The Runaway Wife

by Dee MacDonald

  Maybe my imagination’s running riot but I really think you should come home soon, Mum. If you and Dad have problems then you should be talking things over together. Tess agrees with me and we all send you…

  … much love.

  Nick xx

  REPLY:

  Hello Nick,

  Good to hear from you. I’m fine, really, and having lots of adventures.

  No, I don’t think Dad and I have problems that need to be discussed and many marriages become mundane with time. The problem, Nick, is most likely all mine. I need some freedom, some space and to have a little fun before I become too old. I’ve been feeling restless for a while and need to get this thing out of my system.

  So, has Dad something to hide? Well, according to reports, he’s been acting strangely lately so who knows?

  Tell the boys that their grandmother is off having adventures and, when she gets back, she’ll tell them all about it! I’ll probably be home before too long, and before autumn sets in properly. Right now I’m constantly on the move, and loving it.

  I miss you all. Big hugs and kisses to my wee boys – and my big one, of course – and Tess too!

  Much love,

  Mum xxxx

  Lou sighed as she put the phone down. Now her father wanted her to pick up a load of dry-cleaning. Whatever next? Wasn’t it enough that she’d gone round and dusted and vacuumed – all these jobs her mother should be doing. It was high time somebody told her to come home.

  From: Louise Morrison

  To: Connie McColl

  Hello, Mum, wherever you are,

  We are now getting seriously worried. You’ve been gone for ten days and no one has any idea where you might be or even if you’re ever planning to come back. Di and Nick may think it’s a bit of a joke, but I certainly do not – on my own here all day with a screaming baby.

  And what about poor old Dad, rattling around in that bungalow all by himself? Nick and Andy of course think he’s up to no good, but that’s men for you! We know Dad isn’t that sort of person, although one could hardly blame him if he was, being left on his own like that and obviously beside himself with worry. And the place is in a bit of a mess, but I haven’t time to go round there every five minutes.

  Fortunately we’re OK here and the little one is sleeping slightly better at night now so we’re benefitting from some occasional uninterrupted shut-eye.

  Well, Mum, I only hope you’re OK and that you’ll come home soon. We all miss you.

  Love,

  Lou xx

  REPLY:

  Dearest Lou,

  There is absolutely no need for you to be worried. I’m constantly on the move and having some amazing adventures. I miss you all too, but am still not ready to come home.

  As for your father, I haven’t heard from him for days now, and Nick says he’s rarely at home, so it doesn’t seem to me that he’s particularly heartbroken or worried.

  It might be an idea for you to find a child-minder or a babysitter sometimes as it would be good for you to get out more. I’m not quite sure how I managed to bring up four children without any assistance from grandparents, or sisters-in-law or child-minders. Or anyone really. Somehow or the other I managed.

  Give the little one a big kiss from me – Nana will be home eventually!!!

  Love, Mum xxx

  Connie worried about Lou more than the other two, who had always proved to be capable of looking after themselves. Little Lou, the baby of the family, was, without doubt, Roger’s favourite. He and the other three had doted on this tiny, beautiful new arrival, who absorbed their attention and admiration like a miniature sponge from Day One. Connie found her younger daughter an enigma, so different from the others. Loving and amenable when things went her way, sulky, moody and aloof when they didn’t. Had Lou been so badly spoilt? She was sure she really loved all her children equally, but had never felt this was fully reciprocated with Lou, who gravitated towards her father at every minor crisis. She’d felt some relief when Andy came along, and joy at the arrival of Charlotte, until Lou had started complaining about sleepless nights, difficult feeds and ‘why did I ever think having a baby would be a good idea?’ Lou also made it clear that she considered her mother remiss in her grandmotherly duties. ‘You spend far more time with Nick’s two than my little one,’ she’d whined. ‘No I don’t,’ protested Connie, who religiously balanced her time between the two households. ‘But there are two of them, so occasionally I have to be there more often.’ She remembered babysitting Tom when Josh was rushed to the doctor with an ominous rash.

  As she’d told Lou, she herself had had no mother to babysit, badger or blame. And what about Aunt Lorna, who brought up all her brood single-handed, with a husband who spent most of the year in Africa?

