She looked at her watch as a wave of nausea washed over her. She often felt like this in the middle of the day. She decided to take the afternoon off sick. She’d never done it before, after all. And she just wanted to sleep. If she went to bed for the afternoon, she would be fresh for seeing Joe later. He was seeing Tamara at lunchtime to tell her it was over. She felt a prickling of guilt, for Tamara was the innocent party in all of this, and Molly hoped she wouldn’t be too devastated. Quickly, she reassured herself that there would be any number of people queuing up to replace Joe: Tamara was beautiful and rich. Girls like Tamara had the pick of the bunch.
She decided to go and tell the site manageress she had to go home.
‘You look rough,’ agreed Maureen. ‘I hope it’s not a bug. I don’t need anyone else going off sick.’
‘I expect it’s just a twenty-four-hour thing,’ said Molly. She didn’t feel guilty about skiving off; she really did feel ill.
It was so boiling hot and sticky, she decided she would take a taxi. She didn’t trust herself not to throw up on the bus. She walked down the hill into Mariscombe to get a cab; there were always a few waiting by the main parade of shops. She passed the terrace of the Jolly Roger, then stopped in her tracks.
Joe was holding court at a table. Joe, laughing, looking gorgeous in his cut-off jeans and no shirt, his hair held back with a bandana, waving a bottle of beer as he told a story. And beside him, Tamara. Tamara, shimmering, golden, in a tiny pink skirt and halter-neck, gazing up at him in adoration. As he came to the punchline, there were guffaws of laughter and Joe sat down, sliding his arm around Tamara, turning his head to kiss her. Silhouetted against the blue of the sky, they looked like a king and queen surrounded by their courtiers.
Molly sat down heavily on a nearby bench. How the hell could she have been so stupid? All that bullshit, he hadn’t meant a word of it. And suddenly she saw the truth. How could he possibly be interested in her, when his future lay with the golden girl whose wealth would make sure he never had to lift a finger? A life with Molly would mean drudgery. A baby would be a millstone. Joe would be trapped; more trapped than he was already. He must have realized that. Something had brought him to his senses. Of course he wasn’t going to finish with Tamara. He’d have to be crazy. She wondered how he was planning to get rid of her. Looking at him now, it wasn’t playing on his conscience. Well, it didn’t matter. She was going to save him the bother…
She was ready for him early that evening as he came into the Lamb. She was waiting at their usual table. He was wearing faded jeans and a pale blue shirt with the sleeves rolled up. He gave her a smile and went to hug her, but she recoiled, staring back at him stony-faced.
‘What’s the matter?’ he asked, concerned. ‘Are you OK? Is it the baby?’
‘You don’t have to worry about the baby,’ she replied coolly.
He looked at her suspiciously as he sat down.
‘Of course I do.’
She gave him a tight smile.
‘Well, don’t. I had an abortion this afternoon.’
She was surprised to see the speed at which the colour drained from his face.
‘You can’t have done.’
‘I did. I booked it in last week. You’re in and out in two hours. It’s just like having a tooth out.’
Joe had gone as white as a sheet.
‘You got rid of our baby?’ he whispered.
‘I’d have thought you’d be pleased.’ Molly kept her tone brisk, businesslike. ‘It leaves you free to do whatever you want with Tamara.’ She looked away, because if she looked at him she might cry. ‘I saw you with her at lunchtime. In the Jolly Roger. She didn’t look too upset that you’d dumped her.’
‘Molly, today wasn’t the right time…’ Joe trailed off, knowing full well he couldn’t defend himself. ‘She’d had a row with her dad. She wouldn’t have been able to handle it. I’ve got to wait for the right time.’
‘So you keep saying,’ said Molly, standing up. ‘Anyway, now you don’t have to worry.’
But Joe didn’t seem to be listening.
‘I can’t believe you did that. Without asking me.’
‘What was I supposed to do, Joe? I’m sixteen years old. I can’t bring up a baby on my own. And we’re not going to play happy families. After all, you’ve said it yourself often enough. You don’t want any responsibility. You just want a life. So have a good one.’
