A Summer Fling

by Milly Johnson

  He was still smiling as if he didn’t believe her. That was until a moment later when the sound of a second car’s screeching tyres cut through the night air and a rusted pink Fiat Punto ground to a halt about a gnat’s leg’s length away from Tony’s bumper. His smile dropped like a brick then.

  ‘I knew you’d be here, you two-timing twat,’ said a very angry, scarlet-faced Lynette Bottom, leaping out onto the pavement. A curtain twitched in the upstairs bedroom of the cat-stealer’s window. Then Lynette looked at the glamorous woman in blue velvet and her face creased up with confusion and embarrassment. Then she did a double-take and realized it was Tony’s ex-girlfriend after all. Blimey! She pulled her cardigan around her, feeling very dull and scruffy by comparison.

  ‘Well, you can have him,’ said Lynette through hot, angry tears. ‘He’s bloody useless at anything that doesn’t involve a pair of scissors and a comb. Like – in bed!’

  ‘Oy,’ said Tony.

  ‘He’s got the words “quality” and “quantity” mixed up just a bit!’ Lynette went on waspishly. ‘He thinks if he does it three times, you’ll not notice he’s crap!’

  ‘Lynette—’

  ‘Did he tell you I thought I was pregnant last month?’

  Tony was covering his eyes with his hand. Maybe he was doing that thing kids did where they thought if they closed their eyes, no one could see them either.

  Anna’s breath caught in her throat. ‘No, he didn’t.’

  ‘You’re not pregnant,’ said Tony, peeping out from behind his fingers.

  ‘No, but I thought I was and I told you I might be,’ said Lynette, twisting round to him. ‘And where were you while I was sat in the doctor’s? Sniffing back round here, weren’t you, you . . . you . . . arsehole.’ She stabbed a finger at Anna, then dropped it because this woman in the long dress was making her feel a bit common. ‘Well, you’re welcome to him. The bastard left me a note saying, “I need a break” and “there’s no one else” and then he crept out, thinking I wouldn’t notice. But I saw him loading his suitcases into the car because his leaving technique is as shite as his foreplay. And I just knew he’d slither back here! Have him, he’s yours!’

  ‘Thank you for your generous offer, Lynette, but sadly, I must decline,’ said Anna, in more control than she could have thought possible. ‘Goodnight to you both. Tony, we’ll be in touch about splitting the assets.’ Although from the scream she heard after unlocking the door and shutting it behind her, she thought Lynette might have started splitting Tony’s assets already.

  Shortly afterwards, Anna heard one car drive off with tyres squealing and then the other, much more slowly, as if it had its tail between its legs. She didn’t know if they were going in the same direction. Nor, she realized with some delight, did she care.

  There was a disgruntled screech at her feet when she walked into the darkened kitchen to put the kettle on and stood on something soft. It appeared that Butterfly had picked this night to come home too. In typical male fashion, with his tail between his legs.

  Chapter 77

  Elizabeth held in her hand the letter that her sister had written to Raychel saying that she was thrilled she had agreed to come and giving her directions to the hostel where she was staying. Elizabeth was trying to remain calm but it was so very difficult. Thank goodness John was driving. He was, clichéd as it was, her rock. He always had been. She was so glad her niece had a rock in Ben too.

  Young Ellis was at his ‘Auntie’ Janey’s house. Her husband George was as daft as a brush and, no doubt, the little boy would be having a ball playing with Janey’s son Robert and their new hulking great St Bernard puppy, Jimbo. This journey was no place for a child.

  The drive to Newcastle was two hours long. Elizabeth’s nerves started to rev up even more when they passed the Angel of the North on the right. She closed her eyes and asked it to instil some strength in her because she wasn’t sure what she would feel when she saw Bev. The monster who had both beaten her own child and stood aside whilst her boyfriend did the same was also the little girl she had heard crying in her bedroom when they were kids because their dad was an abuser. She didn’t know which Bev she would see when Bev opened her door.

  The Satnav announced that when they turned around this corner they would have reached their destination. John drove slowly on, trying to find a sign for the hostel where Bev lived and where she was presently expecting a grand reconciliation with her daughter.

  ‘I’ll come in with you,’ said John.

