by Frances Pye
“Girls. I said to your room. Quickly.”
Moo and Tilly heard the serious note in Mara’s voice. And disappeared upstairs.
“May I?” Ridgeman asked before dusting off one of Mara’s dilapidated chairs and sitting down. Clearly, he didn’t think his question needed an answer. “Actually, I’m glad to have seen the two Misses Moore. Their grandparents wanted me to check on their welfare.”
“As you can see, they’re fine,” Mara said through gritted teeth. What a nerve. Check on their welfare indeed.
Ridgeman put his briefcase on his knee, opened it, and pulled out a sheaf of papers. “Now. To business. Mr. and Mrs. Moore are sure you won’t want to go to court. It is always a long, messy, expensive business, and I gather you have very few resources. And the press are bound to get involved. Given your previous, er, occupation. So my clients have empowered me to offer you a deal.”
Mara moved to sit opposite the lawyer. A deal. Well, if the Moores were suggesting it, it was bound to be to her detriment. But if they were willing to talk, surely they could sort this out. No need for courts or lawyers or summonses. Or press. “I’d be more than willing to talk to them, arrange for them to see more of the girls, perhaps. I am aware of how important grandparents are in a child’s life and I know that Moo and Tilly enjoy seeing their Nan and Pops.” Mara prepared herself to make a major concession. But it was worth it if it stopped them pursuing their claim for full custody. “I would even consider sharing them. You know, letting the Moores have them every other weekend. That sort of thing.” Mara’s voice drifted off into silence. The lawyer continued to rustle through his papers. Either he hadn’t listened to a word she’d said or he was completely uninterested.
Finally, he looked up, a document in his hand. “Ah. Right. Now. Mr. and Mrs. Moore will go no further with their suit if you will voluntarily give them full custody of,” the lawyer paused and flicked through the document he was holding, “ah, yes, Miranda and Matilda.”
“They must be joking.” That wasn’t a deal. That was victory for them. Total and utter victory.
“Now, should you agree to do this, they will allow your daughters to visit you, unsupervised, once a week. And for one weekend in every four.”
“But they’re my children. Mine. Not theirs. They can’t do this.” Mara was dumbfounded. Couldn’t the lawyer see that this was not right?
“They are concerned about letting you continue to see your daughters with no one else present, considering the moral issues involved, but feel their generosity is justified if it stops their granddaughters being dragged into court.”
“Generosity! Moral issues!” Mara couldn’t believe what she was hearing. The Moores seemed to think she should be grateful to them for letting her see her daughters once a week.
Ridgeman ignored her outburst and carried on, unmoved. “If, however, you refuse their offer, they will continue with their case and ensure that you are only allowed to see, ah, Miranda and Matilda under supervision for an afternoon every two months.”
“They can’t expect…You can’t expect me to agree to this. It’s horrible. I’m their mother.”
“If you’d like to take a look at this?” Ridgeman handed Mara one of the documents he had taken out of his briefcase. “The place where you are to sign has been marked.” He pointed to a yellow plastic clip placed on the side of the paper, toward the end of the sheaf. He reached into his inner pocket, pulled out an expensive-looking marbled fountain pen, unclipped it, and held it out to a stunned Mara.
“This is wrong. Wrong. Surely you can see that?”
“If you’d like to take a look at the contract?”
“How can you come to my house and try to get me to sign something like this?” Mara’s shock was beginning to wear off.
“I have also been authorized to offer you a substantial sum of money.” Ridgeman delved into his briefcase again and came up with a check for £25,000.
Mara lost her temper so very, very rarely that the world believed her to be the most placid of people. Few knew that underneath all that serenity and calmness, she could mix it with the best of them. It might be only once or twice a year, but when given real cause, she could and would erupt.
“You bastard. You want me to sell my children.”
“Of course not.”
“No? You want me to take money in return for their company.”
“I wouldn’t put it like that.”
“How would you put it, exactly?”
