Kezia had found some young friends and had wandered off to look at something in the Youth Centre. Louise took her opportunity.
“Excuse me,” Louise said to Mrs Johnston. “I just need to remind Father Larkin of something.”
Father Larkin freed himself to talk to Louise, towards whom he had much sympathy.
“Father, I could not go to Confession, and yet I am sorely troubled and seek guidance,” said Louise, while wondering how much she could tell the priest, who was younger than her. She need not have worried. There was a small conference room at the front of the Church Hall where they could talk in private. Once started, Louise bared her soul.
When Louise had finished Father Larkin advised her to go to the police while things were fresh in her mind and to settle her conscience before God and seek His guidance. As far as Father Larkin was concerned, she was sinned against and not a sinner.
Kezia did not mind her mother’s silence as they walked slowly home. There was something big on her mother’s mind otherwise why would you want to go to church when you had been out all night?
Louise was silent because she wanted to ponder the priest’s advice, that she should resolve the guilt her drunken or drugged action had generated, and she should tell the police what had happened to her.
When they got home, Frank was in the living room watching a recording of a game of cricket from the night before. Although Kezia went to her room to give her parents some space, neither Frank nor Louise addressed the big question of ‘Where were you?’
“Good party?” asked Frank.
“Met some nice people,” answered Louise as she sat on the sofa beside him. “Strange time for a party, in the week after New Year’s Eve. What about you. Enjoy it?”
“Always enjoy free booze,” Frank answered. “As much as you want. On the house.”
“Who organised it? Nigel?” Louise chose not to mention Stuart Larcombe.
“Yeah. Nah. Nigel did most of the running. He’s a good organiser. Larcombe. I do a lot of work for him. He wants me to take on a supermarket. All pre-cast concrete panels. Just do the founds, then it’s just like Lego.”
Frank had not spoken so freely about his work for a long time.
“How many permanent men will you need?” asked Louise.
“I think I can get away with five,” said Frank. “That will be a crew of six counting me. The rest I’ll pick up as I need them. Larcombe is financing everything. That’s what the party was about, Nigel getting us planning permission and consents for the work.”
Louise knew that Nigel was the Chief Planning Officer for the Council. Her friend Charlotte, Nigel’s wife, had spoken of the bonus payments Nigel got every time consents were approved.
“I’ve got to get special steel from Germany,” said Frank, who seldom spoke about his work and what his concerns were.
“Larcombe wants to go with the unspecified Chinese steel. That stuff’s rubbish,” Frank continued. “The special steel is a condition of the building permits. That, and the special foundation. Earthquake precaution. Need a raft floor now. Ring foundation. Rubber blocks and all that carry on.”
Louise had no idea what those terms meant. She was happy snuggling into his large comfortable body. She was distracted because she could smell ‘other woman’, even though Frank had shaved and showered. She was appalled but confused because of her own situation. She was not sure what to do and so did nothing, carrying on as if nothing had happened.
But it had happened. Frank had been with another woman, and to make it worse, Louise had been at the party. To make it ten times worse, Frank had not been there to protect her. She suddenly knew that things were over between them even as she suppressed the thought.
Frank seemed pleasant this morning, so it was not the time for a row. ‘Go with the flow,’ she thought as she put her arms around Frank.
He was a large man, with a big beer belly. He had been distant and critical lately, as if he had the world on his shoulders. Her feelings turned upside down again as she thought of her children and how painful separation had been for Kezia when she left Julian Ricciardello for the same reason. Could she manage to stay for another ten years?
Probably. Really, Frank wasn’t too bad. A bit of a hard man but if you did as you were told, you were fine. She could do that until the kids left home. Kezia would go soon, and Alexander in about ten years. She could do it. She snuggled into him just as the front door banged open and Mr Eight came charging in.
“Hi Alec,” said Frank. Louise always called him Alexander. Frank used Alec quite a lot of the time. “What have you been up to?”
