Lost Innocence

by Susan Lewis

  June Downey-Marsh could feel the intensity of Sabrina’s gaze even before she looked up from the computer screen in front of her. With a sleek cap of dark blonde hair, caramel-coloured eyes and a girlish tilt to the corners of her mouth, June didn’t look her entire forty-six years. However, despite her attractive appearance, since her divorce she still hadn’t been able to find a wealthy man to replace the one she’d so foolishly let slip. So she was currently living in a modest apartment on the second floor of a grand stately home, halfway between Shepton Mallet and Holly Wood. This was where she and Sabrina were now, not in the apartment, but behind the grand house in one of the offices that they leased from the National Trust. It was from here, with its eye-catching views of a water garden, a magnificent sweep of lawn and several Renaissance-style statues, that they ran the bi-monthly freesheet they’d devised and largely financed to serve the surrounding area.

  ‘Do you really want to do this?’ June asked seriously.

  Sabrina’s expression hardened. ‘That shop only has a licence for retail,’ she stated tightly, ‘which means she will be operating illegally if she starts up a manufacturing enterprise.’

  ‘Does sculpting qualify as…?’

  ‘What’s more, she has it in her mind to start bringing tourism to Holly Wood, and the people of Holly Wood don’t want it.’

  ‘Have you asked them?’

  ‘I don’t have to. I live amongst them, so I know how they feel about the village being invaded by coachloads of Japanese and check-trousered Americans.’

  ‘Sabrina, get real, one little art shop isn’t going to put Holly Wood on anyone’s tourist map, and even if it did, no one would come, because Holly Wood doesn’t have anything else to offer.’

  ‘I thought you were supporting me over this,’ Sabrina said crossly.

  ‘I am, I’m just trying to point out the holes in your argument. And this letter,’ June added, indicating the one on the screen, ‘is too emotional. You need to tone it down and put forward a rational case for why the shop should not be used as a…manufacturing unit.’

  Sabrina looked at her own copy of the letter she’d drafted before coming here.

  ‘The point is,’ June went on, ‘even if you manage to stop her turning it into a workshop, she’s still entitled to sell her sculptures, and anything else she might choose.’

  ‘Not if the rest of the village don’t want her to reopen the shop. I could get up a petition.’

  ‘Sabrina, save yourself the embarrassment. She’s from that village. They’ve all known her since she was knee-high to a grasshopper, and everyone loved her mother. I’m telling you, for your own good, they won’t take your side against her, not over something like this.’

  Sabrina’s eyes closed in frustration. ‘June, I have to do something to get rid of her,’ she groaned. ‘We can’t exist in the same village, you know that as well as I do, so help me out here, come up with a plan.’

  Sitting back in her chair, June folded her arms and regarded her sadly. ‘You won’t want to hear this,’ she said, ‘but I’m afraid I agree with Robert. You should try to make peace with her. No, hear me out,’ she said, as Sabrina looked about to erupt. ‘The chances are she won’t want to have anything to do with you…’

  ‘Save your breath, June,’ Sabrina broke in. ‘There’s no way in the world I’m going to speak to her. Would you, if you were me, after everything that’s happened? Craig and I loved one another. If it weren’t for her…’

  As her eyes filled with tears, June gave a murmur of sympathy. More than anyone, with the exception of Robert, she knew how Sabrina had suffered after her break-up with Craig. The heartbreak had consumed her as voraciously as the affair itself, though whether Craig had been equally distraught, or obsessed, June had never been sure. It had obviously meant something to him while it was happening, though, because they’d spent every available minute together, travelling back and forth across the country, meeting halfway in fancy hotels or cheap motels, in one another’s houses, sometimes even in the car. Secretly June had always been afraid of how it would end, because relationships of such intensity were almost always doomed to disaster, and when the dreaded explosion did finally come, she had rarely seen displays of emotion like it. Many and long were the days and nights she’d sat with Sabrina, watching her tearing herself to pieces, so desperate to see Craig, or even hear him, while swearing the worst imaginable revenge on Alicia, that June had been afraid to leave her alone.

  ‘I have to speak to him,’ Sabrina choked, slopping her wine as she reached for the phone. ‘I can’t go on like this. I need to tell him how I feel.’

