“If I’m going to bring Ronnie down, one of us has to be working while I do that. Jules is going to have to go back to full-time teaching.”
Joe looks between us two, trying to decide if we’re joking. “But she said she was gonna do her dancing?”
I lift my eyebrows so high, they hurt. “I said that. However, since we found out about Ronnie, it’s all become clear. My dancing isn’t as important as just finding out what happened to my mum and how she died. Someone has to know and your dad is the best person to find out.”
Joe gulps. “I don’t like this. I don’t want either of you getting hurt. If that man is dangerous…”
“I know what I’m doing, Joe,” Warrick tells us, certain of himself, “besides, he’ll think I’m as naïve as all the rest. He’ll never suspect me. I’ll… start up my community volunteering again and use that as my cover. When I leave social work in a month, I won’t have anyone to answer to anymore, will I? I don’t have to abide by the rules this time.”
His hands clasped together, Joe asks, “What about our headmaster at St. Clare’s? How’ll you swing it with him? He’s a right ball buster.”
“Simple,” I reply. “I’ll pull a Morticia Addams. When he seems stunned that I want to work, I’ll cry down the phone, tell him my husband’s a depressed bum who’s quit life, basically, and I need the money to feed my starving kids. Everybody’s inquisition quelled.”
Joe shrugs. “So this is what you both connive and get up to when my back’s turned?”
Warrick growls slightly and I stand, clearing the table of cups and wrappers. I squeeze my husband’s shoulder and Warrick says, “The world’s a piggin’ mess and the only way to beat ’em is by joining ’em, son.”
Joe shrugs, stands, and asks, “Alright if I go up?”
“Sure, but not a word of this to anyone,” I ask him.
“Nobody would believe me anyway.” He winks.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Jules
July
Vernon and Ruby have invited me for tea and cake today. It’s Saturday afternoon, blazing sunshine, and I’m wearing a big, baggy summer dress I recently bought. I’ve just about lost all my baby weight but I still like baggy stuff. Anyway, their request was for me to come alone. No Warrick. Which makes me suspicious. It also makes me smile because I think I know what they’re going to try to do – that is, beg and plead on their knees for me to come back.
We’re meeting at The English Muse on the Avenue and I’m looking forward to some indulgent treats and sucking up (bearing in mind they don’t know I’ve already decided to come back to work). I’m waiting until the last week of term to tell Jack otherwise I know he would make me start right away and I want the whole summer off first.
I walk in the door and see they’re not alone. They have two guests with them already, two women. When I get closer, heads turns to look at me and I recognise the faces.
Hands over my mouth, I gasp, “Oh my god!”
Hetty leaps off her chair and dashes to me, her arms immediately round me. I’m crying before I’ve even heard her say, “Mrs Jones! Ha ha! Good to see you!”
I pull back. “You look so well!”
Hetty has crazy, spiky blonde hair, a wicked penchant for torn denim and now stands taller than me!
“What about you? With your nose stud and tattoos? Not so square anymore, Jules?” She winks.
I smile. I have the ballet slipper tattoo, the ‘Warrick’ one and now I have Harry and Charlie inked on my left ankle.
“Liza!” I gasp as she comes towards me, a beautiful woman now, and pregnant it seems!
“Hey, you!” she says.
I hug her and spot a ring on her finger. “You’re married? Flaming hell, he didn’t waste any time, did he?”
She snickers. “When you know, you just know!”
I do a calculation in my head, and I think these girls are not even twenty-one yet.
“Come on, we got you loads of cake and loads of cream and hot chocolate,” Hetty says, because everyone knows how much I like my hot chocolate and cream.
I stand by the table and stare at Vernon and Ruby, who look so hopeful. Ruby’s still sporting a bump but she’s destined to drop any day now. I look at them all and reason I could mess with them, but I stand there and say, “I know why you’ve all got me here.”
“Now, wait Jules, and just listen to what we have to–” Vernon begins.