Alexander crashed on top of Louise and Frank and put his arms around them both. After a time, Louise broke from the cuddle and went to make a pot of tea. She felt Alexander’s arrival had interrupted something Frank and she had not known for a long time. Perhaps it wasn’t all over for them after all.
‘Maybe tonight,’ she thought as she began preparing lunch for everyone.
CHAPTER 9.
Kezia was in her room. Although it was still school holidays, she was reading her biology textbooks for the new school year in three weeks time. Naturally good with figures, she could follow the chemistry formulas with ease. She wanted an A this year. She had her results for Level One. They were excellent. Next she needed Level Two to get into her university course the following year. Thirteen months seemed like a lifetime. Sixteen now with a birthday in February, he would be eighteen by the time classes started.
She listened to the slow and lazy conversation of her parents, which, for the first time in ages, seemed calm and loving. She hated Frank’s caustic comments whenever her mother did anything, and the way he treated her when she was feeling emotional or unwell.
‘He’s a typical beer swilling loud mouthed Kiwi male,’ she thought. ’He just doesn’t understand women; thinks they are the same as men. Toughen up is his mantra.’ She liked the word mantra; it was her new word and she used it whenever she could.
Hearing her mother preparing lunch, she slipped out of the house and along to Mrs Hohepa’s.
“Tena koe Kezia,” said Mrs Hohepa as she opened the door. “Come in, come in. Kei te pēhea koe? How are you?”
Annette Hohepa was an old woman in her seventies. Her honey coloured skin was smooth and firm. Her eyes were like those of a horse, brown with large whites when she rolled them. She was a pleasant lady who seemed to take everything in her stride. She was always dressed in a long black skirt, a checkered shirt that hung down over the skirt, and a black cardigan which she kept unbuttoned. Her shining hair was still black but now had silver threads in it.
“Kei te pai au. I am good thank you, Mrs Hohepa,” said Kezia. “I’ve come to ask a favour.”
Frank would be furious if he heard Kezia use any Maori phrases. ‘This is an English country,’ he would say. ‘If you can’t speak the Queen’s English, go back where you came from.’ He said that for all people he considered foreign, whether Maori or German or Arab.
“As long as it doesn’t involve your father,” said Mrs Hohepa.
“Step father, Kuia,” said Kezia, paying respect to the older lady’s status. “He’s my step father.”
“Whatever,” Mrs Hohepa replied. “How can I help?”
“Mrs Hohepa, Frank doesn’t like Mum doing the garden,” said Kezia. “He’s locked all the tools away. The garden hose as well.”
Mrs Hohepa waited. ‘Do I need this?’ she thought as she anticipated what might come next.
“Could I please borrow a fork and a spade so I can work on the garden after school while Mum and Frank are at work?” said Kezia in a rush.
“Kezia, ever since Mr Copperfield pushed me off your front step, I’ve been scared of him,” said Mrs Hohepa. “What if he finds out?”
Kezia had not thought of this.
“I’ll say I borrowed the gear from a school friend, maybe say it’s part of a school project?”
“You’d better be sure you’re telling the
truth, young lady. Mr Copperfield can be a nasty piece of work, if you don’t mind my saying so. You would be better saying you borrowed from me. I can handle him, never you fear.”
Mrs Hohepa was in her seventies. She had a man come in for the heavy work but did everything else in the garden herself. In other circumstances, she might have offered to help the young wahine in the garden, but given Mr Copperfield’s temper, it would be better to stay out of family affairs. Lending gardening tools would be all right. Neighbours did that sort of thing. She could pretend not to have known that Mr Copperfield had locked things away. At least Louise’s garden would be tidy.
Mrs Hohepa led the way round to her garden shed at the rear of the property. Tall shrubs surrounded a lawn which seemed to Kezia to be smaller than she remembered. The raised bed of special herbs was flourishing.
