by Annie Groves
Oh, how typical of him to try to wrong-foot her, with his pretend courtesy and good manners. As though he or his mother and sister really cared anything about her.
For some reason that made her even more furious.
‘Me worry about them? It will be a pleasure to have my house to myself,’ Bella told him sharply and pointedly. ‘Oh, and whilst we’re on the subject, I’ll thank you to give me my door key. That sister of yours had no business giving you one in the first place, and so I’ve told her,’ she added before skirting round him to go into the hall and then upstairs into her bedroom.
It was typical of her luck that Jan should be there to spoil her happiness just when she had had the loveliest afternoon. Mind, it was perhaps a pity that she hadn’t invited Ralph in – that would have shown Jan something, and no mistake, seeing another man and not just any other man but a man as worldly and charming as Ralph, so taken with her and so flatteringly attentive to her. Not like him. Pushing her off like that. Bella started to clench her hands into angry fists and then discovered that she couldn’t because of the way they were shaking – with anger, of course, that was all.
Automatically she reached for her cigarettes, frowning as she realised that the pack she had left on her dressing table had gone. And then she saw that the jewellery box was open, and that the jewellery had also gone.
Gone? How could it have? Unless … Bella looked towards her bedroom door.
Someone had stolen her jewellery. No, not someone, she corrected herself, her heart pounding with a mixture of shock and conviction. There was only one person who could have stolen it, wasn’t there? A savage hot feeling that was a mixture of anger and triumph burned through her veins. She had been right all along not to trust those Poles, especially him, Jan. She ran downstairs and wrenched open the kitchen door.
Jan was putting on his coat, his kitbag on the floor beside him.
‘Stay where you are,’ Bella told him fiercely. ‘I’m going to call the police.’
‘What?’
‘You heard me. I’m going to call the police. Someone has stolen my jewellery and we both know who it is, don’t we?’
He had picked up his kitbag, the sun through the window making his dark hair gleam like silk. Bella wondered what it would be like to touch it and if it would feel warm from the sun or—Shocked by the sudden slide down the secret shadowy path her thoughts had taken, like a tunnel that had suddenly appeared out of nowhere, she swallowed hard as she clamped down on them.
‘What exactly is it you are trying to say?’ Jan demanded quietly, so quietly, in fact, that it was odd that she should shiver and feel alarmed. He was the one who should be afraid, not her.
‘You understand English, don’t you?’ she threw at him wildly. ‘It’s plain enough what I’m saying. What happened? Couldn’t you afford to buy your fiancée a ring of her own? Oh, I’m sorry, I was forgetting you’re a refugee, aren’t you, and of course refugees have to steal things from other people?’
He had put his kitbag back down and he was standing looking at her, not saying anything or doing anything, just looking at her in such a way that a feeling of nausea, the kind she remembered from a childhood ride she had insisted on having at a fairground, despite her mother’s warning that it would make her ill, was gripping her stomach. Now, though, the nausea was outweighed by the fierce thrust of exhilarating pleasure her defiance of her danger had brought her.
She wanted, she realised, to insult him and humiliate him as he had done her; she wanted to accuse him and watch him beg her not to report what he had done to the police. She wanted to hear him begging her to forgive him.
But he wasn’t doing either of those things, Bella realised. He was simply standing there looking at her with pity and contempt darkening his eyes.
He felt pity and contempt for her? How dare he? Didn’t he realise that she was the one who should be viewing him with contempt? He was, after all, a thief. And he was at her mercy. She didn’t really care about the loss of her jewellery, Bella recognised; what mattered far more to her was the power over Jan that his theft of it gave her.
‘It’s because we know that we can’t trust you that decent people don’t want refugees in their homes,’ she taunted him. ‘That’s why someone like you has to marry another refugee. It’s because it’s like to like. I dare say she’s a thief as well, is she?’
Now at last she had got a reaction from him.
‘You will take back that insult,’ he told her coldly.
‘What?’ Bella was beside herself with fury now. ‘You steal my jewellery and then you have the gall to say something like that? I always knew that, for all others might fuss round you saying that you’re a hero, you haven’t got much sense,’ Bella told him with contempt. ‘Because if you had, right now you’d be down on your knees to me pleading with me to forgive you and begging me not to report you to the police.’
To Bella’s utter chagrin Jan threw back his head and laughed.
‘Ah, so that’s what you’re after, is it? You want me to plead with you for your forgiveness, and not just your forgiveness I think perhaps.’ Subtly his accent had become just that little bit stronger and the look in his eyes very definitely and unsubtly extremely knowing. Now she could see in the grey eyes the awareness she had looked for and had so bafflingly never seen before with regard to his own good looks. ‘You want me perhaps to buy your silence for this supposed theft with a kiss or two, no?’
Bella couldn’t speak past the tight ball of fury blocking her throat. Her heart was pounding fiercely. She felt hot, and then cold, angry and then excited, her body and her thoughts pulsing with fierce energy.
When had he moved? Bella didn’t know. All she did know was that he was now standing right in front of her and that he had reached for her hand and was holding it in his own.
