Rachel McCarron
I’m Glad I Found You
We found each other in 1964. You, fresh and eager on your first day. Me, barely a year on the force, responsible for a new recruit though I still felt like a rookie myself.
When I started, I’d been assigned to an officer twenty years on the beat, but twelve months on, staffing shortages meant that you had to make do with me. My enthusiasm hadn’t dampened yet, and perhaps this was better for you than a jaded old cop whose only concern was his next day off.
You looked so young in your new uniform, like a schoolboy at the start of term. Already married with a daughter, you showed me a photograph of them, then apologised for being soppy. How I envied that sentimentality. I envied you and your cosy family.
“It’s not like cop shows on telly,” I warned as you got into the passenger seat of the patrol vehicle – not a Zephyr like on Z-Cars, but the newer, cheaper Hillman Imp. Far less powerful, but for neighbourhood policing, we weren’t expected to tear up the tarmac. “There’s a lot of hanging about.”
“I know,” you said. “They told us in training that patience is as important as reaction. I just want to do my bit for the community. Protect and serve, and all that.”
“That’s the LAPD,” I said. “Heddlu Sir y Fflint is nothing like Dragnet.”
You laughed at my Scouse attempt at Welsh – unnecessary when everyone just called us Flintshire Constabulary.
“Why sure, Joe,” you said in a phony, wise-guy accent. “It’s a whole ’nother ball game. And how about them Dodgers, huh?”
“Well, hell, Dave,” I said. “I woulda bin there but for the perp still on the loose and them goddam dirty cops tryin’a bring me down all the goddam time.”
We made no sense, but your humour clicked with me, and our mutual indifference to sport, American or otherwise, was just one of many things we had in common.
You won me over with your love of American folk music, and we made a pact never to tell anyone of our harmonious renditions of “Tom Dooley” and “The Railroad Boy” as we drove around the neighbourhood, far more likely to come across petty theft and social disruption than the murder or suicide we were singing about.
“There was a murder hereabouts,” I said. “But it was before I started.”
“I remember,” you said.
Everybody knew about it. The verdict was Not Guilty, but the victim’s husband forever walked in the shadow of what he had or hadn’t done. I saw it as a sign of your respect and integrity that you didn’t express any opinion on the matter.
I admired your compassion when we had to break the dreadful news to parents of a young man killed in a hit and run. I saw your kindness towards teenage lads picked up for shoplifting. They were already terrified and didn’t need to be scared straight. You worried that you were too soft to be a copper, but you had all the right instincts. And I had enough aggression for both of us back then. We made the perfect team: classic good cop, bad cop. You were always the good. I could be as bad as required.
It was essential for the job sometimes – a show of force to any disorganised crime that threatened to emerge in our sleepy manor. You could handle yourself, but you preferred not to strike a blow, allowing me to administer the bigger dose of any unavoidable violence. I threw myself wholeheartedly into any punch-up demanded by the job and off duty if necessary.
It was all about defence and concealment. I worked at maintaining an image. I kept fit with running and boxing. The occasional date with a good-looking woman added credibility. I knew the sort of hatred, fear and ridicule reserved for poofs, fairies and fags like me. I saw and heard it everywhere – on the job, on the street, down the pub, on mainstream television. But not only could I pass as straight, I was the hardest bobby on the beat.
I did not expect to fall in love with anyone of either sex. I had no hopes of settling down. First dates with women never led to second ones, and I never had to fake more than a goodnight kiss. The men I encountered were as nameless as I was. I knew places just about safe enough up in Merseyside, anonymously far from anyone who knew me or my profession. Untraceable as long as I never retraced my steps.
You invited me to tea one Friday. I ignored your wife’s suggestion to bring a girlfriend and was welcomed into a household I would soon feel part of. Wendy fussed over me, and I could feel you watching as I tried to flirt with her the way I had learned to flatter women for the sake of appearances.
“Are all the nurses on your ward as pretty as you?” I asked. “Maybe you could fix me up.”
“Perhaps.” She eyed me quizzically as though she knew.
“How did someone as lovely as you get stuck with a bloke like Dave?”
“But Dave’s lovely too, don’t you think?” said Wendy. I couldn’t tell if she was being funny or if she had already seen through my macho bullshit. Standing behind you, she ruffled your hair where you sat at the kitchen table and planted a kiss on the top of your head. You looked across at me with an expression I couldn’t interpret.
Your four-year-old daughter broke the tension by stomping down the stairs, insisting it was too early for bed. At barely half-six, she had a point. “You must be Hannah,” I said.
“I must be,” said little Hannah. “Are you Uncle Joe?”
“I must be,” I said.
“Daddy says you’re his best friend.”
“I am.” I’d been unprepared for the emotional kick of this declaration.
