Don't You Dare

by A J Waines

  A question is on my lips, one that I’ve never dared ask before.

  ‘Why did you keep me, then?’ I snap, flaring up with equal fury. ‘If I was going to be such a burden to you? The father wasn’t interested, so why didn’t you have a termination?’

  She grinds her teeth and glowers at me, like she’s about to boil over.

  ‘My mother lost three young children,’ she yells. ‘Can you imagine her simply standing by to watch me deliberately wipe out another tiny life?’

  ‘Why did you tell her, then?’

  ‘Vera wasn’t stupid,’ she says, with a half-laugh. ‘There are tell-tale signs a good mother will always notice, you know. I was sick in the mornings, off my food, needing to go up a bra-size…’ She glances down as if she’s not sure whether to say what she wants to add next. ‘You know what? I was in denial at first and I acted as if I wasn’t pregnant; flinging myself around in the gym at school, pushing myself to the limit on the sports field, drinking too much behind my parents’ backs, smoking the odd joint now and again. Anything, to make it go away.’

  She’s never told me this before.

  I recoil as though she’s punched me. In fact, I’d rather she had, because her words hurt me far deeper than a blow ever could.

  ‘To make me go away…’ I say, my voice breaking. ‘You didn’t want me…’

  ‘No. Not at first…’ she says. She stops and looks away, refusing to grant me the words I need to hear.

  I blink away a tear. She must know how much I could do with her reassurance, to hear her confirm her love for me – that unwanted baby – right now.

  She shakes her head. ‘I can’t do any more for you. I can’t get you where you want to be. But Peter can. This terrific man you’ve treated abominably! Who thinks the world of you and wants to help you reach your dreams.’

  When I don’t respond, she takes a step closer and flings her arms down by her side. The raging avalanche isn’t over.

  ‘I cannot believe how ungrateful you are. Peter has been understanding and incredibly patient every time you’ve cruelly ignored him. Anyone else would have walked away, but he’s hung on in there while you’ve turned your back on him, refusing to take his calls, casting him aside.’

  I can’t hide my dismay. ‘But you know why I’ve had to blank him.’

  ‘Because you have no composure or self-control. Because you can’t trust yourself to keep ONE simple secret.’ She tosses her hand in the air and turns away in despair.

  ‘Two secrets,’ I correct her, then wish I hadn’t.

  She laughs. ‘The affair with Carl is frankly indefensible. I’m disgusted at your behaviour.’ She spits out the words. ‘You should be pulling out all the stops to make it up to Peter, not tossing him aside like this.’

  I sigh. She doesn’t see how complicated it is. My feelings for Carl, my shame and guilt about cheating on Peter, my impulse to come clean, but knowing it would lead straight to suspicion about Carl’s death. I’m still trying to make sense of it all.

  ‘I don’t know how to be with Peter,’ I scream at her. ‘I’m so confused.’ I turn away, clutching my head, grabbing handfuls of my hair.

  ‘Well, it’s crunch time. He’s coming to Winchester tomorrow to have one final showdown with you. So, you’d better get your act together, girl, because otherwise you’re going to blow the chance of a lifetime.’

  I draw back as she storms past me, out into the hall. She stops and turns around.

  ‘So…are you coming back with me, or what?’

  I stand my ground, not moving an inch other than to shake my head. ‘No.’

  ‘Peter will be here in a matter of hours. You’ve got until then to make an appearance. Otherwise, I can guarantee you that the wedding is OFF.’ She hooks her hands into her hips. ‘And bang goes your ticket to any hope of a life in the limelight. Or any sniff of luxury. You’ll spend the rest of your life, mopping up spills and wiping the floor, like me.’

  She steps forward wagging her finger at me. ‘And if you let that happen, if you let this one golden opportunity slip through your fingers, then I don’t think I’ll be able to bring myself to look at or speak to you ever again.’ Spittle flies into the air and her knuckles are bony-white, as she forces herself to keep her clenched fists by her side.