  ‘No, wait here,’ said Elizabeth. ‘It’s not exactly the sort of area you’d want to leave a nice car anyway.’

  ‘It’s not exactly the sort of building I want my wife walking in by herself,’ said John adamantly. ‘I’ll at least see you to Bev’s door.’

  Elizabeth didn’t protest. John would want to see she was safely in. And her nerve was slipping by the second.

  The entrance area was reminiscent of a Chinese takeaway in a rough district. All cheap wood panelling and a quarter-hearted stab at cheering up the walls with some tacky pictures hanging up in plastic frames. There was a serving hatch in the wall, presumably ‘Reception’. Through it, Elizabeth could see a woman sitting with her back to the hole, listening to an iPod and watching a portable TV at the same time.

  ‘Hello,’ John called through it, getting her attention when his voice didn’t work by hammering on the hatch frame. ‘We’ve come to see Marilyn Hunt.’

  ‘Top floor, room eight,’ said the woman, giving him her briefest attention before turning back to the TV again.

  ‘Obviously a very secure hostel,’ said John in a whisper.

  ‘You go back to the car,’ said Elizabeth.

  ‘Like I said, I’ll see you up first.’ John was insistent.

  They walked up a very bare, narrow, twirly staircase three floors up till they got to the top. A cobwebby, scruffy skylight let in a bit of grey light to make the place look even more depressing. The landing carpet was crusty, and hanging Magic Tree air fresheners didn’t quite mask the fustiness.

  Elizabeth’s heart was racing as her hand rose to knock, but she snatched it back at the last second and took a moment to collect her thoughts. She had no idea what she would find when that door opened and no way of preparing for it. Come on, Elizabeth, she geed herself up, lifted her knuckles and rapped hard. There was the sound of some activity behind the door, then it opened and there stood the sister she hadn’t seen since she was a child, the sister she had cried buckets’ worth of tears for, searched for, prayed for. It took her breath away to see the woman version of the girl she had last seen all those years ago. She would not have recognized the bloated bleach-blonde who looked so much older than her years. Only in her grey eyes was a hint of the Bev she once knew.

  The two women stood staring at each other, unable to move. It was Bev who eventually broke the silence with one breathless word.

  ‘Elizabeth?’

  ‘Yes, it’s me.’

  ‘God. I didn’t expect this. Where’s Lorraine?’

  ‘Let’s go inside,’ replied Elizabeth. ‘John, you can go now, I’m OK. John!’ She had to waken him out of a reverie. Some unpleasant one from the look on his face. He nodded at her and went slowly back down the stairs.

  Bev moved aside to let Elizabeth into her room.

  ‘It’s a dump, I know, but it’s only a temporary place,’ Bev said, gesturing towards the room with some embarrassment.

  ‘It doesn’t matter. I didn’t come to see where you live.’

  It was a functional basic space but it was immaculately clean. There was a double bed standing along the left wall, and a table, chair and old sofa tarted up with a red throw under a sloping Velux window. To the right, an old walnut wardrobe, bashed pine drawers, a shoe rack with male and female shoes on it, and a run of three kitchen cupboards, two drawers and a small, shiny steel sink. There was a thick Chinese rug over a gaudy patterned carpet and the smell of Citrus Shake ’n Vac in the air. Two cups and a plate
of chocolate Hob Nobs sat waiting at the side of a kettle. The door was still open and Bev was looking out of it.

  ‘Is she here? Will she be coming up in a bit?’ Bev said. Her accent was pure Geordie now. Another degree of separation between the sisters, if there could be another one.

  ‘She isn’t, no,’ said Elizabeth. ‘So you can close the door.’

  ‘Why isn’t she coming? She said she would.’

  ‘Talk to me first. Shut the door.’

  Bev shut it and then went over to switch the kettle on.

  ‘Can I get you a drink?’

  ‘Not for me, thanks,’ said Elizabeth just as Bev was about to ask her the ‘tea or coffee’ question. Bev spooned some coffee into a cup and Elizabeth watched her, trying to associate this stranger in front of her with the sister she had grieved so long and hard for, and failing.

  ‘It’s strange to see you, Elizabeth. It’s been a long time, hasn’t it?’ said Bev awkwardly. She was shivering as if she was cold and pulled her cardigan tighter and defensively around her. ‘How did Lorraine find you? Is she well?’

