Way back into the past for this chapter. It's a different take on how Chas ended up pregnant with Aaron as it's not really addressed in the show that Chas ended up pregnant at 13. So I've made my own explanation up.
January 5th 1992 – Skipdale Detention Centre, Yorkshire, UK
"Dingle, you're out" a voice called down the corridor into the games room. Everyone turned to look at Cain, who was busy scribbling his name onto the side of the pool table with a compass. He gave them a shrug and went out onto the corridor to see what was going on.
"You what?" he asked the warden who'd shouted; Mr Miller, a small chap with a greying moustache who was always on at him to tuck in his shirt and buck his ideas up.
"You're out, go and pack your things up. Now please" he replied, as officious as ever.
He did as he was told, then Miller led him to the governor's office, where he was asked to come straight in. He sat down and waited for the governor to start talking.
"Mr Dingle. I am sure you're aware that you still have another three weeks of your sentence to serve…"
"Yes Sir" he replied.
"…well, due to a family emergency…"
"What family emergency?"
"…the courts have granted permission for an early release so that you can sort your affairs out".
"What affairs? What's happened" Cain asked again, frustrated by the lack of decent information.
"A member of your family was taken into hospital yesterday. You were down as next of kin"
Cain automatically assumed his dad had been on another bender and ended up getting his stomach pumped again, "great. Just what I need. Which hospital is he at then?" he asked, bored of the same routine.
"Actually…" the governor replied awkwardly, "it's your sister…."
January 5th 1992 – Hotten General Hospital, Yorkshire, UK
Cain walked into the room and barely believed his eyes. His little sister, not even fourteen, was lying in a hospital bed hooked up to a drip, fast asleep. Her eye was black, and her cheek red and swollen. And next to her in a small cot, was a baby, her baby.
The nurse talked softly so she didn't wake either of them. "It was a difficult birth by all accounts, she's really lucky she didn't end up in surgery. She's got very small hips and baby got a bit stuck coming out. It ended up being a forceps birth and it really took it out of her, so she's having a well-earned rest now before she meets baby. She's severely dehydrated and underweight, so we've put her on a drip for now and we're gonna keep her in a couple of days. Ah, here's Sharon now" she said indicating a lady coming through the door with a briefcase and a clipboard. Cain could tell straight away she was from the Social.
"Mr Dingle?" she checked.
"Yeah" Cain confirmed, refusing to be polite.
"Sharon Denholme, Social Services" she offered her hand to shake, but Cain looked at it like it was covered in growths, so she eventually let it drop. "Could we have a quick word outside please?" she asked, maintaining her professional demeanour.
Cain knew better than to argue, so he followed her out into the corridor and into a family room. He sat in one of the plastic chairs lined up against the wall and she took the one next to it.
"I have to be frank with you Mr Dingle, I have major concerns about Chastity's welfare, and that of the baby. We've not been able to locate your father, have you any idea where he might be?"
Cain shrugged, "you know where I've been until half an hour ago. How am I supposed to know? What's Chas said about where he is?"
She didn't answer his question, but carried on asking her own, "when was the last time you heard from him? It's just we've been trying to contact him for two months about Chastity's truanting. There's never been anyone in the flat when we've called and, according to the landlord, the rent's three months in arrears, but somebody's changed the locks without his permission so he can't get in."
"I've not heard from him since I was inside, but that don't mean anything, we're not exactly close. Has Chas not said where he is?" he tried again. He wanted to know what Chas's story was so he could corroborate it.
"Your sister hasn't been forthcoming with any details. She just keeps saying he's gone to Filey on a bird watching trip, but can't say how long he's there for or where he's staying" she told him.
Cain laughed despite himself at Chas's ridiculous story, "oh yeah, he's a big fan of twitching is our dad. What happened to her face?" he asked, more serious.
"Two beat police came across a fight on the estate. When they dragged Chastity off the child she was punching, she collapsed and was brought to the hospital. She refused to speak, but luckily one of the policemen knew her".
"Lucky" Cain scoffed.
Sharon Denholme finally lost her patience with the sullen and obstructive young man in front of her. He didn't seem to give a damn about the situation and she felt like she was banging her head against a brick wall trying to get across how serious it was.
"PC Milnrow stayed with Chastity for five hours, held her hand and bought her chocolate and cola from the machine before he was called out on a job. Then he came back after his shift to check she was okay. So please don't start casting aspersions – she'd have had no one if he hadn't been there. Now, the doctor wants to keep both of them in for at least one night, but if we've not found your father, or another acceptable guardian to look after them by the time they are discharged, then they are both going to have to go into emergency foster care."