I push a finger to his lips to shut him up. “I’m already coming back.”
“You are?” Ruby says, whelping like a baby elephant.
I nod and stare around the table at them all, finally acquiescing to sit down. “Warrick got tired and fed up of his job. He misses community work, you know? So I’ve agreed to come back to keep us afloat. Besides, I know you’re all useless without me.”
“Oh babes…” Ruby blows her nose, tears streaming down her face.
Hetty looks at Liza and they both nod before Hetty bravely asks, “It’s crazy you left and then when you came back, all that love was still there between you and Warrick?”
Everyone with me looks sceptical and that’s fine. They want to know, so I’ll tell them…
Shaking my head, I argue, “No, it wasn’t like that. When I came back, there was even more love. What we had was so perfect in the beginning but now we have this life and it’s all over the place, but it’s even more amazing. It was like we met at the worst and best possible time. Best because we needed one another, worst because neither of us was really ready to make that ultimate commitment.”
“Ruby told us about your mum,” Liza begins. This girl is far wiser than her years, and more sensitive than she lets on, so it’s no wonder some man wanted to make her his. “Nobody ever knew.”
“I know.” I look at my lap, trying not to react.
Hetty adds, “You might not have spotted me suffering, had you not suffered yourself?”
I squeeze her hand across the table and smile. “That’s very true. Although, you were extremely forthright in being teacher’s pet and I always knew there was something to that.”
I wink and she accepts what I’m saying.
“So what do you both do now?” I ask the girls, as Vernon pushes a plate toward me with toffee-walnut cake and the promised lashings of cream.
“I’ve had a year out,” Liza says, “but next year, I’m going back to finish my degree and then do an MA. I’m going to teach at the university, hopefully.”
“Good for you! And Hetty?”
“I just graduated with distinction but it’s funny… I’m not going into social work even though I got a degree in it.”
She gazes around the table confidently, not the on-edge teenager I used to know. “What’s the plan, then?” I ask as I lick cream from the spoon, on tenterhooks.
“Police,” she says smiling, “reckon I could give Warrick a run for his money.”
I smile, shaking my head jovially. “He’s been that much of an influence on you, eh?”
Her lips turn down and she shakes her head, “No. I mean, yes, but not as much as you Jules.”
She stares and I wonder about that stare. There’s a hanging moment if ever I experienced one. All eyes stare at me and Ruby adds, “We were all prepared to beg in our own ways, to get you back. We’ll still beg if you want us to.”
I chuckle and hold my hands up. “I don’t need that. Although, I honestly don’t understand why you’re all being so forgiving. I mean, four and a half years ago, I did up and leave all of you.”
“While we are all happy to follow,” Vernon says, “you’re happy to lead. Say you’ll be our leader again. Like you said, time apart only gives you perspective of what you had. You put your heart and soul into it like nobody else does or ever will and we need that. We need you back. We’re enduring the worst cold turkey of our lives and we need Jules ‘the Bombshell’ Jones back in the ring. We need all that fire and pizzazz and energy and guts you bring to the arena.”
I smirk and ki
ck him lightly under the table. “I’ve moved on and my boys take my all now. But how about half a leader? Best of both worlds.”
“Here’s to that,” Hetty suggests and we all raise our mugs in the middle of the table, clinking them together.
“Shitting hell this is good hot chocolate,” I gasp, snickering as I dribble a bit of cream. Everyone laughs and I tell them, “Do you wanna know about the trip?”
“Thought we’d never fucking get there,” Hetty exclaims and the pregnant women around the table rub their tummies as we all start laughing harder than we have in ages.