“The money is a…contribution.”
“Is it? A contribution. And who thought of that? You? Or the Moores? Because I’d call it blood money. For twenty-five thousand pounds, you want me to sign my daughters over to them. I thought that slavery had been abolished in this country. I thought buying and selling human beings was illegal. Clearly, I was wrong. You bastard. Get out of here.” By now, Mara was standing over Ridgeman, her arms akimbo, her face flushed with rage.
“Mrs. Moore. Please. There is no need for this. Your parents-in-law just thought the check might help.” Ridgeman made an attempt to calm things down.
“I hope for your sake you believe that. But I don’t think you do. I think you’re another sleazy lawyer raking in money off other people’s misery.”
The lawyer was beginning to look as if he’d been caught in some very high-powered headlights. He slithered out of his chair.
“I assure you, no one intended to upset you.” He closed his briefcase, then picked it up. He put the contract and check on a small, junk-shop bamboo table. “In case you change your mind,” he said, and walked away.
“You must be deaf. For the last time, I won’t sell my children!” Mara ran after him and thrust the papers at him. He ignored them and they fluttered to the floor. “Go away!” Mara shouted as Ridgeman reached the door and opened it. “Get out!”
The door closed softly behind the lawyer.
“Who was that, Mum?”
“Why were you shouting?”
Mara looked around in a panic. The girls were hanging over the banisters, looking down into the living room. She’d forgotten about them in the heat of her anger. She forced herself to calm down. “Nothing. Just a…a salesman.” She didn’t want the girls to know about the Moores and their threatened lawsuit. So far, she’d managed to head off any questions about what had happened to their Nan and Pops by telling Moo and Tilly that they’d gone on a long holiday, but sooner or later the girls would find out something was wrong. And she wanted it to be later. Whatever happened, she didn’t want Moo and Tilly hurt.
“What was he selling? You sounded really mad.”
“Yeah. You told him to get out.”
“Er…meat. Pork chops. And…and lamb.”
“Ugh. Disgusting.”
“What are those papers?”
“Just…leaflets. I’ll throw them away.” Mara rushed to pick up the thick, detailed contract and the thin insult of the check. “I’m late with dinner, girls. You can use the PlayStation for an extra half hour.”
“Yay!”
“Cool!”
The girls dashed to the console. Mara walked into the kitchen and ritually ripped both check and contract to shreds before slumping against the counter. All the energy her rage had lent her had drained away. The Moores were not going to give up. She had to find some money, get a lawyer of her own. And stop them. Or she might lose the girls.
THE FOLLOWING afternoon, as Mara took Amy’s weekly shopping into the old lady’s house, she was no closer to finding a solution to her problems. She couldn’t even decide where to start. She’d tried to reassure herself that if the Moores thought they could get the girls, they’d have gone to court already, but it didn’t help. The glass-half-empty side of her kept insisting that of course a judge would decide against a woman who’d been an expensive prostitute, and for Dorothy and George with their churchgoing respectability and their power to feed and clothe and house the girls without needing to grow their own food or collect wood from the local pa
rk to make a fire or clean other people’s homes. Even Mara’s job might prejudice a judge against her—she had no idea. And wouldn’t unless she consulted a lawyer.
She walked down the dim hallway, into the old-fashioned, cream-and-green kitchen. Amy hadn’t changed anything since she’d moved there in the 1940s. The sink was wide, shallow porcelain, the stove ivory enamel, the floor cold flagstones. Mara set the shopping bags on the wax-cloth-covered table and started to put things away.
“Mara? Mara! Is that you?” The old lady sounded terrified.
Mara rushed into the living room, horrified that she’d forgotten to say anything when she’d come in. “I’m sorry, Amy. I don’t know what I was thinking. Of course it’s me.” Mara’s voice was distorted by unshed tears.
“Are you all right, dear?”
“Yes…no…” Mara started to cry. The pressure had been building since the lawyer’s visit last night and she could hold it in no longer.
