by Sue Nicholls
Letting Out the Worms
SUE NICHOLLS
For Whizz, Horace and Mavis
Copyright © 2020 Sue Nicholls
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-9997539-1-7
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
With gratitude to my family: Husband Dave, Daughter Helen and parents Meg and Reg, for reading and commenting with honesty. And my talented daughter Stephanie for her fantastic cover design. Also, to my dear husband, Dave, for his patience and financial, technical and moral support.
Belinda Hunt of Mardibooks got me started on my writing journey and taught me so much. My eternal thanks to her for this great gift.
Finally, I could not have achieved this novel without the help of my Buddhist practice. For further information and to find absolute happiness, visit https://www.sgi.org/ or https://sgi-uk.org/
DISCLAIMER
The people and places in this book are entirely fictional. I have never visited Mauritius and the restaurant, Le Chamarel and its location near the promontory are made up.
Any resemblance to real people of the characters in this or any other books by Sue Nicholls is coincidental.
1 MOTOR CYCLIST
An old Matchless motorbike gleamed at the curbside in the autumn sunshine. Beside it, a figure, clad in red leather, shook its helmeted head. Fuel blockage? The helmet shook, No. Plugs? Another no.
The figure shrugged, lifted the red helmet from a small, neat head of cropped, white-blond hair and tucked it under one arm. She gave one last puzzled look at her bike and wrinkled her nose, making her silver nose ring wiggle. A careful observer would spot a tattoo - a delicate, pink rose - growing from inside the collar of the leathers.
Clutching her protective headgear under one arm, Kitty Thomas strode to her building’s entrance and took the uncarpeted stairs, in twos, to the front door of her spartan flat. Although this had been her home for three years, the place was the same today as when she moved in. It was her opinion that it existed only to provide the necessities of life: a space in which to sleep, eat and work. This pragmatism was anathema to her best friend, Sam, who viewed life almost entirely in terms of colour and form.
Kitty slotted her key into the lock and let out a sigh. She was weary, and looking forward to a shower and a beer. But when the door swung open, she halted on the threshold and stared at an envelope lying on the mat. Thumping her boot onto the familiar handwriting and leaving a pattern of diamonds across the white surface, she marched to her bedroom to strip off.
After a shower, and dressed for comfort in soft pyjamas, she flipped the cap off a Budweiser, keeping her eyes from the letter that sang to her like a Siren. To keep herself occupied, she decided to draw up a plan for maintenance of the motorbike and stalked to the sitting room, snatching up a roller-ball pen from the dining table.
In her childhood, her father, Paul, rode the Matchless every day, maintaining its perfection to the exclusion of almost everything else. Kitty and he would spend hours in Paul’s regimented garage, primping, de-greasing and re-greasing the bike’s components. In this way, Kitty learned about the workings of the internal combustion engine and the bike’s other mechanical parts. Sometimes, the two would take outings, Kitty low in the sidecar, excited by her view of the tarmac and hedges rushing past. On her eighteenth birthday, she became the bike’s sole owner. ‘I’m getting a bit long in the tooth for it now,’ Paul had said with a hint of tears in his eyes.
The small, soiled rectangle lay on the doormat, distracting her from her task. Other similar letters had arrived over the years, but after reading the first one or two, she had torn up the rest, unopened. This week, though, one had landed every day and their silent urgency disturbed her. Unable to bear it, she stuck the pen behind her ear, and still holding her beer, stomped down the hall and swiped up the envelope. In the kitchen, she stood by the fridge, ready to open another beer if the contents of this latest communication made one a necessity.
The printed logo on its back confirmed its source, HM Prisons, Lymchester.
Dear Kitty,
I think about you often. That little girl who stood so joyfully at the chapel doorway to surprise her mother on our wedding day, and waved her goodbye at the airport, not knowing it would be her last sight of her.
Kitty blinked.
Your mum and I loved each other very much, and it was our greatest wish to give you a loving, stable home.
