Sunshine Over Wildflower Cottage

by Milly Johnson

  She pressed her finger onto the doorbell button and heard the long buzz deep in the house. She could see a head bobbing about through the frosted glass in the door. Two heads, but no one came. Caro buzzed again. She had no intention of moving away until she had confronted Mick Pollock’s mistress. After the fourth persistent buzz, Caro saw a figure stomp towards the door, heard the lock turn on the inside and it was yanked open. There in a grey-white towelling robe and grubby pink slippers stood Danira. The furious look on her face softened immediately on seeing who the visitor on her doorstep was.

  ‘Auntie Lena. God, what are you doing here?’

  ‘I’ve come to see you, dear,’ said Carolena Bellfield, as was, stepping into the house.

  *

  Hugo’s name on the screen of her mobile sent Viv into a panic. She was all fingers and thumbs when she pressed the connect button.

  ‘I haven’t got any news yet. I’m on it but I’m going to need more time,’ he said all in one breath. ‘I bet you saw my name on the screen and had a fit, didn’t you?’

  ‘Something like that,’ said Viv.

  ‘I’ll be back to you as soon as I can,’ Hugo replied. ‘Promise.’

  *

  ‘Er, come in,’ said Danira, when Caro was already inside. ‘I . . . er . . .’ Danira scratched her head in embarrassment as a scrawny young male with a crew cut and a hand cupping his naked crotch appeared in the doorway which led to the kitchen.

  ‘Who is it?’ he said.

  ‘It’s my auntie,’ said Danira. ‘Get some fucking clothes on, Ash.’

  Ash strode towards them. ‘You’re going to have to shift, then. Me clothes are upstairs,’ he said. Danira squashed herself against the wall to let him pass. Caro didn’t move an inch and he had to squeeze past her, muttering expletives not quite under his breath.

  ‘Didn’t take you long, Danira,’ Caro said, when Ash had reached the top of the stairs.

  ‘He’s just a friend. I said he could kip down here for a bit.’

  ‘You can make me a cup of coffee,’ said Caro.

  ‘Er, yeah, come in,’ replied Danira, clutching the neck of her robe and scuffing the soles of her abnormally long slippers on the carpet as they entered a very untidy kitchen. She’d inherited the family’s bigfoot gene, it seemed. With pincered fingers, Caro lifted an empty condom wrapper from the table and held it out to her niece.

  ‘Just a friend then, Danira?’ said Caro, as it was snatched from her hand and stuffed in the bin in the corner. Caro sat stiffly down on the chair and looked around at the work-surfaces littered with all sorts. This lovely new house would be a dump in no time. ‘I think Ash should go. I want to talk to you in private.’

  There was a flash of protest in Danira’s eyes, but she quickly extinguished it. At that moment, Ash’s footsteps could be heard on the stairs. He swaggered into the kitchen in jeans and a T-shirt emblazoned with a blasphemous slogan and was just about to take a seat at the dining table when Danira barred his way with her arm.

  ‘Can you leave us for a bit?’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘I want to have a talk with me auntie.’

  Caro gave him a smile. Not a nice one. A smile that said, ‘you heard what she said, so do one.’

  ‘Who the fuck is this telling you what to do? I could hear you upstairs, you know.’ Ash jutted out his chin as if he was about to square up for a fight.

  ‘Do you really want to know who I am?’ said Caro, unruffled, crossing her long elegant legs and sitting back in the chair.

  Danira pushed him out of the kitchen and Caro listened to her whispering to him in the hallway, warning him. Seconds later, Ash had crashed out of the front door.

  Danira came back into the kitchen. She thumbed behind her. ‘Sorry about that,’ she said. ‘He wouldn’t have talked to you like that if he’d known who you was.’

  ‘Lucky for him you told him then, before he said anything else, isn’t it?’ said Caro. ‘I like my coffee with no sugar and just a dash of milk, please.’

  Danira jumped to the kettle and Caro tried not to let the amusement show on her face. Danira was a gobby little slapper but she wouldn’t have crossed ‘Auntie Lena’. Nobody would.

