Her hands shake, her body jerks.
Bernie gapes at the morning paper, at the front page of the local paper, at the near-naked figure of Dominic Coates emerging from the sea with a child in his arms. Has she reached the stage of hallucination, has her madness gripped her with such intensity that she sees him when he’s not there?
She must get her thoughts in order. Her wounds burn afresh with this memory.
‘What is it? Bernie! Hey! Are you ill? Speak to me,’ shouts Kirsty. ‘You look terrible. You look like a corpse.’
Bernie hands over the paper. ‘Holy Jesus. That’s him, Dominic Coates, the fella I was with.’
‘What’s he done? Let’s see what it says.’
‘He has rescued a three-year-old girl who they all thought was dead. He brought her back to life on the sand in front of a crowd of people. He’s a hero. Hang on, let me read.’
They read on together. ‘They’re getting at the mother, the kid was out of sight for half an hour before she even missed her. What’s the matter with these sad people?’
‘The father died. How dreadful.’
‘He should never have tried if he couldn’t swim.’
‘They brought his body in half an hour later.’
‘God. Just imagine.’
But this life-and-death drama means little to Bernie, far more important than this is the fact that Dominic is working in Cornwall as a lifeguard for the summer. So he followed her after all, and yes, it would have been simple to discover her whereabouts, just a matter of chatting to friends. He must be biding his time, he’ll get in touch when the time is right. He is probably nervous about her reaction after the suicide bid. Secretly Bernie has always believed that Dominic still cares. You can’t love someone as strongly as she does without any reciprocal feelings, surely that’s just not possible? After all, when you look at things calmly, it was his parents who caused the split and influenced Dominic with their snooty beliefs, who threatened to cut him off, who must have made him as desolate as she.
Yes, yes! It makes sense. All is not lost. Life, intolerable yesterday, is now filled with relief and joy. Hope, which springs eternal, walks once again at her side with hot, sandy feet.
It is a reborn Bernie, gagging with hope, who dials the agency’s number from the communal phone outside the recreation room.
‘I ought to have read it,’ she whispers to Kirsty. ‘Hell, if I wrote it, I ought to have read it.’
‘Shut up,’ hisses Avril, plump legs crossed with excitement.
After a short but nerve-racking pause Bernie is speaking to Candice Love.
‘There was a mess up,’ says Bernie. ‘Your phone call got lost in the system. That’s my fault really, I used a false name, the name of a friend. I’m sorry, I thought it sounded better. I was just too freaked out to use my own.’
She raised enquiring eyebrows. Had she said that convincingly? They had rehearsed this excuse, at length, together.
‘Your real name is perfect,’ says Candice, thinking what cranks some authors are but, when all’s said and done, this one’s rather special with a right to be eccentric. The agent is taking one hell of a risk by keeping this marvellous find to herself and not sharing it with her boss, RC.
‘The main question is, Bernadette, when can you and I meet?’
Money is the problem. Bernie, Kirsty and Avril have worked this out and the only way they could club together to buy a return from Cornwall to London is if they got hold of an Apex ticket, which means buying six weeks in advance. Otherwise they would be faced with an eighty-quid bill, not possible.
‘Funds are rather low at the moment,’ says Bernie cautiously. They will beg, steal or borrow if necessary, but honesty has to be worth a try.
‘Fine,’ says Candice happily. ‘You tell me when you can come and I’ll send you the ticket.’
Bernie’s next day off is on Friday, the most expensive day of the week, but this means nothing to Candice. ‘I’ll order the tickets today and get them sent directly to you. Now, let me explain where to come.’
She asks how much of the novel is ready. When she hears it is finished she immediately demands that Bernie should bring it with her. ‘Although I can’t promise anything yet,’ she says with professional cunning, ‘but if the rest of the book is as good as the first five chapters I think we can be sure of some interest.’
‘But how long will it all take?’ Bernie asks, overexcited.
Candice decides it is best to be truthful, assessing, correctly, that this writer knows nothing. ‘I’m afraid these things do take time.’
