by Anna Jacobs
It’s time for someone else to take over now, she decided. John’s right. I’ve given it a fair go, but I don’t intend to make a martyr of myself.
She waited until about four o’clock, to allow for time differences between the UK and Australia, then picked up the phone and rang Paul’s head office. It took a while to persuade them to give her his number in Hong Kong, but she did, because she was absolutely determined. Though he wasn’t going to like her telling them there was a problem with his younger daughter, she knew. Well, too bad. There was a problem.
When she got through to the hotel in Hong Kong, she felt lucky. Paul answered his room phone at the second ring. ‘Yes?’
‘It’s Audrey here.’
‘Ma-in-law! Hey, nice to hear from you. How are things?’
She grimaced as his voice took on that over-jolly, patronising tone he always used with her. How she hated it! ‘Not going well, so we’ll not waste time on chit-chat. Paul, I can’t cope with Louise any longer. You’ll have to make other arrangements for her.’
He sighed. ‘Have you rung Ros? The children are her business, really.’
‘No, I haven’t rung her and I’m not going to. You’re nearer to Perth by a few thousand miles than she is. I’ll expect you to fly down here at the weekend. You can take Louise away then. I’ve had more than enough of that young woman.’
‘Look, put her on the phone and I’ll have a very strong word with her. I promise you, I’ll make her so afraid she’ll—’
‘Not good enough, Paul. I’m sixty-seven not twenty-seven. I can’t cope and dammit, I won’t even try any more. You have until Saturday to fetch her.’
He scowled at the phone. Stupid old cow! ‘I can’t make it on Saturday, I’m afraid, Audrey.’
‘Then I’ll have to call social services, say she’s unmanageable and ask them to take her off my hands. She’s not eighteen yet, after all. I think they’ll be interested.’
‘You wouldn’t!’
‘I would, actually. I don’t want the police raiding my house looking for drugs or—’
‘Drugs?’
‘I’m pretty certain she’s taking something.’
‘I’ll be there on Saturday. Don’t tell her I’m coming. Let me surprise her.’ He’d surprise Liz, too, while he was at it. He’d missed her since she returned to Perth, missed her astringent conversation and sexy body. She’d been very firm about not continuing the relationship, but he was sure he could persuade her to see him while he was there. They’d been good together in the sack. If only Ros were more proactive about sex like Liz was.
As he put down the phone, anger sizzled through him and he thumped the pillow with one clenched fist. Bloody kids! You gave them the best of everything, private schools, expensive holidays, bicycles, and who knew what else – and what did they do to thank you? Went off the rails. Abandoned their studies. Got into drugs. Ran off to America.
Oh, hell, his youngest daughter was doing drugs like her brother. Why? Where had he and Ros gone wrong?
He sat down on the edge of the bed, chewing his lip. Unfortunately Audrey was right to ring him. This wasn’t something Ros would be able to cope with. In fact, Ros must have been weaker than he’d thought on the discipline side. First Tim, now Louise. And even Jenny had chosen a no-hoper of a guy when she was let loose on the world, though she’d had the sense to realise that and leave the fellow, at least.
He was going to nip this present mess of Louise’s in the bud right away, but first he had to figure out what you did with a seventeen-year-old rebel in Hong Kong?
It wasn’t until he was getting ready for bed that an idea struck him. He began to smile. Yes, that should sort it out nicely.
The following day he strode out of Perth Airport and hailed a taxi. At Audrey’s he paid off the driver and turned to find his mother-in-law waiting for him at the door. They didn’t waste time on greetings.
‘Louise is still asleep,’ Audrey said in a low voice. ‘She didn’t get back until about four o’clock this morning.’
Something caught his eye and he didn’t follow her inside. ‘What the hell is Ros’s car doing here?’
‘Louise has been using it. She said Rosalind gave her permission.’ Audrey’s heart sank. Oh no, not more lies! And Paul looked so grimly angry today she hardly recognised him.