  Young Carolena Bellfield had been the apple of her father Johnny’s eye, not that she’d seen much of him growing up because he’d been in prison after taking the rap for a top London hardman, Carolena’s godfather. Even now if she needed a favour from their family, all she had to do was ask. Carolena’s brother was a total embarrassment to Johnny, getting banged up in a young offenders institution for mugging pensioners, but he revelled in how lovely his Lena was growing up, despite being in the care of a pathetic drunk of a mother. Johnny died in Belmarsh when Carolena was fifteen and she left home on her sixteenth birthday. She ended up working all over the world as a croupier until one day in Monte Carlo, stationed at the roulette wheel, she met the handsome Eamonn Richmond from West Yorkshire. She married him within two months and it was the best gamble she had ever taken.

  Carolena had never told her friends her full history. She might one day, if it ever came up in conversation, but it hadn’t so far. She had lied only once to them, when their little club started two years ago, and told them that her maiden name was Hampton. She knew them well enough now to know that, with the obvious exception of Gaynor, they would think no less of her for her connection to the Bellfields.

  Danira delivered two cups of coffee to the table and then sat down opposite her aunt.

  ‘So what can I do for you then? Is it about my dad?’

  ‘I haven’t seen your father for three years, nor do I want to,’ said Caro. ‘I came to talk to you about Mick Pollock.’

  ‘He’s dead,’ said Danira. ‘I’m a widow.’ She had a smirk of pride on her lips as if the word was the equivalent to a damehood.

  Caro corrected her. ‘No, you aren’t his widow. His widow is Gaynor Pollock, who is still married to him and has a child with him.’

  ‘He left her. He loved me.’

  ‘I’m sure he did find you exciting and fresh,’ said Caro, throttling back on the sarcasm as much as she could. ‘But you know that he would have gone back to Gaynor in the end, given time.’

  Danira’s jaw dropped open. ‘He wouldn’t of,’ she said. Caro shuddered at the clumsy grammar and Danira assumed her aunt’s reaction was at her protestation. ‘He wouldn’t of left me. He was divorcing that cow and he’d asked me to marry him.’

  ‘In bed, presumably,’ sighed Caro. ‘In the post-coital glow of sex.’

  ‘Yeah, after we’d done it,’ nodded Danira, presuming that’s what ‘post-coital’ meant. ‘He said he adored me. He couldn’t keep his hands off me.’

  ‘And did you love him as well?’

  Danira opened her mouth to answer, saw in her aunt’s eyes that she would be able to tell a lie from a mile off and shut it again. Then re-opened it to deliver the truth this time.

  ‘I liked him a lot. He was good to me.’

  ‘He bought a house, which I presume is now yours.’

  ‘Well, yeah.’

  ‘And you have a car. And a cash card to a joint bank account that you’ll have emptied by now, just in case Gaynor had a claim on it.’

  Danira didn’t need to say yes, the flush rising to her cheeks said it for her.

  Caro lifted the mug of coffee, saw the traces of lipstick on the side which weren’t hers and put it back down again.

  ‘I want you to do the decent thing and let his wife arrange the funeral.’

  ‘Eh?’ Danira’s black-dyed eyebrows sank into a deep V of confusion in the middle of her forehead.

  ‘You heard.’

  ‘It’s been sorted already. I had to go and see the funeral bloke . . .’

  ‘Unsort it. It’s Gaynor’s job. She’s known Mick for thirty years, you haven’t known him for thirty months. She is his wife, you aren’t. And you’re already sleeping with someone else.’

  ‘I’m . . .’ Danira started to protest t
hen shut up.

  ‘You’ve done very well out of this, Danira. You’ve got a new house and a new car all for few months’ work. I don’t doubt that Mick Pollock left this mortal coil with a big smile on his face but he would have got tired of having Pot Noodles for tea and living in a pigsty eventually.’ She cast her eyes around the room. ‘I want you to pick up the phone and tell Gaynor that you think it’s only right you should step back and let her take over the reins of her husband’s funeral because he was about to leave you and go back to her. He told you that he’d made a mistake.’

  Danira dropped her cup of coffee all over her dressing gown. She swore, jumped to her feet and pulled the material away from her skin, then grabbed the kitchen roll and blotted herself with it, and all the while Caro sat and watched her, cool, detached and emotionless.

