelza?’ Lisa asked Ray, with a tiny smile.
‘Oh there won’t be a fight,’ Ray said, breaking into a grin. ‘He’s all mine.’
‘Funnily enough, I think our next companion might have something to say about that,’ Lisa said.