‘Ros definitely didn’t do that.’ She’d have told him if she had. She’d told him every other goddamn detail of her preparations for England in those boring letters she wrote weekly when he was away. She hardly ever used emails, and hadn’t bothered to get online in England, or if she had, she hadn’t told him, and she would have done.
He was going to drag her into the twenty-first century, even if she screamed all the way. He pushed those thoughts aside. He had to deal with his daughter first.
‘Tell me the details about Louise.’ He listened in growing fury, then said in a tight, clipped voice, ‘You stay here and I’ll go upstairs. This may take a while. You were absolutely right to send for me. You – er, might like to put the radio on. There will definitely be some shouting.’
As he opened the door of Louise’s bedroom, he stared round in disgust at the mess. Dirty clothes on the floor, litter everywhere. By the side of the bed was a cotton thing that looked like a shoulder bag made from a flour sack, so he upended it on the desk by the window. A small packet of what looked like herbs fell out. He sniffed it. Pot. Pray that was all she was on. But there were a few pills, too. He didn’t know enough about drugs to guess what they were.
He began to search the drawers and all the time his daughter slept peacefully behind him, looking as innocent as the child she had been not long ago. There was also a packet of condoms. Bile rose in his throat. His daughter screwing around. At seventeen! How had she got into all this?
He stood by the bedside, contemplating the child who had always been his favourite, the one who looked most like him. She appeared innocent and pretty still, sprawled on her side with one hand curled beneath her cheek. But she wasn’t innocent, she was spoilt, dirty.
What was that? He bent closer and saw the ring in her nose, the streaks of dirty blonde on one side of her hair. She looked so tarty that for a moment disgust rose like vomit in his throat. Then he reached out and shook her – hard.
‘Hey! Wh-what? Dad!’ She jerked upright in the bed. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Your grandmother phoned. It seems, Louise, that you’ve been upsetting her, as well as burning the candle at both ends.’ He flicked one finger towards the things on the desk.
She gasped and stared at him, her eyes large and frightened, but didn’t say anything.
‘I thought you had a little more sense, but you didn’t waste much time following Tim’s example, did you?’
Her voice was sulky. ‘Everyone does something nowadays. It’s only dope.’
‘And the tablets?’
‘Amphetamines. To help me keep my weight down.’ They gave you the most lovely feeling of energy and optimism, too. Pity they were so expensive. ‘They’re not hard drugs, Dad.’
‘I don’t expect my children to do any drugs. Hard or soft.’
She laughed, a shaky, nervous sound. ‘They’re no worse than alcohol. The law’s stupid. This is the twenty-first century, not the—’
She didn’t finish what she was saying because he slapped her across her face, hard, then slapped her again.
After an initial screech, she cowered down on the bed, sobbing noisily.
‘I’ve never hit you before, Louise. Perhaps I should have.’ He reached out and held her at arm’s length, forcing words past the anger that seemed to have solidified in his throat. ‘Now listen, and listen well, young woman.’ He gave her another shake for emphasis. ‘I learnt my lesson with Tim. I overlooked this and overlooked that – and he carried on mucking around. Heaven knows where he is now – whether he’s still alive, even.’
She looked at him in horror.
‘Surely that possibility had occurred to you
? America can be a dangerous place. He hasn’t been in touch for months.’ And Paul worried about that, though he hadn’t said so to Ros.
Louise stared up at her father and waited for more harsh words – or more slaps. He shook her again, but less violently, then said in a tight, angry voice.
‘I’m not going down the same path with you, Louise. I trusted Tim to grow out of his silliness and he ran away instead, got in deeper. You have a simple choice ahead of you, really simple. Behave yourself – and I’ll be watching closely, so don’t think you can pull the wool over my eyes as you have your mother’s – or get out of my life and family this minute. I shan’t give you a second chance, either.’
She could only goggle at him. Get out of the family! He couldn’t mean that. But she saw the grim determination in his eyes and realised with a jolt that he did.
