Chapter 9

Later that week a police woman and a detective called at the house. Apparently they had found a cache of drugs at Forbes' parent's house. His parents had been so obviously shocked that the police believed them when they said they knew nothing about the drugs. After being taken to the police station and questioned Forbes had eventually confessed to possessing and supplying drugs and it turned out he had been supplying to some of the kids at school. He had also implicated Gavin and Henderson. They wanted to know if we would press charges against him and his cohorts and suggested it could be for assault with a deadly weapon.

I asked if this would add any time to the sentence they might get for possessing and supplying drugs. The detective told me that they would receive a stiff sentence for both but as they were still juveniles they would probably run concurrently. In the light of that I said that if we pressed charges it would give Katy and me a lot of unwanted publicity. Since this was the case I felt that I would prefer to let the matter drop. The detective looked a bit disappointed at this but the police woman said that they could still be charged with the possession of knives and the intent to use them and that by itself carried a mandatory sentence.

In the end, since we were reluctant to get involved any further they left. The police woman returned a few days later to tell us that they were proceeding with the possession and supply of drugs and owning and possessing knives. She went on to inform us that as they were pleading guilty to all the offences we would not be needed as witnesses. Before she left she turned to Katy and me and said that she personally thought we were quite wise to let the assault charges drop as we would have had a lot of hassle and publicity for very little return.

Back at school things had changed quite dramatically with the news that I had taken out all three of the biggest bullies in the school. This meant that no one did anything that would offend us in the slightest way and even the name calling that Katy had suffered till now dwindled to nothing. When the police charged Forbes and his two friends with the possession and supply of drugs, their investigations extended to interviewing several pupils from the third, fourth, fifth and sixth years. This caused a real stir in the staff room and brought the management under real scrutiny because of their failure to detect what was happening. It seemed that there was going to be a real shake up there and it left me wondering if it would lead to the uncovering of the fact that they did so little With regard to the culture of bullying about which several parents had complained, but which had never been dealt with effectively.

At home things had settled back into a routine but here too things had been changed by events. After Katy's outburst to Isa, she and Joe must have talked.

The result of this was a family conference at which they told us that Joe had proposed to Isa and that she had accepted his proposal. They said that they had planned to give us time to get used to the idea before setting a date for the wedding. In the light of the events with Forbes and what Katy said, however, they had changed their minds. They now felt that if I was the same mind as Katy, they would speed up things considerably. I told them that Katy and I were in complete agreement regarding their relationship and felt that the sooner we were all under one roof the better.

Joe laughed when I said that.

"You obviously want be closer to the pool now that school has started so that you can use it every day," He told me

"You are quite right sir," I replied, and then I thought I would test the waters (no pun intended) and I continued,

"But I have to confess the pool is not the only thing that attracts me to the idea"

Isa got my meaning at once, and so did Katy for she blushed to the tips of her ears. Joe looked puzzled until he saw Katy's crimson face.

"Am I to take it that you are interested in a relationship with my daughter that is more than platonic and from her colouring it seems she is aware of this and concurs?"

"Well sir!" I said, "Your beautiful and highly intelligent daughter and I have been very close companions for several months now. I would hazard a guess that very few boys of my age privileged to have such an arrangement would be able to resist her charms and prevent themselves from falling for her."

At this both Joe and Isa burst out laughing.

"Why didn't you make me aware that I would be housing a silver tongued young woman pleaser when I asked you to marry me Isa?" He asked.

"I have to confess Joe I was unaware he was such a talented wordsmith," she told him. "Though I must say, I have found him to be a quite pleasant and trustworthy young man. I suppose when it comes down to it your daughter could do a lot worse than have him as her boyfriend."

"After the way he stood up for her at school I am inclined to agree with you," Joe replied. "So do you think we should give them our blessing.?"

"I don't see we have much choice in the matter if she is as smitten with him as he seems to be with her." Isa stated.

"And are you as smitten?" Joe asked Katy.

"Yes I am daddy," Katy replied then her red haired fiery nature kicked in, "And I would be grateful if you two stopped embarrassing us."

