He smelled of diesel.
“We’re going to have to do something, Kath. He’ll send us into an early grave if he carries on like this. If we doubt ourselves any more we’ll be in padded cells next to each other.”
Kath lifted up her head as the taxi sounded its horn in three consecutive short blasts, each appearing more impatient than the last.
“I’m scared, Jim,” she whispered, clutching his hand. “Scared of losing a son and ending up in a rerun of what happened to you all those years ago . . . because I’m not sure how much longer I can cope with this.”
James took his wife’s hand and together they headed down the biscuit-coloured stairs and into the porch with its icy-cold tiled floor and fake pampas grasses.
“Nothing that kid does will ever make our family relinquish him. I had it done to me and I know what it feels like.” James’ eyes narrowed and his lips tensed. “You never get over it and no matter what he’s done, or he does, Kath, we’ll get through it . . . but there’s going be some tough measures put in place starting from now.”
“I don’t mean ‘lose’ as in turn our back on him – I mean lose as in watch the bond we’ve worked so hard to keep tight start fraying at the seams . . . it’s happening already. We’re losing the boy that he once was.”
James shoved his wife out of the porch door with loving force and kissed the back of her head. “Get out of here and enjoy yourself,” he told her, brave-faced, “and if you still remember my name when you come in I’ll be disappointed in you.”
As he closed the door behind her, his beautiful wife, his mind drifted back to the day his mother had told him he might as well be dead. He had visited her after hearing Kath’s account of the hospital saga and she had told him exactly the same thing. Not that he didn’t believe his wife but he simply couldn’t account for the sudden loathing his mother seemed to feel towards him. It came from nowhere. ‘You are dead as far as I am concerned.’ It was true. He heard it with his own ears. And for what reason? He had done nothing but fall in love with a girl, and she him.
James swore that no matter what his sons ever did to him, they’d always be welcomed as part of his family. No son of his would ever be made to feel like an outsider by their own flesh and blood, not while they carried his DNA.
James knew that the situation with Jason needed to be handled and handle it he would. But not like Elizabeth did. Jason needed extra attention to get to the root of his trouble. Turning his back on him would solve absolutely nothing.
Helena leaned forward in the black taxi, watching the meter like a hawk. Each time it increased in price, so too did her blood pressure.
She had worked overtime making dozens of telesales calls to customers of the bank, trying to flog them loans with loan protection policies they simply didn’t need or want. Under strict instruction she had also tried to talk them into increasing their overdraft with a ‘special offer’ rate of interest. Why not?
It was this side of banking which she abhorred. The sales side. The bank had turned into nothing more than a retail outlet, a shop where you went to browse but came out a signature stuck to the end of some needless policy which you were instructed you ‘absolutely needed’. Helena was ashamed of what she had to do to make money. The word ‘bank’ in the current climate translated as ‘hard sell’. Still, points made prizes and those prizes made money – the stuff that made the world go around.
Helena stared at the windscreen wipers as they speeded up in time with the heavy rain which had just started to come down like a raging waterfall. She watched them sway to the left before they swished and flopped over to the right and their seamless silent movement hypnotised her. She liked the feeling of that temporary calmness; the only things she needed to move were her eyes.
As the meter clocked once more, its greedy melodic churn woke her from the anaesthetic trance she had been in and she yelled at the driver.
“Stop!”
The driver slammed his foot on the brake and the cab skidded to a dangerous halt. Its back end shot out as the front wheels absorbed most of the shock.
As it did so, Helena was launched from the back seat where she had been perched – her weight too inconsequential to hold her down – and she was flung violently against the plastic glass which separated the driver from his passengers. Her head butted it with brute force.
She lay on the floor for a moment, dazed and aware that her head had begun to throb. She pushed herself upright, holding on to her forehead which was already beginning to swell under her twig-like fingers, wondering what the hell had just happened.
As did the taxi driver.
“I’m sorry, love, but you yelled so loud I thought there was a problem so I did a full-on emergency stop.”
