‘What are you going to sit on? Or sleep on?’
‘I’ll go shopping,’ said Bonnie.
‘Do you want me to come with you?’
‘God no,’ Bonnie protested. She didn’t want Lew seeing her buying crap, cheap sticks of furniture. ‘But thank you anyway,’ she added quickly.
Lew was about to press his offer to help but stopped himself. Bonnie was a woman with much-valued pride in tatters and he knew she must be feeling uncomfortable and ashamed, though she had no reason to be: he genuinely wanted to help her. He’d have driven her up to Houseworld in Penistone and bought a bed, a sofa, a table for her, but he knew she would never have agreed to it. He wondered what the outcome of the scenario with her husband would have been had he not driven up there, and was so glad he’d followed his instinct.
‘There’s someone looking in the window,’ said Bonnie, pointing to a couple outside. ‘You’d better open up.’
‘I will, but I want you to go home,’ said Lew. ‘To your new home.’
‘No,’ said Bonnie. ‘I had a plan. To get out, come to work and then go to my new house when I finish. Please. That’s what I really want to do. To get back on today’s track. As I wanted it to be.’
Lew waved at the couple and unlocked the door, greeting them warmly as they entered. ‘Yes, we’re open, we were just finishing off a stock-check,’ he said as an excuse.
Bonnie recognised the couple. They’d been in the previous week asking about the Queen Anne-style walnut writing desk. They smiled at her when they saw her.
‘I’m so glad you’re here,’ said the woman. ‘We’d like to buy the desk. I could have kicked myself when we came away without it. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. We didn’t know if you were on commission so we wanted to make sure we bought it from you, just in case.’
‘Bless you,’ said Bonnie, warmed by their thoughtfulness. ‘Well, it’s here and still available, but it’s certainly been a piece of interest.’ She had slipped into work-mode, which was a blessing for her because it was normal and normal was tantamount to a home.
Chapter 35
Lew insisted that Bonnie leave at four.
‘Lew, I can’t afford to lose any more pay,’ Bonnie said.
‘Do you actually think I’m going to dock your wages?’ he asked. ‘Please!’
‘Ken Grimshaw would have.’
‘I’m not Ken Grimshaw,’ said Lew sternly.
No, you’re most definitely not, said Bonnie to herself. Ken Grimshaw didn’t have deep blue eyes, the colour of a twilight sky, or thick black-brown waves of hair that her hands wanted to plunge into. Ken Grimshaw didn’t smell like a fresh forest and have a smile that make the heat rush to her cheeks. Ken Grimshaw didn’t make her heart feel as if there were something on this planet worth beating for.
‘Make sure your phone is charged up and do not hesitate to call the police if your husband turns up. Does he know where you’ll be living?’
‘No,’ said Bonnie. ‘Not yet. But it won’t be long before he finds out.’
Lew picked up one of the business cards from the counter and scribbled on the back of it. ‘Here’s my personal mobile number. Only a few people have it and I’ll always pick up if it rings.’ Apart from one notable occasion, added his brain for his ears only.
‘Thank you,’ said Bonnie, reaching out for it and then pulling her hand back quickly before he caught sight of the state of her nails, which had been bitten down to the quick when she had been locked in the room. They had pulsed with pain all day.
‘I’ll get your luggage out of the back room.’
‘Lew, you’ve done enough, I’ll—’
‘I’ll get your luggage out of the back room.’ He was insistent. They walked across the square to her car and Lew lifted the bags into the boot for her.
‘I’d better not forget to give you these,’ he said, pulling out two sets of keys tied together with ribbon. ‘The blue ones are for the back door, the red for the front.’
Bonnie took them from him and felt a fizzy thrill zip around inside her. She’d done it. She’d actually done what she had wished she could do. These were not only keys for the doors of a little house, they were keys to a new life, a life without Stephen. Her freedom. She wouldn’t be going back to him, whatever he said, whatever he did. A Queen of Wishful Thinking would only ever move forwards.
