‘Yes,’ Matthew Stokes said. ‘And they’re really rather good.’
Chapter Eighty
I’ve got complete brainache. All night I’ve been lying awake turning over Spencer’s proposal in my mind. Every time I blink, my eyelids sandpaper my eyeballs. I wanted to be firing on all cylinders today, but I feel like I’m walking through treacle.
What am I going to do? This feels like a dream come true, but – as is usual in my life – it’s not without its complications. The biggest one being, do I love Spencer enough to marry him? Put aside the fact that he’s going to inherit this enormous estate and I’d swan off down there to become Lady of the Manor – do I actually love him enough to promise ‘till death us do part’?
For some reason, I wanted to talk it through with Johnny. He’s always been my sounding board and it’s a hard habit to break. I wanted to catch him this morning, but I hadn’t reckoned on Delicious Dana being there too. Why did my heart squeeze so painfully when I saw the loving way she looked at Johnny? Why did I want to scream, ‘He’s mine!’ when he is so clearly no longer mine? I have no right to begrudge him happiness, but I do. Particularly when it comes in the shape of someone more beautiful, more curvy and more together than I am. It only serves to make me realise quite how magnanimous Johnny has been about my relationship with Spencer. Speaking of which . . . I also need to talk this through with Charlie. It’s a fantastic opportunity for both of us, but I want him to be completely happy with it and maybe it’s too soon for him. He’d be changing school soon anyway, so that wouldn’t be too much of a wrench, but it means leaving behind his friends and, more importantly, Johnny. Not sure how he’ll handle that. I couldn’t have talked rationally to him this morning, because I can’t even get my own thoughts straight yet.
There’s no doubt that I still want out of here – who in their right mind wouldn’t? But Surrey seems such a long way away. It took us hours to get there. Bloody hours. It’d be like moving to the moon or New Zealand. I can’t drive, so there’d be no popping back for coffee with Debs or our girly trips down to Kirberly market. I want out of here, but I didn’t imagine going so far – either physically or emotionally. I thought maybe I’d move to somewhere like Ormskirk or the Wirrall. Somewhere nice, but still within striking distance. If I went to Surrey, I’d be leaving behind everything that I know – even the good bits.
When I get to the garden, Mrs Kapur is – as my boy said – hard at it already. Paintbrush in tiny hand, she’s still working away, covering up the graffiti on the wall. Even more surprising, given the early hour, is that the hoodies are here too. Jason, Daniel and Mark are all digging away happily, chatting and laughing to each other. How quickly they’ve been transformed from disenfranchised hooligans with attitude into helpful, enthusiastic kids. Is this all it takes to bring people back into the fold?
‘Hiya, Sally,’ they say in unison as I approach.
‘Morning, lads. Good to see you. You’re making great progress there.’
They blush in unison too and all turn back to their spades.
I glance round the wasteland area. It’s coming on in leaps and bounds. Spencer and I managed to clear nearly all of the weeds yesterday. In among them we found a few discarded tyres, a telly, two microwaves and even a couple of mouldy old teddy bears probably from the time when this place was last used as a garden.
Mrs Kapur’s going great guns with her painting and the lads have dug over three borders and have just one left to do. After that we’re going to lay a winding path down the middle and some new turf. This is going to be a quiet garden where the older residents of the area will be able to get away from the noise of the kids. I envisage it as their own little sanctuary, with roses round the arbour and lots of scented plants to cheer them up. I hope that Johnny’s mum will love it and we can get her out here and in the fresh air a bit more often.
I look around me. Everything’s shaping up nicely. We won’t know this place when it’s finished.
Then I see Debs tottering through the gate towards me. She’s wearing her silver high-heeled shoes and is dragging deeply on a cigarette.
‘Hiya.’
‘Gardening on a Sunday morning is obscene,’ she grumbles. ‘Sunday mornings were made for lying in.’
‘Hard night?’
‘Very harsh,’ she says. ‘Very harsh.’ My friend sniffs and flicks a thumb towards the Community Centre. ‘Saw your man out with the woman from the Council at one of the bars. He was looking very into her. Did you know?’
‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Apparently they’re an item.’
‘That was bloody quick work on someone’s part.’
Somehow I don’t think that it would have been Johnny’s.
‘How do you feel about it?’
‘Fine,’ I say. ‘I’m glad that he’s happy.’
‘Huh.’ It’s accompanied by a snorty noise of disbelief. ‘Where’s your man today?’
‘On his way. He’ll be here soon.’ This would be a good opportunity to run Spencer’s proposal past my friend, but I can’t bring myself to voice it. I have a lot more thinking to do about it yet.
‘I might be crap at gardening,’ Debs says, ‘but I’ve brought bacon butties for everyone. Shall I dish them out?’
I kiss my friend warmly on the cheek.
‘What’s that for?’
‘You’re a lifesaver, Debs.’
‘Yeah,’ she says. ‘Don’t forget it. You’d miss me if I wasn’t around.’
And that’s something else that I need to think carefully about too.
Chapter Eighty-One
‘We’re dead meat,’ Charlie informed Kyle. ‘Seriously.’
His friend took a drag on their communal cigarette. They were leaning on their spades round the back of the Community Centre out of sight of the others, taking a momentary respite from the strenuous activity of digging. Charlie had been enjoying himself, but Kyle wasn’t so sure about gardening. Kyle was getting bored. But then Kyle was always getting bored.
‘Your mum might not find out.’
‘She will,’ Charlie said. ‘She definitely will.’
‘Johnny might not go to his appointment at the gallery.’
‘Why wouldn’t he?’ Charlie scratched his head. ‘Isn’t that what we want him to do? Isn’t that the point?’
Kyle conceded that one in silence. ‘That bloke was supposed to ring us,’ he grumbled. ‘How did he get Johnny’s number?’
‘I might have put it down on the paper,’ Charlie confessed. Which earned him a scowl from the much more wordly-wise Kyle Crossman. If only he could think things through like his friend did. ‘I had to. What if the man had phoned while I was busy?’
‘Doing what?’
‘I don’t know. Playing football? Digging?’
‘He could have left a message.’
‘Oh.’ Charlie hadn’t thought of that. It was too late now. He had overheard Johnny telling Dana that someone had phoned and that he was going down to see him at the gallery. Then Johnny would find out that Charlie and Kyle had taken the paintings there, then he’d realise that Charlie and Kyle must have also broken into his lock-up, and then he’d tell Charlie’s mum, and then . . . Charlie and Kyle would be dead meat. And then they’d get one of those ASBOs that Kyle was so keen on.
It was making Charlie very worried. ‘I should tell her first,’ he said.
‘No,’ Kyle warned. ‘Say nothing. Let them drag a confession out of you.’
Charlie didn’t think that he wanted anyone to do that.
‘But they’ve got my name. On a piece of paper.’
‘We should have gone in disguise,’ Kyle said, tutting at the flaw in their plan.
‘What would we have gone as?’
‘I don’t know.’ Kyle huffed. ‘You should have given them a false name.’
‘And a false phone number too.’
‘Then they wouldn’t have been able to call you, knobhead.’
‘Oh.’ They’d phoned Johnny anyw
ay, not him – but Charlie didn’t want to argue with his friend. ‘Should I just tell Johnny it was us?’
‘You,’ Kyle corrected. ‘No. Say nothing. That’s always the best way.’
Kyle sucked in the cigarette smoke and blew it out. He was trying to blow rings like his big brother could, but he hadn’t managed to do it yet. Kyle said it would make them both look cool if they could do that. He was going to learn first and then show Charlie. Really, Charlie longed to tell him that he didn’t want to smoke at all any more, but he thought that Kyle would be annoyed at him.
‘How are things going with the other bloke?’
‘Spencer?’
Kyle nodded.
‘Okay. I think Mum’s going off him. She came back from his house early last weekend.’ Charlie didn’t tell his friend that he’d cried down the phone. ‘And she didn’t say that she’d had a nice time or anything. Not like she went on when she came back from Canada.’
‘Thought you said it was Cuba?’
‘Oh, yeah.’ Charlie remembered now. ‘There too.’