"We are suitably chastised," Joe old her. "So I will just say you have our blessing and get on with telling you what is going to happen; if you continue to approve of that is," he amended."

"Because of recent events Isa and I have decided we will not wait for the wedding, but will move in together this week end. We will see the registrar next week and sort out the legal issues and when these are complete we will marry in about a month's time"

Katy and I both applauded this decision and Isa and Joe laughed at our reaction.

"I will have Katy as my bridesmaid if she is willing," Isa told her, "And Joe wants Peter to be his best man. We will need other people present because you are both too young to witness the marriage documents since you are under age. But that is a small detail and we will both have a few friends from work who will be able to sign in your stead."

The week end was quite busy as Isa had to decide what she wanted to keep from her flat. Once she had done this those things had to be moved to Joe's house and arrangements had to be made for the disposal of the rest. By Sunday night however, the move had been completed. All that was left to be done was to arrange for someone to be there when a local charity workshop came to pick up the furniture which Isa was leaving behind. Then they had decided the flat would be put up for sale

Joe had an office in the house and he said that he and Isa could share it. He also suggested that Katy and I should similarly move our desks into one of the still vacant rooms and use this as a place where we could study and use our computers. We were more than happy with that arrangement.

At school on the Tuesday of the following week while we were eating our packed lunch, a boy and a girl who were among the brighter students in our year approached us and asked if they could talk to us. We indicated that they should sit down at our table and they did so.

The girl spoke first,

"You probably know who I am since we share most of our classes, she said, "But it will introduce myself anyway. My name is Dianna Walker, but most of my friends call me Di. The big galloot* with me is Charlie McFadzean and he is my boy friend.

I grinned and said "I take it you know our names, but just in case you don't, I am Peter Thomson, and this is my girlfriend Katy."

"I was sure you were a couple, but somebody told me you were brother and sister." Di remarked,

"No," Katy said. "Peter's family were killed in a car crash and he was taken in by his aunt, who was his mum's sister. His aunt will shortly be married to my dad. Meantime we all live together at my dad's place and when they marry in a few weeks time his aunt will be my step mum and I think that makes Peter my step cousin or something." she finished with a giggle.

"Sounds a pretty complicated relationship to me as well," said Di with a giggle. "Anyway I wanted to talk to you both and to thank you especially Peter for the way you dealt with Forbes and company. They bullied me for a while last year till Charlie plucked up the courage to ask me out one day and I agreed. You will have noticed he does not say much but he is a great guy and I love him to bits." She went on"

At this point Charlie spoke for the first time in a deep kind of slow drawl'

"You will also have noticed," he said with a grin, "That I don't have to say much as Di does enough talking for both of us"

Katy and I burst out laughing at this remark and Di punched her boyfriend on the arm. He is going to be one of those guys who is a master of the one liner comeback I thought.

"Why did they stop bullying you because of Charlie," Katy Asked

"Well everybody knew Charlie was the under sixteen County Wrestling champion," Di told us, "And as you can see he is a big guy even at fifteen. Nobody was going to give him any trouble."

"They still gave me trouble when I found a boyfriend," Katy said

"Yeah," said Charlie with a grin, "That was because the idiots didn't know what Peter was capable of dishing out. I guess they found out to their cost."

"Anyway", Di said, "I noticed last year you were kind of shy Katy and I thought a couple of times about saying Hi! But what with dating Charlie and you keeping so much to yourself I never got around to it. I had talked to about it to Charlie though. Then when you took care of these guys Peter; and it was clear you were a couple, he thought now would be a good time. So if you want a couple of friends we would like you to be ours."

"I think we would like that very much," I told them. "I don't know if you are doing anything on Saturday afternoon, but Katy's dad is firing up the barbecue and if you would like to join us you would be welcome."

"Gee we would have loved to come," Di replied, "but we are meeting up with another couple of friends on Saturday. They are in most of our classes too; Bobby Watson and his girl friend Jenny Baxter."