  ‘No way, no fucking way,’ Danira said. There were tears in her eyes, a combination of frustration at not being able to give vent to her temper and pain from the burn.

  ‘I’m not asking you, Danira, I’m telling you. Gaynor Pollock is a good woman and it would cost you nothing to do this. But it would cost her everything not to be able to grieve in public for him as his wife. Sit down. I heard he changed his will.’

  Danira sat, covered in coffee. ‘Well yeah. He still left her loads though. He had stacks of insurance policies and pensions and stuff.’

  Caro picked up the bling-covered mobile, which was face down on the table, with her lethal red nails and handed it to her niece. ‘Ring Gaynor now.’

  Danira looked at her aunt’s hand and noticed the arthritic bump on her third finger and that observation recalibrated her thoughts. Who exactly did her aunt think she was? She was nothing! Johnny Bellfield – the bigshot – was dead and Lena lived a soft life in a big house and she was getting on a bit. What could she do if Danira said ‘no’? So she tried it.

  ‘No.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ Gaynor said, though she wasn’t shocked really. She’d been prepared for this word since before she stepped over the threshold.

  ‘No, I won’t do it.’

  ‘Fine,’ said Caro, with a dangerous smile. ‘Then I’ll make a call, shall I? To a certain Vic Briggs. Do you know him? Yes, you do, don’t you? You and one of your dodgy friends burgled his dad’s house of two thousand pounds when Vic was doing time. And it was all on CCTV. But your dad paid Mr Briggs Senior five thousand pounds to forget it, didn’t he?’ Caro really was enjoying seeing Danira’s face drain of colour. ‘He bought the tape with the evidence on it from him, but guess who gave him the money? And guess as well, who has that tape in her safe at home?’

  ‘Yeah right,’ said Danira, cockily but with a tell-tale nervous gulp.

  ‘I thought you’d say that,’ said Caro. She took her phone out of her handbag and clicked onto the stored videos. She pressed play and held it up so Danira could see herself. The video was grainy but she could clearly see that it was her face tilted to the ceiling in perfect view of the camera which Vic Briggs had fitted in his dad’s house.

  ‘Alas they can’t see the face of the other person but there is absolutely no doubt that it’s you, wouldn’t you agree? You remember Vic Briggs? My goodness, can that man hold a grudge. You know, he always said that burglary contributed to his dad’s death.’

  Danira was now as white as her dressing gown would have been had she ever washed it properly in Persil.

  ‘You wouldn’t. You’re family,’ tried Danira in a lame attempt to wriggle out of this trap.

  Caro leaned over the table and put her head very close to her niece’s. Danira did her best for a moment to stare the ‘old woman’ out, but there was a light in her aunt’s eyes that was blinding. And nasty. It was like staring into the sun and she had to turn away. ‘I might not have the Bellfield name any more, love, but I can scrap like one and I will. For those I love and I care about and that includes Gaynor Pollock. Your dad begged me to lend him that money to get you out of the shit. I gave him seven thousand pounds and he handed over five and I’m still waiting for a penny of it to be paid back. He stole from me, his own sister, so don’t you family me, lady.’ She thrust out her hand with the phone in it. ‘I’ll give you the number. Put it on hands-free so I can hear. Now ring Gaynor.’

  Chapter 63

  Gaynor was sitting in her kitchen wearing a pristine fluffy white towelling robe. On the table beside her was her mobile, a cup of lemon tea which had long gone cold and an ashtray. It had been ten years since she’d had a smoke, but she’d found a packet with five cigarettes left inside on Leanne’s bedside cabinet and that morning had smoked them one after the other.

  Her mobile rang on the table. She didn’t recognise the number. She answered it hoping it would be someone telling her that she was due some PPI compensation so she could give them both barrels of fuck-off and feel justified in venting her spleen.

  ‘Hello,’ said the voice. A rough woman’s voice. A young common voice.

  ‘Who is this?’

  ‘Don’t hang up, it’s Danira.’

  Gaynor didn’t hang up but she was throttled into silence by the cheek of her.

  ‘I want to tell you something that I think you should know.’

  Gaynor’s finger was now hovering over the end call button ready to cut off Danira at the first sign of venom.

  ‘Hello, you there?’

  Gaynor swallowed. ‘Yes, I’m still here.’