The driver looked stunned and confused as he left the safety of his front end and risked the rain to assist Helena from the rear of the cab. He saw the immediate swelling on her forehead and watched as she shakily counted out every penny owed to him, noting how she handed the mixture of coins over to him with embarrassment and avoidance – two pound coins, some silver but mostly copper. A bagful of it.
Normally he wouldn’t have accepted so many coins but under the circumstances the poor girl looked upset enough, he thought. Plus she could do with a good feed.
He held out his hand to help her and she gladly took it.
“You know, it’s a good job there wasn’t anyone behind me when I slammed on, otherwise you’d probably have a broken neck to go with that bump on your head.”
“Sorry,” was all she could manage as he assisted her onto the pavement where she tried desperately to get her bearings through the relentless rain. Her eyes fought against the cruel liquid until she recognised where she was. It was okay. She could walk from here.
As she braved the weather, her chin wobbled with the pain from her forehead and her right hand also ached from where she had used it to protect the rest of her body from plunging into the foldaway seats in front of her. It felt like she had sprained her wrist.
Helena knew why she had yelled ‘stop’ with such urgency. The meter had instructed her to do so.
“Fucking bastard meter!” she cursed as she set about taking the rest of the journey to Sophie’s apartment on foot.
“Fucking bastard money!” she muttered out loud.
One day she’d have no money worries. She’d have a driver like Peter had to take her everywhere and a waterside apartment like Sophie’s. She just needed Nathan’s talent to be recognised by the powers that be, although she’d been waiting a bloody long time.
Helena chided herself for the immature thoughts. Get a grip. Life was not a fucking fairytale, she scolded herself bitterly. Hers certainly wasn’t – it was a brutal prison sentence where she had shared a cell with a torturous browbeater who had managed for too long now to oppress her.
“Well, no more.” Helena talked openly to herself as she ploughed through the rain with vigour and determination. “No fucking more!” she shouted up to the sky.
The bump to her head had distorted her typically negative chain of thought and from the wetness of her soaked feet to the rain which rolled down her forehead across her pronounced cheekbones, staining her cheap blusher, Helena felt a strength from within that she could only put down to concussion. Perhaps it was the shock, was it possible? But Helena had been slapped so severely around the face that she felt revived, strangely alive, and it felt good – unlike the concealed and imaginary slaps that Nathan had given her over the years – this one felt bloody good. It felt like the world was full of promise.
She could finally see a way out.
Inside Sophie’s waterside apartment the atmosphere was unusually tense and Sophie could see from Jude and Kath that they had brought their problems with them. They wore them as transparently as their clothes, draped around their necks as accessories, wrapped around their waists like tight restricting belts, and so when Helena Wright stormed through the front door armed with attitude and ready to seize the ev
ening, she stood out like an unarmed civilian in the middle of a war zone.
“What’s up with you, Hel?” Sophie took in her sopping wet friend. “You look a mess – worse than a mess – but kind of – well – strangely happy at the same time.”
“Cheers, Soph. I think there was a compliment in there somewhere!”
“Your eyes are red. Is the pollen count high today?”
Helena kicked off her wet shoes and headed straight for the bathroom, Sophie following in her wake, where she removed her cheap clothes and wrapped a pink towel around her long brown hair which was dripping against her bony shoulders.
Sophie stared at Helena’s skeletal body. She knew that she herself was perfectly slim, but as she took in the sight of Helena in her mismatched bra and pants she gasped. Her hip bones jutted out alarmingly. They were as narrow as a child’s and you could hang your coat over her collar bones they protruded so violently. Helena looked practically bulimic although Sophie knew this would not be the case. Helena didn’t have the money to gorge in the first instance, yet alone regurgitate it.
“Oh my God, Helena, when did you get so skinny?” Sophie gasped. “I could play the ribs on your back like a xylophone!”
