At that point Barney came to the door and rushed into her arms. ‘Why didn’t you come home?’ he cried. ‘I was hurt and I had stitches at the hospital.’
That incident did pull her up sharply. Laura was upset that Roy had said she looked and smelt like a wino, and by the inference that she was neglecting Barney. She promised herself she would never leave him again with anyone overnight.
His cut knee soon mended, but he didn’t forget. Clearly he’d heard things said between Roy and Fiona that had given him the idea that he was unwanted and neglected.
Laura made sure she was on time to collect him from school every day until the end of the term when the holidays started, and because she couldn’t work with him off school she planned to make a real effort to take him out somewhere every day. Then Jackie phoned and asked if Laura would like to stay at her cottage in Cellardyke and said she would join her there when she could get away from London.
The hot weather of 1976 continued. They said it was the hottest summer since records began, and Laura and Barney spent all day, every day, on the beach. But lovely as it was there, Laura felt bored a great deal of the time. A six-year-old boy was more interested in playing with other children than being with his mother. He swam, looked for crabs in rock pools, collected shells and played cricket, and there wasn’t much else for her to do but read.
Jackie arrived from London looking a million dollars in a pale green silk dress, her hair styled like Farrah Fawcett Majors in Charlie’s Angels. The bangles on her wrist were real gold and she was driving a new red convertible car. She laughed when Laura hugged her and said she must be making a fortune. When she took a case of champagne out of the boot, instead of the cheap wine they used to drink, that seemed confirmation.
Jackie had always been great with Barney, she was patient and loving and as interested in his development as if she were a blood aunt. But after a couple of days, Laura found herself becoming irritated that Jackie seemed far more enthusiastic about being with Barney than with her. The moment she got up in the morning she began planning the day around him. Even though he was more than happy to play with his friends, she joined in games of cricket or crab-hunting with them, leaving Laura sitting alone on the beach. She didn’t want to go into the pub and leave him to play with the other kids, and when she took him up to bed in the evenings she would stay reading to him for well over an hour.
That was what started a row, a week after she arrived.
Laura had been drinking steadily since about six in the evening. They’d had a bottle of wine with dinner, and then Jackie disappeared off upstairs with Barney to bathe him and put him to bed, so Laura opened another bottle of wine and had finished it all by the time Jackie came downstairs again.
‘You are so lucky, Laura,’ she said breathlessly as she sat down on the settee. ‘He’s so bright, so handsome and so loving. I wish he was mine.’
‘Then take him,’ Laura retorted. ‘I’ll swap him for your car.’
It was a flippant remark, but her voice probably had a hard edge to it because she was drunk and fed up.
‘Don’t you realize what a treasure he is?’ Jackie asked sharply.
‘I realize I can’t go anywhere, do anything because of him. It’s easy for you to moon over him when you’ve only got him around you for a week or so, you only see the good part,’ Laura snapped back.
‘So where do you want to go, what do you want to do?’ Jackie asked tartly.
‘To be wined and dined, to stay in luxury hotels and wear fabulous clothes. I want fun and men adoring me. I want to be as rich as you are.’
‘That is so shallow, Laura,’ Jackie exclaimed. ‘Stuart said that was how you’d become, but I didn’t believe him. Yet it’s true, all you’ve talked about since I got here is money, clothes and your hair and nails. What’s happened to you?’
‘You can talk,’ Laura threw back. ‘Sitting there with half a pound of gold on your wrists, an Ozzie Clark dress and that sports car outside! You’ve got everything – a wealthy husband, a business worth a fortune, even this place too for when you feel like slumming it.’
‘But I haven’t got a child,’ Jackie said, revealing that was what she really wanted. ‘And if I had to choose between all the material things and a baby, I’d choose a baby any day, even if I had to live in a council flat.’
‘Oh yeah,’ Laura mocked. ‘Like you know anything about life in a council flat. You were born with the proverbial silver spoon. It’s the easiest thing in the world to get a baby, and the hardest thing of all to bring them up, especially when you’ve got no money.’