  So, where had she gone wrong with Lou? Had she gone wrong with Lou?

  Chapter Seventeen

  GOLDEN GIRLS

  Connie was heading at last for Edinburgh, a city she’d always wanted to explore, but mainly to look up the Sinclairs, who had lived next door to them in Sussex for eight whole years. That, of course, was their old house, the proper house, the large Victorian semi with the wooden sash windows and the lovely garden.

  She was longing to see Wendy again. Dear Wendy, the only one who’d remembered Ben’s anniversary.

  Bill Sinclair, a Scot, and his English wife, Wendy, had three children, a little younger than Connie’s. They’d been there when Ben was killed and Wendy had been the person who’d got her through those black days. She’d kept an eye on Connie’s three while Connie was in emotional turmoil and Roger had immersed himself in work. Every evening Wendy would appear with the Scotch bottle. ‘Bill says you’re to have a wee dram whenever you feel like it. Never mind the bloody sedatives!’ Connie had never been able to drink Scotch since. She wasn’t sure if it was the association with Ben’s death, or whether she just didn’t like the taste.

  She’d missed Wendy dreadfully. Wendy had been her rock, her soulmate, and the person who’d taken her by the arm and made her face the outside world again. After Bill and Wendy had relocated three years later, they kept in touch with greetings cards and the occasional phone call.

  She’d given them no advance warning of her visit, so Connie decided to find a B&B first and do a spot of sightseeing before getting in contact. She knew they would invite her to stay but she wanted to do some exploring on her own.

  Anyway, now it was time for some Connie-type sightseeing; not the things people thought she should see. As a teenager, after a particularly heavy week during a very educational school trip taking in the historic sites of London with accompanying lectures, she’d decided she had to have a free day when she’d escape to explore the zoo and Carnaby Street and all the wonderfully naughty and exotic-sounding haunts in Soho. And, in later years, she’d often exasperated Roger by expressing a preference for people-watching in pavement cafes and exploring interesting alleyways to the interior gloom of museums and churches.

  But, as most of the trip so far had been pretty much Connie-type sightseeing, she felt the need for a teeny bit of culture and spent a whole day navigating her way around the city via a Lonely Planet guide and a bus timetable, touring the Royal Mile and the castle. And, all the while, treated to acts by performers of varying degrees of talent, because she’d quite forgotten that this was coming up to the time of the Edinburgh Festival and its Fringe. Interesting though all that was, the next day she headed for Corstorphine and the zoo, mainly to see the pandas, which she loved, and then on to Greyfriars Kirkyard to see the famous statue of Greyfriars Bobby, the Skye terrier who, it is claimed, in the 1800s guarded the grave of his owner, John Gray, for fourteen years, until Bobby himself died and was buried a short distance away from his beloved master. Connie found herself in tears at this sad tale. She loved dogs and wondered if her late lamented Paddy would have been so committed in his grief had he outlived her. Well, probably not – not if he saw another dog, or a cat, or a rabbit. But she knew that Greyf
riars Bobby would remain lodged in her memory long after she’d forgotten the relevant facts about poor Mary, Queen of Scots.

  It had turned cooler and Connie, dressed only in T-shirt and jeans, decided she needed a long-sleeved sweater. She explored several shops on Princes Street on her way back and finally settled for a buttercup-yellow wool number from Jenners, which was reduced to half price and so fitted the bill – and her – perfectly. As she waited for her bus, she watched with incredulity the most amazing troupe of acrobats from Brazil perform some daredevil balancing acts.

  She’d memorised the landmarks so she’d know where to leave the bus to return to Craiglarry House B&B, and the very grand Mrs Conon-MacLeod, who wore twinsets and tweed skirts and had Corgis and a hair-do exactly like the Queen’s.

  ‘There are fine parts, and not so fine parts in Edinburgh,’ she’d proclaimed to Connie in her very precise accent. ‘I’m a Morningside person myself.’ She pronounced them ‘Aidenburgh’ and ‘Morningsade’. This remark was supposedly sufficient in itself to denote superiority and supremacy. Connie recalled once hearing a comedian on the radio who was poking fun at the various parts of the city. ‘In Morningside,’ he’d quipped, ‘sex is something in which they deliver the coal.’