  Now there was silence at Danira’s end of the line for a few seconds before the blurted sentence was delivered. ‘Mick was coming back to you.’ She bared her teeth at her aunt, hating her for making her do this.

  Gaynor gasped. ‘What did you say?’

  A huff. ‘I said Mick was coming back to you, okay?’ The words were like razors in Danira’s mouth. ‘He said he’d made a mistake. He said it had been fun but he missed you and he was going to go over to yours and beg you to take him back.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘When did he say this?’ Caro could hear the thirst for details in Gaynor’s voice.

  ‘I don’t know.’ Caro mouthed the correct answer at her. ‘Thursday night.’

  ‘The night before he died?’

  ‘Yeah. The night before.’

  Hearing those words it was as if there had been a crack in the black clouds above Gaynor’s world and the sun had come pouring through.

  ‘He was definitely coming back?’

  ‘Oh for fu— Look, he’d packed to leave me, all right? I didn’t tell you before because . . . because I was hurt. He wasn’t mine when he died. I think you should ring the funeral home and take over the arrangements. Co-op in Hoymoor. He said whatever happened, this house was mine, okay?’

  Gaynor didn’t care about the house. She didn’t care about anything but the revelation that Mick had intended to come back to her. She broke down into sobs.

  ‘Did he say he loved me?’ she said.

  Caro nodded slowly and menacingly. The inference was that Danira better get this right.

  ‘He said he’d never stopped loving you,’ she said through gritted teeth before ending the call.

  There was a long moment’s pause before Caro spoke.

  ‘Well done. Now that wasn’t too painful, was it?’

  ‘It was a load of bollocks.’

  ‘Did Mick ever mention what he felt about Gaynor?’

  ‘He said he felt sorry for her,’ said Danira. ‘He said that he couldn’t remember when he’d fallen out of love with her but it was a long time ago.’

  ‘But only you and I know that,’ said Caro. ‘Besides, words are cheap. Infatuated men speak with their dicks.’ She stood to go and picked up her handbag.

  ‘You’ll give me the tape, right?’ said Danira.

  ‘No, I won’t give you the tape, Danira. I don’t trust you but you can trust me on this: if you ever, ever mention what we spoke about today then I will hand over the tape to Vic Briggs and the police – in that order – without even warning you and that�
��s a promise. All you have to do to remain safe is to believe that what you told Gaynor today is the truth.’

  ‘That’s not fair.’ Danira screwed up her face.

  ‘Life isn’t fair. If it were, old people wouldn’t get burgled by young scum, would they?’ She tilted her head at her niece who had the decency to lower her eyes in submission because she didn’t want to prod her aunt into action.

  ‘You know, Mick Pollock has given you the chance to have a change of life, Danira. Just because you have the Bellfield name, don’t let that dictate your fate. Ditch the plankton you hang around with, take some pride in yourself and this lovely house. You’re a young woman with your whole life in front of you.’

  ‘Like you did, you mean?’

  ‘Yes, like I did.’ Lena Bellfield died many years ago; Caro rose from her ashes and made a very good life for herself. ‘But no one gave me the advantage of a house and money to christen a new life, I had to work bloody hard to get it.’

  ‘My nana is still alive, you know,’ Danira said, with a shrug of her shoulders. ‘Just saying.’

  Caro showed no reaction to that. Her mother was consigned to the dark vaults in her head where she belonged.

  ‘Goodbye, Danira, and thank you for doing the right thing. Who knows, you might get used to it,’ said Caro. She walked regally out of the kitchen, down the hallway and out of the front door and back to her lovely life as Mrs Richmond, even though she knew that if ever push came to shove, she would always be able to fight like the alley cat that Lena Bellfield had been.

  Chapter 64

  The tug of war in Stel’s head continued all morning until she was so sick of it that had she been able to cut the top off her skull and pull the two warring parties out, she would have grabbed an electric saw immediately. She only had respite when Gaynor rang Stel at quarter to twelve to give her something else to focus on. A miracle had occurred. Danira had not only rung Gaynor to tell her that Mick was going to come back to her but she was handing over the arrangements for the funeral. Gaynor sounded as ecstatic as if she was organising a wedding. She asked if Stel would mind telling the others for her.