He leant forward until his face was almost touching hers. ‘Do you believe me? Do you believe that I mean exactly what I say, Louise?’
She nodded, gulping.
He moved back and stood there with arms folded. ‘Right then, it’s entirely your choice. If you don’t toe the line from now on, I’ll cut you off from the family within the hour – and push you out of your grandmother’s front door myself.’
The chairman would have recognised him. The chairman really approved of the way Stevenson cut through the crap when it was necessary. So would one or two cheating managers whose thieving Paul had uncovered, and whom he had sent packing there and then.
But Louise had never seen her father like this and she looked, quite literally, terrified. Good. He wanted her terrified.
‘D-dad, don’t!’
He looked at his watch. ‘I’ll give you exactly one minute to decide, Louise. Not one second longer. After all, it’s a very simple choice.’
She started sobbing.
‘And weeping won’t make any difference at all.’ Implacable, he waited until she capitulated – as he’d known she would.
Chapter Ten
Rosalind picked up the phone. ‘Yes?’
The voice was hesitant. ‘Mum? Is that you?’
‘Jenny! How nice to speak to you.’ Rosalind glanced at the clock. She was meeting Harry in five minutes and they were going to have coffee with the organisers of the auction. Why did people always ring up for a chat when you were in a hurry?
‘Mum – oh, Mum, I’m in England, at the bus station in Poole. Can you come and pick me up?’
‘In Poole! Jenny, what have you done?’
There was the sound of sobbing at the other end. ‘It’s not what you think, Mum. I – please can you pick me up? I’ll tell you about it then.’
‘Yes, of course. Where did you say you were?’ But although she would be glad to see Jenny, Rosalind’s heart sank.
She cancelled everything, programmed the satnav and drove into Poole. Her anger vanished as she hugged her daughter and saw how haunted and jumpy Jenny was looking, not to mention how much weight she had lost. ‘What’s wrong? Have you been ill?’
‘Not exactly. I’ll – explain later.’
Jenny picked up her big suitcase and Rosalind took the piece of cabin luggage out of her hand.
‘That one’s got some of your embroideries in, Mum. I had the rest shipped out – these two may be a bit crumpled, but they’re safe, at least.’
Why should things not be safe? What had been going on in Perth? Rosalind looked sideways at her daughter, not attempting to start the car. ‘Tell me.’
Jenny’s face crumpled. ‘It’s Michael. He’s been – oh, Mum, he’s been stalking me. He kept phoning at all hours. I couldn’t get a proper night’s sleep unless I unplugged the phone. And then he broke into my flat and trashed everything. I’ve been terrified. If your neighbours hadn’t turned up when I was getting those embroideries for you, he’d have raped me.’ And every time she thought about that, she wanted to curl up into a ball and scream herself into oblivion.
Rosalind felt horror trickle through her as she took Jenny in her arms, shushing her and patting her back as she had done when her daughter was a child. Now, Jenny was five foot nine and a woman grown, but she needed holding just as much as the child had.
When the tears had subsided and Jenny had blown her nose several times, they looked at one another.
‘You aren’t – angry with me, Mum?’
‘Only with Michael. But how did you get the money for your fare, love?’ If it was from her mother, it’d have to be paid back at once. Rosalind knew Audrey had very little to spare.
Jenny gave a hiccupy laugh as she explained about her timely win. ‘I took the money and ran, Mum. Fled for my life. I was terrified. I thought – no, I knew he was going to kill me if I stayed in Perth.’
‘Kill you?’
Jenny nodded. ‘The policeman said he was a sicko.’ She explained about the underwear laid out on the bed, the knife and mock blood.
Horror kept Rosalind silent for a moment. ‘You did the right thing, then. But Jenny, if you’d rung and explained what was happening, I’d have sent you the money for your fare earlier.’
‘I thought of that, but Dad didn’t want any of us to come here with you. He’d have persuaded you not to help me – or arranged something else. Only you see,’ her voice quavered, ‘I needed you. Do you mind very much?’ She reached across to take her mother’s hand.