“Mummy said I had to go to bed early because you were coming round. I don’t think it’s fair.”
“Hannah, don’t be rude,” said Wendy. “Say sorry to Uncle Joe.”
“Nothing to be sorry for,” I said. “She’s right. It isn’t fair.”
“Can I stay up then?”
“If you’re a good girl,” you said.
She refused to go to bed until you sang “Puff, the Magic Dragon,” and she giggled with delight when I joined you in harmony.
“Sing me something, Uncle Joe,” demanded Hannah. But the only songs I knew were the murder ballads we sang in the patrol car. I sang what I could remember of “Twenty-four Hours from Tulsa” because I had heard it on the radio earlier that day. Wendy said it was an odd choice for a lullaby, but Hannah enjoyed it well enough and went upstairs to bed without further complaint.
“You have a great voice,” said Wendy. “You should try the folk club at the White Swan.”
So, we would go along to the pub if we weren’t working late on a Thursday. We sang our close harmony American folk songs about “Stagger Lee” and “John Henry” or treated them to a Bob Dylan number they could all join in with. I felt the intimacy of our voices entwined without our bodies ever touching. Hidden closeness in plain sight.
I got along with Wendy as if she were my sister, and she gave me chores around the house that you never got round to. I helped with Hannah after school sometimes. The three of us co-ordinated our shifts to take the pressure off your parents who had been the main babysitters until your dad became unwell.
You spent more time with your mum after your dad died, determined she wouldn’t be lonely, and I got to know her too. A widow not yet forty, she possessed stoicism and humour I had never known in my own mother who I hardly saw for fear she would recognise what I was. Your family accepted me without judgement.
I started seeing one of Wendy’s nursing pals. It was about time I had a girlfriend, Wendy said, and the four of us would go to the pub or cinema while your mum babysat Hannah. Pamela was young and sweet and Catholic enough that we never needed to consummate the sham of our relationship. I closed my eyes as I kissed her and imagined a rougher mouth and more stubbled cheek. If she got too frisky, as occasionally she did, I reminded her that it was the right and proper thing to do to wait until marriage.
“And when will that be?”
I didn’t have the heart to point out that I meant when she was married to someone else.
It was at some point during the Pamela months that you made your move. We’d known each other over a year, working together, spending most of our free time together. I still occasionally prowled Queen Square in Liverpool, but the relief I sought was now as regrettable as it was forgettable. I had come to accept that the part I played as an accessory to your family was as happy as I was going to be. That I would never have the partnership you shared with Wendy, mattered less than the time I spent as your professional partner and best friend. I would never have instigated anything more. Dave, this was all on you.
One night, we were first on the scene at an address in Connah’s Quay where an elderly woman had found her middle-aged son hanging from the garage ceiling. I cut him down while you took her statement and the pointless ambulance arrived.
Later, when we were parked up, reluctant to return to the station, I said, “What was he thinking? He must’ve known she would be the one to find him.”
“I don’t suppose he was thinking at all,” you said.
“But it’s not like that girl who took her mum’s sleeping pills, or the lad that got stoned and jumped out of a window that was only high enough to break his leg.” We had been superfluous in both those cases. The ambulances proved necessary, the kids survived, and no crimes were committed. “Hanging takes planning,” I said. “It takes bravery.”
“I can’t fathom why anyone would do something like that,” you said.
But I could. It had crossed my mind now and then. “I understand why people think about it,” I said.
We had been staring straight ahead as we talked, the way we usually did, natural enough for two people sitting in a car, and easier for me not to make eye contact. But now I felt your eyes on me and sensed panic in your silence.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I never think about it these days.” I started the car. “We should head back.”
Your hand covered mine as I moved to shift gear. You told me later, that if I hadn’t responded, if I’d snatched my hand away and recoiled, you would have passed it off as friendly concern. But I turned my palm upwards, threaded my fingers between yours and held on tight.
“Promise me you won’t ever think about it,” you said. “Promise you won’t leave us.”
Not me, us – your family, your shield.
“I’ll never leave you,” I said. “I promise.”
We drove back to base in silence. As we pulled in at the station you said, “You don’t fancy Pamela, do you?”
“Of course not.”
The next day, we behaved as though nothing had changed. But everything would change. We were only waiting.
I was saved from breaking Pamela’s heart when she dumped me to get engaged to a more suitable man. Being both Catholic and a doctor, he was a good catch, as Wendy put it when she broke the news on cowardly Pamela’s behalf.
“Are you alright, Joe?” asked Wendy.
“Oh yes, plenty more fish and all that.”
“What are you smiling about?” she said to you. “Can’t you see the man’s heartbroken. Take him to the pub to drown his sorrows and give me and Hannah some peace.”
“Is there more fish?” asked Hannah.
“No, pal,” I said. “We ate it all.”
