by Ricki Thomas
Beryl drew herself up, hugging her knees to her chest. “You should have seen her this time, Harold. Her make up was caked on so thickly but the bumps and bruises just glared through. Why does she tolerate it? Why doesn’t she admit it to us? I’ve even passed her leaflets about domestic violence, and then watched her discreetly throw them in the bin. It’s just become too hard to stand on the sidelines and see that happening to my child.”
Harold pulled himself up wearily, placing a caring arm around her shoulders. “I know, darling, I know, and if that’s the case then you’ve done the right thing. In a way we only have ourselves to blame…”
Beryl sat straight, abruptly, aghast. “Us! How dare you, Harold Waller! We brought both our children up to respect people and be respected in return, we…”
“Ssshhh, you’re misunderstanding me. Darling, we have a wonderful marriage, we rarely argue, and even when we do it’s a sensible discussion rather than a shouting match. Sophie has grown up to believe that once married, forever married, you know, until death do us part. We’re her role models and that will have made her determined to make her marriage work.”
Beryl sighed deeply, her body relaxing back into Harold’s warm shoulder. “I see your point.” The comment was resigned, but the emotion frustrated. “I just can’t bear to see her being treated so badly.” They both knew that no more words were needed, but she had to add the thoughts she’d had so many times over the years. “Darren’s always been rough around the edges, I mistrusted him from the very first time I met him.”
Harold gently snuggled himself and his wife back down until their heads rested on the pillows once more, drawing the cool sheets over their shoulders, and he felt despair as the solemn tears rolled from her cheek to his chest. Holding her close he whispered gently. “Sophie’s an intelligent girl, darling. She’ll not take the mistreatment forever. One day she’ll come to her senses and leave Darren, but it’s up to her to choose the right time, not us.”
Her voice was childishly innocent, despite her true age. “You really think she’ll leave him?”
“One day, yes. Of that, I have no doubt.”
Beryl closed her damp eyes, the warmth of his reassurance comforting her, and silently listened as his breaths grew deeper and further apart, eventually lulling her to sleep alongside him.
Chapter 3
Lucky for Some?
After doing Beryl’s tarot reading I’d had a good chuckle to myself, certain that meddling with her life in such a way was going to cause her distress. So, when I saw her the following week I was stunned to find that I’d inadvertently helped her, and I silently chastised myself, determined to find out more about the family so that my attempts at destroying Harry and Beryl’s lives would work.
It was an easy task, we didn’t even get as far as a ‘tarot reading’ or ‘psychic consultation’, because as soon as she sat at the table it was clear that this was a lady who needed to talk. Well, I wasn’t about to stop her getting things off her chest, was I! So I put the question to her, and she nodded her head gratefully. Rubbing my hands together with my secret glee, I leant forward and gently told her to go ahead.
She told me about Sophie, how her husband Darren had been increasingly violent, how it was affecting her work as a solicitor, how much it was upsetting her and Harry, and how useless Sophie’s devoted brother felt, knowing his sister was being beaten and not being able to do anything to stop it. Now I knew why she had so readily accepted my advice the previous week: Darren was a bad sort. And for the next part in the saga, it seemed that they weren’t the only people who had an intense dislike for the man. She told me that her son had received a call from an incredulous Sophie the very next day, explaining the unbelievable event that had happened at her cottage in the early hours the next day.
As Beryl explained, I could picture the scene in my head, her account being so, and I hate to admit this, conscientious. I was soon lost in the relation, gasping intermittently at the extraordinary occurrences. I’ll elaborate for you:
All was peaceful, the night sky clear of clouds, stars brightly glowing in the late summer warmth that had the people of the pretty village of Coleorton throwing off their covers in their sleep. Inside Iris Cottage, Darren and Sophie were no different, the duvet draping only their feet, eyes tightly shut, minds in separate dreamlands. A smash of shattering glass stirred them, but not enough to wake fully. But the second thunderous crash had them both sitting in bed, looking at each other with questioning eyes.