  ‘He already knows,’ June said kindly, ‘and it’s gone one o’clock in the morning.’

  They were in Sabrina’s bedroom, Robert was next door in the guest room, where he’d been sleeping since the day Craig had told Sabrina it was over. Three months banished from his own bed was more than most men would take, but Robert was hiding his own heartache while trying to be patient and understanding, and asking for June’s help when he needed it, because, when drunk, Sabrina couldn’t stand to have him near her.

  ‘It doesn’t matter what time it is,’ Sabrina slurred. ‘I know he’ll be lying awake thinking of me.’ Her face crumpled as more tears spilled on to her ravaged cheeks. ‘I can’t bear to think of him hurting too,’ she wailed. ‘We have to be together. It’s wrong for us to be apart like this.’ She poured more wine into her glass. ‘You know she blackmailed him into going back to her, don’t you?’ she ranted. ‘She threatened to tell the children about us and turn them against him, and he couldn’t have stood that. Nat and Darcie mean everything to him.’ She drank some wine and hiccuped. ‘We used to talk about how wonderful it would be if they could come to live with us,’ she ran on, ‘how we’d be a family, all of us. Annabelle used to get along so well with his two. They were like brother and sisters already, but that bitch wouldn’t let him go.’ She was swaying badly and as her head went down she started to cry again. ‘He never really loved her,’ she sobbed, ‘but it wasn’t until he met me that he realised how shallow their marriage actually was. What we had together … It was like nothing I’ve ever experienced before. Nor had he. We just couldn’t get enough of one another.’ Seeming to register the phone in her hand again, she looked down at it blearily, and suddenly remembering why it was there she opened it up.

  As she dialled the number she was hardly able to see, she’d cried and drunk so much, and June could only watch helplessly, knowing she’d turn violent if she tried to stop her.

  ‘It’s me,’ Sabrina slurred into the phone when he answered. ‘I know it’s late …’

  June heard him say, ‘I can’t speak to you now. You have to stop ringing here.’

  ‘Craig, please listen to me. I’ll do anything …’

  ‘I don’t want you to do anything. I’m sorry …’

  ‘Please, let’s just talk,’ she begged. ‘That’s all I’m asking.’

  ‘There’s no more to say.’

  ‘I know you still love me. It’s only because she’s there that you can’t say it.’

  ‘I have to go.’

  ‘No! Don’t hang up. Craig, please. I’ll drive up to London …’

  Alicia’s voice came down the line saying, ‘If you call here again I’ll report you for harassment,’ and the line went dead.

  ‘Oh God, I can’t bear it,’ Sabrina seethed, rolling on the bed and clutching her knees to her chest as she sobbed. ‘She won’t let him speak to me. She knows how much I mean to him and she’s afraid he’ll leave her. If he doesn’t, June, I swear I’m going to kill myself. I mean it, I can’t go on like this. There’s no point to anything without him.’

  Hoping Robert wasn’t able to hear, June went to try and comfort her.

  ‘Mum? What’s the matter?’

  Startled, June turned round and her heart burned with pity to see poor young Annabelle standing in the doorway. Though it wasn’t the first time she’d witnessed her mother in
this state, it was plain to anyone how much it was scaring her.

  ‘It’s OK,’ June said, going to her. ‘She’ll be fine.’

  ‘No I won’t,’ Sabrina choked. ‘Nothing will ever be fine until I’m back with him.’

  Annabelle turned her bemused eyes to June. ‘Who’s she talking about?’ she asked.

  ‘No one,’ June answered, trying to usher her out.

  ‘I’m dying,’ Sabrina gasped from the bed. ‘My heart is breaking and no one in this house cares.’

  ‘Sabrina,’ June said sharply, hoping to make her stop.

  ‘I care, Mum,’ Annabelle said shakily.

  ‘Just go away,’ Sabrina cried. ‘I don’t want you here.’

  ‘She’s had too much to drink,’ June whispered, as Annabelle started to cry. ‘Come on, I’ll take you back to bed.’

  ‘She’s really stupid, the way she carries on like that,’ Annabelle wept, as June tucked her in. ‘She shouldn’t drink, because she says horrible things and hurts people’s feelings.’

  ‘I know,’ June whispered, ‘just as long as you understand she doesn’t mean them.’

