The Barn on Half Moon Hill

by Milly Johnson

  ‘She’ll be all right, love,’ said Linda. ‘She’s a sensible lass, is Viv.’

  ‘She went off to university for three years, Stel. Surely that acclimatised you for her leaving home?’ said Gaynor.

  ‘That was different, Gaynor. She was home nearly every weekend and in the holidays. I always felt as if she were on a piece of elastic, but now . . .’ Her voice dissolved into a croak.

  ‘She’s only gone to the moors, not emigrated to bloody New Zealand,’ said Gaynor impatiently as she got up from the sofa. ‘Think about me. I haven’t seen my Leanne for nearly six months.’

  Lucky you, thought most of the room. Leanne Pollock had been one of those horrible, spoiled kids who had grown up into an even more horrible, spoiled young woman. She took the art of self-serving to new levels. She had done Gaynor a favour by moving down to London to pursue a modelling career; not that any of them would say that to her, with the possible exception of Iris if the opportunity presented itself.

  Gaynor snapped her fingers. ‘I knew there was something I had to tell you all. Leanne had an audition for that top modelling agency a couple of weeks ago. You know, the one that Kate Moss used to work for. And they would have taken her, they said, but for one thing, one tiny thing . . .’ She pincered her thumb and finger together. ‘And do you know what it was?’

  ‘Her face?’ suggested Iris.

  ‘No, her height.’ Gaynor glared at the chippy octogenarian. ‘She was one inch too short. Would you have thought an inch made that much difference?’

  Caro snorted down her nose and Gaynor threw her a dirty look.

  ‘An inch can make a hell of a difference, Gaynor love,’ Linda winked at her.

  ‘Oh, I’m going to the loo if you’re going to talk smut,’ said Gaynor. The air seemed to lighten by several degrees when she left the room, shutting the door hard behind her. Once upon a time, thought Caro, Gaynor would have been the first to chuckle at the innuendo.

  ‘Your father and I were always very active in the bedroom,’ put in Iris, causing Linda to cover her ears.

  ‘Mum, please.’

  Iris huffed in exasperation. ‘That’s the trouble, every generation thinks it invented sex. I used to be a young woman with a figure that your father had difficulty keeping his hands off. We once managed—’

  ‘La la la la.’ Linda couldn’t hear what her mother and father had managed to do because she was singing and her hands were over her ears. But her friends did – if their widened eyeballs were anything to go by.

  ‘I reckon Gaynor needs a good bonk,’ whispered Stel. ‘Hasn’t Eamonn got any nice friends, Caro?’

  ‘They wouldn’t get up there for the barbed wire,’ sniffed Iris.

  Linda immediately rounded on her. ‘Mum, that is mean. Gaynor’s struggling and anger is her way of dealing with it. Even if it wouldn’t be yours or my way of doing things.’

  All of them wished for her sake that Gaynor could move on, and they knew she wouldn’t do that until she stopped denying her Mick the divorce he wanted. She was being as awkward as she knew how, not responding to his solicitor’s letters and making her presence felt in any way she could as punishment for leaving her for a girl over thirty years younger than she was. And a Bellfield at that. There were some rough renowned families in the town: the O’Gowans, the Clamps, the Crookes; but the Bellfields were considered the worst. Young Danira Bellfield (or de Niro as Gaynor so scathingly called her) was as different from Gaynor as she could be, which wasn’t very flattering to Gaynor, and gave a gigantic clue to why Mick had left his wife two weeks after their Pearl Wedding Anniversary. Danira was plump and loud, peroxide-blonde and wanton. But Gaynor, for all her Hyacinth Bouquet pretensions, was a good woman who’d worked hard to make a comfortable home for her family, only to be rewarded with a duplicitous husband and a self-obsessed daughter.

  There was the sound of a flush in the background, so Linda quickly switched the subject to the neighbours.

  ‘Annie and Joe next door are renewing their marriage vows in Jamaica next month.’

  ‘I bet he was doing the dirty on her,’ sniffed Gaynor as she walked back in and immediately joined in the conversation. ‘Couples who renew their vows usually have that story to tell.’

  ‘Actually, you’re wrong because—’ began Linda, but Gaynor cut her off.

  ‘You mark my words, they won’t just be doing it because they’re still so much in lurrrve.’ Gaynor loaded the word with all the sarcasm it could carry. ‘It’ll come out eventually. He’ll have been dipping his wick where he shouldn’t have been. He was always too good-looking for her,’ she huffed derisively.

  That couldn’t be said of her own marriage. Mick Pollock was a smart, handsome man but Gaynor more than matched him for looks. She had the same dark colouring, wide mouth and big brown eyes as Sophia Loren. In fact that was the first line Mick had ever said to her: Excuse me, could I have your autograph, Miss Loren? Corny, but it worked on her. She had always taken care over her appearance, maybe too much so. Maybe she had been too polished for Mick’s tastes, if the slobby Danira was anything to go by. The past year was telling on Gaynor though. Her mouth was set in a downward arc and she radiated waves of resentment. If she had been born a cobra, her hood would have been permanently expanded.