“What was that?” Sophie wasn’t sure if she was dreaming.
Without answering the redundant question, Darren jumped off the bed, racing to the window that overlooked the ambling driveway, and he tugged the curtain aside, straining to see. “I don’t know, it’s black out there.”
Sophie stifled a yawn, now sure she had been dreaming. “Maybe it was just a cat or something.”
The ear-splitting sound of creasing metal rang out, and Darren raced to the door of the bedroom, throwing on his dressing gown as he went. “Somebody’s out there, I just saw a silhouette by the cars!”
Sophie reached the bottom of the staircase just in time to see him dart through the front door, feet bare, fists clenched in anger. She hesitated, unsure, before running outside to join him. Standing in the safety of the rose covered porch, she watched silently as her husband, incredulous and almost crying, inspected the smashed windscreen, crumpled bonnet, and the indented driver’s side door of his prided car. She’d been horrified in the spring when Darren had told her he intended to buy the BMW, it seemed so flamboyant with her being so deeply in debt, but at this moment she felt nothing but pure compassion for him.
“How can this happen!” He was talking to himself, to nobody.
“Did you see anyone?” She instantly surmised he would have given chase if he had, shoes or no shoes, and felt ridiculous for asking such a pathetic question.
“Of course I bloody didn’t!” Darren glanced around, shook his fist, and yelled, “Fucking wanker!”
“Sshhh, Darren! Look, I’ll go and call the police. Come back inside, there’s nothing you can do out here.”
They waited nearly two hours before the patrol car finally turned up, and by that time Darren was fuming: the police might not see it as an emergency but it certainly was to him! Moments after returning to the house, he’d poured his first vodka and Red Bull, the first of many, and lit a cigarette, inhaling deeply. But after waiting an hour for the police to arrive he had begun pacing back and forth angrily, drinking swiftly, smoking heavily, swearing copiously.
As the police officer, invited in by a very calm Sophie, sat on one of the cream coloured leather sofas, she poised her pen and pad, ready to take notes, but Darren continued stomping back and forth, his face a glowing crimson with a mixture of anger and alcohol. “Have you seen what they’ve done to my car! I can’t fucking believe it!” He was spitting the words, his outrage so intense.
“My colleague, PC Taylor, is inspecting the damage right now, Sir.”
“I suppose that’s a bloody woman too!”
Sophie mouthed an apology at the irked policewoman, who managed to keep her voice steady. “Do you have any idea who might have done this?”
“Of course I bloody don’t!”
“Any enemies, disgruntled employees, unpaid debts …”
Darren stopped pacing and stared at her, astonished, and Sophie considered his head might actually explode with rage. The image in her mind brought a twitch to the sides of her mouth, which she instantly dispelled. “Miss whatever-your-name-is…”
“PC Adams, Sir.”
He glared at her. “I have no idea who did this. I have no enemies, I’m a good bloke, everybody likes me.” Sophie headed to the door, she didn’t want to hear this again, he was always spouting about how wonderful he was. “I’m self-employed and have no employees, and I’m financially solvent. What are you going to do about my car and the wanker who did this?”
Laura Adams’ eyes fol
lowed Sophie’s disappearing figure through the doorway. She’d seen the bruises on her make-up free face, and she knew the steaming man in front of her was definitely not a ‘good bloke’. She sighed.
Nobody had noticed PC Taylor enter the room, a scrap of paper in his hand. “I think you’ll find that you have upset somebody somewhere, Mr Delaney. I found this note in the front seat of the car. I’m guessing it must have been thrown through the smashed windscreen.”
He passed the note to Darren, whose eyes widened as he saw the letters, cut from a newspaper and glued to the paper. ‘It’ll be your legs next time.’ Although Darren’s expression was quizzical, Taylor and Adams shared a knowing glance: there was every possibility this could be an insurance claim job. A decent car left unlocked, hence no alarm. No witnesses. Who would know if he’d smashed his own car up? Except his wife. Adams discreetly nodded to Taylor, who followed the direction of her gesture and left through the door Sophie had taken.