My reason for writing now, is that I am due for release. I see from the On-Line Proclaimer that you are a journalist, and a hard-hitting one at that. As you know, I have always denied murdering your mother. I tell you again; I am innocent and determined to prove it. As a professional, it might interest you to help me investigate what really happened to all those women. What a scoop if you discovered a miscarriage of justice.
In your shoes, I probably would not come. But in the faint hope you are curious enough to meet the now much older man to whom your mother gave her love and trust, I will be out at 9am on Thursday, 15th September.
With every good wish,
Max W. Owen-Rutherford.
Kitty screwed the cheap paper into a ball and flung it the length of the hallway, where it bounced back onto the mat. Such cheek. To imagine she would meet him: the man who murdered her mother. She drained her beer and dropped to her haunches on the tiny floor, supporting her back on a cupboard. Gazing at the fridge door, she thought back to that time. There was so much unsaid about it. Pop would not discuss it, and she had never raised it with the others, her ‘siblishes’, as she called them: Luc and Livvie, who lost their mother, Millie in a gas explosion, and Sam and Josh, whose mother, Twitch, was murdered at a local beauty spot. By the age of nine, they had all lost their mums and were left under the dubious protection of their fathers, supported heavily by lovely Nanny Gloria, who was the grandmother of Luc and Livvie.
In her career as an investigative journalist, Kitty vicariously uncovered the secrets of other dysfunctional families, directing her mind from the terrible scandal of her own childhood.
Last year, Paul had found a new love, Cerys, a fussy little Welsh woman with an ample bosom, about whom Kitty’s feelings were ambivalent. Kitty’s mother, Fee, left Paul when Kitty was five, and for months after their separation, until the couple improved their relationship, Kitty had lived mainly with her.
Since Fee’s passing, Kitty had survived by pretending her mother’s death had never happened. She had ploughed through life looking neither left nor right, and this had worked well until the string of letters started to arrive. Now, a dribble of unwanted recollections was easing its way through the protective wall she had constructed. With her eyes shut, Kitty tried to block them out, but it was impossible.
The pain in her crouching knees reconnected her with the present, and with a grimace she pushed herself upright and hobbled along the hall to retrieve the crumpled missive.
2 MAX 1967
Mother was too excited to listen to Max’s concerns. Besides, the whining engine of the Austin Metro made conversation impossible. As they ploughed along the M40 towards London, the usual questions preoccupied little Max: Would they have anywhere to stay? Did his mother have money in her purse and had they enough petrol?
They had left home without the knowledge his father. This was not unusual, but that did not make it any more acceptable to Max. He pictured Sean’s arrival home after a day at work, to find the dirty breakfast things on the table and the front door wide o
pen. Max wished he had disobeyed and closed it, but Claudine was blind to the danger. On a previous occasion, a group of teenagers had used the inviting entrance to spray graffiti on the walls and furniture and spread excrement around the kitchen.
This latest mad dash to a part in the musical, Hair, was one of many to which his mother had subjected him during his seven-year life. He had never remained at the same school for more than two years and he wondered if she realised the intelligence of her only son. It was clear that she cared nothing about his well-being. If he objected, Claudine would intone, ‘My work is everything.’ Her only interest was her ‘art’, and apparently, she needed him with her. In truth, Max decided, what she wanted was a lacky to entertain her cronies and run her errands. It was her arrogant assumption that that anyone close to her shared responsibility for her success. One night, when Max was only three years old, she had shaken him awake at two in the morning and carried him downstairs to the hotel bar. There she demanded he showed off his juggling and dancing skills, which he did, to the hoots and claps of drunken actors and actresses. Another time, she had forgotten her room key. After he had stumbled to let her in, she plonked herself on his bed and railed about the talentless efforts of the rest of the cast.
They arrived at the Waldorf with rain bouncing off the pavement. Striding beneath an umbrella held by a doorman, Claudine dropped her keys into the man’s outstretched hand and left him with Max to unload their suitcases. Once the bags were on the baggage trolly, Max shook rain from his hair and caught up with his mother in the foyer.