‘This year, next year?’
‘Not until next year, I’m afraid, at the very earliest.’
‘How much would we be talking about?’
‘Stop it,’ spits Kirsty with a nudge and a glare, while Avril closes her eyes in shame.
Candice gives her professional laugh while her eyelids bat like cash machines. ‘I can’t tell you that either, not at this early stage, but the first impression I get gives me hope. It all depends on the rest of your novel, of course, and the state of the market at the time.’
‘So we just have to wait and see?’
‘It’s a slow and painful process, but you must have found that when writing Magdalene. It probably took you a long time.’ Candice is holding her breath, for this information could be all important—best if an author can knock out one a year.
‘About six weeks,’ is the pleasing reply.
When the hair-raising phone call is over, Bernie fetches a bottle from the bar and they go upstairs to their sparse attic room and drink a toast to Magdalene.
They raise their glasses and see one another happy and glowing through Sicilian red. They are friends. They have come together. They have a goal in common. ‘Share and share alike,’ says Kirsty magnanimously. ‘Whatever we get we split three ways.’
‘It was your idea, you did the work, you should get more,’ says Avril unsteadily, unused to alcohol.
‘What d’you think I should wear?’ asks Bernie, too het up to fret about such details. ‘What sort of person should I be? We don’t want them to think I’m pig-ignorant.’
‘But you are pig-ignorant,’ worries Kirsty. ‘And the less you say the better.’
‘Then I’ll dazzle them with my personality.’
‘The only reason you don’t sound stupid,’ says Avril, ‘is because you’ve been around,’ and she searches for the right words, ‘life. Well, men, sex, that’s what I mean.’
‘What? You think I’m a whore? You’re right, I’ve had more men than you’ve had hot dinners.’
‘And if you really did write a book it would be in a black cover on the top shelf of the motorway services.’
But there is a serious point here. Bernie is not your stereotype author. To start with she is a slag, or was (innocently promiscuous is how she sees it); secondly she is only nineteen and never took English at GCSE. With her IQ in such doubt, all the school would put her down for was RE, Drama and Art.
‘But there’s one thing I do have,’ she says to cheer her downcast conspirators, ‘and that’s a rich imagination. That was written once in my report. If I get the chance I’ll work on that.’
‘Just be yourself,’ says Kirsty. ‘Don’t show off or try to be clever, you couldn’t keep it up anyway. Let’s hope your looks will pull you through.’
The dress rehearsal arrives unexpectedly when Bernie is doing her shift that evening.
‘Off to London then?’ asks the odious Mr Derek with a nod and a wink, still hoping he might be in with a chance. ‘Off to the big smoke. Must be something important.’
‘I’ve written a novel,’ says Bernie, still on top of the world and bursting with confidence now that she knows her lost lover is back in the picture.
Mr Derek’s smile is contemptuous. ‘Oh yeah, and I’m the Queen Mother.’
‘Hey? Now why would you think like that?’ asks Bernie, peeved. ‘Why wouldn’t I write a novel?’
‘You�
��re not serious,’ says Mr Derek, irritating beyond endurance with that superior, amused expression.
‘Fine, if you don’t believe me,’ says Bernie, stiffening, ‘but what’s more I’ve found an agent who thinks she might be able to sell it.’ And won’t Dominic be surprised and impressed when he discovers his little colleen has more about her than he imagined? Won’t his mammy and daddy feel bad when they hear they snubbed a famous author? This is the gloss on the gingerbread. Because famous is what Bernadette Kavanagh has always been determined to be. She now has the platform she’s always desired. Thousands never get the chance, and all she has to do is throw herself off.
‘Well, what d’you think?’ asks Kirsty, finding Bernie immersed in the manuscript, her mess of magazines abandoned on the floor, covered with ash and snagged pairs of tights. She has been reading for an hour now, a unique situation for Bernie, whose normal concentration span is five minutes.
Bernie looks up, shocked, and still half immersed in the story.
‘I can’t put it down.’
‘There, we told you, it’s gripping.’