And with that, she walked out of the pub.
She lay in bed that night unable to sleep. Half of her wanted to get up and rush to him, tell him it wasn’t true. But she was incredibly tired. She could barely lift her head off the pillow. And she wasn’t going to let him off that easily. He had to suffer for at least one night. It was the only way she could make him realize how badly he could make others feel. And now she’d seen his reaction, his horror, his remorse, she knew she had him. When he found out their baby was still alive, she thought, he would be overjoyed. They could start to make plans.
The next morning, she got up filled with expectation. She’d go to work, get her shift out of the way and then go and find Joe. She wasn’t sure how she was going to explain herself yet, but no doubt he would be so relieved that she wouldn’t need an excuse. Maybe it had been rather a drastic thing to do, but Molly reasoned that Joe needed bringing to his senses.
As soon as she arrived at work, she sensed that something had happened. Everywhere seemed unnaturally quiet. She went over to the site office. Maureen looked up, her face rather grim.
‘What’s happened?’
‘It’s Joe Thorne. He drove his brother’s Porsche off Mariscombe Point last night.’
Molly held on to the doorframe, her knuckles white.
‘What?’
‘No one knows why. They think he was drunk.’ She gave a sharp bark that masqueraded as a laugh. ‘Well, that goes without saying with Joe. They found the wreck this morning.’
Black specks danced on the edge of Molly’s vision. She wasn’t quite sure what Maureen meant.
‘Was… he in it? In the car, I mean?’
Maureen looked puzzled.
‘Yeah.’
‘Is he dead?’
‘What do you think? It’s fifty feet down on to rocks.’
There was a rushing sound in Molly’s head and everything seemed to swim in front of her. Maureen looked at her.
‘I think you should still be off sick. You look awful.’
‘Yes,’ said Molly. ‘I need to go home. Right now.’
‘Go,’ said Maureen. ‘It’s going to be chaos as it is, without a sick bug.’
‘Was it an accident?’
‘Nobody knows,’ said Maureen. ‘But knowing Joe he was three sheets to the wind. Apparently he’d been in the pub all night. The police will get to the bottom of it, no doubt…’
Molly lay down on the back seat of the cab on the way home, holding her tummy, her eyes tight shut, wishing and wishing that any moment she would wake up and realize this was some awful nightmare her guilt-ridden mind had dreamed up.
Joe was dead. Joe was dead. And the last thing she’d told him was that she had killed their baby…
All she could think was that she had to keep her head down. If anyone found out about her affair, about the baby, then they would know she was to blame. That because of what she’d told him, Joe had driven himself over that cliff. Over and over again she convinced herself that she hadn’t been wrong to tell him what she did. Seeing him on the terrace that afternoon with Tamara had been justification enough. He’d had no intention of being faithful to her. But Molly didn’t want the truth to come out in public. She knew, because of what she was, and because of the calibre of people she would be up against, that somehow she would be held accountable. There would be no sympathy for the little strumpet that had brought on Joe’s demise.
Molly knew she had to steel herself. There would be no one at all with whom she could share her plight. But she’d been brought up tough. The Mahoneys didn’t was
te time on guilt and sentiment. They’d been taught to be self-reliant. For two days she stayed locked in the house, coming to terms with her situation. For once she was glad that her family were so self-absorbed and disinterested, for they showed no concern. She gave them the same excuse she’d given Maureen, that she had a bug, and to a man they grimaced.
‘Ugh,’ said Siobhan. ‘Do you have to bring your germs back here? I’ll kill you if I get it.’
Her mother was equally unsympathetic. But at least they kept out of her way in their eagerness to avoid contagion. She lay on the sofa for two days, unable to cry, drifting in and out of a troubled sleep, paralysed with terror and uncertainty. On the third day she dragged herself into the bathroom, had a long shower and got dressed in her uniform. She had to face her colleagues. She went back to work, knowing that she would have to teach herself not to flinch at the mention of Joe’s name. Of course, gossip was rife. The word was he’d driven over the edge after a huge row with his brother in the afternoon. Molly felt relieved that there was an apparent explanation, that the police weren’t hunting high and low for a motive for his suicide. They were satisfied that it had been a gesture of drunken defiance; Joe’s way of putting two fingers up to the family who thought he was worthless.