‘Well,’ Kyle said. ‘That’s one less problem you’ve got to deal with.’
Charlie brightened. He hadn’t thought of it like that.
‘There’s just this little matter to fix.’ Having given up trying to blow smoke rings, Kyle stubbed out the cigarette. ‘When’s Johnny going to meet the man?’
‘He said he’d go tomorrow, but I don’t know when. He looked very happy about it.’
‘If they give him a lot of money you might not get killed.’
‘We might not get killed,’ Charlie corrected.
‘This hasn’t got anything to do with me,’ Kyle said. ‘It’s your name on the paper. Johnny’s your friend. It was you who said that his paintings were better than the ones that they had in there.’
Kyle was right. It was all his fault. And, no matter what his friend said, tomorrow he’d be a dead man.
Chapter Eighty-Two
We’ve all worked really hard again today. Now though, my aching back is calling out for a long, hot bath. I stand up and stretch, trying to stifle the groan that wants to accompany it. We’ve cleared all of the weeds and I’ve just laid out the route that the path’s going to take with string and pegs and I’ve set out the area for the bench and its covering arbour in the back corner, furthest away from the flats. Hopefully it will catch the afternoon sun, giving Mrs Kapur, Dora and their friends a lovely, peaceful place to sit and while away the hours together.
Ted, Brian and Jim, the old blokes from the allotments are going to come over tomorrow and lay the slabs for me. Mrs Kapur is still painting away furiously, eager to get the very last bit of wall finished before the dusk consumes us.
I survey the tidy garden that’s starting slowly to appear out of the wreckage while I enjoy some juice that Debs has brought round for us all from the Community Centre kitchen. My friend is right, she may not be much of a gardener, but there’s no doubt that Debs has excellent timing with refreshments.
Jason, Daniel and Mark have all stopped for a drink too. The lads have worked really well together again today and have finished digging over all the new borders and clearing them of weeds. Where there’d been hardbaked soil and bindweed, there’s now fresh, rich pristine topsoil just waiting to be planted.
They’ve all asked if they could come along tomorrow, straight from school, to start the job. It’s wonderful to see not only the transformation in the ground that they’ve worked, but in the boys too. I feel so proud of them. I’ve got a maternal glow just looking over at them chatting away together. There’s a certain satisfaction in hard, physical labour that I’ve just discovered, and it looks like the hoodies have too.
Spencer comes over and slips his arm round my waist. ‘Happy?’
‘Mmm.’ I smile up at him. After our shock conversation last night, I wondered if there’d be an awkwardness between us today, but there hasn’t been. Spencer had come along this morning, bright and breezy, and simply got on with all of the tasks that I set him without complaint. To look at him though, you’d never know. He’s still managed not to be as filthy dirty as the rest of us.
‘You’ve had so many volunteers come along to help that you’ll get this done in no time.’
‘It’s been brilliant, hasn’t it? Much better than I ever could have hoped for.’
‘And all down to you.’
‘With a little help from my friends.’
‘I love you, Sally Freeman,’ Spencer says.
‘I love you too.’ And I really think that I do. I kiss Spencer’s cheek and nestle into him. Could I make my life in this man’s arms? Could I take on him, his snotty family and his big, fuck-off stately home? It’s something I should decide soon. If Johnny’s moving on and away from me, what is there really to keep me here?
‘Any more thoughts after our talk last night?’ my boyfriend asks.
‘Loads,’ I tell him. ‘I need to sit down with Charlie and talk to him about it and what it would mean.’
Spencer squeezes me. ‘That sounds as if you’re coming round to the idea.’
‘Maybe,’ I say.
‘That’s progress enough for me.’
The sun’s sinking lower in the sky and my eyes are starting to roll with tiredness thanks to my sleepless night and the fact that I’ve shifted ten tons of soil this afternoon. ‘Shall we call it a day?’
Spencer nods.
‘You go straight back to the flat,’ I say. ‘See if you can find something to go with pasta for dinner. There might be some tins of tuna in the cupboard. Take Mrs Kapur with you. Although I think you might have to wrest her paintbrush from her.’