“But you just said…”
“I meant, plenty more fish in the sea. It’s an expression.”
“Not in the fridge?”
“No,” you said, “but there’s a tin of sardines in the cupboard,” which only confused the poor kid more.
We didn’t go to the pub. We went straight to my bedsit where you kissed me as I fumbled to lock the door. I had never felt so nervous, and I marvelled at your eager confidence. “Hey, take it easy.” I pointed you towards the record player. “Choose some music. The walls are paper thin.”
“Does that mean play it quietly?”
“No, soft lad. Play it just loud enough to drown anything out.”
I poured some scotch while you put Simon and Garfunkel on. I laughed at them singing “You Can Tell the World,” knowing we could never tell anybody.
We kissed again, barely coming up for air. You were more frantic, hungrier, than I had ever imagined in all my imaginings of us together.
“Are you sure about this?”
“Desperately certain,” you said. “But I’ve never... only ever with Wendy.”
“Follow your instincts.”
Your instincts had you unfastening my belt and kneeling before me, not a trace of doubt. I could only hold back a few moments before I erupted to your splutter of surprised laughter, and you wiped my joy from your chin. What were you expecting?
I finished undressing and watched as you discarded your clothes revealing the pale, smooth skin I had been longing to touch. The faintest tremble in your hands belied your boldness. I stroked the scant, fair hair on your chest, a contrast to my dark, wiry mat that you curled about your fingers. I towered you in height, but you dominated me in every other way. You nudged me towards the bed, your enthusiasm overriding any lack of experience.
I could hear Simon and Garfunkel singing “Bleecker Street,” and I imagined us living together in New York’s Greenwich Village, comfortable at last among our own kind.
Afterwards, as I held you in my arms, I told you I loved you. I didn’t need you to say it back, but you did.
“But I don’t think I can leave Wendy,” you said.
“You mustn’t leave her. It would be the end of everything. We’d lose our careers as well as your family.”
“But shouldn’t I be willing to give it all up?”
“What for?”
“For you.”
“It wouldn’t be safe. Until we get an apartment on Bleecker Street, our chances are better as we are.”
And I was right. Our chances were good. We would be together for six years behind the mask of your family, as best friends and the most respectable of professional partners in Her Majesty’s police force.
I felt the wrench when you became a sergeant in the merger of ’67, and I got another recruit. I wasn’t upset about being passed over for promotion. You were always a better copper than me. And I was aware of my vulnerability as a bachelor nearing my thirties, happy to stay at a level well below anyone’s radar.
“Don’t fall in love with your new partner,” you said.
“Never anyone but you,” I promised.
You had my complete devotion, but we lamented the time we could no longer spend together. We’d already stopped singing at the folk club for fear any emotion might show through. We took Hannah for days out at Colwyn Bay and Chester Zoo and snatched moments to talk while she was distracted. We stole brief windows of delight at my place while Wendy was on duty and Hannah was at school or at her grandmother’s house. But perhaps we lingered too long, craving each other’s company.
“I don’t want Hannah to think I’m weak,” you said.
“Why would she think that?”
“You know… I’m worried that it shows. I’m worried she’ll think I’m less of man than other kid’s dads.”
I tried not to feel offended by what she might think of me. “You’re the manliest man I’ve ever known,” I said, and you laughed. “I mean it. You’re a wonderful father.”
“If she ever found out…”
“She doesn’t need to find out. Hannah adores you. Stop worrying.”
But your fears became a familiar theme, and you needed constant reassurance of your masculinity. Words would only go so far; submitting to your dominance in the bedroom was the only way to settle you. Not that I complained. The thrill never faded.
“I can’t understand why people think being gay is emasculating,” I said. “Two guys together – it doesn’t get more masculine than this.”
“Wendy knows,” you said one day.
“How? We’re so careful.” I was sure I behaved no differently around Wendy than I ever had. My presence in your household felt as natural as the first day you invited me, no pretence necessary. But we should never have taken Wendy for a fool.
“She says she knew from the first day she met you, and she sees it in me too. It doesn’t take much to work out the rest.”
“But she’s got no proof, has she?”
“I told her everything. I can’t keep lying to her. I do love her.”
“So, this is the end for us.” A grip tightened in me, a futile holding-on to something I never expected to last. How could it? You had a family to consider. I had no ties. I could go anywhere, request a transfer easily enough. I needed to plan an exit.
“No,” you said. “I don’t want it to end.”
“But you can’t leave Wendy. We talked about this. It’s professional suicide if nothing else.”
“Wendy says she can handle it.”
“How do you mean?”
“She thinks our marriage is better for it. Don’t ask me to explain.”