‘What happened between you and that man from the casino to make you change so much?’ Jackie asked, her eyes glittering with unshed tears. ‘Okay, so we both used to dream of being stinking rich, we used men and did things that perhaps we shouldn’t have. But you loved Stuart, you were good together; what made you throw all that away?’
Laura had known that sooner or later Jackie would question her about that. She tried to think of a good excuse, but there wasn’t one.
‘I didn’t want to throw it all away. I never intended to do anything with Robbie but he took me to lunch and one thing led to another. It was a big mistake.’ Laura’s voice began to rise in agitation. ‘I thought he was going to help me get a really good job, but it was all hot air.’
‘Was it him who got you to do the pin-up pictures?’
Laura was very drunk, but at Jackie’s question she suddenly felt sober and afraid. ‘Yes, it was if you must know. And what’s wrong with it?’
‘Nothing if they are all like the one Stuart showed me. But are they, Laura? That was an old magazine he showed me. Have you progressed to something more hardcore now?’
‘Of course I haven’t,’ Laura said indignantly, but she was scared that Jackie might know that wasn’t true. Robbie had always said the pornographic pictures were sold abroad, but he might have been lying. ‘Why would you think that?’
‘Well, it was a bit of a shock to both of us. You looked very sexy and lovely, but pin-ups are a bit old-hat now, and let’s face it, Laura, page three girls are usually about eighteen, not over thirty.’
The last thing Laura wanted was to be reminded she was too old for real modelling. She also hated the idea that Jackie and Stuart had been looking at the picture together and discussing what it might lead to. ‘Pardon me if I used the only assets I had to make some money,’ she said with heavy sarcasm. ‘You could go running home to Mummy and Daddy if you were left in the lurch with a four-year-old. I wasn’t that lucky.’
‘When are you going to realize that having Barney is the luckiest thing in the world?’ Jackie asked.
‘Bollocks!’ Laura shouted at her. ‘You make it sound like motherhood is some kind of privilege. It isn’t, it’s like having a ball and chain around your ankle.’
‘Then I’d give everything I’ve got to have a ball and chain,’ Jackie said.
∗
That evening all Laura had really been aware of was that Jackie was suspicious about her modelling. Laura was on the defensive and what she’d said about motherhood wasn’t how she really felt, just a spur of the moment counter-attack.
But the next morning when she woke and remembered what was said, she suddenly realized Jackie was trying to tell her she was afraid she’d never have a child.
It had never occurred to her before that Jackie and Roger wanted children. She’d always seen them as the couple with everything and imagined that a child would be too much of a tie in their busy lives. But when she thought of how Jackie was with Barney, she realized she was in fact hungry for one of her own.
When she got downstairs Jackie was sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of tea. She had already got Barney up and given him his breakfast, and now he was out by the harbour playing tag with the other kids. ‘I’ll make another pot of tea,’ she said to Laura. ‘And maybe you’d like some aspirin too.’
‘I’ll do it,’ Laura said, feeling ashamed of herself. ‘I�
��m sorry if I was nasty last night. I was a bit depressed.’
‘I’m sorry too if you thought I was being judgmental about the pin-up picture,’ Jackie said. ‘I was just worried you were mixing with dodgy people.’
They agreed to put that tiff behind them, and over a fresh pot of tea they discussed what they would do that day. Jackie had just heard about Brodie Farm being put up for sale and thought they could go up there together and have a look around.
‘Before we do that, I want to know why you are afraid you can’t have a baby,’ Laura said. ‘Have you had any tests?’
‘Dozens,’ Jackie shrugged. ‘And they all say there is nothing wrong with me.’
‘What about Roger?’
Jackie’s face clouded over. ‘He won’t go for any. He gets really indignant at the suggestion it might be him. To be honest, it’s putting our marriage under a lot of strain. If he doesn’t care enough about why I want to get checked out, I don’t want to make love. If we don’t make love I’ve got no chance of getting preggy either. Got any suggestions?’