‘Shall I see if she wants to join us for dinner?’
Not sure that I’d call pasta and tinned tuna anything as grand as ‘dinner’, but that’s Spencer for you. ‘That’s a really nice idea. She probably needs a bit of carb loading after all her hard work. I’ll go over and see how Johnny and Dana are getting on and lock all this stuff up in the Community Centre.’
And if they’re standing there looking all loved-up with each other, then I’ll try really hard not to mind.
Chapter Eighty-Three
Johnny’s finishing up too before he loses the light. The whole of the Community Centre has been transformed with white paint so bright that I need my sunglasses.
For some reason, I’m relieved to see that he’s on his own – apart from Ringo fast asleep at his feet, of course. ‘Wow,’ I say as I approach. The dog cocks his ear, but carries on snoozing. ‘That’s amazing.’
‘This bit of the base coat dried so quickly in the heat that I’ve been able to start the mural already,’ he tells me.
On one of the big concrete panels, Johnny has started to paint some figures. There’s a little enclosed garden and they’re digging it over. ‘Hey,’ I say. ‘That’s me.’ Unfortunately, I can tell that from the way my hair’s scraped back and Johnny has perfectly captured my knacky old red T-shirt and jeans. I’ve got a painted smut of dirt on my cheek. ‘You could have made me look a bit more glamorous.’
His eyes meet mine. ‘You look fine just as you are.’
I flush and ask, ‘No Dana?’
‘She’s gone off to get changed and put some tea on for us,’ he says with a corresponding blush.
‘Right.’
‘She’s nice, Sally,’ he says softly to me.
‘Yeah, yeah. She seems great.’ Then neither of us know what to say. So I look at Johnny’s mural some more while I mull over the fact that my son is also obsessed with the lovely Dana and even Ringo is.
The mural’s looking fab. Mrs Kapur’s there in her beautiful sari all daubed with paint. Johnny’s even got the hoodies in a huddle – the boys will like that. They’re not likely to graffiti over or piss on that, right?
Then my own boy saunters over to join us. Charlie leans against me, letting me put my arm round his shoulders and he yawns tiredly. Can I smell a faint whiff of cigarette smoke on him?
; ‘No Kyle?’
‘Gone to the chippy with his mum and dad,’ my son supplies.
Kyle’s parents have been here all day too digging alongside their boy, and they even looked like they were enjoying themselves, laughing together. Kyle might be a little toe-rag, but sometimes my heart goes out to him.
‘That looks sound, Johnny,’ Charlie says. ‘Can I be in it too?’
‘Course you can. I’ll have to catch you doing some work first.’
‘I’ve been busy,’ my boy protests.
I stroke his hair. Definitely cigarettes. ‘Enjoyed today?’
‘Yeah.’
‘You too, Johnny?’
‘Yeah,’ my friend says with a heartfelt sigh. He stands back and admires his own mural. ‘I’d love to be doing this full-time.’
I shrug my shoulders. There’s no way I’m going to give my friend careers advice. Last time I did that, I got my head bitten off for my pains.
Johnny puts down his paintbrush and turns to me. ‘Sal,’ he says, suddenly serious. ‘I had a call from a fella at the Tate Liverpool today. One of the top bods.’
‘The Tate? That deserves another wow.’
Charlie squirms against me.
‘I know.’ Johnny folds his arms.
‘What did he want?’
My friend frowns. ‘He told me that someone had handed in some of my paintings.’
‘The ones that were stolen?’
‘Looks like it.’
‘Did he say who?’
‘No idea. He seemed to think that it was one of my friends rather than someone who’d robbed me. I didn’t tell him they’d been stolen. Strange thing is, they gave him my phone number.’
‘Seems a bit stupid if it was the bloke who nicked them.’
Johnny looks as puzzled as me. ‘Thought you might know something about it.’
I shake my head. ‘Not me.’ My boy fidgets next to me. ‘Stand still, Charlie.’
‘He wants to see me. Tomorrow.’
‘Are you going to go?’
‘Can’t do any harm, can it?’
‘It might give you a lead to help you find out who busted up your garage.’
All You Need is Love Page 26