He found her in the kitchen, a glass cupped in her hand, leaning back against the kitchen worktop with her head hanging low. He was struck instantly, he’d never seen such a beautiful creature, so vulnerable, so deeply wholesome. She was still in her flimsy, satin effect nightdress, and Taylor was horrified by the bruises around her wrists and the tops of her arms. He wanted to hug her, comfort her, protect her. “Were you asleep when this happened?”
She nodded, still surveying the tiles of the floor, pleasantly cool against her bare feet.
“I have to ask, is your husband in any kind of financial trouble?” He was opposite her now, standing beside the sink, soaking in the vision that had instantly made his heart flutter.
Quickly. “No, not at all. Not unless he’s run up debts behind my back.”
“Of course, you may have reasons why you wouldn’t want us to know…”
Too quick. “I’m the one with the debts, not him. He earns a good wage.”
Taylor scribbled in the notebook he’d pulled from his breast pocket, words Sophie wished she could see. Her manner became agitated, placing the glass on the side and reaching for a nearby packet of cigarettes and lighter. “Maybe you feel you can’t say anything in case there’s any come-back.”
She paused from lighting up, questioning. “What do you mean?”
Taylor nodded at the bruises. “Your face, your arms. You’ve had a little accident somewhere along the line, haven’t you?”
She could feel her cheeks reddening, and the realisation of what he was implying dawned on her. Defensiveness flowed through her. “Now hold on a minute! Darren’s a good husband, he’d never lay a finger on me, never.”
“So how did you get those bruises?”
Sophie lit the cigarette and inhaled deeply, letting the smoke out slowly as her unwelcome blushing subsided, concocting the feasible lie in her hesitance. “We have a shower over the bath. I slipped the other day and banged my face. It stunned me. Darren bruised my arms accidentally when he was trying to help me up, he was worried about me.”
Taylor noticed she was fidgeting, he knew she was lying, but this avenue was dead for now. “Do you know of anybody with a grievance against Mr Delaney?”
Another long drag, and the odorous smoke filled Alan Taylor’s lungs. It gave her enough time to consider if either her mother or father were deranged enough to do something as vile as this. Of course they weren’t, they were gentle souls. “No, I have no idea why anybody would be so vicious.”
Realising they were getting nowhere, he thanked her, mentally burning her stunning image deep inside, and returned to his colleague.
As Beryl finished telling me the tale I wanted to laugh so hard. The images I had conjured up in my mind of Darren pacing were like something out of a slapstick comedy. But Beryl wasn’t laughing and I realised that there was more to come. I offered to make her a mug of tea and she agreed, so I stepped to the sofa and cleared some of the clutter to one side, leaving a space for her to sit. “Come and sit here, it’s more comfy than the chairs.” I headed for the kitchen while she settled herself.
Once the tea was made, I dragged my chair to face her, explaining that I found it difficult to get up from the low settee, and I could see that she knew as well as I did that it was because of my vastly overweight body. But politely she made no comment. Damn the woman I hated for being so annoyingly pleasant!
“You see, Mary … can I call you Mary?” I nodded and she continued, her soft voice lulling me back into the unusual events of the past week. “Because I’d told Sophie not to be in touch until she,” her hesitation showed me how painful the decision to take my advice had been, “well, anyway, she called Harold. She’s always been a daddy’s girl and she knew that he would talk, whereas I would put the phone down. Anyway, that’s irrelevant. It seems that Sophie had suspected she had fallen pregnant the previous week when she took an instant and violent dislike to anything from the ocean. Fish of any kind had always been a favourite food of hers, well, for as long as I can remember, but the smell of it now, raw or cooked, was making her retch. She’d not told anyone of her suspicions, worried in case it was a false alarm.
“But Sophie needed to know, for herself, and her gut feeling was right, the test was positive. She knew that Darren had a big battle with the insurance company ahead of him, so decided not to tell him straight away, just in case it stressed him further. So she hid the test stick at the back of the bathroom cabinet.”
