Managers of the various clubs shared slight smiles. Fortunately, Martina Nelson of Checkmate had given up on him, so Alex suffered the unwanted admiration of just one woman at the table. Everyone here knew about Amber’s desire for him, and she had become something of a joke, since the boss was clearly head over heels with his wife.
Kate stalked in, head held high, document case in one hand, small bouquet in the other.
‘Good morning,’ she said, smiling broadly, and turning to place the flowers in the sink with a little water. After taking her place at the table, she opened the case. ‘Onward and upward, Mr Chairman. We haven’t much time.’
Alex hid his grin behind a glass of water.
‘Charm,’ she announced. ‘That’s Lily and Ian, yes?’
The middle-aged married couple nodded in unison – they knew their dance moves.
‘As far as I can see, it needs very little change. A new, thicker carpet and some better padded chairs in seating areas would be appreciated by older clientele. For salsa nights, coloured lighting would make a huge difference. I don’t mean disco stuff, just colours that melt from one to another.’
Ian and Lily nodded their agreement.
‘For Cheers and Checkmate, I suggest booths, half wooden, upper parts plastic that imitates stained glass set in frames. Bobby Ray, I know the club is half yours, so just think about my suggestion and talk to Alex. Cheers is brilliant as it is, but booths would afford a little bit of privacy to couples on dates.’
She motored on. ‘Checkmate’s booths would be a chance for people to get to know each other better, Martina. The panels would need to fold back against the walls for speed-dating nights. Yours is the smallest of the clubs, so just think about it. None of this is written in stone.
‘Nick and Sandra, Champs aux Fraises needs colour. A freedom flag should beam on walls – a couple of cheap projectors would do just that. A balloon net, its contents echoing colours on the flag, could be used from time to time. The chairs are good, but perhaps they might be upholstered in the same shades. We’ll talk about that.’
Alex waited for battle to commence; Kate had deliberately left Chillex to last on the list. He watched as she turned the page very, very slowly, until eventualy she achieved eye contact with the enemy.
‘Amber, Chillex should be left as it is unless you require equipment. The exercise areas are suitably clinical, and the lighting in the chill-out rooms is calming. Perhaps a little bit of red in the restaurant area might help, but I leave you to decide. Red improves the appetite and you’d sell more food.’ She glanced at Alex, and he took over.
Standing, he dismissed the meeting. ‘Questions and/or objections in writing to me, please. Kate and I have to be on our way.’
For the first time ever, Amber Simpson led the others out of the room. Kate gazed at Alex. ‘Do you think I’ve upset her?’ The words were coated with a thick layer of pseudo-innocence. ‘She fled as if she had a firework up her bum.’
‘Do you care?’ he asked.
‘No. I just need to blot the stems of my flowers, then we can be off.’
While she blotted, his arms encircled her waist. ‘You’re magnificent,’ he whispered. ‘And you look almost edible.’
‘As do you. Let’s go and make sure they get married.’
On Bold Street, Amber Simpson hid in a recessed doorway and watched as the dynamic duo walked towards the company parking area. If Kate Price would just remove herself from the picture, he would need comforting, wouldn’t he? Or if someone were to remove the damned woman deliberately . . . The wheels in her head began to move. Was she on the verge of creating a plan? She loved plans.
Monica was strangely restless in fits and starts. Her first meeting with Tim Dyson, psychologist and wonderfully sarcastic twit, had given her much food for thought. He was probably right about being qualified in talking shit, shite and sugar, because he dealt all the time with people who were more than merely troubled. According to Kate, Tim was a real psychiatrist who worked in real hospitals, so he must have come across all kinds during his career.
She was doing a bit of crocheting – not the lacy type that might trap little fingers, but closer work that imitated knitting. The true beauty of crochet lay in the fact that she couldn’t drop a stitch, so she could throw it onto the coffee table whenever she got fed up. And she got fed up with monotonous frequency.
‘Patience has never been my thing,’ she told the shawl she was working on. She had to make it her thing. She was thirty-four, she had four children and was about to become a grandmother. Things needed sorting out, and she wanted somebody to talk to now, this minute. The security guards seldom bothered her, and she didn’t have much to say to them, so the house was echoey and empty once the trades had left for the day.