  ‘Anyway, I don’t care if she does, because I’ve got my friends and everyone.’

  ‘And Robert,’ June reminded her.

  ‘Yes, and him.’

  After pressing a kiss to her forehead, June returned to Sabrina’s room to find her on the phone to Craig again. ‘If you won’t see me I swear I’m going to kill myself,’ she was crying.

  June didn’t hear his reply, so could only imagine how angry, or afraid, or guilty he was feeling.

  ‘I will,’ Sabrina shouted. ‘OK, then tell me you love me. Yes you can. I don’t care if she’s there. No! It’s not over, Craig. It never will be and you know it, because it’s not what either of us wants.’

  Since June had never discussed anything about the relationship or the break-up with Craig, she had no idea how he’d really felt about it all. She only knew that until the day he’d died Sabrina had never allowed herself to stop believing that somehow they’d be together again.

  ‘The last words he said to me,’ Sabrina murmured, as June went to pour them both a coffee, ‘were “I love you.” I never spoke to him again after that, but it was still as though we were soulmates, two halves of the same person. I know he didn’t share any of that with her.’

  Yet he stayed with her, June was thinking, and if you believe it was because of the children, I’m sorry, but you’re deluding yourself, because children survive divorce and if two people love one another as much as you seem to think you and Craig did, then nothing would keep them apart. ‘You’re happy with Robert though,’ she said, aloud, making it a statement rather than a question.

  Sabrina sighed. ‘I suppose so. I mean, yes, of course, but it’s not the same as the feelings I had for Craig. Not even close.’

  ‘Maybe it’s… healthier, the way things are with Robert?’

  Sabrina nodded, but she didn’t seem to be listening. Then her eyes focused again on the letter she’d drafted about Alicia’s workshop. ‘I have to get her out of Holly Wood,’ she said forcefully. ‘The place isn’t big enough for both of us, and as far as I’m concerned she has to learn that she can’t have everything.’ She looked up as June passed her a coffee. ‘She might have taken Craig away from me,’ she said brokenly, ‘but I swear I’ll kill her before I let her do the same with my home.’

  Alicia was about to leave the house when her mobile rang on the hall table, providing a timely reminder to take it with her. Grabbing it, she tucked it under her chin as she riffled through the mail Sam had just sent cascading through the front door.

  ‘Hi, is that Alicia?’ a voice came cheerily down the line.

  Recognising Annabelle’s voice, and wondering what happened to the ‘Aunt’, Alicia said, ‘Yes, it is. How lovely to hear you. You’re up early this morning.’

  ‘Oh yeah, well, I’m staying with a friend, you met her, Georgie, and we kind of haven’t really been to sleep yet. Anyway, that’s not why I’m ringing. I was hoping you’d be able to give me Nat’s mobile. There’s this party that loads of his friends are going to, and we thought he might like to come too.’

  ‘You mean the one in the Copse, because I think he’s already going to…’

  ‘Oh, no, that’s not for another couple of weeks. This one’s on Saturday. Everyone’s going to be there, and I thought, if he’s going to be living here now, that it would be a good chance for him to catch up with everyone. They all want him to come, and they’ve made me promise to make him, so if you could let me have his number…’

  Suspecting Nat might prefer her not to have it, especially while Summer was around, Alicia said, ‘I could probably take my phone up to him now. I think I heard him moving around a few minutes ago.’

  ‘Oh no, it’s OK,’ Annabelle responded. ‘I don’t have the actual address yet, so if you can just give me his number, I’ll ring later to give him the details once I have them.’

  Sensing herself being outmanoeuvred, and not liking it too much, Alicia said, ‘Actually, it’s in the phone I’m speaking on, so I’ll have to ring off and call you back.’

  ‘That’s cool,’ Annabelle chirped. ‘I’ll wait to hear from you. Oh, and by the way, I think what you’re doing in the shop is fantastic. It’s just what Holly Wood needs, something upscale and arty. Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.’

  After thanking her smoothly Alicia rang off, sensing the offer was more about irritating her mother than about actually lending a hand, which was fine just as long as Alicia herself didn’t get dragged into the fray.

  It wasn’t until she reached the end of the street that the blindingly obvious way to put Annabelle off finally occurred to her, and with a smile that would have made Nat laugh if he’d seen it, she took out her mobile again.