  ‘I’m not coming back home,’ I say. ‘I need space. I need to think and get my head round everything.’

  ‘If you let this lucky break go, don’t you dare come to me for money,’ she snorts, ‘because there isn’t any! You’ll be on your own. Then you’ll see what life is really like!’ Her eyes are smouldering, her entire body trembling and she’s pitched forward like a cannon about to fire. I’ve never seen her like this before.

  With that, she flings open the front door, storms out and slams it closed with a reverberating crash.

  After she’s gone, I slip quietly into the sitting room to see what impact all Mum’s yelling has had on Grandad. He’s sitting frozen in his chair, his arms stiff against his side, staring ahead like he’s expecting an army inspection.

  A wash of fury curdles in my stomach for the way Mum has frightened him.

  ‘It’s okay, Grandad. Nothing bad has happened. It’s just Mum getting angry…about somebody. But she’s gone now.’

  ‘Is it Way-way? Is it Vera?’ His eyes dart around him, agitated and muddled.

  ‘It’s all right. She’s gone. Everything’s fine.’ I pat his hand. ‘Shall I get you a cup of tea?’

  He nods and clings on to my fingers, a look of anguish on his face.

  ‘I’ll put the kettle on,’ I say, cheerfully. I slowly pull away and he lets me go.

  When I get to the kitchen, I flop into a chair and drop my head into my hands.

  I don’t know which way my decision is going to go about Peter yet, but whatever I do, I’m not sure Mum and I can ever come back from this.

  After a cup of tea, Grandad seems to have forgotten the outburst – a hidden blessing of dementia. He seems chirpy and insists on watching a re-run of Cash in the Attic, so I look for yet another job to take my mind off things.

  His bedroom is tidy, he’s naturally that way, although often items are put away neatly – just in the wrong place. Last time I had a tidy up, I found half a tuna sandwich in his sock drawer and I’m not in the mood to start picking through any recent surprises there might be in his cupboards.

  As I swing the door to, I spot the metal stick leaning beside the long curtains on the landing, the one Grandad uses to open the loft hatch. Inspired by the show he’s watching, I peel down the folding ladders and climb up to see what treasures might be tucked away up there.

  There’s a bulb above my head that lights up piles of boxes, most neatly stacked, but the path once carved between them has filled up over the years with stray items; a rolled up sleeping bag, tennis rackets, books, an old vacuum cleaner. The boxes are labelled and in a single scan around, I skim over the key stages of Grandad’s life: wedding, new house, Rachel – early years, Rachel and Beth.

  There’s a box beneath ours with the label torn off, so I kneel down and slide it out to take a peek. Inside are several smaller flat boxes, the kind that men’s shirts are sold in. They carry the names of Mum’s dead siblings, the children she referred to earlier; Robert, who died of leukaemia, aged three, and his twin Olga, who died at five. I remember Mum telling me Olga had a virus which led to cardiomyopathy – a problem with her heart.

  Buried amongst handfuls of photographs are birth certificates, death certificates, medical records, funeral notices and orders of service.

  In one photo taken outside Buckingham Palace, Olga is looking cute, holding onto her hat in the breeze, next to Mum who looks about ten. I’ve not seen this snap before. Olga has my Mum’s almond-shaped eyes. No one could have known then that she didn’t have long to live. So tragic.

  Others are of Mum as a child; one on a campsite beside Grandad’s battered old Ford Cortina, another on the dockside in Southampton. There’s a lat
er one with me aged around three, with Mum and Vera, who’s wearing one of her jazzy poncho tops the Chilean’s call chamantos. It was taken a year before Vera died.

  Leyla was the baby who was stillborn nearly twenty years ago and complications then led to Vera’s death. I sit back on my heels. It’s strange that I had all this family and never knew them. I don’t even remember Vera.

  Underneath that photo is a large brown envelope.

  I can hear the television through the floorboards. Grandad’s hearing isn’t so good these days, so it’s constantly loud. He won’t even know I’m up here. The envelope is blank on the front – surely it would say ‘private’ or be sealed if it was anything important.