Beryl sipped her tea, eyeing me, questioning, and timidly spoke as if she was asking a huge favour. “Look, before I go on, would you do the tarot reading, I mean, can you do one on Sophie, rather than me.”
I mulled the question, not knowing how to answer. Was it possible? Let’s face it, I was doing this game as a money earner, there isn’t a psychic bone in my body. Not wanting to wait too long, I said of course it was possible, and we returned to the table. Once again I did the Celtic cross spread, the only one I had studied in depth, and prepared myself to make an educated guess at what it all meant.
I began to interpret the cards to the best of the knowledge I had learned from the book. Obviously Beryl had told me about the pregnancy, and, strangely, the cards appeared to back that up. But, following on from that, there appeared to be warnings, something about heights, the images weren’t clear, but Sophie was in danger somehow. I looked pleadingly at the woman I hated: maybe she knew something I didn’t, but her face had paled, jaw dropped.
For the first time I felt empathy for her, she was so nice, so kind, so gentle. Maybe I should stop hating her. After all, she did nothing wrong all those years ago, it was Harry and me who were having the affair. All she did was remain his wife, which meant I couldn’t have what I wanted. Maybe I should accept that my hatred for this woman was borne out of selfishness, and I had made her guilty by association. I swallowed hard, not ever expecting to berate myself in such a way.
Her voice was strained as she pointed to the card at the top of the staff. “That card tells you how it’s all going to end, doesn’t it.”
I nodded, still astounded by my new feelings for this woman. “Yes, it’s the final outcome should you, well, Sophie, carry on…”
“Turn it.” She was insistent, with no apparent interest in the cards before. “Please.”
Now beginning to fear what the card would predict after seeing her reaction to the danger and warning cards, I felt a strange intuition that I needed to see the other cards first, it seemed imperative, and I told her so. Her expression became agonised so I hastened back to the cards. Moving slowly up the staff, I uncovered three cards that, in my experience, could only mean one thing. The Ace of Wands, drawn with the Empress was a great combination, but add the Page of Pentacles too. That was pretty much failsafe. I smiled widely to relax whatever fears she was so anguished about. “I think the baby’s going to be bouncing and healthy.”
But the tears that flooded her eyes, coursing down her cheeks, told me a different story. Guiding her back to the sofa, I helped her to sit, drawing my chair for
ward so I could hold her hand. “Beryl, come on, what’s the matter?” I was confused. Maybe she didn’t want Sophie to be expecting because it meant she would stay with Darren. I just didn’t know what to think.
But soon I realised why my reading had upset her so much. “Sophie’s in hospital. She lost the baby.”
I didn’t know what to say, the silence in the room hung like a dark cloud for what seemed like an eternity. Several ideas of how to continue sprang to mind but none of them were befitting and I stayed seated, mind whirring but mouth closed, while Beryl sobbed quietly. Eventually I stood, unnoticed, and clambered through the cluttered living room to the kitchen. It was the only solution I could come to: the bottle of whisky that had stood in my cupboard for probably two years now, with barely a drop touched. I poured two equal measures and took them through, passing one to Beryl, whose weeping had begun to subside. After a few sips she had composed herself enough to continue, unprompted.
“Sophie wouldn’t have called Harold unless she was desperate, she’s a stubborn girl. From what he said later I guessed she was in turmoil and he was the only person who would understand. They’re very close. She called him at work, I suppose because if she’d rung our home number, I might have answered and rejected her again. Obviously he was pleased to hear from her, I mean, we love her, we love her so much, which is how this has all come about, really.
“She touched on the subject of me not wanting to talk to her, and he explained how worried I was for her, but he said he could tell she really needed her mother, as her voice dropped when he told her I was standing firm this time.” Beryl lifted her head, staring at me with pleading eyes and I felt awful, it was difficult to remember why I was being so harsh on the broken woman before me. She reached out her hand for mine and grasped it, firm. “Please tell me I haven’t done the wrong thing, Mary. I couldn’t bear it if it was my actions that led to her being in hospital.”