‘Lie back and think of England?’ Laura said, raising one eyebrow.
Jackie laughed. ‘Or maybe I should get myself a new stud.’
They saw Brodie Farm that day, and despite it being a ruin, Jackie instantly fell in love with it. Laura could see its potential, but she had a sneaky suspicion that its real attraction was that it would be a huge project which Jackie could use as an excuse to stay away from Roger. For the rest of the week she could talk of nothing else, and on several occasions she disappeared, only to come back an hour later saying she’d been up there again. Perhaps it was this preoccupation on her part that made her ask Laura at the end of the week about her job in the dress shop.
‘They can’t be very pleased that you need the whole of the school holidays off,’ she said. ‘And you must need the money?’
‘Well no, they weren’t pleased,’ Laura said. ‘But they had to lump it, I couldn’t take Barney with me. And yes, I could do with the money.’
‘Well, why don’t you go back to work then, and leave Barney with me? I’ve got to stay on through till September to oversee the renovations on that other cottage I bought. And I want to find out more about Brodie Farm. I could bring him back to you the day before he has to return to school.’
Laura felt a surge of excitement at the idea of going back to the city alone. ‘Are you sure?’ she asked. She could ring Don and see if she could get some extra sessions, and she could go out at night with Katy and the other girls.
‘Laura, I’d love to look after Barney.’ Jackie smiled. ‘Goodness knows when I’ll get to see him again! To me it would be bliss.’
Laura had ten days on her own, and she filled every moment of them. Sessions at the studio each day, and out partying in Glasgow by night. She only went home to Edinburgh once to get some more clothes, the rest of the time she slept on one of the other girls’ settees. Not that she slept much, for she was doing coke in the mornings, and took some speed at night to keep going. She hadn’t had so much fun in years, dancing, drinking and flirting with any man who looked as if he had a few bob.
She made a point of phoning Jackie every evening at six to check on Barney, but once that was done she could relax and think about the night ahead.
It was people she met that week that set her off on a new road. Up till then she didn’t have any real friends; she knew women from Barney’s school and the old neighbours in Caledonian Crescent, but they were people she only had the occasional chat with, they weren’t mates. Even Katy and the other girls from the studio had held themselves apart to begin with. To them she was ‘posh’ because she came from London and lived in Edinburgh. People in Glasgow tended to think anyone from Edinburgh was stuck up.
Yet when they saw she liked Glasgow, that she didn’t look down on them for living in tenements or council flats, and could party just like them, all the barriers came down. They saw her as one of them.
Laura smiled wryly as she remembered how good it felt to be accepted back then. The irony of it didn’t escape her. All her adult life she had struggled to erase her true background and climb the social ladder. But there she was at thirty-one, mixing with and loving people who lived and behaved much like the people back in Shepherds Bush. She’d come full circle, except it was a much darker circle, for instead of the women doing office cleaning or working in factories, they were in the sex industry. And the men in Glasgow didn’t work on building sites and go to the pub in their working clothes, they wore sharp suits, drove smart cars, and their work was dealing in drugs, pimping and extortion.
But of course she didn’t see that at the time. All she saw was that these were people who lived life to the full, they were generous and fun. She put down their living in bad housing as part of that curiously Scottish trait of not caring too much about their surroundings. The men went out with wads of money in their pockets, and they spent it carelessly. She felt excited by the hint of underlying aggression, she loved their humour and their warmth. In a way it was like going home.
‘You look so tired,’ Jackie exclaimed when she brought Barney back on the Sunday before he was to start school.
Laura hadn’t been home more than a couple of hours, just enough time to have a bath and change her clothes.
‘I’ve been working extra hours, what with the Edinburgh Festival on,’ she lied. ‘And I did some bar work too at night. But you two look marvellous!’
Barney had run in to greet her shouting at the top of his voice, climbing up her like a little monkey. He was deeply tanned, and Jackie had had his hair cut short ready for school. In a white tee-shirt and little blue shorts he looked good enough to eat.