  I lift the flap and slip out the contents. Inside are clippings from several newspapers about a teenage girl, Tracy Limehouse, killed outside a pub in Southampton in 1992. The year before I was born. She was run over by a car.

  Why did Grandad keep this? Why is it with photographs of Vera? What does it mean?

  36

  Beth

  I left Grandad stocked up with more tea and a chunky slice of the stickiest ginger cake I’ve ever made, grabbed an old jacket and took the next bus into Winchester. From there I caught the train to Southampton Central, using the cash Grandad had left in my dressing gown.

  After the sickening confrontation with Mum, I was glad of a new distraction. I needed more time to think about whether marrying Peter was really the best thing – not for her, but for me.

  I kept hearing the words she’d spat at me, hateful words about how she’d never wanted me during her pregnancy and how much she’d missed out on because I’d come into the world. I’ve cried so much lately that I didn’t seem to have any tears left. I’ve swung from feeling numb and empty to being overcome with surges of rage for her. How can she not understand what this has been like for me?

  I should have said there and then that we should definitely at least postpone the wedding, but I’m sure both she and Peter would have seen that as me backing out altogether. A coward’s way of calling it off for good.

  In the last few weeks something has definitely shifted between Peter and I. I can’t put my finger on it and I’m not sure where it leaves me, but it certainly means I’ve got to hold fire and review everything.

  I feel so much more grown up since the terrible thing happened. I look back at my time with Peter and it feels like make-believe, as though I was just a naïve teenager soaking up the attention. I keep coming back to the fact that if things had been right between Peter and I, I would never have allowed myself to be led astray by Carl.

  One thing I also need to do is to separate out how I feel about Peter, as a person, from what he seems to be offering me. It’s so tempting to be taken in by the allure of stardom and wealth. If I choose to marry him, I wouldn’t have to worry about money anymore and that would lift such a massive weight off my shoulders. But it’s also about living day in and day out with this one man. Mum thinks he’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me, but she doesn’t know one or two things.

  Peter and I had a brief discussion about children before the hen party and it totally threw me. It started with a bit of a clash about my auditions. He rang when I was at the market, stocking up on cheap fruit.

  ‘Shame about your last one,’ he’d said. ‘I had a word with the casting director beforehand and she liked your photos. What went wrong?’

  I tutted, manoeuvring my way around shoppers to get away from the main drag. ‘I’m working so hard, I don’t know what more I can do.’

  Peter’s voice stiffened into the lecturing tone I’d heard once or twice before.

  ‘The problem is, it looks like you are. Working too hard, I mean. That’s what she told me afterwards.’

  ‘You spoke to her?’

  ‘I wanted to get her feedback. You’ve got to let it come more naturally, more organically. It needs to flow, you need to own the part – you can’t afford to play the parts any more. Do you understand?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘Don’t forget you never film in the right order. You must have a character in your bones, so that one minute you can play a scene from the end and the next, you can play that same character at the opening.’

  I half-laughed at his patronising tone. ‘I know that. It was one of the first things they taught us at college.’

  ‘Well, you’re going to have to do something special soon or it’s going to be too late.’

  ‘Too late?’ Within the space of two seconds I’d shifted from feeling put out to downright nauseous. He’s going to give up on me. ‘Is there a deadline, then?’ I said, bluntly.

  He was calling from a rehearsal studio on Broadway. I could hear people applauding in the background. ‘You’re aware of my history and how much I value dedication and focus. You know I expect you to give your all to getting your acting career off the ground. That can’t be new to you, surely. It’s not going to be easy. You’ve got to prove yourself, even with my help, you’re not simply going to walk into a role that happens to fit you like a glove.’

  ‘I know that.’

  His next sentence came at me with a bang. ‘But whatever the situation, I take it that we’ll be starting a family before long.’

  ‘A family?’ My voice shot up an octave. ‘I thought you wanted me to be an actress! I thought you were going to pull out all the stops to help me.’