I didn’t ask, and the next time I saw Wendy, she hugged me and told me I was brave. You took Hannah to the park and left us alone. We cried on each other’s shoulders. She told me things she said she’d never told anyone, and she let me talk about my life before I met you. Things I never told you. Things you didn’t need to know. All my loneliness, all my sorrowful tears wiped away by the wife of my lover. And then life carried on with your happy family as if everything was so very normal.
It was Stonewall that changed things. Hannah was nine by then, and so used to me being around, she never questioned the intensity of my friendship with her father. We were settled and, I believed, happy. But my utopian fantasy of liberated gay life in Greenwich Village was shattered by news of the riots there, and it reminded me that I was still lying to everyone about who I was. The impact of events that summer of 1969 had me yearning to stand shoulder to shoulder with my queer brothers and sisters.
“Think of your career,” you said. “Think of my family.”
I went back to Liverpool, not to the cinemas or gentlemen’s conveniences where I used to go, but to a meeting at the university. I became educated about the challenges that faced us. Us in a broader sense, not you and me. You and I, Dave, we were okay. Safe. Strong. But I wanted to join the campaign for gay rights for all of us. I wanted to change the world.
It was a slow transformation, but I was changing, and on my thirtieth birthday, two years after Stonewall, I told you I wanted to leave the police force.
“But what will you do?”
“I don’t know, but I can’t stay in a profession where I can’t be myself.”
Wendy suggested I work at the hospital as an orderly or porter, but you refused to accept my resignation, and procrastination kept me rooted for the time being.
Looking back, I should have taken your paranoia more seriously. The script became repetitive:
What if anyone at work found out? Nobody knew.
They think I’m a weak sergeant. Your authority was never in doubt.
Why does Wendy put up with me? I was damned if I knew for sure but presumed it must be for the same reason I did – love.
Hannah will hate me when she’s older. Hannah adored you. She still does.
Please, please, please don’t leave me. My promises in reply eventually sounded worn out.
I could sense change everywhere – optimism as more people came out but fear too with the inevitable backlash against the gay liberation movement. It wasn’t fair to expect me to remain still while everything around me was in motion. You had your family and an upwards career trajectory which would leave me far behind. I needed to stand up for who I was.
“I’m handing my notice in,” I said.
You said you didn’t think I was serious.
“I need to be myself,” I said. “I don’t want to hide anymore.”
“So, you’ll get a job at the hospital.”
“I think I should get away for a while.”
“What about us?”
“You’ve got a career and a family.”
“It’s your family too.”
Was it? “I’ll come back and visit.”
“You’ll stay.”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Don’t leave. I need you.”
“I’m doing it for you. And Wendy and Hannah. You need the chance to be a proper family.”
I thought it was such a selfless act – an overdue, noble sacrifice for the people I loved.
“Don’t be such a fucking martyr,” you said.
You made it look like an accident the first time, and I believed you when you said it was. You wrote off your car, but you and the tree were miraculously unscathed. You were instructed to take two weeks’ leave and were never charged with drink driving because no supervising officer could hold such a conviction nor go without an unblemished driver’s license.
It was Wendy who suspected there was more to it.
“You can’t leave,” she said.
“I’m doing it for you and Dave,” I said. “I just complicate things.”
“You make things easier, Joe.”
Sometimes I regret not asking what she meant by that, but if she was having an affair of her own, it was none of my business.
“He won’t talk to me about the accident,” I said. “Has he said anything to you?”
“He said he should have been driving faster.”
I’m glad I found you.
I’m glad you had the sense to plan it somewhere your mother, wife and eleven-year-old daughter wouldn’t be the ones to discover your lifeless body. Did you know I would be first on the scene? Or were you unconcerned which officer would pull you down and make a futile attempt to breathe life back into your cold lips?
“How’s school, pal?”
“I joined the choir,” said Hannah. “I love singing.”
“Your dad and I used to sing together.”
“I remember,” she said.
““Puff the Magic Dragon,”” I said.
“No, something called “The Railroad Boy,” but it had nothing to do with trains.”
“Go dig my grave, both wide and deep,” I sang. “Place a marble stone at my head and feet. And at my breast, a snow-white dove. To show the world I died for love.”
Perhaps it was the wrong thing to sing to a girl grieving the loss of her father, but all she said was, “I can still hear him.”
I still hear you. When I sing. When I sleep. When I’m wondering what I’ll do with my life without you. All I know is, I’m glad I found you.
Editor’s note: This piece was longlisted for the 2026 Leopold Bloom Prize.
Rachel McCarron is a writer from the Northwest coast of England. She is the winner of the 2026 Goldfinch Novel Award, and her short stories have been published in Mslexia and Thin Skin. Her first non-fiction, a work of autotheory about Virginia Woolf, will be published in an anthology in January 2027. She is the critique forum moderator at Litopia.com and the co-presenter of the Two Wayward Writers podcast.