She looked up at him. He was looking back at her. She gave a small gasp, her body trembling. Jan’s thumb rubbed gently across the back of her fingers, and she trembled more violently.
He was bending his head towards her. She couldn’t take her gaze off his lips. She could feel her own softening and parting. He was smiling at her as though he knew all about that treacherous exciting ache inside her that had suddenly become so very intense.
‘Poor Bella.’ He placed his index finger against her lips and shook his head.
Her body was awash with so much giddying sensation that her mind couldn’t spare the time to grapple with the meaning of his words.
‘What, nothing to say? Perhaps you want more than just merely a kiss or two? Perhaps you want me to take you to bed and give you what your husband never did, is that it?’
Why was he still talking? Why wasn’t he kissing her instead of talking about doing so, Bella wondered wildly.
He was still smiling at her, giving her a smile that curled the corners of his mouth in such a wicked way that her heart was jumping around inside her chest cavity like a fish out of water.
‘Perhaps you even hid the jewellery yourself, did you? Ah, poor Bella, to be so desperate for a man.’
His voice was still soft but it was a softness that raised the tiny hairs at the back of her neck in swift alarm. His words had the same effect on her as a jug of cold water being thrown over her, leaving her reeling and gasping under the shock.
‘I am not desperate for a man,’ she denied angrily. ‘And if I was, that man would not be you.’
‘At last – something we are agreed on,’ he told her, his voice suddenly cold and hard, as he released her hand and stepped back from her. ‘Because I cannot be bribed or bought or threatened, Bella. I have not touched your jewellery.’
‘You must have done. It’s missing, and you’re here. You’re a thief, Jan, for all that you’re trying to pretend that you’re not, and I’m going to make sure that everyone knows it,’ she threatened him furiously.
He was doing it again, putting her in the wrong, making her look bad, but this time she wasn’t going to let him get away with it.
There was a small silence as he looked at her without a smile this time. Instead there was a gravity mixed with revulsion in his gaze that made her heart jerk painfully.
‘You know, Bella, despite everything I feel sorry for you. Sorry and rather sad. You’re so blind to reality, and blind to the fact that the rest of the world, unlike you, can see past your lovely face to the ugliness inside you. And you are ugly inside, Bella, very ugly. But it isn’t all your fault. Your parents are a great deal to blame. I’m sure if they had loved you more and the outward trappings of success less, then you would have learned from them that true beauty is something that comes from the heart, and that it’s that beauty that really counts.’
Ugly, her? That was a lie and anyone could see it. She was stunning; beautiful.
‘And no, I am not going to hit you,’ Jan continued quietly. ‘Using violence to make my point would make me contemptible in my own eyes. How sad it is that someone with so much potential to be a truly worthwhile and lovable human being should throw all that away and instead become a person that others dislike and avoid. You know, I’m surprised that someone as intelligent as you obviously are hasn’t worked out yet that treating others badly, hurting them and being unkind, simply means that they will behave towards you in exactly the same way. I feel very sorry for you. It must be very lonely being you, Bella, a woman without friends or kindness or love in her life, who shows only meanness to others.’
‘That’s not true,’ Bella denied. ‘I have got friends, and … and people do love me.’
She was humiliatingly close to tears – of anger, of course.
‘I haven’t taken your jewellery,’ Jan continued. ‘So if it is really missing and this is not just some silly game you’re playing because—’
‘Because what? Because you think I want you to kiss me? Well, I don’t. Your fiancée is welcome to your kisses. I certainly don’t want them.’
‘And I don’t want your jewellery. So, are you sure that it is missing?’
‘Yes.’
How had it happened? How had it come to this – that Jan was now the one accusing her, and she was having to defend herself from those accusations?
‘Then someone must have broken into the house,’ Jan told her. ‘Presumably no one else has a key?’
‘Only my mother,’ Bella began impatiently, and then stopped.
‘Well, I think we can safely assume that your mother won’t have stolen your jewellery,’ Jan told her wryly.
‘No. Of course she wouldn’t,’ Bella agreed sharply. No, her mother wouldn’t have taken her jewellery, but Charlie might have done, Bella realised with a sickening jolt of awareness. How humiliating it would be if she had to tell Jan that, after what she had said to him. She longed for him to be the thief, and right now nothing would have pleased her more than to send for the police and accuse him in front of them before seeing him being handcuffed and marched off.
However, an inner voice was warning her that he was not lying when he claimed he had nothing to do with the disappearance of her jewellery and that same inner voice was telling her that her brother could have done. Bella knew Charlie well enough to know that he was perfectly capable of taking her jewellery, and of being able to justify to himself his need to have done so.
She needed time to think – and alone. And time too to find out if she was right about Charlie without alerting Jan to her suspicions. He’d love that, being able to taunt her about her brother being a thief just like he had taunted her about wanting his kisses. Which, of course, she most certainly did not.
‘I don’t want to discuss it any more,’ she told Jan in a flat voice. ‘I just want you out of my house, and the sooner the better.’
EIGHTEEN
‘I can’t wait for it to be May and the dance competition,’ Lou told her sister excitedly.
‘Me neither,’ Sasha agreed.