She agonized over whether to go to the funeral. Of course, all the staff from the campsite were going. Practically the whole of Mariscombe was going, so her actual presence there wouldn’t be questioned. She just wasn’t sure whether she would be able to keep her composure. She’d never been to a funeral before. In the end, she decided she would.
The little church was packed. Molly just managed to squeeze into a space at the back, but the congregation spilled out of the doors and into the churchyard, where the service was relayed on a set of speakers specially set up for the occasion. Some had dressed smartly and traditionally for the occasion, some came in their work clothes, others just came as they were, as they’d always been with Joe, as they wanted him to remember them and wanted to remember him. Molly wore her uniform. She didn’t want to attract any attention. Anyway, what the hell did you wear to the funeral of the father of your unborn child?
At the front of the church, flanked by her parents, was Tamara. She’d chosen to wear white, a long white linen dress with a ruffled skirt that fell nearly to the ground, and her ash-blonde hair tied back. She looked, Molly decided, almost like a bride waiting to take her place at the altar, except her face was drawn beneath her tan, her lips pressed together, her nails digging into her palms. Molly felt no resentment. Tamara didn’t know that Joe had cheated on her and Molly certainly wasn’t going to tell her. That would be too cheap, too cruel. It was Molly who’d been stitched up, Molly who’d been taken for a ride and fed false promises. She could see Tamara had no idea; that her grief was genuine and not tainted by the knowledge that Joe had been tupping a little nothing from Tawcombe on the side. It was Molly’s secret, one that she’d take with her to her own grave.
And then a couple walked up the aisle, taking painfully slow steps. The woman looked steadfastly ahead, not daring to look to the left or the right at the sympathetic smiles and pitying glances of the congregation. The man held tightly on to her elbow, whether for his or her support it was difficult to tell. They stepped into the pew at the very front amidst a dreadful, respectful silence that was punctuated by the odd cough.
Joe’s parents. Her baby’s grandparents.
Finally, a man with thick, black curls and broad shoulders stepped into the church, the heels of his shoes ringing out on the stone floor. Bruno, Joe’s brother. Molly wondered what the rumoured row had been about. Joe had been bitter about Bruno whenever he mentioned him. He had been everything Joe wasn’t: wealthy, successful, capable, responsible. Someone his parents could be proud of… But Molly had got the impression that Joe secretly looked up to Bruno, that he didn’t actually dislike him, despite the fact that the sun shone out of his proverbial.
Molly watched Bruno carefully from her seat at the end of the aisle. Although Bruno was older than Joe, and stockier, she could see the resemblance in their bone structure, the dark eyebrows, the dimple in the chin, and it made her heart hammer in her chest. He was wearing an immaculate grey suit, his expression grim as his eyes met the vicar’s and he gave an almost imperceptible nod. They were ready.
Molly gripped on to the back of the pew in front of her throughout the service, clenching her teeth to stop herself from crying. As the service ended and the congregation turned to leave, the PA blasted out ‘No Woman, No Cry’ by Bob Marley, the poignant organ chords and the hypnotic reggae beat filling the tiny church, bringing tears to the eyes of those who had so far managed to remain composed. Molly bit down hard on her lip. She remembered Joe playing this in his car so loud the bass blasted through her body, earning him glares of disapproval as he drove through the streets of Mariscombe.
She didn’t have the luxury of being able to shed tears. Somehow they hadn’t come, because the emotions she felt were battling for supremacy and it wasn’t grief that had won. It was trailing in third place behind guilt and anger. Joe had played fast and loose with her heart, and she’d tried to punish him, fighting back with the only weapon she had. Except it had backfired and she had misjudged him. Those dark moments she’d witnessed, those black moods, his apparent self-loathing and need to escape obviously went deeper than she had realized. It was Molly who had tipped him over the edge. Literally.