‘Auntie Jackie let me sit in the front seat and we had the hood down,’ he said excitedly. ‘I’ve got a new pencil box and a real leather satchel. And I can read lots of new words too.’
‘It’s been such a joy being with him,’ Jackie said, looking sad that it was now to end. ‘I wish I could persuade you to come back to live in London, so I could see more of you both.’
Laura knew Jackie was sincere, and part of her loved her for saying it, but the other part felt irritated. ‘If I came back to London I couldn’t afford to live in Kensington, like you,’ she said. ‘I’d be in one room in Hackney or somewhere grim.’
‘It’s high time you went to a solicitor and got a divorce and a settlement from Greg. You could buy your own place then.’
‘I don’t want anything from that bastard,’ Laura snapped. ‘I can keep myself and Edinburgh is my home now. I like it here.’
‘I love Scotland too,’ Jackie said wistfully. She didn’t appear to have noticed her friend’s sharp tone ‘If you won’t come to London, then perhaps I’ll come here to live permanently. I really don’t want to go back.’
‘Stay with us, Auntie Jackie,’ Barney piped up. ‘You can sleep in my bed and I’ll go in with Mummy.’
Jackie looked at Laura, apparently waiting for Laura to endorse Barney’s idea. But Laura said nothing; she wanted to be alone, she was strung out and she intended to take a Mogadon the moment Barney was in bed and catch up on all the sleep she’d missed in the past week.
‘I’d like that, sweetheart.’ Jackie bent to kiss him. ‘But I’ve got things to do in London and Uncle Roger’s waiting for me. I’d better fetch your things out of the car and get going.’
‘But you haven’t even seen my bedroom!’ Barney said indignantly. ‘Don’t go yet!’
Laura pulled herself together enough to help Jackie get his things from the car. He appeared to have twice as much as he’d taken to Fife. ‘I’d ask you to stay for lunch,’ she said as they brought the stuff in. ‘But I haven’t got much in, what with working all hours.’
Jackie looked around the flat, and even put Barney’s clothes away for him. She’d bought him quite a few new shirts and trousers, and even his old things were washed and ironed. If Laura hadn’t felt so strung out she would have hugged and thanked her.
&
nbsp; ‘You look poorly,’ Jackie said, coming over to her and taking her face in her two hands. ‘I wish I hadn’t suggested you went back to work now, you’ve overdone it. I’ll ring you tomorrow night to see how you are.’
Years later Jackie told her that she thought she was on the verge of a breakdown that day, and that she worried about her all the way home. She said if she’d only insisted on staying that night she thought she would have realized that Laura had been taking drugs, and she would’ve taken steps to stop her. She added that if she’d done that maybe everything would have turned out differently.
‘Perhaps she was right,’ Laura mused aloud.
12
‘Twenty years ago this pub was famous for its nightly punch-ups,’ Stuart said cheerfully as he and David approached The Bear, which Robbie Fielding was reputed to own.
‘I hope it’s not still like that now,’ David grinned. ‘I can feel you getting psyched up to punch the lights out of Fielding, but let’s leave everyone else alone! I don’t fancy spending the night in a police cell.’
David had spent the last two days trawling through both used and unused evidence from the original investigation. Stuart had spent the time seeing people who had some connection with Laura both here in Edinburgh and in Glasgow.
David was now up to speed with the whole case, but Stuart hadn’t turned up anything relevant, which was why they were now going to see Robbie Fielding.
They paused in the doorway of the pub, both a little surprised it was so quiet. There were no more than fifteen people in there, and all of them were young student types, not the kind of rough crowd they’d expected.
‘It was a spit and sawdust kind of boozer before,’ Stuart said somewhat regretfully.
David felt relieved. It was one of those trendy designer places which were so common in London, everything from cobbler’s lasts and old tools to stone bottles arranged artfully along high shelves, scrubbed pine tables and stripped floorboards. But it didn’t have an air of success about it; it looked tired and dusty, and at eight on a Saturday night, a city centre bar should have been much busier.
Faith Page 32