‘But there’s much more to it than that.’
‘Of course there is. That’s the whole point.’
‘This Magdalene,’ starts Bernie doubtfully, and her face takes on a clouded look, ‘there’s something abnormal…’
‘She’s a winner,’ Kirsty enthuses. ‘She’s unscrupulous. We could all be as strong as that if we tried. It’s just that we’ve all been conditioned to accept our limitations.’
‘I hope we’d never be like her.’ Bernie looks down at the thick wad of paper, and then back to Kirsty, bewildered. ‘She’s evil. It’s scary. It makes me go cold when I’m reading, can’t you feel it?’
‘That’s because of the strength of my writing,’ says Kirsty with a triumphant smile.
‘No.’ Bernie shakes her head once again, dark curls tumbling around her face. ‘No, it’s not that. There’s a word Mammy sometimes uses for things she can’t understand, like heathens and werewolves and paedophiles. She calls them accursed,’ murmurs Bernie, starting to shake uncontrollably, ‘and there’s something about your Magdalene that is definitely accursed.’
Ten
WHILE TREVOR HOSKINS MIGHT look like a man, talk like a man, walk like a man, as the days turn into weeks and his wife and kids remain out of reach, inside he feels like a cougar. Sniffing. Stalking. Snarling.
He has visited all the obvious places, spied on the neighbours, opened her post. Driven by pride and raging vengeance he has bagged and burned her remaining clothes, torn up the photograph albums, binned her goddamned trinkets and savaged the hidden books he found.
All this left him exhausted.
But the woman is thick as a bloody plank. There’s bound to be clues left somewhere around.
‘She used the phone, didn’t she, Margot, she used the payphone at lunch times. I always thought that was odd.’
Other than busybody Margot Banks, most of her workmates were discreet.
‘And she never said who she was ringing?’ Margot Banks shook her head and took another fag from his packet.
‘Some of them thought it was some bloke. They used to rag her something awful about it.’
Trevor went cold all over. How would Kirsty get a bloke with her miserable face and tired expression? She made it clear sex with him was disgusting. No, no, Trevor cannot tolerate the thought of another man. ‘But you never thought it was a bloke?’
‘Nah.’ Margot took a deep drag and blew it out into a shaft of sunshine. ‘Not Kirsty. She was far too shy, no confidence. She wouldn’t say boo to a goose.’
‘But you never saw her with anyone? Out here? In the carpark after work?’
‘Hang on a minute, there was a time, a couple of times now I think of it, when she was picked up by some woman in a car. I never gave it a second thought, well, you don’t, do you?’
Trevor, tired of Margot’s big rouged face and the thrill she got out of his discomfort, said, ‘So there was nothing else?’
‘She had lots of dental appointments. I always wondered how the hell she could afford it. Craig and I never go any more, well, not unless we’re in agony.’
So, she was up to no good behind his back in spite of his careful checking. Women are all the same. Wouldn’t you sodding well know it? He checked the dentist, of course, but the receptionist said they hadn’t heard from Mrs Stott for some time and wasn’t he, Trevor, due for a check-up? Unknowingly he came quite warm when he rang the Samaritans, for that was the kind of pathetic, whingeing thing he suspected Kirsty would do—moan about him for hours on end, not knowing when she was well off. OK, he lost his temper at times, but she drove him to it with her constant moaning. And he hadn’t touched the kiddies, had he?
‘She’s disappeared and I’m concerned about her,’ he said, cursing to himself on the other end of the phone. The tossers.
‘I’m afraid we operate in total confidence and never reveal our clients’ names to anyone,’ said the snooty voice.
‘But I’m her husband and she’s taken my kids.’
‘We would be very happy to talk to you, Mr Hoskins, if you felt we could be of some help. My name is Angela—’
‘Piss off,’ said Trevor as he slammed the phone down.
Kirsty has no friends that he knows of, no relatives save a brother she hasn’t been in touch with for years, and the kids’ friends don’t come home. She has never been into that school bit, car-boot sales, swimming-pool duty, hobnobbing with other parents, off to sports days and PTA meetings. There was no chance for Kirsty to go out at nights; after a busy day’s work it was Trevor who needed to go down the pub, and she had to babysit.