‘I don’t mind at all, not now I understand.’ Rosalind squeezed the fingers that were quivering against hers. ‘And your father doesn’t dictate everything I do.’
Her voice was so quiet and sure Jenny stared at her in surprise. ‘He usually tells you – well, he tells us all what to do.’
Rosalind stared down blindly at the steering wheel. ‘I’ve let him do that in the past, to my shame. But he won’t be giving me quite so many orders from now on – or at least, if he does, I won’t be obeying them.’
‘You sound different.’
‘Yes. I think I am. We can talk about that later, though. We’re both shivering, so let me get you home. The countryside round here is gorgeous. There’s nothing like pretty scenery for soothing the savage breast.’
When they got to Burraford, Rosalind settled Jenny in front of the fire with a big mug of coffee and tried to ring Paul, breaking her normal rule of not disturbing him when he was working on a project. But although it would be the middle of the night in Hong Kong, he wasn’t in his room, and the hotel receptionist said he was away for the weekend. Which seemed very strange. He didn’t usually take holidays when he was working on a project. ‘I’d like to leave a message, then. And tell him it’s extremely urgent …’
That evening Jonathon decided to ring Rosalind simply because he wanted to talk to her. Another few days and his sons would be here, and after that her husband would be back. Oh, hell, he didn’t want this interlude to end, this brief idyll when they’d forged a friendship and fallen in love.
‘Hello?’
He smiled at the way her voice always sounded as breathy and uncertain as a young girl’s. ‘It’s me, Rosalind. Do you fancy going to the pub for a drink?’
‘I can’t, I’m afraid. My daughter’s just arrived from Australia. Jenny, the eldest. She’s been having trouble with an ex-boyfriend.’ She lowered her voice, ‘He’s been stalking her and she’s very upset.’
‘Anything I can do to help?’
‘Not really.’
‘I shall miss you.’ He didn’t have to spell it out that her daughter’s arrival meant their closeness had ended sooner than they’d both expected.
‘Yes. I shall, too.’ She didn’t dare talk more openly to him. She had done nothing to be ashamed of – nothing but fall in love, that truthful little voice said inside her head – but even their public friendship would have to be lower-key now. And perhaps that was a good thing. Though it didn’t feel like a good thing.
When he had put the phone down, Jonathon poured himself a whisky, then went to pace up and down the long gallery upstairs as he did sometimes when he was upset. T
he creaking floorboards suited his mood today, as did the frayed hangings and worn carpets.
At first he was angry that the daughter had come, then he got annoyed with himself because stalking was a very serious matter and any mother worth her salt would naturally drop everything to look after that daughter in those circumstances. But the thought of not being with Rosalind hurt even more than he had anticipated.
‘Oh, sod them all,’ he told the last bit of amber liquid in his glass, ‘I’ve never had any luck with women.’
Well, at least the boys were coming down the following weekend. That was something to look forward to. And he’d get Harry to invite him, Rosalind and the daughter round for coffee. He had to see his lovely, gentle darling sometimes, to make sure she was all right, at least. He poured the rest of the whisky down in a gulp and went to refill his glass.
Not even his divorce had made him feel this bad emotionally, because by then all affection between himself and Isabel had been gone and he’d only been left with anger at her rapaciousness – and relief at being rid of her.
The house creaked and shifted around him and the ghosts of his ancestors rustled past, as they always seemed to do when he was alone in this room. Thin, spindly people like him and Harry, with sad narrow faces. He never quite knew whether he was imagining them or whether they really did gather round him, but they felt real enough. And certainly, when this mood came upon him, Dusty grew uneasy, whining and twitching at the shadows. But dogs were like that. They could sense your mood – and perhaps see your family ghosts. He looked down at the furry face and wagging tail. Dogs didn’t pretend. They gave their love wholeheartedly and unconditionally. As he’d like to give his.