‘Do you think we should add something a bit more fancy into our routine, like a bit of Latin American?’
They were up in their bedroom, having spent the earlier part of the afternoon supposedly going for a walk in Wavertree Park, but in reality very daringly going into Liverpool to meet up with Kieran, who had told them that his uncle had offered to provide them both with new costumes for the competition.
‘Something a bit racy,’ he had told them with a wink, adding, ‘You’re to go to the theatre and ask for Ma Jenkins. She’s in charge of all the costumes and she’ll run you something up.’
Now Sasha shook her head in response to Lou’s question. ‘No. Kieran says that we need to keep something back for later in the competition. The next heats, you know.’
Lou nodded vigorously. They were united in their unshakeable conviction that every word that fell from their idol’s lips was spoken with irrefutable wisdom and truth.
‘I think Kieran’s a bit disappointed in you, though, Lou,’ Sasha felt obliged to tell her twin.
Instantly Lou was bristling with angry defensiveness. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, when you went to the ladies, he told me that he was worried that you might let me down because he doesn’t think that you keep time quite as well as me.’
They had always been so close and so much in agreement that there had never been any reason for them not to speak their minds openly to one another. But that had been before.
‘You’re making that up,’ Lou accused Sasha furiously.
‘No, I am not.’
‘Yes, you are, because last week he told me that my voice is much stronger and better than yours, only I didn’t say anything at the time ’cos I know how much you like him and I didn’t want you to be upset. Besides, I thought it might put you off when we do our number and spoil our chance of winning.’
‘I don’t believe you,’ Sasha announced flatly. ‘You’re just saying that because you’re jealous, because it’s me that Kieran likes best.’
‘No he does not.’
‘Yes he does.’
Since he hadn’t been able to find a pawnbroker who looked respectable, was open for business over Easter, but was a safe distance away from Wallasey whilst en route to the run-down part of Liverpool where he was supposed to meet Dougie, Charlie had decided that he would have to offer Dougie the jewellery in lieu of cash. Not that that should be a problem. With his connections Charlie was pretty sure that Dougie would get a far better price for it than he ever could.
He’d already found the pub, on the corner of a shabby-looking street of terraced houses, in what was obviously a very poor and rough area of the city, with a gap here and there courtesy of Hitler’s Luftwaffe. But he was a bit earlier than he had planned, having allowed extra time for negotiating with a pawnbroker. The street was empty, or at least it had been until the door to one of the houses had opened and a girl had stepped out, and a very pretty girl too, Charlie recognised appreciatively. Her hair was black and curled luxuriantly down onto her shoulders, her face pale and heart-shaped, with gorgeous full red-lipsticked lips and large dark brown eyes. The girl had got to have Italian blood in her somewhere, Charlie decided, but he reckoned she couldn’t be full Italian because everyone knew that they didn’t let their sisters and daughters out on their own and especially not dressed like this girl was dressed, in a short-sleeved blouse with such a low neck that it was falling off one of her shoulders, and a skirt pulled in tightly round her tiny waist.
The brown eyes were surveying him as boldly as he was her, and quite plainly she liked what she saw as much as he did, Charlie thought appreciatively, as she continued to study him, one hand on her out-thrust hip, her head thrown back as she tossed her hair and eyed him challengingly, before asking mockingly, ‘Lost your way, have you, soldier boy? Only if it’s Seacombe barracks you’re looking for you’re well in the wrong place. This is Toxteth. You need to be going north of the city, not south. What you want is the ferry terminal just past the Cunar
d Building. You can get the ferry there that will get you over the Mersey to Seacombe. Round here isn’t the place for the likes of you.’
Since he was supposed to have been going down to the drill hall, Charlie had felt obliged to put on his uniform instead of wearing civvies.
‘The wrong place for the barracks but the right place for the prettiest girl in the city,’ Charlie riposted with a knowing wink.
She was younger than he had thought at first, no more than seventeen or eighteen, he guessed. She was still standing on the steps to the house, but now she was leaning against the doorframe in a pose that showed off the delicious curves of her breasts. Charlie could feel his blood heating and roaring through his veins.
Being in the army had given him a taste of what life was all about when it came to girls. The confidence that went with that made it easy for him to swagger over to her and place his own foot challengingly on the step below hers as he looked at her.
She wasn’t very tall, he was standing below her and she had to tilt her head back to look up at him. She was very, very pretty.
Lena looked up at the soldier. He was good-looking, she had to give him that, tall and broad-shouldered too, and with that confidence about him that said he knew a thing or two. She’d been half shocked and half thrilled when he had come over like that in response to her comment. The kind of comment she’d heard her cousin Doris making more than once, before she’d hooked up with her new steady. Lena’s heart did a small excited dance inside her ribs. She was going to get in a lot of trouble if her cousin came back and found her parading around in her clothes, and she’d get the strap from her uncle an’ all if he caught her doing what she shouldn’t, but she was tired of being treated like a kid. She was sixteen, after all, and prettier than her cousin Doris – much prettier. But Lena knew that her late mother’s family didn’t approve of her because of her dad being Italian and him only marrying her mother when he had had to, and even then spending more time with his own family than he did with his new wife and child.