‘You take care,’ Lew said and bumped her shoulder because he’d wanted to touch her in some way to convey his concern and it wouldn’t have been right to close his arms around her again as he had that morning. He would swear he could still feel the imprint of her against his chest.
With every yard she covered towards the house on Rainbow Lane, Bonnie felt a further notch of exhilaration, like a child on her way to see Santa. She knew that when she walked in, the house wouldn’t be the same as the one in her head, an explosion of cheerful colour, but it didn’t matter. She parked up in front of the green gate and took the keys out of her pocket, having another moment of disbelief that she was actually here and about to open the bright red door. Her bright red door. Inside, instead of the huge cosy inglenook fireplace of her imagination, there was a small low tiled one in the lounge and the carpet was dark brown, the walls magnolia, but it was still lovely. She brought in her luggage and shut the door behind her. She was home, and her lungs expanded and she breathed in the slightly damp air and it felt wonderful. The kitchen was tiny, but it did have a two-ring hob set in the work surface and a small fridge underneath it. She switched it on and it whirred merrily into life. Upstairs there was one large bedroom with built-in wardrobes either side of a chimney breast. The window afforded a view of a considerably overgrown square of garden, two posts standing upright and a droopy washing line strung between them. There was a bathroom with a cheap but new-ish white bathroom suite. It felt wonderfully unfamiliar.
Now came the part she had been waiting for, the exciting part. She needed things and, thanks to The Rainbow Lady sales, she had extra in her budget to buy them with. She set off down to the small retail park just outside town where the big Argos was. She already had the product codes saved on her phone for a kettle, a single quilt, cover, pillow and the flip-out bed that doubled up as a chair. The bed, in the brown colour only, had twenty pounds off. The colour didn’t matter to her at all. The young male assistant kindly carried it to the back of her car for her. Then, across the road in Asda, Bonnie bought some milk and coffee, bread and butter and basics, including a can opener that she realised wasn’t on her list. She found a toaster for ten pounds and when she saw a microwave with a large scratch on the side for the discounted price of thirty-five pounds on a gondola end, she couldn’t resist. She unloaded her new purchases at home as if she were unwrapping surprise birthday presents. Her evening meal consisted of a cheese toastie and a mug of tomato soup and it was a feast because she didn’t have to eat it opposite a man chewing his jaw off and pontificating about subjects he pretended to know more about than he did.
She was tired out by ten o’clock and settled down on her new bed in the front room, which wasn’t the most comfortable thing on the planet, but she didn’t care. She snuggled under the cheap quilt, rested her head on the pillow which was soft and bouncy with its newness and savoured a different sort of quiet from the one in Greenwood Crescent. She hadn’t realised the sounds her ears registered there, until she could no longer hear them: Stephen’s muted padding across his carpet, the faint play of voices or music coming from the radio in his bedroom, the neighbour’s garage door opening and closing when he arrived home from work. Here there was only a sporadic rumble of cars on the nearby High Street, but she didn’t mind that at all.
She would wake up in the morning not having to see Stephen over the breakfast table. It really would be the first day of the rest of her life, as the old saying went. Further thoughts of him flittered to her brain, like moths drawn to a light. She thought about what Lew had said about him manipulating her and she explored that from her ne
w safe vantage point in the little house. She rolled back to thirteen and a half years ago and again tried to fathom what had made her so thirsty for the attentions of a man like Stephen Brookland. She’d been a wreck, on the precipice of a nervous breakdown. Physically she was so drained that Harry Grimshaw had sent her home on full pay for a fortnight to have a good rest. Mentally she was so wired she was barely sleeping, yet she was exhausted. She was battered too from the beatings she had given herself for not being able to help Joel or see through the ‘I’m perfectly fine’ act her father had put on. He’d been her rock, her daddy who had brought her up with all the love he had to give and made sure she had the best of what he could afford. All that to cope with and Bear’s illness thrown on top. She had loved her dog so much and had to watch him growing weaker as the silent, sly cancer took hold. And though she’d known her final kindness to him had been to let the vet send him to his forever sleep, it had still been a hard duty. If she closed her eyes, even now all these years later, she could still recall him falling backwards into her arms and see the light draining from his eyes. She could still imagine her face pressed into his darling fur made damp with her tears and the voice of the vet above her saying ‘Sorry for your loss.’