Helena turned to her best friend, wiping black mascara from beneath her eyes. Her face was stained a shade of pink from the thrashing rain which had stopped, ironically, just as she arrived at the communal entrance of the apartment block. The irony of life.
“Since I’ve got no money to eat,” she replied matter of factly. “And since that loser stopped giving a fuck about the finances, leaving them all to me . . . since I work so much bloody overtime that I am too tired to eat. Does that answer your question?” She didn’t wait for Sophie to respond. “But you know what, Soph, he’s still a fat bastard so something, some-where, doesn’t add up, does it?” Helena smirked.
Sophie couldn’t help but emit a giggle.
Helena was an odd sight in her tatty mismatched undergarments, her face streaked with mascara. As Sophie watched her, all she saw was a vision of paradox – the exterior of her body seemed frail – but her face bore the confidence of someone who had just accomplished their life’s goal.
Sophie smirked at her friend’s bitchiness towards her partner. True, Nathan had always had a belly and he had always been lazy but Helena knew this when she met him. In fact, Sophie had warned Helena about him, but like many women when it came to men, she didn’t listen and that was why Sophie kept men at arm’s length. They weren’t to be trusted. She should know.
Sophie went to speak but Helena could see it coming.
“Don’t even go there with the ‘I told you so crap’! I can read you like a book, Sophie Kane. Remember, we’ve been friends since the age of five and there’s nothing I don’t see coming – you’re so damn predictable – eejit!”
The girls laughed and Helena flung her arms around her best friend. Sophie’s arms could have wrapped themselves around her friend’s torso twice over and she felt strangely fat by comparison.
Helena knew Sophie and she knew of her secrets, the real reason why Sophie reacted so harshly when it came to the opposite sex. They were inseparable as friends went, although so far apart in personality and ambition.
“I wasn’t going to say ‘I told you so’.” Sophie stuck out her tongue just like she used to when she and Helena fell out at primary school. “I was going to offer once again for you to come and live with me until you get yourself sorted out.”
Helena froze, holding the damp, blackened piece of soggy toilet roll in her hand and Sophie could see her mind ticking over. She didn’t want to say too much but she did want to make sure that Helena could clearly see the lifeline she was being offered. Again.
“I won’t treat you as a charity case, Hel, I swear, but I do want to help you get yourself straight – you know, maybe save a deposit for a place of your own or something and so I won’t take any rent from you . . . that’s not up for debate,” she added quickly, sensing that Helena about to raise an objection.
Sophie squeezed Helena’s bony hand. “Just promise to keep the place tidy and buy your own shopping. Deal?”
Helena turned to face the mirrored bathroom cabinet above the sink where she continued to drag at the skin on her face until it was cleansed of smudged make-up. She could think better with a cleansed face – it was as though she were wiping the dirt away from her life too.
Sophie winced at Helena’s beauty regime until she was forced to intervene. “Keep doing that and you’ll look like a pensioner by the time you’re forty!” she lectured. “You’re pulling all the elasticity from your skin! What’s wrong with you, girl? Do you want to age unnecessarily?”
Helena belted out a peal of hoydenish laughter. “Sophie Kane, I’m about to leave the man I have lived with and loved for the past nine years and embark on a new life and all you can think about is how I look? Do you even know how to be anything other than a superficial bitch?” Helena lifted the lid of the toilet and flung the used tissues into its mouth. A splash of water bounced back and landed on the bleached white toilet seat. “You’re as shallow as ever but I can’t help but love you.”
“I love you too, but if you splash my toilet seat again I’m going to have to ask you to move out before you’ve even moved in!”
Jude and Kath appeared at the door to the bathroom, drawn by the hilarity. From the living room they had heard Helena and Sophie deep in conversation and had decided to leave them to it as it sounded heavy. They had no idea what had happened while they were admiring the view from the lounge and sipping on Long Island Iced Tea. But they soon realised that Helena had finally come to her senses. She was leaving the loser at last.