‘Weekends are long, too,’ she advised the fireplace. ‘I’m sure I get two Saturdays and two Sundays rattling about in here by myself. I need a bloke – my bloke.’ She wanted Pete, but she wasn’t yet fit for Pete. How and when would she be in a condition to act like a wife? She was still fertile – did she want to risk a fifth pregnancy? The pill? She was terrified of the bloody pill.
She stood in the hallway and looked at the longest ladder she’d ever seen. Staircases hadn’t gone in yet, so two wooden contraptions acted the part, and one of them had to go all the way up into the gods. ‘Right. I’ll have a look at that floor, see if he’s shaped up to the job. If he hasn’t, I’m getting a Pole. A Polish person, though a fireman’s pole would make life easier on the way down.’
The second floor flat was looking good. The kitchen needed only kickboards and some tiling, while the bathroom was superb – a free-standing bath with clawed feet, a massive shower stall, twin washbasins that stood on top of a counter, all stark white and grey, with a touch of colour among the tiles. Lovely.
On hands and knees, Monica crawled about the light oak floor in the living area, making as sure as possible that it was flat and laid properly. It was good, so he’d left her no excuse to sack him. ‘Bugger,’ she muttered. ‘I was looking forward to that.’
After climbing down the oversized ladder, she attacked the shorter version which led to the first floor apartment. This one was still having its first fix completed – plumbing, electricity and gas. The layout was similar to the one she’d just visited; both were to have a little balcony to accommodate a small table and two chairs. The ground floor would be getting a wooden deck, while each flat would own a piece of the huge garden.
Monica loved this house, but she was becoming homesick. She missed the background music of kids arguing and laughing; she missed her husband and their own place. Neighbours? Surely she could make an effort, befriend somebody, admit that she’d been crazy?
In her temporary home on the ground floor, she made herself a pot of tea and re-addressed the shawl. If she didn’t buck up, Kylie’s baby might arrive before the article got finished. A grandmother at thirty-four? Suddenly, she found herself grinning. She wouldn’t be the old granny sitting in a corner, the one who got invited at Christmas or New Year. ‘I am going to get myself right,’ she whispered. ‘I’m going to be as good a mother and grandma as I possibly can be, because I’m having help.’ Yes, Tim would show her the way. As for the being a wife bit – well, she might risk the pill after all.
She was just about to switch on the DVD player to continue watching Gone with the Wind. The title had always been a joke to her, and she had often aired the opinion that indigestion tablets hadn’t been invented back in those days, so everybody was gone with the trapped wind. These days, she was trying to better herself, and there were several films Kate had suggested she watch. The next would be Wuthering Heights. What the hell was wuthering? Was it withering with a u instead of the i? Was it dithering, or wondering, or weathering? Maybe wuthering was a Yorkshire word; they talked funny, them Yorkshire folk.
With the remote poised ready to switch on the television, Monica heard something in the hallway. It sounded like a letter landing in the
wire basket on the inside of the door. She also heard Alan, the security man, dashing out of an old wash house that now acted as a bedsitter. ‘Funny bloody time for a postman,’ he muttered as he ran towards the front door.
He returned and spoke to Monica. ‘This is for a Mrs Latimer,’ he said. ‘There was nobody at the door when I opened it. What do we do about it? Do you want me to drive it round to Mrs Price tomorrow?’
‘I’ll phone her. Go in the kitchen and make yourself a brew while I talk to her.’ But she didn’t talk to her. It was after ten o’clock, and the newly married couple might have gone to bed, so she sent a text informing Kate that a letter had arrived hand delivered, stampless and addressed to somebody called Latimer. She pressed Send and accepted a cup of tea from Alan. ‘Sit here for a bit,’ she said. ‘I’m getting fed up with crochet and Gone with the Wind.’
‘Gone with the Wind?’ he asked incredulously. ‘That film’s older than Adam.’