“Well, I started in Paris, and I did everything. You know when you see stuff on telly and think, I’m going there, well I ringed all those places on my map and I just went… and then I travelled round Europe, Australia, Japan, New Zealand, and a few stops in America, and a few other random stops in between,” I giggle, and nervously watch everyone watching me. “I found out why the Americans call it a vacation because I totally got out of my own head and felt disembodied I suppose, and free, but I was kidding myself I was travelling to fulfil some dream, to travel in the footsteps of my mother or better myself. I mean, I did loosen up as you’ve all pointed out, and I did learn a lot… I danced every day I was away and I realised the only times I turn to dance are when I’m suffering and in pain. I have to feel desperate, because they’re the only moments I can stand to put myself back in a pair of ballet slippers, because the pain fuels the battle, you know?”
Vernon rubs my shoulder and grins. The girls all look emotional, but I continue, “I was really trying to run from the existential crisis I was undergoing at the thought of Warrick and his ex-wife… almost shagging but not. At the same time, though, Warrick’s always telling me everything happens for a reason and I honestly think, if I’d stuck around here after finding out about what happened between him and Anna, I would’ve done something stupid. I don’t know what, but something stupid. I just knew in my gut,” I twist a fist in front of my belly, “I had to go and make sure that I wouldn’t spend my life wondering about what could’ve been. Pain dulls with time, doesn’t it, but it’s always there. We were lucky that when I came back, we got pregnant really quickly and then it was a family we were building, not just a marriage, and it’s all somehow worked out.”
“Pain does dull with time,” Hetty tells us, her clear eyes gleaming, “but when you love someone so much, you know, a part of you tries to destruct that before it destructs you. Unless of course, by some fluke you do get it right.”
I nod swiftly. “Warrick made me come alive. He wrenched me from the pits of depression and the abyss of my addled mind to yank me into his loving arms, to hold me tighter than anyone ever had done before. The thought of my saviour becoming what might eventually destroy me was devastating. But life, you know, it’s about risk. I existed without living for so long and then bam, he was in my life and I was in his, and then do you know what?”
“What?” Liza asks, a smirk on her face.
Vernon and Ruby are holding hands, listening, while Hetty is dabbing her eyes constantly.
“There was no turning back once we fell in love because we fell so hard, so deep, so true. In the first few months, there was only us in the world and nobody else existed anymore. It was absolutely perfect and tranquil and sensual and it was everything. Until it wasn’t. Until the world got involved and I couldn’t deal with it all… there was all this danger to our perfect love and it made me clam up again. So that was it, I had to venture out alone, hoping and praying we’d somehow get back together again in the end.”
“It’s rare,” Vernon says, his eyes serious, “did neither of you, you know? Have a slip?”
“No, we didn’t! I know! I would’ve actually forgiven him that, you know, if it was a physical thing but neither of us had the balls or the inclination to go elsewhere, obviously.” I shake my head. “From the very beginning, I was willing to risk it all with him but he wasn’t. He kept things from me. Before I went abroad, he put off the wedding again and again. There was something holding him back. So, maybe I went abroad for three years to recharge the batteries because I knew deep down, that when I got back, I’d be the one supporting him constantly. I wasn’t the one who ever really needed support, he was. The world had broken Warrick in ways he wouldn’t admit.”
“What’s wrong with him?” Ruby asks with a frown. “I hope you didn’t get saddled with a nut job.”
I laugh, berating her with my stare. “He has this thing where he becomes a bit of a hermit and denies himself the good things in life. It’s not like it’s depression, though it probably does have roots in that, but he doesn’t trust himself when he’s alone so he doesn’t live when I’m not with him.”
Everyone raises their eyebrows and I also reveal, “He was an addict.”
“You don’t get over being an addict, though?” Vernon asks.
“I expect that’s why he does what he does and hides himself from the world sometimes, because for so long he indulged the voracious side of himself… and he fears it.”
“So basically,” Hetty taps the table, wagging her head dramatically at us, her lip curling, “love is shit? Yeah? You sacrifice yourself for them and they give you knack all back and you, what do you get?”