  At her end Annabelle was sprawled out on Georgie’s bed in a skimpy vest and boy boxers, admiring her legs as Georgie prattled on about whether she should ask for a membership for the Cowshed gym at Babington for her seventeenth birthday, when it came round next March.

  ‘This’ll be her,’ Annabelle interrupted, clicking on her phone as it bleeped with a text.

  Her smile was smug and sleepy until she read Alicia’s message: Have passed your number to Nat so he can call you. Ax

  Annabelle’s eyes sparked with frustration as her pretty mouth tightened. ‘Shit!’ she muttered.

  ‘What?’ Georgie prompted.

  ‘She’s only getting him to call me, and we both know the ginger’s bound to stop him.’

  Georgie smirked. ‘It’s really bugging you, isn’t it, that he didn’t seem interested?’

  ‘You are so wrong about that, because I know he is. I’ve told you about the things we used to do when our parents thought we were playing draughts in the bedroom. He was practically my first.’

  ‘Yeah right, when you were eleven.’

  ‘Twelve and fourteen, actually. We felt each other up and snogged and I even went down on him a couple of times.’

  ‘Yeah, really. In your dreams.’

  ‘No, not in my dreams. And he’s definitely interested, he just didn’t want to let it show in front of the ginge – and if you ask me, his stupid mother’s trying to keep us apart because of her feud with the she-devil.’

  ‘Yeah, what’s that all about?’ Georgie asked, holding up her nails for inspection.

  Annabelle’s eyes narrowed as she recalled what she’d overheard on Saturday morning. Wild. However, she didn’t want to get into it now, so she simply said, ‘Who knows? Who cares? I’m only interested in getting Nat to Theo’s party on Saturday night.’

  Georgie yawned and rolled on to her front as Annabelle went to open a window. ‘Are you going to tell him what kind of party it is?’ she asked. ‘I mean, if you ever get to speak to him.’

  Annabelle shrugged and stood looking down the morning-misted valley in the direction of Holly Wood. ‘Dunno. I’ll decide that when I put plan B into
action.’

  ‘What’s plan B?’

  When Annabelle turned round she had the kind of danger in her eyes that invariably made Georgie’s heart trip with excitement. ‘You’ll find out soon enough,’ Annabelle murmured, and returning to the bed she flopped down on her back, revelling in the thought of what was to come.

  Alicia was so engrossed in scraping and washing down walls ready for Nat to paint that she didn’t hear anyone entering the shop. She only knew Robert was there when she turned to go and refill her bucket and found him in the doorway, gazing around the old place.

  ‘Gosh, you made me jump,’ she scolded. ‘How long have you been there?’

  ‘A minute or less.’

  As she watched him taking in the cracked and bubbled paint, bare light bulbs, dusty counter and empty racks, she knew what he was thinking even before he said, ‘God, this place takes me back.’ He was shaking his head in wonder. ‘Funny how it makes me think of us as kids, even though Mum was still running it right up to the time she fell ill.’

  Alicia smiled. ‘I like to think she’s still here,’ she said, hoping he wouldn’t be embarrassed by the fancifulness.

  He was still drifting in nostalgia. ‘It certainly feels as though she is,’ he stated. ‘She used to love this place, all the comings and goings, bags piled up so you could hardly move, waiting to be emptied, the treasures we used to find.’

  ‘Until we were teenagers when we wouldn’t be caught dead in the stuff,’ Alicia laughed.

  He smiled, and for several minutes they wandered off down memory lane, recalling the games they used to invent with their friends, who were always invited around when a new donation came in. They’d played cowboys and Indians with moth-eaten headdresses and dented bowlers; devils and ghosts thanks to old black jackets and voluminous white shirts, or big fat people when huge knickers and underpants turned up. Once in a while something magical would fallout of a pocket, or reveal itself at the bottom of a handbag, like a chipped crystal necklace or a fob watch with no hands which Robert had used to power a very realistic toy rat, providing endless hours of fun. Or, on one dazzling occasion, a real diamond ring, which their mother had returned to the owner, who’d been so relieved to find it after believing it lost for so many years that she’d donated fifty pounds to the shop, and given a ten-shilling note each to Robert and Alicia.