Perhaps she’s in one of those hostels? Or convinced someone she’s badly done to… everyone’s at it these days. There’s plenty around who will listen to women, but how about the men? Who has Trev got to listen to him? And he almost weeps at the unfairness of it, he is so sorry for himself.
Well, look. He comes home from work to an empty house, no food on the table, nothing but old ham that’s gone green round the edges in the fridge. He’s having to live on fish and chips or takeaway curries. He watches the telly on his own—there’s not much sodding fun in that. Mostly he dozes off in his chair and wakes up cold and shivery, only to have to make his own cocoa and plod up the stairs like a sad bastard, where he lies recumbent and open-eyed, cracking his knuckles.
Twice he has been late to work ’cos there’s no-one around to get him up and he is too tired to hear the bleeding alarm. And far from being admired and respected, he knows they are talking about him now, gossiping like old fishwives. ‘She’s upped and left him’, ‘sodded off’, ‘not much of a man if he can’t keep his own wife’…
Sometimes he gets so bleeding angry at home alone with the silence that he kicks at the sofa like a child in a rage, sinks more Southern Comfort than he can handle, so his breathing goes strange and he wonders if he’s unconscious, and shouts to himself with the telly up so the neighbours won’t hear his thunderous outrage.
A man right at the end of his tether. The only thing that brings him peace is the thought of what he will do when he finds her.
‘I’m not worried,’ says Maddy in her letter, ‘because it’s only a cold which is lingering, but I think I ought to register the children with my own doctor, just to be on the safe side, in case they should catch the normal childhood bugs and need medical treatment. So if you give me the name and address of your doctor I’ll organize it. We ought to have done it before, of course, but there’s so much in your head in the heat of these moments.’
One hasty phone call to Maddy and a happy chat with Jake and Gemma reassures Kirsty that all is well.
She has returned the books she borrowed from the hotel quiet lounge, all apart from Magdalene, of course, which she took to the boiler room and burned. In great trepidation she stood and watched the pages curl, the cover slowly disintegrate. She watched through the little glass door until t
he book turned to ashes in the fiery furnace.
What is going to be tricky, if all should go well, if Magdalene finds a publisher, is the prospect of a second book. Browsing through the quiet lounge of the Burleston Hotel, the chance of picking up another choice gem must be nil. If only Ellen Kirkwood had been more prolific, but then, if she’d written more, her work would probably be better known.
As it is, all three women are praying that nobody is going to remember a novel they read in 1913. That no friends or relatives kept a copy carefully dusted and preserved in pride of place on their bookshelves. That no ancient reviewer associates their book with something he might have dug up in the cuttings department of his library. Perhaps they should have changed the title—she rolls her eyes despairingly—but everything has happened so quickly.
Everyone in the hotel is talking about Bernie’s book. Bernie, a natural exhibitionist, makes sure everyone knows and Kirsty dreads that the colonel himself might be roused from his vegetative state to declare Magdalene as one of his favourites. After all, the book was in Colonel Parker’s collection, although the other titles do suggest they were probably bought as part of a job lot.
Mrs Stokes is all condemning. She has watched Bernie flirting shamelessly with all and sundry, but is unaware this is learned behaviour and that no-one shapes up to Dominic. ‘If that girl manages to get a book published then pigs will start to fly,’ she says indignantly through pursed lips. ‘Silly fool. Trying to show off. More likely the trollop has gone off to London to see some man.’
‘She’s jealous,’ says Avril knowingly, understanding how the old woman feels. Although she has to admire Bernie’s nerve. Avril would not have the guts to assume the title of author and go off alone to face the music.
But Kirsty’s peers are greatly impressed. ‘Bernie has kissed the blarney stone,’ says Lorna Hodge, who does the top landing, folding the edge of a new toilet roll into a neat triangle. ‘And she’s got the looks to carry it off.’
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