by Jessie Keane
‘Oh, I’m fine,’ said Ruthie.
‘I’ll phone Mum,’ said Kath, and rang off.
Ruthie sat there, alone in the big Surrey house. The silence was oppressive. After a minute she got up from the couch and poured herself a Scotch.
Maureen took Kath’s call and without hesitation went and knocked at Connie’s door. After a while of waiting in the rain, with her brand-new perm going frizzy, she swore and took out her spare key and let herself in. She and Connie had had the keys to each other’s doors since the Blitz, it was no big deal. But Gawd, what a mess the place was in.
Curling her lip in disgust she went through to the lounge and there, as expected, was Connie spark out on the sofa. She was a mess. The cardigan she had on over her food-stained dress had two buttons missing. Connie’s gut was swollen, Jesus, she almost looked like she was up the duff. As if. Who in his right mind would lay a finger on Connie Bailey without fumigating her first? Connie had never been house-proud or tidy about her person, but she had now sunk to a new low. There was a trickle of drool running out of her half-open mouth.
‘Fucking hell,’ muttered Maureen, wrinkling her nose at the smell in there. Impatiently she shook Connie’s shoulder. ‘Connie! Come on girl, rise and shine.’
She shook her again. Connie’s head waggled from side to side and Maureen saw the blood in the drool. ‘Jesus,’ she said, her stomach clenching in alarm. She shook Connie once more. She couldn’t rouse her.
‘Come on Connie,’ said Maureen nervously. ‘Don’t arse around.’
But Connie was dead to the world. There were empty vodka bottles all over the front room, on the floor and on the coffee table. Fag ash everywhere too. The place was a tip. Maureen placed a tentative hand to Connie’s neck. Oh thank Christ. She wasn’t dead, anyway.
Maureen looked at Connie’s sunken cheeks and yellowish colour and thought she’d seen better-looking corpses than this. She’d laid out her own mother and she’d looked as if she might sit up and start chatting away at any moment. Poor old Mum had looked a fucking sight better dead than Connie did alive, and that was a fact. Maureen went back out to the hall and unravelled the piece of paper with Ruthie’s number on it. She phoned her first, and then she called the ambulance.
34
Annie was in Harrods poring over one of the make-up counters when someone grabbed her in a bear hug from behind. She turned and found that her new minder Donny, a Mancunian and as tough as they come, had Kieron Delaney in a headlock. Kieron’s face was turning puce. Annie touched Donny’s steely arm quickly.
‘It’s okay, I know him,’ she said.
Donny let Kieron go. Kieron clutched at his throat and took a deep breath.
‘Fucking hell,’ he gasped.
‘Give us a bit of space, will you?’ Annie told Donny, feeling irritated.
She’d never had a minder before, never wanted one, never needed one. Now Max insisted. She was Max Carter’s woman, she had to have protection day and night. She didn’t like it. Donny doubled as her driver. She had a car at her disposal, but she couldn’t drive, so Donny drove her wherever she wanted to go. Today, she wanted to go shopping and she was already in the heart of Knightsbridge so she wanted to go on foot. Donny had insisted on coming along, and now this. Kieron was getting his breath back. Annie was getting ever more irritated.
‘Sorry,’ she said to Kieron.
‘It’s okay,’ he said, his colour back to normal. He glared at Donny, who gazed impassively back at him from a few yards away.
‘Since when have you had a minder?’ asked Kieron.
Annie shrugged. She didn’t want to go there.
‘You’re looking good,’ said Kieron, regaining his composure. ‘You know, this is sort of romantic, barring the near-death by strangulation.’
‘Pardon?’
‘This is where we first met. You remember? You with your Aunt Celia, me with Orla.’ He looked around. ‘She’s here somewhere, spending like a man with no arms, God bless her. How are you, Annie? Long time no see.’
‘I’m fine,’ said Annie. ‘And you?’
‘Yeah, fine. Busy, you know. Planning another exhibition. Landscapes this time, though. No nudes.’
‘Thank God for that.’
‘Ah, you enjoyed getting into your pelt for me, don’t deny it,’ he twinkled.
‘I hated every minute of it,’ said Annie truthfully.
‘It was a great exhibition.’
‘Did you sell the lot?’