  Plainly he’d met Mrs Conon-MacLeod.

  Connie alighted from the bus at the stop alongside the enormous Gerry’s Garage with its countless orange flags declaring that you wouldn’t find a better used car anywhere else on planet Earth. Be this as it may, it was also an easy-to-recognise bus stop. Even here a lone tenor was belting out ‘Panis Angelicus’. Connie was unable to decide if he was part of the Fringe, or had just jumped on the bandwagon. For sure the Bocellis of this world had little to worry about. From here she knew she must turn right down the one-way Billington Street, which led to Garbon Road and Craiglarry House. The only problem was that Billington Street seemed to be filled with a moving sea of yellow-clad ladies waving placards and shouting lustily. Were they also some form of Fringe entertainment? This demonstration was blocking the entrance to the street, much to the chagrin of a long queue of furiously hooting, irate drivers. She knew of no other way to go and, as she cautiously approached, she noted that the yellow outfits were sweatshirts printed with the words ‘Save Victoria House!’ and ‘Safeguard our Refuge!’ The placards, held high in the air, read ‘Men might bash us but they’ll never break us!’, ‘Help us to keep safe’ and the like. Connie had little choice but to push her way through, and she only hoped they wouldn’t prove to be too militant. At least she blended in well colour-wise. She’d only gone a few yards before she became wedged between two enormous women, one with a broken nose.

  Connie looked nervously at the least intimidating of the two. ‘Can you tell me—’ she began, only to be interrupted by Broken-Nose saying, ‘See, are yew English?’ To which the other one added, ‘Ach well, she cannae help that. Thae Sassenach women get knocked aboot just as much as us.’ She turned to Connie. ‘Don’t you, hen?’

  ‘Well, yes, I suppose—’ Connie was cut short by Broken-Nose again.

  ‘At least ye havena any scars on the ootside.’ She indicated her nose. ‘Twice that bastard broke it. And ma arm!’ She rolled up a buttercup sleeve. ‘See that? Ah had tae have a pin put in there. An’ see that?’ She rolled up the other sleeve to expose a long, jagged scar. ‘That wiz a kitchen knife! An’ here wiz me thinkin’ it needed sharpening!’

  ‘Goodness!’ said Connie faintly.

  ‘If it wiznae for the Refuge we’d likely all be dead,’ Broken-Nose added.

  ‘Aye, so we would,’ agreed her companion.

  Nodding and smiling, Connie managed to squeeze past them, continuing further into this angry tide of womanhood.

  A tall, black, very attractive girl, brandishing a placard, had suddenly appeared at her side. ‘It’s going well, isn’t it?’ she said to Connie. ‘Are you from the Refuge too? Don’t remember seeing you before. I’m Julie.’

  ‘No, no, I’m not from the Refuge,’ Connie replied. ‘I’m Connie, just sort of passing really…’ She looked up at the placard. ‘Bullied and Battered! But we won’t be Beaten!’ it asserted as they were carried along slowly by the huge procession of women.

  ‘Well, it’s good that you came to support us. We should be on the telly tonight,’ Julie continued. She didn’t have much of an accent, unlike the others.

  ‘Should we?’

  ‘We need all the publicity we can get, don’t we?’

  ‘Well, actually, I—’ Connie began, but was interrupted by a woman on her other side who leaned across and asked, ‘How’s yer bairn, Julie?’

  ‘He’s coming along OK now,’ Julie replied. ‘There won’t be any lasting damage, thank God.’

  Connie gulped. ‘Your child?’

  ‘Yeah, my little Bobby. Six months old he is.’

  ‘I hope you don’t think I’m being nosy, but what happened to him?’

  Even with a slight lull in the shouting Connie had to cup her ear to decipher Julie’s reply. ‘My bloke tried to kill Bobby. Did you not see it in the papers?’

  ‘Well, no, I don’t actually live round here. But that’s awful!’