Cain was suitably chastened by this. He knew PC Milnrow well; he'd lifted both him and Chas many a time over the last eight or so years and Shadrach more times than anyone could count. He was a decent sort for a copper and he'd always had a soft spot for Chas, mostly because she made him laugh, even when she was being told off. He was glad that there was someone familiar there for Chas, even if it was bacon. He wasn't sure what the social worker wanted him to say, he couldn't conjure his dad up out of thin air, and he didn't want to. He needed to speak to his sister before he made any decisions.
"I'll sort it" he told her, "can I talk to Chas now?" he asked.
She nodded, "yes, but I'll be back tomorrow morning to discuss this further". She left, annoyed at herself for lecturing the lad, she'd read their file, knew that he was just as much a victim of his circumstances as his sister, he was just older and more hardened to them than she was. She hated her job sometimes.
Cain went back into the room and took a seat by Chas's bed. He watched her sleeping, sucking her two little fingers, curling her other two fingers around her nose just like she'd done since she was a baby. No amount of teasing had ever got her to stop and she'd ended up with two smaller fingers on one hand than the other. She looked like a child when she slept and he wondered how this had happened. She'd never been interested in boys, she'd insisted she wasn't going to end up like all the other girls on the estate; single mums at sixteen in council houses, with no lives and no futures. She'd always been determined to go to university and become a lawyer. He couldn't see any of this happening for her now.
He looked more closely at her injuries – a fat lip, bruised eye and cheek, and her knuckles were all bust up. She was a mess, like some sort of savage. Then he looked at the baby sleeping in the cot next to her, a sign above its head which read 'Baby Boy Dingle'. A boy. He had a nephew. He walked around Chas's bed to take a look at him. Cain couldn't believe his skinny little sister had managed to grow another human inside her and keep it hidden for so long. He reflected on how scared and lonely she must have been.
The baby woke and started to cry and he backed away, sitting back down on the other side of the bed. Chas started to stir, her eyelids fluttering open, her fingers leaving her mouth and rubbing her eyes. She winced in pain, then looked at Cain, staring right through him at first until she'd woken up properly, then recognising him and frowning at him. She was about to ask him what he was doing out of borstal when a nurse came into the room and she clamped her mouth shut. She'd been mithered to answer questions since she'd been brought in and was bored of having to deflect them.
The nurse went to the baby and picked him up out of the cot, bobbing him up and down and talking to him, "shh shh Baby, look who's awake to meet you now. It's Mummy! Just in time for a feed because I think you're hungry aren't you little fella?" she spoke in a saccharine sweet high-pitched voice that grated on the two Dingle kids.
Chas suddenly found her arms full of screaming baby and she had no idea what to do. She looked to Cain for help, completely out of her depth, but saw her own bewilderment reflected in his face. She was screwed.
"Right Chastity sweetheart, we're going to learn how to feed Baby" the nurse told her, "I'll just pop out and get you a feeding pillow, won't be a minute".
When she left the room, Cain finally spoke, "what the hell happened to you? Are you stupid?" he asked. He hadn't meant to be so harsh, but he was so used to talking to people like that, he didn't know any other way.
Chas nodded her head at him but didn't speak. She didn't know how to answer him. She was completely overwhelmed by the whole situation.
The nurse came back in and shooed Cain out while she tortured Chas with a breastfeeding lesson. She was numb to everything, the small creature that was latched to her, feeding from her, didn't feel like it had been part of her. It felt like an alien. She went through the motions, following the steps the nurse showed her, burping him and trying him with more milk, but he'd had his fill so the nurse took him off her and put him back in the crib. The baby went straight to sleep and Chas stared at it, trying to feel something for it. But she found she couldn't feel anything at the moment.
Cain came back in and sat in his previous spot. He indicated her bruised face and hands, "I hope the other girl came off worse" he joked, trying to break the ice.
"It was Jarrod Finnegan, and Milnrow said I broke his jaw" she replied, a hint of pride in her voice.
"What were you doing fighting?" Cain asked.
"He said I were fat" she replied simply.
"Fair enough. Where's Shadrach?"
"Ireland"
"Not bird-watching then?"
She grinned at him, as much as she could grin with a bust lip.
"How long?"
"Since August"
"Why didn't you go and stay at Colleen and Zebediah's like usual?"
"They're the ones that banished me dad, I'm not staying with them. Anyway, it'd have meant sharing a room with Our Del, and she's a cow. Would've grassed me up."
"What's he banished for this time?" Cain asked, ignoring the comments about their cousin.
"Nicked off 'em they said. Then sold them a dodgy cooker. Serves 'em right for buying it off him. Idiots"
Chas sulked at the unfair treatment of their father by the rest of the family. She was fiercely loyal to him, though he didn't deserve it.