  ‘A fucking Bellfield!’ exclaimed Gaynor, sliding into dark, slimy waters in her head. ‘Lowest of the low. And what does she see in him? He’s thirty years older than her for a start. When we got married, she wasn’t even born.’ She shuddered as if that somehow made him a paedophile. ‘It won’t be anything to do with his bank balance, will it? Anyway, he can whistle for his divorce. I burned the last set of papers in our firepit and I’ll do the same with the next lot. Bastard. I’ll make it as hard as possible for him to get me out of his life.’

  The room crackled with Gaynor’s electric bitterness. The only sound was Iris’s cup hitting the saucer. Then Caro’s soft, smoky voice broke through the silence.

  ‘Do you think maybe, for your own sake, you should let him go, Gaynor love?’

  Gaynor’s lips narrowed until they were almost invisible.

  ‘You are joking?’

  Caro prepared to back up her words with more of the same. ‘No, I’m not. Look around you, Gaynor. You’re in a room full of people who care for you. You’re young enough to start a new life, find a new man. All this fighting is damaging you more than it is him.’

  ‘It needed saying,’ added Iris, who was never one to miss the opportunity to throw petrol on a fire. ‘It’s what everyone here is thinking.’

  ‘Is it now?’ Gaynor’s eyes took them all in.

  ‘Because we’re your friends and we love you, Gaynor,’ Caro said. She was all too aware that Gaynor thought that she had the Midas touch, and so what would she really know about what Gaynor was going through. Caro had a gorgeous faithful husband, loving children, a big house, a successful business and his-and-hers Mercedes and a Motorhome parked in the treble garage. Caro shopped in Waitrose, wore expensive clothes, and had a diamond the size of Poland on her third finger. She and Gaynor had been close friends until Mick had buggered off. His leaving had triggered an irrational envy of Caro which Gaynor knew was both wrong and puerile, but she just couldn’t help it. Right now, getting a life lecture from Caro was like pouring acid in Gaynor’s wounds.

  Gaynor stood up.

  ‘Well, if you’ve all decided behind my back that I’m a bore and you’re all on flaming de Niro’s side, I’ll go.’

  ‘Gaynor, don’t be daft.’

  ‘Oh don’t, Gaynor.’

  Protests ensued but Gaynor wouldn’t be placated.

  ‘I’ll show myself out.’ She strode out on her long, pin-thin legs and the others knew they had no choice but to let her go when she was in that stubborn mood of hers. They exchanged cringes and shrugged.

  ‘No wonder she’s on her own,’ piped up Iris.

  ‘Mum,’ objected Linda.

  ‘We-ell,’ said Iris, waving away her dau
ghter’s indignation. ‘It might do her good to know that everyone thinks she’s in the wrong. You’ve to be cruel to be kind sometimes. She’s in a rut and she wants booting out of it.’

  ‘Iris is right,’ replied Caro. She hated that there was distance between them and wished they could get back onto a normal footing. The trouble was that the more rain that fell on Gaynor recently, the more the heavens seemed to shine on Caro. If Caro could have stemmed the tide of her good fortune and diverted it to Gaynor, she wouldn’t have hesitated to give her friend a break.

  ‘She’ll come round,’ said Stel, watching Gaynor strut down the road through the window. ‘Let her stew for a bit. She knows we are on her side.’

  ‘I worry that Mick will start playing funny beggars,’ said Linda. ‘Guilt’s made him offer a generous divorce settlement, but if she keeps on refusing to cooperate he might start getting as bolshie as she is. I’d hate for her to lose out financially.’

  Linda hadn’t known Mick that well but she’d been surprised when he’d left Gaynor. He’d seemed such a quiet man, easy-going and settled, even a bit boring. Gaynor had idolised him; and despite her believing that she and Mick had been together for so long that she knew him inside out, she had been the last to discover that he’d been messing around behind her back. The split had hit her hard, but she hadn’t yet worked her way through the natural grieving process that might have healed her. Instead she had stuck fast on the ‘anger’ setting. Gaynor wanted Mick back, and as far as she could see it, clinging on until she had worn down his resistance was her only option.

  Linda suddenly leaped to her feet and headed for the bar area in the corner, returning with a bottle of Prosecco and some glasses.

  ‘Bugger tea, let’s have a glass and wish Viv well. I didn’t know she was that fond of animals, Stel, that she’d want to up and go work in an animal sanctuary.’

  ‘She’s based in their office, not actually hands-on with the animals,’ explained Stel. ‘She wanted a bit of experience working with people in a small business doing accounts and suchlike.’

  Linda handed round the Prosecco and poured her mother a Tia Maria, as she didn’t drink wine of any description. Iris insisted that all wine tasted of feet, and firmly believed every grape had been trodden by some bloke with verrucas.

  ‘To Viv. Here’s hoping she enjoys her new home and her new job.’

  ‘To Viv.’

  Four glasses were raised in the air. And Stel Blackbird smiled, though inside her heart was breaking because she suspected the real reason why her daughter had taken up that post had nothing to do with getting experience of a small business at all.