  ‘She’s well,’ was all Elizabeth could manage to respond. She had planned for days what she was going to say to Bev, but the script had been torn up and left back there by the Angel of the North. Elizabeth could no longer predict how she would react in front of ‘Marilyn’.

  Calmly, Bev tipped some sugar into her cup from a bag and stirred it daintily with her little finger sticking out, an action at odds with the clumsy-looking bulk of her. It was obviously for something to do because she didn’t drink from the cup afterwards, just continued to stir.

  ‘I don’t know what to say to you,’ she said quietly.

  ‘Me neither,’ said Elizabeth, in a much colder voice.

  ‘I really need to talk to my daughter though,’ said Bev. ‘I need to see her.’

  ‘Talk to me instead. She doesn’t want to see you, Bev.’

  ‘She wrote and—’

  ‘I wrote the letter – with her permission, of course. I wasn’t sure you’d agree to see me.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘She told me everything and I can’t say that I blame her for not wanting to come.’

  Bev placed her spoon into the sink. ‘I’d hoped she would see me, just one time. I know she wouldn’t want to see me any more than once. I don’t blame her for that. I wanted to say I’m sorry. For everything I’ve done to her.’

  ‘You could say that by letter and spare her the face-to-face ordeal,’ replied Elizabeth.

  ‘I was doing it for her. I thought she might . . . might want . . .’ Bev stumbled. She took a big breath. ‘I thought she might want to pay me back.’

  ‘What – you wanted her to come here and slap you?’

  Bev shrugged. ‘Or shout or scream at me. Whatever she needed to do.’

  ‘She’s not a vengeful person. She’s a wonderful, kind-hearted girl.’

  ‘I made so many mistakes with her.’

  Marriage and motherhood had softened Elizabeth but at that moment she felt once again like the feral teenager she used to be. ‘Mistakes? That’s putting it finely, isn’t it? How could you? How could you let all those things happen? To your own child?’

  ‘Do you know what happened to me as a child? No, you don’t!’ Bev returned, the hint of a sob present in her voice. ‘You haven’t a clue what I went through.’

  ‘Yes, I do,’ said Elizabeth, matching her for volume. ‘I know what you went through because Dad started on me when you’d gone!’

  Bev’s mouth opened into a long O. ‘I’m sorry about that,’ she said at last. ‘I didn’t know.’

  Elizabeth laughed without the slightest bit of humour. ‘Well, you wouldn’t, would you? Because you left me to it. Didn’t it cross your mind he would try and do to me what he’d done to you? You could have told someone about him when you left, just in case, but you didn’t.’

  Elizabeth thought back to the pale-faced, big, moody sister whom she used to tease, not knowing that their father was abusing her. For years, she had punished herself for not realizing, for being too young to help until John Silkstone had come into her life and loved her and forced her to face the fact that she was worthy of being loved.

  ‘I can’t turn the clock back and there’s too much I can’t make up for, but I wish more than anything I could. I used to take a lot of drink and drugs,’ said Bev, not meeting her sister’s eyes, ‘and I’m not trying to use that as an excuse.’

  ‘It isn’t an excuse,’ Elizabeth butted in.

  ‘No, it isn’t. Everything was my fault. I’m clean now. I got myself sorted when I came out of prison. It’s taken me a few years, mind. I’m leaving here next week. I’ve got a little council flat.’

  ‘That’s good,’ said Elizabeth quietly, because she couldn’t think of what else to say.

  ‘I should never have been a mother, I know. I should have had her adopted. I can’t ever make up for what . . . what I let happen to her. And the other one. The drugs killed her. I couldn’t stop taking them. I’ve had to face that I killed my own child, did Lorraine tell you?’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ said Elizabeth.

  Bev sank onto the sofa and twiddled nervously with her necklace. ‘I’ve been so scared of meeting Lorraine again. I . . . I felt I had to though. But I didn’t know how to say it.’

  ‘I’ll tell her that you’re sorry,’ said Elizabeth. She wanted to hate this pathetic woman but she couldn’t quite manage to. Pity, revulsion, anger whirled inside her – but not hate.