  ‘I am, but I’m not going to do it forever.’

  I stared at the brick wall ahead of me with my mouth open. ‘I can’t take time out to have a child. I’m not ready to have children.’

  ‘If you were a dancer it would be different, you’d have to take a career break, but as an actor, you can come straight back to it.’

  ‘Only if I’m established, if I’ve got a platform to come back to.’

  ‘You’d only need twelve months off, if that. In fact, you could be filming until you’re about four or five months’ pregnant. Then you could have a nanny and get straight back to it.’

  My eyes blinked hard in amazement. ‘You’ve got it all worked out, haven’t you?’

  I couldn’t take any more after that and flung the phone into my bag. Later, he sent a text apologising for ‘being a bully’, but he didn’t retract what he’d said.

  The train is held at signals just outside Eastleigh and I have more time to kill. Whatever happens, I can’t see myself going back to live under the same roof as Mum after this. I’ll have to collect my gear and perhaps stay at Grandad’s until I work out what to do. Maybe, by that time, I’ll have landed the part in the TV series that I’ve got the callback for and I can set myself up – without Peter’s help.

  I’ve been so worried about Mum’s state of mind that I’ve allowed her obsession with the wedding plans to steamroll over my fluctuating emotions. As a result, I’ve completely lost touch with how I really feel about Peter.

  With a jolt, we’re on the move again and I shift my attention back to my current mission. Before I left Grandad’s, I’d looked up the details from the news clippings, on my phone. A string of reports came up, all showing a pub in the background – The Hope and Anchor – with the photo of a girl’s face in a circle at the side. Tracy Limehouse, aged eighteen.

  The initial story gave the facts. There’d been a party at a house near The Hope and Anchor, in Southampton. It sounded like it’d been a rowdy affair and at around 10 p.m., a crowd had piled out onto the streets. An innocent passer-by, Tracy Limehouse, was hit by a flying object and fell into the path of a car. She was killed.

  The driver, who was unnamed in the report, was never blamed. The girl was flung into the path of the car without any warning and there was no time to react.

  In spite of the party crowd, it appeared that no one came forward to explain who threw the object. Everyone was drunk, messing about, not paying attention. Further reports, months, then years down the line, stated that no evidence ever came to light and no one was convicted.

  Nevertheless, from t
hat day on, the driver would have had to live with killing a young girl in a freak accident.

  A reconstruction was staged in May 2002 to mark the tenth anniversary of Tracy’s death, then it seems the crime was filed away as a cold case.

  Why had Grandad kept the clippings in the loft?

  As the train pulled into Southampton Central, I thought about the ten-year age difference between Grandad and Vera. They’d met at Southampton University, when she was working in the canteen and he turned up as an electrician to upgrade the wiring. Mum said he fell for Vera straight away, wooing her with soppy poetry and terrible songs on his guitar. We’ve always teased him about that. She got pregnant within weeks, with Mum, and they got married. Vera was nineteen and Grandad was twenty-nine.

  It never seemed to matter to my grandparents. Did it matter to me, being twelve years younger than Peter? Along with a stack of other issues, we’d never really talked about it.

  As I go through the ticket barrier, I return to the dates from the news clipping: May 1992 – before I was born. Did Mum know the girl? Was this somehow connected to our family?

  The Hope and Anchor is in St Mary’s, not far from the football ground, at the end of a densely populated row of terraced houses. It’s often referred to as the roughest part of the city. I stride out, not sure what I’m expecting to find, but driven by the need to be doing something. I’m hoping that while my mind is preoccupied, I’ll come to some clear-cut decision about Peter.

  On the way, I mull over how I’m going to approach this and, having come up with a possible bright idea, I take a look inside my purse.

  Good, I’ve still got it.

  This might just work.

  37

  Rachel

  Beth is coming back with me if I have to drag her by the hair. I’m not taking no for an answer, this time. She needs to see that Peter deserves to be spoken to. He needs answers and I refuse to let her treat him like he’s some kind of stalker she’s trying to shake off.