‘Everything! Even the stuff I thought I’d have to hang on my own walls.’
Annie laughed. Kieron thought how beautiful she was, exquisitely groomed and seeming almost to glow. But it was a lost opportunity. He had heard from Redmond that she had some sort of serious romantic involvement now. When pressed, Redmond had said that he’d heard Annie was involved with her sister’s husband. Sure, hadn’t Kieron always suspected that particular fire was still smouldering away? So she was with Max Carter now. He’d missed his chance with her. His taste for playing the light-hearted joker had backfired on him. He was mad as hell about it, if you wanted the truth.
‘I heard,’ he said carefully, ‘that you have a boyfriend now.’
‘That could be the case,’ said Annie reluctantly.
‘I also heard that it’s Max Carter.’
Annie shrugged.
‘I heard he’s keeping you, actually,’ said Kieron, growing annoyed at her evasiveness.
‘I have an apartment on Park Street,’ said Annie.
‘Right, right.’ Kieron felt furious now. He had expected better from her somehow. He knew how much she loved her sister. How the fuck could she do a thing like this to the poor cow? ‘And how many banks did he have to rob to pay for that?’ he asked her.
Annie’s smile faded. She turned on her heel and started to walk away. Kieron grabbed her arm. Donny was there in a flash and grabbed his.
‘Fuck it,’ said Kieron, wincing. ‘Sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. Don’t just walk off, I’m sorry.’
‘It’s okay, Donny,’ said Annie, and once again Donny dropped him like an obedient attack hound.
‘Jeez, that hurt,’ said Kieron, rubbing his arm.
‘No more than you deserved,’ said Annie, as Donny moved away again.
‘I’m just surprised, that’s all. Fuck it, I’m more than that. I’m appalled.’
‘I love him, Kieron.’
‘He’s married to your sister,’ said Kieron.
‘The marriage is dead.’
‘Oh, come on! They all say that, don’t they? My wife doesn’t understand me, we don’t sleep together any more, we have separate rooms, poor little me, won’t you let me jump your bones?’
‘Donny,’ said Annie, ‘hit him. Hit him hard.’
Donny lumbered over. Kieron backed off. The customers milled around them, getting worried about all the aggro.
‘No, stop.’ Annie shook her head. ‘I didn’t mean that. Sorry, Donny.’
Donny subsided.
‘Yeah, you great tame gorilla, give us some space here,’ said Kieron, braver now that Annie had given Donny the hard word.
‘You’ve got no right to comment on my personal life,’ said Annie.
‘I know, I know.’
‘Don’t ever do that again.’
‘I won’t. I was just …’ Kieron hesitated. He didn’t know what he’d been intending to say. That he’d been disappointed in her? Or jealous as fuck of Max bloody Carter?
‘You were just concerned for me, I know,’ said Annie.
Or that, thought Kieron, maybe he’d been intending to say that. Whatever, it was too late now. She was committed elsewhere. Still, it galled him, niggled at him like a rash he had to scratch.
‘Hello?’
It was Orla, gliding over, her green eyes bright with curiosity as she looked between Kieron and Annie. She smiled and held out a hand. Annie clocked the minder, ten paces behind her. She saw Donny clocking him too.
‘Annie Bailey
! It’s good to see you again,’ said Orla.
Annie shook Orla’s warm, dry hand in greeting.
‘I saw Kieron’s portrait of you, it’s wonderful.’
‘That’s down to the talent of the artist,’ said Annie.
‘And the beauty of the sitter, I’m sure,’ said Orla graciously. ‘Are you well, Annie?’
Annie was starkly reminded of Redmond when Orla said that. Cool, polite Redmond. They were startlingly alike. She rather missed Redmond’s weekly phone calls. She hoped Dolly was nice to him when he phoned and minded her language a bit.
‘I’m very well. And you?’
‘Ah, fine. We ought to be getting along, Kieron, if you’re ready?’
‘Yeah, sure.’ Kieron took one last lingering look at Annie. ‘Goodbye then Annie. It was nice to see you, if slightly painful.’
He grinned at her and she grinned back. His arm ached, just a bit. His heart ached too, quite a lot. But maybe he was still in with a chance.