‘You don’t need to tell me. See, it’s North America against the Southern states, Bible belt, slave owners, half bad men and half daft buggers. But you can’t tell who’s what in the film, cos they’re all covered in brown. There’s blue and there’s grey, but they’re all messed up in brown muck and dust and they keep dying. It must have been one of the first films in colour.’
‘There’s the Southern drawl,’ Alan reminded her.
‘Nobody says much apart from the main ones like Rhett and Scarlett. The rest are all too busy dying. I worry about the horses.’ Her phone rang, so Alan made himself scarce.
It was Kate. ‘Monica.’
‘That’s me. There’s a letter just come. Alan ran right through the house, but whoever pushed it through done a runner, too. It just says Mrs Latimer.’
Kate paused for a second or two. ‘Open it, please.’
It was Monica’s turn to hesitate. ‘Are you sure? What if it’s personal, like? I mean . . . I don’t know what I mean. Anyway, who’s Mrs Latimer?’
‘I was. Open it and read it to me, please. You’re one of the few I’d trust with my life. Just do it.’
Monica complied. ‘Dear Mrs Latimer, This is being smuggled out by my mate Charlie, what’s getting out of Walton today. I am going to send you a visiting order because I need to tell you some stuff. I know you was treated bad by Jim and I don’t want you to suffer no more. With respect, I just want to say sorry about what happened to the kiddy, and this is my way of trying to set things easy in your mind. Eric Mansell.’ Monica paused. ‘You all right, queen?’
‘I don’t know. I’m going to talk to Alex. I’ve never visited a prison before.’
‘Oh, you’ll be OK. Take nothing in – they rummage through your things sometimes. I went once for Beryl next door down the Dingle. She was the nearest thing to a mam I ever had, taught me to crochet and make pies. Her Ned was in for stripping lead off church roofs. I went to Walton when she was in the ozzy with vericlose veins. Like blue ropes, they were.’ Why was she nattering on? ‘It was all right apart from being herded like sheep into a holding area. Find two forms of identification with Latimer on them.’ She waited. ‘Kate?’
‘I’m still here. I have a credit card that’s still just about in date, and recent utility bills from my London house. They should do, yes?’
‘Yes. I’ll . . . er . . . I’ll let you go and talk to Alex, then.’
The call ended. Monica stared at the phone as if expecting it to tell her more. Posh people knew criminals, too.
Alan tapped on the open door. ‘You all right, Monica?’
‘I think so.’
‘What about that letter?’
Monica shrugged. ‘Kate was married to a Latimer, but he died. I read it out to her cos she asked me to.’
He opened his mouth as if intending to say more, but thought better of it. He was security, no more, no less, and letters were none of his business.
There’s a long, long and very high wall. I suppose most prisons have the same arrangement. I’m sitting here holding fast to Alex’s hand; there is nothing more to say, so we remain silent. Women and children alight from a bus; I could never drag Amelia to a place like this. Some people look rather drab and poor, possibly because there’s no income, since Daddy is locked away. Others are well dressed and wearing makeup, but these women are young and filled with false hope for their contained men.
Alexander James Price is tense; I can tell by the set of his jaw. Of course, he wanted this to happen in a different way and, at first, demanded to telephone the prison and remind them of the nature of Mansell’s offence, but I refused to allow that. Then he suggested obtaining a visiting order for himself, but that idea was stupid, since none of us was sure how to go about it.
Perhaps the wardens will recognize my old surname and disallow the visit anyway, but there’s only one way to find out. I tell Alex I must go now, and he points to a side road whose very ordinary semi-detached council houses seem at odds with the huge building to our left. He tells me he will park round the corner.
After the promised herding of visitors and when I have proved my identity, a mountainous man informs me that I am Mansell’s first visitor. ‘So you live in London, then?’
‘Yes.’ I riffle through the imagination section of my brain, which seems rather arid at the present time. ‘My parents know his,’ I manage. ‘They must have told the Mansells I was about to visit Liverpool, and given them the address—’
‘I see. In you go then, Mrs Latimer.’
So in I go.