“Come here.” Amy was in her usual armchair. Mara staggered over and knelt at her feet. The old lady reached out and stroked her hair. Mara buried her head in her neighbor’s lap and continued to sob. “That’s right. Get everything out.”
Finally, Mara lifted her head. She swallowed and wiped her face with a tissue her friend handed her. “I’m okay.”
The old lady snorted. “What is it, dear? Is there anything I can do to help?”
“I’m not sure anyone can. It’s…it’s Moo and Tilly’s grandparents. They’re trying to get the girls. If they win, they’ll only let me see them once a week, if I’m lucky. Once a week. How can they do that? How can they want to steal all the joy in my life from me?” Mara sounded close to hysteria.
“You’re Moo and Tilly’s mother. They can’t take them away from you, it wouldn’t be right.”
“They sent this lawyer.” Mara looked up into her neighbor’s kind, generous face and decided to tell her. She couldn’t hold all this in any longer, she had to talk to someone, and Amy often felt more like mother than friend. Plus, she had always been tolerant of others’ sins. “They found out about something I did before I met Jake. Something they think means I can’t be a good mother. A proper mother.”
“Rubbish. You’re the best mother I’ve ever seen. Whatever it was you did, dear, it can’t change that.”
“I…I was…a call girl.”
“Were you? Did you enjoy it?”
“You don’t understand. I was a prostitute.”
“Does that make you an unfit mother?”
“Amy! I sold myself to men for money.”
“I know what a call girl is, dear.”
“And you aren’t shocked?”
“I went with U.S. servicemen for nylons and chocolate and cigarettes during the war. We all did. And I can’t see why that’s so different. Just money instead of things.”
“Oh, Amy.” Mara burst into tears again. “You’re wonderful.”
The old lady let Mara cry for a bit, then offered another tissue. “Dry your eyes, dear. Yes, that’s it. Now, you need to be practical. You need a lawyer.”
“I know. But it’ll cost hundreds and hundreds of pounds.”
“How much exactly?”
“About five hundred.”
“Hmm. That is a lot. What about those friends of yours? Lily, is it, and the others?”
“They’re all struggling themselves at the moment.”
“And so you can’t ask them.”
“No. Besides, even if I could borrow the money from Jules or Lily, how would I ever pay it back? On what I earn?”
“No, I see. I do see. You need a fairy godmother, dear.”
“And I’m all out of them.” Mara saw the concern in her friend’s face and forced a smile. “Don’t you worry about this. I’ll find a way out of it.”
“I only wish I could do something to help.”
“You have. You’ve listened to me, let me pour out all my woes. Not judged me like other people might have.” She leaned over to kiss the old lady on her cheek. “Thank you.”
“Anytime, dear.”
Mara got to her feet. “I better finish putting away the shopping. The girls will be back from school soon. Don’t you worry. Something will turn up.”
twenty-three
Sean looked up at the dilapidated old factory. Hidden away off the A4 in Brentford, it had not been used for years. The downstairs windows were boarded up, the grounds were a mess of weeds and overgrown shrubs, and the gates had almost rusted away.
But it had definite possibilities. First of all, it was small. That and the fact that it hadn’t been easy to find had stopped its being snapped up by one of the bigger companies. Second, he had worked with the same council before and knew a lot of the planning-applications people. And third, it was fabulous. Or it could be. Erected sometime between the wars, probably in the 1920s, although he couldn’t be sure, it still had its original windows, was built of redbrick rather than the unattractive yellow London stock, and looked, from what he could see between the boards on the windows, to have some amazing iron beams and pillars supporting the floors. And it was all due to Terry that he’d found it.