She was complaining, in a voice that echoed round the foyer, because no room was ready for her. ‘Do you have any idea who I am?’ she demanded.
The young concierge stuttered that indeed he recognised her, and it would be a matter of ten minutes before her room was available.
Mollified, Claudine swept to a white leather sofa, and subsided in a cloud of fur and Jean Patou. Max trotted behind her and waited.
‘Find me a gin and tonic, Maxy.’
‘I can’t go into the bar, Mummy.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous, of course you can. Tell them it’s for Claudine Owen.’
As always, objection was futile. Max’s small heart knocked against his sternum as he peeped into the red plush bar area. An odour of cigarettes and alcohol emphasised its adult nature, but he crept on across an expanse of scarlet carpet towards a barman who was polishing glasses and humming under his breath.
The fellow raised a flute to the light and stood it on a shelf behind him. When he saw Max, he raised his eyebrows. ‘Hello young man.’ His unfamiliar accent was not English.
‘Hello, Sir.’ Max might have had an interrupted education, but he had learned that being ‘quaint’ was an effective weapon in disarming adults - apart from his mother, who didn’t seem to care how he behaved unless they were in public.
‘Sir, is it?’
‘Yes sir. Please will you help me? My mother would like a gin and tonic.’
The man leaned over the bar and looked down at Max. ‘And can she not come and get it?’
‘Max shook his head.’
‘Does she have a working pair of legs?’ Max nodded.
‘Well, go back to your mum and say she must come and get her own drink, and that I do not allow children into my bar.’
Max’s insides did a flip. ‘Sir, she is Claudine Owen.’
The man’s face grew full of regret and he sighed and shook his head slowly. ‘It doesn’t matter who she is, child, if she wants a drink, she must order it herself. I am not allowed to serve anyone below the age of eighteen. You are less than eighteen, are you not?’
‘Yes sir, I’m seven.’
‘Seven is it? Well, off you pop and tell your mum what I said. OK?’
‘OK.’
On her settee, Claudine Owen reclined with her legs crossed at the ankle, flipping through a copy of Vogue.
Max crept behind her and trotted to the reception desk keeping out of her line of view. ‘Excuse me, Miss,’ he hissed.
When the middle-aged woman in the dark swinging kilt saw Max’s face, she was beside him in seconds. Her knees folded so that their faces were level. ‘Is something wrong, dear?’
Max explained.
The lady’s eyes swept over Max’s mother with a bland look that disclosed not a hint of disapproval then she held out her hand to Max. ‘Come on,’ she whispered. ‘Let’s sort this out.’
She left Max at the entrance to the bar, and soon emerged, bearing a silver tray of drinks, which included something orange with tiny bubbles.
Max skipped behind and watched her place the drinks on the low table beside Claudine.
Claudine did not raise her eyes. ‘Put it on my bill.’
‘Certainly, Madam.’ The lady winked at Max and handed him his drink.
Over that first week, Max’s mother breezed in and out of their room, relating stories of sexual indiscretions among the cast or sending him to buy moisturiser and magazines. At no time did she show him affection or even thank him.
During dragging days alone, the boy’s chief companions were the women who cleaned the room: rough spoken, foreign, and kind. He ignored the questions in their eyes and wondered what life would be like if Carol took him home to meet her ‘young’uns’ or Rita to Greenwich, where she lived with her bed-bound father. Once, in his loneliness, Max telephoned home and begged his father to collect him. But Sean said he must go to work and told him that there were also ‘other things’ to prevent his coming for his son. So, Max sought the nearest library and, like Matilda, began to educate himself.
In time, he felt at home in the big hotel and at the Library. In the latter, a kind lady would sometimes sit with him and help with his learning. She tutted at the stories he told of his mother’s escapades. On the day she mentioned that it was illegal to keep a child from school, Max stopped going in case Claudine got into trouble. But on his walk back to the hotel, he ruminated on the information he had received, and as he crossed the vast hotel foyer, he decided he would confront Claudine with the fact of his education rights.