35
All in all, Annie was pleased at how smoothly the switch had gone. She had moved into the apartment, Dolly had taken over in Limehouse. Dolly had panicked a bit at first, phoning her all the time with questions the daft bint already knew the answers to.
Annie took her up West shopping for some suitable clothes. Nothing Dolly currently owned fitted the bill. Miniskirts short enough to show her rent book, long tarty PVC boots, low-necked tops, all that had to go. Dolly didn’t like it.
‘We all have to do things we don’t like in life, Dolly love,’ said Annie. For instance, I have to have a minder, she thought, as Donny trailed behind them like a bad smell.
Annie ushered Dolly into posh Knightsbridge boutiques where the salesgirls looked at her like she was something they’d have to scrape off their shoes. No doubt about it, they had a point – Dolly looked like a tart. But when Annie showed them the money it was a different story. Suddenly they were all eager to please, they started acting like they were going to adopt Dolly and take her home.
‘Christ,’ she said as she wrestled, sweating, into yet another dress in the changing room. ‘All this fuss over a fucking frock.’
‘It’s not just a fucking frock,’ said Annie, pulling the costly thing straight and zipping Dolly up. She grabbed her shoulders from behind her and told her to look in the mirror. The oatmeal shift dress was tasteful, discreet, and it flattered Dolly’s blonde looks. ‘What do you think? You like?’
Dolly screwed up her face. ‘I dunno.’
‘Well I do. And what I say goes. So we’ll take this one, and the navy, and the pale blue. We’ll get your hair sorted too.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with my fucking hair,’ said Dolly.
‘It needs cutting.’
Dolly grabbed her flowing curly blonde locks in alarm. ‘You’re not cutting my fucking hair off. No way.’
‘A short cut will flatter your small features,’ said Annie decisively. She peered at Dolly’s face in the mirror. ‘Now you’ve packed up the fags your skin’s improving. And you’ve lovely eyes.’
Dolly stiffened. ‘You’re not a closet lezzer, are you?’
‘Don’t be daft. I’ve always thought you could be a very attractive woman, but you’re hiding behind all that sheepdog hair and half a ton of cheap make-up.’
‘Christ, this is a nightmare,’ said Dolly, but she trailed around for the rest of the day with Annie, moaning and groaning and throwing out curses like confetti. At the end of it, Annie was pleased to see that Dolly looked halfway decent. Job done.
Annie was pleased to get back to the apartment. The chap on the door in his neat red uniform nodded politely to her as she entered. God, it was nice, coming back here. It was nice to be treated right, like a real lady. It was nice to leave that fucking po-faced Donny at the door too. She took the lift up and tossed her keys into the little dish on the hall table. Max’s keys were already in there. She kicked off her courts and coat, and wandered through into the drawing room. Max was sprawled out on the couch and she joined him there, curling into him.
‘Want a drink?’ he asked.
‘No, just a cuddle.’ Annie sighed. ‘I’m knackered. I’ve been out all day with Dolly. That Donny gives me the right hump, always watching me like he does.’
‘That’s what he’s paid to do.’ Max kissed the top of her head.
‘I don’t think I’ll ever get used to it.’
‘You’ll have to.’
‘Jesus, you’re a hard taskmaster, Max Carter,’ said Annie, but she was smiling as she lifted her lips to his.
‘He comes in handy though, doesn’t he?’ Max asked against her mouth. ‘He said one of the Delaneys was bothering you the other day in Harrods.’
Annie drew back in surprise. ‘No one was bothering me,’ she said. ‘That was Kieron. The painter? He just came up and hugged me. We’re friends, Max. It’s a bit off when a friend can’t come over and say hello.’
Max smoothed down her dark hair. ‘Do you believe that old fanny? That men and women can just be “friends”?’ he asked seriously.
‘Of course I do.’ Annie was frowning at him. ‘Don’t you think they can?’
Max laughed. ‘Not where I come from. D’you reckon any of my boys would just be “friends” with a woman? The only reason any of the men I know are nice to a woman is to get her on her back.’ Max frowned. ‘That fucker’s getting far too familiar with you, if you ask me.’
Annie knew he had a point about his macho ‘boys’. Niceness was a weakness as far as they were concerned. Look at them the wrong way and they’d knock your head off. They wouldn’t understand a man like Kieron at all. They were hard men; Kieron was an artist.