He’d not been looking forward to spending the day with her. He loved his occasional Sundays wandering through London alone and wouldn’t have chosen to take a companion, but Terry had persuaded him to let her come along. She’d wanted to spend some time with him to encourage Paul’s belief in their pretense of being friends. And Sean had ended up enjoying it more than he could have imagined. They had crisscrossed the city, going from Battersea to Dalton, from Hackney to Hounslow, looking at the list of potential properties. The other places they’d seen had been completely unsuitable. Either too small or too large for his purposes, or just too dull to be likely to attract the kind of young, trendy, turned-on-to-industrial-architecture people who went for lofts. But Terry hadn’t complained once. In fact, she’d been more eager than he had. When he’d wanted to ignore the last place on his list and go for a pizza instead, sure that Brentford was all postwar tower blocks, 1960s houses, and square, one-story warehouses, she’d insisted on their going to take a look.
“You’re a star, you are, Terry.”
“All part of the service.”
“I mean it. I’d’ve given up. I had given up. And then this.”
“Will it work?”
“Yeah. For definite. Have to see how much it costs, of course. But everything else is right. Look at it. It’s fantastic.”
“That it is.”
“Thank God I had you with me.”
“Even though you didn’t want me to start with,” Terry teased.
“That’s not true. I did want you.”
“Liar. When you told me what you were doing today, I know it was supposed to put me off. You should have heard your voice when I asked to come.”
“I was a bit surprised. That’s all.” Sean looked worried. He hadn’t meant to be nasty.
“Don’t worry. I’m only teasing. And now that you know I’m interested and I won’t want to stop for a drink every five minutes or complain that I’m bored all the time, will you let me come again?”
“Let you? I’ll make you. If it means I can find something like this again.” And Sean went back to staring at the factory longingly. “God, I can’t believe it. It’s perfect.”
twenty-four
Sean and Paul both revved their go-carts, ready for the off. They were two in a group of six, all racing against each other. And Sean was feeling very insecure. He’d always imagined he was a good driver, able to handle anything, but Paul beat him hands-down. The kid was amazing. A natural. He could judge speeds and distances, the spaces between go-carts, like a pro. They’d had nine races so far and he’d won every one. Sean told himself that because Paul was so much smaller, younger, and more flexible, it made it easier for him to fit his body into the ground-hugging go-cart and allowed him to do things that the tall, solid Sean couldn’t. But he knew he was only making excuses for himself. Paul was b
etter at it.
It had been an odd three weeks. Fun and strange and fascinating all at the same time. Things with Lily were better than he had ever imagined; he had been very, very careful not to tread on her oversensitive toes, and the longer that went on, the more she loosened up with him. The previous weekend, she had even felt relaxed enough to suggest that they go away together to a pretty inn in the Cotswolds.
He’d had another dinner with Jules whilst waiting for the big day and had found himself liking her more and more now that he’d seen past the intimidating, glossy surface to the vulnerable, child-hungry woman underneath. He still found her desire to have a baby in this way eccentric, but he was flattered that she wanted his sperm and determined to be as good a father as possible.
And in Terry he felt he had found a real friend. It was not just the things that they had in common—a working-class Catholic background, the astrology thing, a mutual love of London—but also that he felt no need to pretend with her. She didn’t care that he preferred beer to wine. That he would choose the Mirror over the Times. Or that his favorite meal was fish and chips followed by apple dumpling. With her, he didn’t have to feign the sophistication that he felt he had to assume for many of his clients. And for Lily and Jules. He could relax.
Paul, though, had been and still was a challenge. Sean was making progress, but it was slow. He had called him a couple of times the first two weeks. To talk about Charlton and keep him up to speed on the search for tickets. Then he had suggested the go-carting trip. Paul had been cool on the surface, unwilling to admit to being excited by the idea. But he had said yes. And here they were. Sean looked over at him, intent in his go-cart at the far end of the row. Whatever the kid might say to his mother later, he was having a great time.
The owner of the go-cart track stepped up to the line, carrying a black-and-white-checkered flag. “Ready, steady,” he shouted above the noise of the engines. Then he dropped the flag to the ground and shouted, “Go.” They were off. And naturally Paul was first to the corner….