She shuffled outside with the rest of the congregation. The burial was to be family only.
But I am family! Molly wanted to cry out. I’m carrying his child. Your grandchild!
She stood amidst the throngs on the pavement, as people stood in little clusters, not knowing where to go next. People who hadn’t seen each other during the service hugged wordlessly. The young ones started to trail down the hill on their way to the Jolly Roger, where an unofficial wake was going to be held. Molly stood, rooted to the spot, not knowing which way to turn. She couldn’t go and mourn Joe with her colleagues; she couldn’t sit there amongst them as they sang out his favourite songs and drank to his memory.
She’d got through the service with a determined stoicism, not allowing herself to crumble, for she knew if she made a spectacle of herself that her cover would be blown and her life would never be the same, that she wouldn’t be in control of her own destiny. Besides, his parents and brother had carried themselves with such dignity. As had Tamara – Molly didn’t hold anything against the girl. It certainly wasn’t Tamara’s fault that Joe had been a two-timer. And for all she knew there had been countless other girls at the funeral nursing a broken heart.
But no matter how many times she told herself that Joe was rotten to the core, that he was feckless and a coward, she couldn’t forget the feelings he had awakened in her. Over and over again she relived the closeness they had shared, his wonder. As she watched the crowds disperse and the now empty hearse pull away and make its way back down the hill, she felt a crystal clarity descend on her. All the turmoil of the past few days and nights fell away. She couldn’t get rid of their baby now. It was the only connection Joe had with the world. His legacy. A living reminder of the love she had felt. Even though he had treated her abominably, she would never forget the feeling of being in his arms, the way he looked at her when they made love, the way he suddenly gazed at her and ran his hands through her hair and kissed her, as if she was his reason for living.
Her family didn’t ask too many questions when her condition became apparent. She said the father was someone who’d been to stay on the site and they’d accepted that without demur. Casual sex followed by pregnancy was far from unusual in the circles they moved in, after all, though her mother told her she was mad not to get rid of it.
‘Don’t make the same mistake I did,’ she said darkly. ‘It’ll ruin your life.’
Thanks, thought Molly wryly, even though she’d never been under any illusion that her mother was grateful for her offspring.
Siobhan’s onl
y comment was that now she’d get her own flat. Which she did, but not a council flat. That wasn’t Molly’s style. She went and found a place of her own. She’d saved up quite a lot of money from her job, enough to pay a deposit and a few months’ rent, and there was plenty of accommodation in Tawcombe. No one was queuing up to live there, after all. The place she got was just a room in a Victorian house in a seedy row of terraces near the harbour. It was shabby, and the other tenants were DSS dossers, but it was her own, and she had one of the large rooms at the front of the house – the kitchen and bathroom were shared, but at least she had a sink so she could make a cup of tea.
Nobody at work noticed, for her pregnancy barely showed in the first few months and the uniform was capacious enough to hide any suspicious bulges. She stayed on until the end of October, until the campsite closed for the winter, then she got a job at the supermarket in Tawcombe until two weeks before her due date, squeezing her bump behind the till.
The day she gave birth she was in hospital on her own. The midwives were kind. They didn’t ask any questions or make her feel like a freak. Perhaps they were used to single girls who had been abandoned by their impregnators. The baby was a boy, which she’d known it would be. She called him Alfie, because she and Joe had watched a pirate video of the movie one afternoon in one of the caravans, and he had laughed and said he’d have played the part way better than Jude Law. And Molly had agreed with him. She was sure that was the afternoon she’d caught, because she’d been so happy.
They put her in a bed right at the end of the ward, so she wasn’t at the mercy of prying eyes, and didn’t have to watch all the proud fathers cradling their newborns. They kept the curtains drawn around her. It was a strange new world, with its strip lighting and regular deliveries of food on a tray. The only thing she could bear to pass her lips was the orange juice that came in a ridged plastic glass with a foil top: it was impossible to get it off without spilling half.
Love on the Rocks Page 23