It seemed to Kezia that Mrs Hohepa could read her mind. “I have had a man make the shrubbery bigger and the lawn smaller,” she said. “Kezia, it must be five years since you were last back here.”
Kezia remembered that she had stayed with Mrs Hohepa when Alexander had been born. She had played with Mrs Hohepa’s grandaughter Marama, a name that meant moon, the light of the world. Marama was older than Kezia but Kezia had recently found her on Facebook. Marama had been with her grandmother because of some trouble at home in Kaeo or Kerikeri; somewhere up North. It was seven years ago, and Marama was now married, with children.
“I’ll bring the things back each night,” said Kezia. “I don’t want them locked up by Frank.”
“Put the things on the ground under the tree fuchsia inside the gate,” said Mrs Hohepa. “Nobody will bother them there.”
In the garden of the presbytery next to the church, Father Raymond was trimming the edges of the lawn. A man came to cut the grass but he did not do the edges. Father Raymond had Louise on his mind and another service later in the day and again in the evening. He should be thinking about the services, but Louise kept intruding on his mind so he went into the garden to find a small job that would not make him sweat. He had advised Louise to follow her conscience, and to tell the police what had happened. Although Louise had not been a regular attender recently, Father Raymond knew from the ladies who did the flowers in the church that she had been when married to Julian Ricciardello. He had shushed the lady who criticised Mr Copperfield.
Father Raymond Larcombe was a man in his thirties who managed the parish church in the Finisterre area. He was of medium height with sandy brown hair and a ruddy round face that came from his Irish roots. He got pleasure from the garden, a place he found close to God.
‘Have I done the right thing?’ he thought. ‘What a terrible thing to happen to such a nice lady. Still, she seems not to have been hurt, except emotionally. Let’s hope she tells the authorities so this terrible thing can’t happen too others.’
Father Raymond Larkin made up his mind to put Louise on his visiting list. He could only offer support through what was going to be a difficult time for her. Hopefully, he had healed some of the awful guilt she had suffered from all the time he had known her. Regular visits might give her some comfort.
THE STALKER
where things get nasty.
CHAPTER 10.
Charlotte called herself Mrs Charlotte Jones, wife of the Town Planner. Charlotte Jones was really still Charlotte Hoar, a name she hated. Her mother created a fuss whenever Charlotte suggested she should change her name by deed poll so she simply let people assume she was Nigel Jones’s wife.
Known since high school as Charlotte the Harlot, she could see no reason why she should not live up to her name and sleep with any man she desired. Nigel seemed to have come to terms with her needs. Anyway, the big deal about not being married meant that they could each do as they pleased, and when they thought the grass was greener, they could leave.
Her nickname came about not only because of her family name but also because of Mr Bannister. She was in the softball team coached by Mrs Prendergast who taught Home Economics, as it was called when Charlotte was a teen. When Mrs Prendergast left the school, Mr Bannister took over coaching some of the sports teams, including girls' softball.
It was not long before she was helping Mr Bannister put away the sports gear. He asked her to stay and help him put things in shelves in the store room after the girls had brought in all the sports gear they had been using for their practice sessions. This quickly became a routine. Charlotte's mother and father ran a stables and a stud farm. Charlotte knew that they would not be in until evening and being with Mr Bannister was rather nice. She got a warm feeling when she was with him. He was very tall, with dark hair and brown eyes. His sports shirt clung tightly to him and showed off his muscles. He was strong and he was sexy and it did not take him long to make his move. Charlotte was fifteen.
It started with touching Mr Bannister's biceps, then his chest, then his penis and ended in sex on the padded jumping mats on the floor of the store room.
Mr Bannister was married then, and had two children.
“If I pay you, can you come and babysit the children after school?” he asked. “My wife works until five thirty, in a shop in town, and some days I can't get home in time for the kids.”
Alice Hoar thought it was a good idea to work for the Bannisters after school. It would teach Charlotte the value of money and might ease the awful tantrums Charlotte was throwing. Tom Hoar knew David Bannister and liked him. Bannister was busy at school, working hard to make his way professionally, which meant taking on time consuming responsibilities. They were both in Jaycees and had the odd beer together.