Twenty minutes later, I’m outside again and talking to my mother in France. I tell her what I’ve just discovered, my heart going at ninety miles an hour, sweat pouring down my face. When the call is ended, I walk to the edge of the pavement to cross the road. Alex is just round the corner. We must pack and get to France right away, because my father is ill and Mum and Amelia can’t come home without him.
And that’s when a car driving on the wrong side of the road hits me.
Twelve
I hear it and race round the corner on foot; my darling girl lies in the road like a broken doll. Oh, God, no, not Kate. I run to her, my shoes crunching on the remains of her mobile phone, I think. I think? I can’t think. Mental paralysis.
A woman – not young, steely gray hair – walks from the prison towards us. ‘I followed her,’ she says. ‘She was in shock; I thought she might fall over in a faint . . .’ Words, words, more stupid words. Fear rips at my throat, my stomach, my head.
999. My fingers are rigid. 999. Why is this woman talking to me? I order police and ambulance, but we need a miracle, divine intervention. There’s blood coming from her head. One of her legs is wrong. Bone protrudes from a calf. I don’t know what to do. 999, yes, I’ve done that. Where are they? Where is God?
The woman bends and touches my Kate’s wrist. ‘Her heart’s still working, son. I can tell you this much – she got run over deliberate. Green car, wrong side of the road. No accident.’
Green car. I saw a green car passing the end of the avenue where I . . . ‘Don’t move her,’ I manage to say. She’s damaged, too damaged for the likes of me to understand what needs to be done. I want to pick her up, give her my life, change places with her.
The experts are coming, but they’re taking their bloody time. Bloody. The pool of red is growing. Another pool of red like the one I saw . . . Stop it, Price. Bugger the nightmares and bugger you, you selfish sod. But I know I can’t live, won’t live, without my girl. She found me and claimed me, and I reciprocated almost immediately in spite of my ridiculous rules. Don’t leave me, Kate. Me, me, me.
The woman is talking again, something about being long-sighted and a four and a seven on the number plate. ‘I’ll stop with you, lad. Then the cops can give me a ride to the station, with me being a witness. They might even take me home after.’ What’s she expecting? A round of applause? Stop this. Be grateful, Price. I thank her just as two vehicles arrive and turn off their sirens. ‘Have you come in a car?’ she asks. I nod.
‘Is it locked?’ I shake my head. ‘Round the corner. Black Mercedes.’
She takes the keys and goes to secure my Merc. ‘Wait for me,’ she orders the uniformed policemen. ‘I seen it. I seen it all. Attempted murder.’ She dashes off at a speed that defies her age. That’s a good woman, bless her.
A policeman asks me if I am a witness, and I tell him I’m an ear rather than an eye witness.
I can’t watch while they move Kate. When I get into the ambulance, I see she’s wearing a neck brace, she’s strapped to a hard stretcher to support her spine, and a drip is feeding something clear into an arm. A paramedic is mopping her head and talking to the hospital about O negative.
‘She’s strong,’ I say, hope audible in my voice. ‘Stronger than I am.’
‘Are you her husband?’
The truth is required. ‘I will be very soon.’ I hope.
He awards me a hint of a smile. ‘You’ll have to wait till they get the pot off her leg unless you want her to hop up the aisle.’
I summon some courage. ‘Is she bleeding internally?’
‘Possibly.’
We scream through the streets, probably defying every rule of the road, but that’s OK, because we are an ambulance and there’s a police car behind us. Kate is now wearing an oxygen mask. She’s so very pale, and her curls are matted with blood. The hand I am holding is cold. Don’t die, sweetheart; dying isn’t part of the picture, not yet, not for years. Stay with me. Was that Shakespeare’s Sister?
‘Stop,’ the paramedic yells suddenly.
When the vehicle is stationary, he pushes something into my precious girl’s chest. He looks at me. ‘Punctured lung; just getting air out of her cavity. Try not to worry, because this is par for the course in road accidents.’
‘Tell me she’ll make it,’ I beg. One lung. Firing on one cylinder only.
‘We’ll do our damnedest. There’s a team preparing for her right this minute. Just try to keep calm – she might be able to hear us.’
For the Love of Liverpool Page 21