Stephen was fourteen years her senior, but she hadn’t felt the age difference until they were married. She’d been adrift, floating around helplessly, about to drown and he’d appeared like a lifeboat and led her into a harbour. No wonder she’d fallen in love with him. He had designed himself to make her do that.
Funnily enough when she had a ring on her finger, he hadn’t been as keen to help her with her duties to her father. And his chivalrous ways were sadly lacking when his mother attacked her for not being good enough for her son, for being a gold-digger (that amused rather than hurt), for being a leech. There had been a slow slide from treating her like a lady to a housekeeper then further down the scale to a mere sounding-board for his inflated theories and pompous opinions on everything.
Even with less than a day’s distance from Stephen, she could see clearly how she might very well have been manipulated, as Lew had said. The real Stephen had been the one post-marriage, the fake one had led her to the registry office with a crumb trail of kind words and gallantry. He didn’t even want to sleep with her before they were married and she’d presumed he was an old-fashioned gent. She’d been so easily hoodwinked. And why? Just so that he didn’t have to be alone? She’d been nothing more than a pet to him. And not even one that he’d treated with any respect, or love.
And so what would he do now that they were apart? She pictured him today in an empty house with no familiar smells of Friday chicken coming from the kitchen at teatime. He would have made himself a sandwich and eaten it at the table with no one opposite to speak at – not to or with: she was there to speak at. He would have watched the Discovery or History channel, as per normal but his plate would not be washed up when he went into the kitchen to lock the door at half-past ten. He would have retired to his bedroom then to listen to the radio with the precisely placed socks in his drawer and his boxes of shoes in the wardrobe, and his mind would be spinning on the events of the day, just as hers was now.
Mental exhaustion soon made her eyelids shutter down and sleep drifted towards her in thickening mists. Just as she was surrendering to it, she heard Stephen’s voice cut through them, as sharp and loud as if he were beside her, his lips close to her ear.
You’ll be back. You’ll have to be back. There is no life for you if you don’t, as well you know.
And she shuddered because it was not the way of things that she went and she had absolutely no doubt that he would be planning how to restore order.
Chapter 36
‘Please don’t forget that we are going to dinner at Regina’s tonight,’ said Charlotte as Lew opened the door to leave for work the next morning.
‘Promise I won’t,’ he replied.
‘Can’t you come home early and just leave thingy in charge if she’s so wonderful,’ said Charlotte.
‘Bonnie. And no, not at the moment, it would be unfair . . .’ Lew instantly regretted saying it because Charlotte leapt on it.
‘What do you mean “unfair”?’
He batted away the subject with a wave of his hand if it were of no importance. ‘Just personal problems, I don’t know all the details.’
‘Huh. This from the man who said that personal problems should never interfere with work,’ humphed Charlotte.
Lew looked at her in puzzlement. ‘When did I ever say that?’ He knew he hadn’t because it wasn’t something he believed was true. ‘Personal problems do impinge on work life sometimes, it’s inevitable.’
Charlotte shrugged. ‘Oh well, if it wasn’t you it was someone else, but it’s true though, isn’t it? You get paid to do a job, not mope around. Besides, work should take your mind off things. What’s up with her anyway?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Yes you do, Lewis. Why so secretive?’ There was a suspicious note in her voice.
‘Her marriage has ended,’ said Lew, feeling slightly disloyal that he was discussing Bonnie’s business. Even to his wife.
‘No wonder. Bet her husband is out partying now,’ smirked Charlotte.
‘What a horrible thing to say,’ Lew barked, which made Charlotte’s mouth drop open with shock.
‘Lewis!’
‘You have no idea what the woman has gone through, have you? Not everybody has your privileged easy life, Charlotte.’