He marched from the lift and had nearly reached their door when it opened, and his mother stepped out, laughing, in the arms of a man. The fellow had one hand on her shoulder, and in the other he carried an overnight bag. The very bag Max had struggled to load in and out of the car on their arrival.
‘Oh, hello Maxy darling,’ his mother cooed in a voice he did not recognise. She cupped his chin in her hand and held his eyes with hers. ‘After rehearsal this evening, Reg and I are going away for a week or two. You’ll be all right here, won’t you?’ She did not wait for an answer. ‘I’m sure you will; you’re a big boy now.’ She dropped a brief kiss onto his hair, said, ‘Order your meals from room service,’ and let the room key fall from her fingers. After diving to catch it, Max watched her stiletto heels stalking towards the lift and Reg, trotting behind firing back apologetic looks.
Alone in the room, Max sat in a tub chair with his legs sticking out, and stared at his surroundings. He was paralysed with terror at being left alone.
After ten minutes, his fear had transmuted to fury. He bounced forwards and dropped onto the plush carpet and seized the nearest thing to hand, a magazine. He fired it across the room, and it sailed a brief distance before fluttering to the floor. Sobbing, he followed the magazine with a bottle of water, which shattered the dressing-table mirror with a rewarding crash. Next, a jar of night cream smashed on the wall, and a dollop of white grease slid down the wallpaper and landed in a glutinous blob. Handfuls of pages from the Gideon’s Bible landed in the mess, and he jumped on them again and again, grunting with the effort, ensuring the cream was well imbedded in the carpet pile.
When he had run out of projectiles, his wild eyes fixed on his mother’s negligee on the bed. Last night she had slept in this pink frothy nonsense, had wandered around the room with no concern for propriety; her breasts and pubic hair revealed under its flimsy layers. With a long shard of
broken mirror clenched in his fist, Max proceeded to ‘murder’ the night dress, raising his hand, and driving the point deep into the bedding again and again. A pillow burst open, sending a mass of suffocating feathers into his face, while blood from his lacerated palms sprayed onto the white linen sheets.
Thunderous banging tore him from his madness and he froze, his hand in mid-air, his breath heaving in the dusty, perfumed air. An excruciating pain in his hand filtered into his awareness, and screwing up his face, he opened his fingers to release the glass dagger.
A set of fingers with neat bare nails curled round the edge of the door, and the full-skirted lady from the reception desk peeped in. The memory of her kindness was too much for Max, and he gave a shrill wail. In seconds she had him pressed to her body, and as he wept, she rocked him back and forth. ‘It’s OK. Sh, It’s OK.’
~~~
Claudine’s face was distorted with rage. She grasped Max’s bandaged fingers, forcing silent tears from his eyes, dragged him from the police station and pushed him into the car. After ramming the vehicle into reverse, she skidded from her parking slot and into the road. Her jaw was tense, and her throat contracted with loud, dry swallows. The anger Max had felt in the hotel room still buoyed his indignation, so he folded his arms and frowned at the rain-blurred road ahead.
They travelled in silence; the only sounds were from the over-revved engine, the squeal of the inadequate wipers and the swish of passing vehicles. Then Claudine spat, ‘How dare you do that to me? Do you realise how much that hotel costs? I’ll never be able to go there again, and God knows how much the damage will set me back…’
Max squeezed his arms tighter and kept his silence.
‘And the humiliation. The police actually fetched me from rehearsals. Everyone will be sniggering behind my back.’ She made no reference to the telling off she received from the police sergeant before he handed Max back. Luckily for her, neither Max nor the charming hotel receptionist had shared the fact that Claudine had intended to be away for two weeks. Max was grateful for this. Although he didn’t spend much time in the loving arms of his family, the care system held more dread.