  ‘It’s not just that.’ Bev coughed away the rasp in her voice. ‘There’s more.’

  ‘What?’ asked Elizabeth, as Bev’s face dropped into her hands and she sighed ‘Oh God,’ over and over.

  ‘It’s . . . I’m not one hundred per cent sure . . .’

  Elizabeth had presumed Bev only wanted to apologize. What else could there be? ‘Not sure about what?’

  ‘Do you remember the Siddalls at school? I think they had a girl in every year. Charlene Siddall was in my class. She had a twin brother who went to the all boys’ school: Michael.’

  ‘I remember them,’ replied Elizabeth, not sure at all where this was going, but yes, she knew of the Siddalls: a rough, large family. The name still cropped up a few times in the Barnsley Chronicle, connected usually with drugs and fights and shoplifting.

  ‘I had sex with Michael Siddall,’ Bev went on.

  Elizabeth was confused now. ‘What’s this got to do with Ra . . . Lorraine?’

  Bev took in a long fortifying breath, but the cruel secret she had kept for over twenty-eight years came out with a whisper.

  ‘He could be Lorraine’s dad. I don’t know for sure, but I think he may be.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘When she was a baby, she had the look of him. Tell her I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.’

  Bev began to cry softly into her hands as Elizabeth tried to process that information: that Raychel might not be a child of an illicit union, that she might be able to have children of her own after all.

  ‘Jesus Christ. Why didn’t you tell her that before?’ Elizabeth couldn’t get to grips with this at all. Why would Bev have kept something like that to herself? Why would she have told her daughter that she was born out of an incestuous relationship when the likelihood was that she hadn’t been?

  ‘I was a very different person then. I was hurt and I wanted to hurt back.’

  Then Elizabeth knew. Bev had wanted to hate and punish her daughter for what she herself had gone through. It was so twisted it made her feel physically sick.

  Bev continued to twiddle with her necklace and when Elizabeth noticed it was a crucifix, she nearly lost it totally. She covered the distance between them in two strides and, lifting Bev by the edges of her tatty cardigan, she crashed her back into the wall.

  ‘You told a little bairn that her father was her granddad when you didn’t know for sure? What kind of an animal are you?’

  Bev shrieked but she didn’t try to
defend herself. ‘I know, I know, I’m sorry. I’m sorry I did that. I’m sorry I left you too. I’m sorry I ran off and didn’t tell anyone for you.’ She was flinching, waiting for the slap that didn’t come. But Elizabeth released her grip. There was nothing to be had from more violence. She had seen enough of that. Bev remained curled against the wall.

  ‘I’ll tell her what you’ve said,’ said Elizabeth, calming herself. She wanted to go home now and work out how she was going to put this all to Raychel. There was just one more thing she had to do: the reason why Elizabeth had come to face her sister. She reached inside her bag and pulled out a cheque which she forced into Bev’s hand.

  ‘When Dad died, I sold his house. I put the money in an account for you in case I ever found you. I never touched a penny of it. It’s yours by right.’

  Bev looked at her cheque blankly. Then, slowly, her hand extended towards Elizabeth. ‘It’s Bev Collier’s money,’ she said. ‘There’s no Bev Collier here.’

  ‘It doesn’t say “Bev Collier”. I left the payee line blank. I didn’t know what name to write,’ said Elizabeth.

  ‘Whatever name you write, it’s still Bev Collier’s money and there is no such person any more.’

  ‘It’s yours anyway.’

  Bev’s hand was still stretched out. ‘I don’t want it.’

  ‘You have read that cheque correctly, haven’t you? There’s over forty thousand pounds in that account and it’s all yours.’

  ‘I can read. But I don’t want it. Take it back.’

  ‘You’re turning it down?’ asked Elizabeth disbelievingly. ‘No one turns that sort of money down.’

  ‘You obviously did. You would have used it otherwise,’ said Bev.

  ‘I’ll leave it with you,’ said Elizabeth, moving towards the door. She had done what she came for. But the sound of tearing paper halted her step.

  ‘It isn’t mine,’ said Bev, still holding the cheque, which was now in eight pieces. ‘I don’t want that sort of money. I live simply and without any complications. It’s taken me a long time to get to this stage.’

  Elizabeth still didn’t look convinced.