‘Lewis!’ she said again, but he hadn’t finished.
‘You’ve got a bee in your bonnet because of the other day—’
‘I have not . . .’ Charlotte gave a shrill protest.
‘You might live in a grand house and have a gold visa card, Charlotte, but that does not give you the right to treat people like shit. You came from a semi on the edge of Ketherwood, or have you conveniently forgotten that?’
‘Will you stop shouting at me,’ Charlotte screamed at him. ‘I’m having a really rotten time at the moment with Gemma and that whole baby thing and I could really do with you and me being on the same side.’ Her hands shot to her face and her shoulders started shaking.
Her distress threw a bucket of cold water over him and he felt instantly annoyed at himself for being so insensitive.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said and rushed over to give her a hug. She turned into his shoulder and he buried his lips in her hair.
‘I thought you said you weren’t upset by Gemma trying for a baby, love.’
‘I lied,’ said Charlotte, sniffing hard. ‘I didn’t want you to think that I was petty and jealous. But obviously I am. I’m a horrible person.’
‘Oh don’t,’ said Lew. ‘You’re not.’
She pulled herself away but kept her head down. ‘Go on, get off to work. I’ll see you tonight.’
‘I won’t be late and we’ll have a lovely time this evening.’ He placed his finger under her chin and lifted it up, then he kissed the tip of her nose.
It was only when he got to the car he realised that for all her sobbing, Charlotte’s eyes had been totally dry.
*
As Bonnie started to wake up on that first morning in Rainbow Lane she felt as if something were holding her against her will and her arms pushed against the force and, as she came to full consciousness, she realised that it was only her quilt that was pinioning her arms. But the sensation had freaked her, because it signified something she already knew: that her new-found freedom was an illusion. She had run from Greenwood Crescent and she would divorce Stephen, but he had an ace card and she knew he would use it. He would do everything he could to try and bring her to heel or grind her beneath it if she resisted.
She lifted her left hand and looked at her ringless finger. She could still see the faint groove in her skin where the gold band had sat and she rubbed it and hoped it would smooth away so there was no trace of it. She wondered if Stephen was still wearing his, but she reasoned that he would be b
ecause he had complete confidence that he would keep his marriage away from the divorce court. She sat up and looked around her. She might have to leave this little house for a prison cell, but she would not leave it to go back to Greenwood Crescent.
Her limbs felt jittery with nervous tension as she drove to work because she expected to see Stephen’s car parked on Spring Hill waiting for her. But it wasn’t there and that surprised her. She started second-guessing what he might have planned instead but reprimanded herself. There was no point in leaving him if she were to bind herself to him mentally.
She had forgotten that she would need an iron. Her shirt was creased and she was embarrassed about it. She had put on a long dark cardigan to cover it up but the sun was bursting out of the sky and she looked ridiculous. Lew was already in the shop, sorting out the till float. He raised his head when he heard her open the door and smiled.
‘Good morning. And how are you today?’ he asked.
‘I’m fine,’ she said, returning the smile.
‘How was your first night in your new living quarters?’
‘Wonderful,’ said Bonnie, ‘although there’s a lot of paperwork to sort out now that I’ve moved. Council rates and water and driving licence, and I’ve got to find a solicitor. I’m filing for divorce as soon as I can.’
‘I can give you the name of the firm I use,’ said Lew. ‘The divorce solicitor there is a woman and she’s very good. And thorough. She’ll get you what you’re owed.’
‘I’m not bothered about taking any money, I just want it all to end quickly and smoothly,’ said Bonnie, trying not to notice that Lew was shaking his head at that.
‘Let her deal with it all for you. She will do the negotiating on your behalf, but you should start your new life with what you’re due. Here . . .’ He pulled his mobile out of his pocket and looked up the number, then he scribbled it on a piece of paper and handed it to her. ‘Adriana de Lacey is her name.’
‘She sounds expensive,’ said Bonnie, raising her eyebrows.
The Queen of Wishful Thinking Page 18