I sigh and say to Hetty, in particular, “When you find out someone you love is in need and has been through tough times without you, it’s the most privileged thing in the world to be brought in on their pain and anguish and to live their sorrow with them. To be able to really bury yourself inside someone’s heart and let them burrow inside yours, that’s the only thing that counts. There are people who really, truly love and we’re two of them. It’s possible. It happens. There’s no malice or competition or fear between us anymore, we really love one another and want what’s best for one another. Also, it’s true what they say, it’s never about the destination, Hetty, but the journey. I may have been all around the world, but nobody and nothing churns my guts up like that man with his shaggy hair, chocolate-brown eyes, long arms, big, wide smile and legs almost as long as mine.”
At the table, there’s a moment of serious contemplation but when I catch Vern’s eyes, he winks knowingly and says, “What inside leg?”
“Thirty-four.” I giggle.
He nods his head, appreciative, though not impressed. He lifts his leg and says, “Try thirty-eight. I’d never make it as a ballet dancer. I’m surprised you did… and a little jel about that actually.”
“He’s got problems,” Ruby says laughing, and the afternoon wiles away like that, talking the ultimate therapy it seems. I catch Hetty’s eye and I wonder who the boy is, the one trying to gain entry to her heart. Maybe one day, she’ll really let him in, but girls like us never cave easily and it has to be a special hero that sticks around long enough for that to happen.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Jules
September
Autumn, a time of the year I love. New boots. New winter jeans. The travelling fair. Orange leaves. Raking out thick socks. Getting home and putting PJs on as soon as you’re indoors. A new school year… all these things used to excite me. Now, they do not. Even as I think back to the autumn term during which I met and fell in love with Warrick, I’m struggling to get excited about this new autumn term. My life has changed. I’m not the same anymore, nor is he. I love him leagues and oceans more than I used to and now he’s back out there again – risking it all to do the right thing – I feel sick about the dangers he might face.
I’m well and truly in grump mode, scared for him, while also championing him. I want Ronnie Fitzgerald to pay. I want answers. I want it all.
First day back. I should be full of it. Instead, I’m not…
I wander into my new classroom, which is better than the old one I used to have. Jack’s pulled out all the stops to make this happen, to get me here, and to please me.
“Year Ten, let’s have you,” I command as I breeze through the corridor, and some of them stare, confused.
They enter the room after me, some of them not knowing where to sit themselves. They were expecting to be taught by Ruby – but she decided to extend her maternity leave with her month-old baby girl, Lissa, who unfortunately reminds me very much of Vernon. Bless. I’m sure it’ll all even out.
“Nearest to the door can close it,” I shout as I place my things on the desk.
Some lad closes the door and they all sit, expectant. This is a high set and they want to learn. That’s beautiful. I want to teach them. I also like to mess with them a little sometimes.
“Who I have substituted for here, then?”
There’s a show of hands and many of them obviously know me or know of me.
“Good. Well, now I’m back full-time, there will be no fannying around, just good old-fashioned spanking your botties when you displease me.”
They laugh, sort of weirded out. I snicker to myself.
“So, I will be gliding you through your GCSEs over the next two years. You may call me Mrs Jones and I may call you the wrong name, but I’ll get there eventually. It’s just because I’m blinded by all your beautiful faces.”
The class laughs a little. They’re quiet while I take a register and try to familiarise myself with their names and faces. All are in attendance.
“So, who wants an A star?” I ask with a smirk, and they’re all looking at me like I’m a movie star demoted to teaching. I wonder if it’s my clothes. I’m wearing a pair of smart, black dungarees over a smart shirt, my hair piled on top of my head in a big granny knot. I have to wear glasses these days and I wear big black rimmed ones.
Nobody has raised their hands. They’re still trying to figure out the craick with me.
“Let me put it like this, then, who wants to earn £20 for a C?”
Nobody raises their hands.
“And who would like to earn £100 from your parents for two very shiny A stars? The good thing about English is that you could gain two A stars so that’s actually £200.”
All hands raise.
Beyond Angel Avenue Page 28