Charlotte liked the children, who were eight and ten at that time. They were old enough to be independent but they needed someone to keep an eye on them and monitor who they were with, and what they were doing.
Roland and Amber generally went to play with friends after school. They would arrive home, check in with Charlotte, drink a glass of milk and eat a cake or biscuit, then go off until tea time. Sometimes they stayed in the house and watched videos on the television set in Roland's room while Charlotte prepared the evening meal for the family.
When the children were playing elsewhere, Charlotte would call him and Mr Bannister would sneak home and take Charlotte to bed in the spare room, which had a double bed, before going back to his office at the back of the classroom where he taught maths, or to the store room in the gym, which also had some office space. Alice Bannister never checked the sheets or wondered why her husband David insisted in scented air cleaners in every room; or perhaps she did, with some other girl at some other time when Mr Bannister had finished with Charlotte. Perhaps that was why Alice Bannister had left with the children, leaving David Bannister on his own.
The girls in her class began to mutter about the time Charlotte spent putting away the sports equipment. Some put two and two together when Charlotte began house keeping for the Bannisters, although she made it clear that she made the beds, prepared an evening meal ready for when Mrs Bannister came home from work, and kept an eye on the children. Mr Bannister usually came home after Alice Bannister because he taught mathematics as well as sports and gym and had a lot of marking and preparation that kept him in his office.
Then came trouble, as so often happens with teenage girls who think they are in love with the same male. Mr Bannister began an affair with Louise Moore, who later became Louise Copperfield. Mr Bannister came home less frequently in the afternoons while the children were otherwise engaged, and Charlotte saw less and less of him. Then Mr Bannister told Charlotte that they had had fun, she had enjoyed herself and had come to no harm, but people were beginning to talk so they had to end the affair and the housekeeping. Their thirteen month affair was over.
Charlotte's heart was broken. All the talk about divorcing his wife had been a lie, Bannister had just used her. What he said was true, apart from the guilt and the shame and the constant fear of discovery, her body had enjoyed the episodes. Charlotte turned to anyone who could replace M
r Bannister.
And that is why the girls called her Charlotte the Harlot.
Charlotte also developed a visceral jealousy of Louise Moore. Both had a deep secret that no-one should ever know, both had to remain friends in case the other denounced her. Louise knew about Charlotte's affair with Mr Bannister and wished that things had not happened as they had, whereas as Charlotte's feelings hardened towards Louise, believing that Louise had engineered matters so she could take Charlotte’s man away from her. Charlotte became bitterly vengeful on the inside but sweet and pleasant on the outside. She began to do sneaky things to hurt Louise, and got pleasure from the fact that Louise never realised who was being spiteful to her.
In a small town, you have to get along with people and just suck in your feelings. Louise was not stupid. She realised that much of the pain and embarrassment she suffered was caused by Charlotte but she decided to endure in the hope that Charlotte would grow out of her pique as time went by.
Time did go by, Charlotte’s nastiness disappeared, or at least became less frequent, and eventually both girls led separate lives, in touch with each other but not close. Louise married Julian Ricciardello and Charlotte continued to sleep with any male that caught her eye. Louise had Kezia, divorced Ricky Ricciardello for being unfaithful and went on to marry the rugby star, Frank Copperfield. Charlotte had eventually partnered Nigel Jones because he was kind and loving, and because she could manipulate him.
She was taller than him, which did not bother Nigel but was a constant worry to Charlotte. She sent texts to him almost hourly, just to keep him in line. If she did not get a reply within a short time she wanted to know why. Nigel lessened the ‘where are you?’ and ‘what are you doing now?’ texts by carefully enumerating his daily programme, even texting it to her so he could say ‘I told you that, dear’.
The Stalking of Louise Copperfield Page 5