Roni raced into the taxi which had been waiting patiently outside The Tudors for a good ten minutes, the tails of her coat flapping wildly. She was late. Late for Sophie’s Curry Club and the last thing she wanted was to be chastised over it and one thing she most definitely couldn’t do was be honest about the reason she was late.
The car pulled away, its wheels crunched along the gravelled driveway and Roni turned to watch the gates close behind her. She trusted no-one.
“You’re running a little late tonight then?” The driver was hinting for an apology.
Roni grunted something which he couldn’t quite make out and he quickly realised that she was one of them – people with big houses who thought they were better than everyone else – and one of those who had all that money but looked like their lives were about to end.
Snobby cow!
Roni sat back and focused on the view of Cheshire’s finest mansions which flashed by her like a kaleidoscope as the driver – now late for his next pick-up – flew past them at a dangerous speed. Roni glanced at her Cartier watch. Jewellery was her one weakness and she took great pleasure in indulging in it. Peter had bought the watch for her last Christmas to replace another one which she had seemingly misplaced. While Roni was keen to claim off the house insurance, Peter wouldn’t have it. ‘What if it turns up somewhere and we’ve made a claim, Roni, my love? That would be fraud.’ But Roni had tutted at him and told him that was what insurance companies were for. ‘To cough up,’ she had put it. Still, Peter knew everyone. Someone who could do something, who could do something for him. A phone call later and Roni’s gift was fedexed from Paris to her front door.
The cab stopped in the communal carpark of Maritime Wharf. Without looking at the meter Roni threw a twenty-pound note at the driver before getting out without a word of thanks.
He turned to call her with the change but Roni had already fled the scene and he immediately felt better for receipt of such a generous tip. He never minded taking money off a rich bitch like her. And a bitch she was, he decided, as he made his exit through the security barrier where he waved to the silver-haired guard as he passed through.
“You’re late, Mrs Smith,” Sophie teased as Roni handed her a bottle of Châteauneuf-du-Pape even though she knew full well that Sophie drank only white wine.
She did it every time and Sophie had gone past the point of annoyance.
“It’s Sm-y-th,” Roni corrected her and was about to continue when she saw Sophie tittering away, trying to hold it in.
“You’re so uptight, Roni, relax and take a chill pill.”
Sophie handed Roni a cocktail poured from the jug she had made earlier. Long Island Iced Tea was her signature cocktail and she made it as well as any renowned cocktail bar and with measures which would bankrupt them.
She put the jug back into the fridge of her open-plan luxury pad. “Or better still have some sex,” Sophie whispered to Helena who spat her drink back into its glass almost choking on it.
“What was that, sorry?” Roni hadn’t heard. She wasn’t meant to.
“Nothing, Roni. I was just talking to myself.” Sophie beamed at her with the charm of a hostess whose very life depended on the evening’s success.
As Roni turned to join Kath and Jude on the balcony she let out a yelp. Her knees pushed together and she held her groin as she bent over slightly to ease the pain.
Jude came rushing to help, leaving the stunning view of the rainbow which beamed its rays of colour across the square fourth-floor balcony.
“What is it, Roni?” She held Roni’s arm and tried to support her but Roni remained hunched like she had aged thirty years within a matter of seconds.
“It’s nothing.” Roni’s face was flushed with embarassment and Sophie was keen to know why. Sophie was keen to know everything.
“Women’s problems?”
Roni scowled at Sophie, lifting her head to glare at her. “No.”
“Coil fallen out?” Sophie asked in earnest.
“No!”
“Prolapse?”
Kath let out a screech of laughter. “Sophie!”
“No, it’s not a bloody prolapse!” Roni flared. She could take it no more. She knew Sophie Kane well enough to know that she would never tire of guessing until she discovered the truth. That was why she loved the Curry Club so much. No-one needed to know whose life they were dissecting when it came to the really personal stuff. But this she couldn’t keep completely confidential, it seemed.
Some Like it Hot Page 10