‘He’s a different sort of man,’ said Annie.
Now it was Max’s turn to frown. ‘How d’you mean, different? He’s got two legs and a cock, just like the rest of us.’
‘He isn’t like that.’
‘Darlin’, we’re all like that. So you’re telling me you were laid out in his studio stark naked and he never tried it on?’
‘Of course he didn’t.’
‘There was absolutely nothing between you?’
‘No!’ For God’s sake, she didn’t realize any of this had even entered Max’s head. He couldn’t really think that she and Kieron … could he?
‘But you like him. And he’s got a charming way about him, I hear. If he can charm the birds out of the trees, why wouldn’t he charm the knickers off you?’
‘I like him. That’s it. I like him, but I love you.’
Max looked at her closely. Then he shrugged. He was supposed to say he loved her back, but he didn’t. Annie felt a bit disappointed, but she knew that a man like Max would never wear his heart on his sleeve.
‘I’ve never developed Jonjo’s knack of taking women lightly,’ said Max, slipping his hands around her neck, lifting her chin with his thumbs. His mouth came down and he kissed her, hard, bruising her lips against her teeth.
‘I know,’ she said when he drew back.
‘Fidelity’s very important to me.’
But you’re cheating on your wife, she thought. But she knew what he meant – her fidelity to him. Her total faithfulness. Anything less would disgust him and cause him loss of face among the boys, she knew that. Anything less would be unacceptable. Perhaps punishable. But she didn’t want to think about that. She had no reason to stray, she was in love with this man, she always had been. If he couldn’t trust her, that was his problem.
Maybe Kieron’s too, Annie wondered. But she brushed the thought aside.
Dolly phoned again a few days later.
‘Fuck me, not again. What is it this time?’ asked Annie, exasperated.
‘Your sister pitched up this morning looking for you. Said it was urgent, that you were to phone her on this number.’ Dolly reeled it off. Annie grabbed a pen and wrote it down. It wasn’t her mum’s number, it must be the Surrey house.
‘Oh. Okay. Thanks. Dolly?’
‘What?’
‘You didn’t give her this number, I hope?’
‘You told me not to give it out to anyone.’
‘And you didn’t.’
‘Of course I fucking didn’t.’
‘Wind your neck in, I’m only asking. I’ll give her a call. Thanks, Dolly.’
Ruthie must have been sitting right by the phone. She picked up immediately.
‘It’s me,’ said Annie.
‘Not before time. It’s like trying to reach the Queen.’
‘Well I’m here now,’ said Annie. ‘What’s up?’
There had to be something going off. She had no illusions that Ruthie would have phoned her for a girly chat. This had to be some sort of emergency.
‘It’s Mum,’ said Ruthie.
‘What about her?’
‘She’s not well.’
‘What, she’s drunk again?’
‘No, it’s more serious than that. I phone her every day but a couple of days ago she didn’t answer. I asked Maureen to go round, and she found her in a ruddy coma.’
‘What do you mean, a coma? Is it the drink?’
‘Yeah, it’s the drink. They drained a load of fluid off her, they said her liver’s shot. Cirrhosis.’ Ruthie’s voice cracked. ‘I tried to get hold of Max, but he’s off doing business and I couldn’t speak to him.’
Annie gulped. She hadn’t seen Max for a couple of days either. Again, the guilt took hold of her guts and screwed them into a tight knot. She took a breath to calm herself.
‘Is there anything they can do?’ she asked.
‘They say no.’
‘God, this is awful.’ It had been a long time coming. Annie had been expecting this call for years, and now the time had come. Finally, Connie’s love affair with the bottle was going to kill her stone-dead. The funny thing was, she felt almost relieved. At last, it would be over. All the torment, all the hate and love, would be gone.
‘Oh come on. You can’t pretend you’re broken hearted.’
‘It’s upsetting,’ said Annie. She didn’t want to fight with Ruthie.
‘Upsetting?’ Ruthie spat down the phone. ‘I’ll tell you what’s upsetting. That I couldn’t get hold of you to tell you your own mother’s on her way out. That I had to phone you to let you know, because you never go and even see her.’