  ‘He wouldn’t stop crying, you see. I should’ve known Kevin would do something because he has such a hellish temper and he’d already broken my arm.’

  ‘What?’ Connie was appalled.

  ‘He knocked my baby black and blue, trying to kill him. And he even broke Bobby’s little leg.’

  ‘Julie!’ Connie’s eyes filled with tears. ‘That’s horrendous! Oh, the poor little mite – what did you do?’

  ‘I did what I should have done months before. I bashed him over the head with the first thing that came to hand, which happened to be the frying pan I’d left to drain on the sink. It was good and heavy and stunned him enough to let me grab Bobby and get out the door.’

  ‘Where’s this wretched man now?’

  ‘In jail, thank God. But he’ll be out in a few months, and I don’t want to stay at Victoria House forever, so I’m going to get myself sorted. And Bobby’s on the mend.’

  ‘I don’t know what to say; that’s just awful.’

  ‘What about you, Connie?’

  ‘Me? I’m a fraud, only here by accident. But have all these women been abused?’

  ‘Yeah, one way or another.’

  ‘Then I’m glad to be with you. What can I do to help? Here, let me take that placard for a bit. Give your arms a rest.’

  ‘Thanks, I’d be grateful if you would as I’m dying for a pee and I’ve just seen a loo over there.’

  Connie grabbed the placard, hoisted it as high in the air as she could, and started chanting along with all the other women. What the hell had she got to complain about when some of these poor women were in fear of their very lives? And their children’s lives! She had never, mercifully, known that kind of fear, or that kind of treatment. She’d read about it in the papers of course, and heard some graphic details via the media. It doesn’t happen round here. Well, perhaps it did.

  Connie was now aware of flashing blue lights and scuffles taking place as police tried to clear the street and the traffic chaos. And here she was, yellow-clad and waving a banner with the best of them. And I’m glad, she thought. I’m on their side.

  Propelled forwards, Connie spied the line of police who, using loud-hailers, were ordering the women to go home, and being none too diplomatic in their choice of words either.

  ‘Go home!’ exclaimed the busty blonde who was now yelling next to her. ‘Is he kidding? That’s why we need the bloody refuge!’

  Connie wondered how many thousands of women nationwide needed protection from abusive partners and offered up a silent prayer of thanks; Roger might have his faults but he’d never, ever raise his hand to her.

  She’d now managed to inch forward sufficiently to be within spitting distance of the line of police. She knew this because one woman at the front was doing just that. Connie only needed to squeeze through and then she�
�d be on her way. And she knew that somehow or other she must try to do something to help these women. As soon as she got back to Craiglarry House she’d get on the internet to find out what she could do in the way of writing to her MP or signing a petition, perhaps. Could she afford to make a donation? But first she needed to squeeze through the last row of bodies and then she could be on her way.

  She’d just made it to the front when she got shoved from behind and stumbled forwards, the placard landing with considerable force on the head of a bulky, red-faced policeman who was trying to restrain a particularly vociferous female. In fury he released her and grabbed Connie.

  ‘I’m so sorry, I tripped—’ Connie began.

  ‘And I’m George Clooney!’ he snapped, holding her firmly by the arm and manhandling her in the direction of a large police van. ‘Get in there and don’t say another word! Anything you do or say will be taken down and may be used in evidence against you.’ Another equally bulky constable took hold of her other arm and together they frogmarched her into the van, which already contained six women, all yelling abuse at their captors. She hadn’t realised that she was still holding onto the offending placard until they prised it off her. That was the moment she saw the cameras. There was a battery of press and TV cameras with a grandstand view.

  In the police station the group was informed that they were to be charged with disturbing the peace, causing traffic chaos, assaulting police officers and resisting arrest. While the sergeant was reading out the list, Connie sat down on a bench alongside the other women.

  ‘Ach, dinna look so worried!’ The woman next to her placed a comforting arm round her shoulders. ‘They’ll no likely keep us for long – they just have to put on a bit of a show and look like they’re doin’ something useful. They’re on our side really. What’s yer name? Ah’m June.’