"And bunking off school? Why?"
"Why d'you think?" she asked testily, indicating her still swollen stomach.
"But you know the rules – you created the code in the first place – don't bunk off, don't draw attention to yourself, don't let on that Shadrach's disappeared."
"If school found out I were up the duff, they'd have been straight onto the Social. I had to change the rules a bit"
"How've you paid for stuff?"
"Nicked some food, but mostly sold homework. I've been going to the central library every day, doing a few homework assignments for money, reading what I've been missing in class and keeping warm at the same time"
"Trust you to bunk off school and hang out in a library" he tutted, but was amused, and heartened to see she'd not changed completely. "What about the flat? Was it you that changed the locks?"
"Yeah" she grinned, "that pervert Mallam was sniffing round all the time, asking where Shadrach was. I got Jimmy the Peg to do it as a favour, before Mallam chucked us out."
"Clever girl" Cain approved. She'd always been the one with the street smarts, he'd always just gone in head first without thinking until she showed him it was better to plan stuff. If he'd planned the last job properly, he wouldn't have ended up in the clink.
The baby sneezed, making them both jump and turn to look at him. Cain could see Chas and himself in the baby, but wondered who else he was seeing.
"What you calling him? You need to name him soon, or that nurse is going to keep calling him Baby" he said, doing an impression of her high-pitched voice.
Chas snorted in amusement. "Aaron I think" she replied.
"Why?" Cain asked, hoping it was some clue to the father.
"Milnrow's first name. He's alright is Milnrow".
Cain knew that was Chas's understated way of admitting she couldn't have done it without the cop, that she'd needed someone and she was glad he'd been there. And Cain was glad too, so he allowed her to give the baby a policeman's name. "Don't tell anyone else where that's come from, will you?"
"Don't be stupid, course I won't".
"You gonna tell me who the dad is?"
Chas shrank back into the bed, and dropped her head, ashamed of herself. She'd not been sleeping around like other girls on her estate. She'd only done it once, and it wasn't what she'd wanted. Not really. Not that she'd call it rape, or assault, just overly persuasive, pressured. He'd been so nice as well, offering to help her with a project she'd been working on in the school library. She'd wondered why a sixth former had wanted to hang out with a second year, but assumed he was just really into history, or felt sorry for her because she never wore a uniform and had free school dinners. He was funny and charming and she liked spending time with him, so she agreed to go to his for tea. And when he got wine out of his parents' drinks cupboard, she agreed to have a small glass. And he'd kept filling it up while she was trying to talk to him about something or other. Then his hands had been all over her and he kept telling her this was what she wanted. And she started to believe him. She let him do what he wanted, her head too fuzzy to argue. Afterwards, he told her she was brilliant, walked her to the bus, gave her a peck on the cheek. But when she sobered up, she felt ashamed, disappointed in herself, and vowed never to let it happen again. So she avoided him at school, told him to leave her alone, even kneed him in the crotch when he wouldn't get the message. He called her a stupid bitch, and they ignored each other from then on if they ever passed in the corridors or lunch hall.
But there was something she couldn't ignore, and that was an absence of period. One month, two months, three months and nothing. She wasn't stupid, she knew what it meant. She just didn't know who to tell. They broke up for summer holidays and then Shadrach got banished and did a runner. She was alone, apart from the boy growing inside her. She found it a comfort sometimes, at night, when she was barricaded in her bedroom, buried under three blankets to keep warm, reading by torchlight and he was kicking her gently, reminding her of his presence. Sometimes, she'd pray that she'd wake up the next day and he had disappeared. She borrowed books about birth and scared herself, books about adoption and upset herself, books about families, proper families who loved each other and looked after each other, and drove herself mad wishing she knew what that felt like. Then she started reading books about history again, about war and death and famine, the circle of life repeated through time. And she stopped dwelling on things and got on with her life the best way she could.
Cain was still waiting for an answer. She knew he'd wait all day, he wouldn't give up. Part of her wanted to protect Gordon, tell Cain it was a random boy whose name she didn't ask. Why cause more trouble? Cain would beat him up and then end up straight back inside. But then, a bigger part of her wanted to punish Gordon, wanted him to feel a small portion of the agonising pain she'd just been through for the last twenty hours. So she told him.
"Gordon Livesy?" Cain repeated, surprised, "that geek in my year at Hotten comp?"
"Yeah. He's in sixth form now" she said through a yawn. She was drifting back to sleep, her exhaustion clear.
"So he's seventeen?"
A sleepy nod.
"I'm gonna kill him"
"I wouldn't bother, he's not worth it. Feel free to rough him up a bit though. But don't get caught Cain. I need you".
With that, she fell back to sleep and Cain left to find his quarry.