by K. L. Slater
And of course, I can’t deny that I both enjoy and take great pride in my job.
I think I can safely say that the bad time is finally behind me. And long may it stay that way.
Chapter Ten
Holly
With the unpacking mostly done, Holly reluctantly admitted that she couldn’t string it out upstairs much longer. It was time to go down again.
‘Get a grip,’ she muttered out loud as she felt the familiar resistance inside flare up. She hated that Geraldine’s voice piped up in her head so frequently, especially since, infuriatingly, she’d often been right: sometimes Holly was her own worst enemy.
Cora now had a solution for her chronic loneliness and Holly had found a much-needed home and, hopefully, a stable base from which to begin rebuilding her life.
There was just one last thing to do.
At the bottom of the suitcase lay a laptop. It had been Geraldine’s, and Holly had managed to sneak it out of the house without her even missing it, such was the wealth of possessions the other woman had.
She took the lead and plugged it into the wall socket at the side of her bed. The battery was completely flat but should be fully charged by the time she came up to bed later.
When she got downstairs, Cora was still sitting in her armchair by the window, leafing listlessly through a magazine.
‘There you are, dear. I was beginning to fear you’d got lost up there.’ She laid the magazine on the arm of her chair. ‘Now, where was I? Ah yes, our wedding day.’
Holly sighed inwardly but managed to raise a smile.
‘That’s right,’ she said, perching on the end of the sofa. ‘March 1966.’
‘I remember it as if it were yesterday…’ Cora’s eyes glazed over; she had immersed herself in the past so completely that the odd grunt and affirmative nod from Holly was all that was required to give the impression that she was listening.
She stared in fascination as Cora’s soft, drooping features grew steadily more animated, more alive.
Rather than feeling guilty, Holly felt this was what Cora wanted from her. Simply another human being to sit and witness her life lived so far. To listen without interruption whilst she brought her memories out to polish again.
It was heartening and understandable.
Holly began to relax a little, caught up in the rhythmic waves of sound as Cora told her story.
She closed her eyes, allowing a slight smile to play on her lips as if she were visualising the eighteenth-century church and the hand-made Nottingham lace that had trimmed nineteen-year-old Cora’s ivory wedding gown.
A rap at the back door made her sit up sharply, her eyes springing open.
Cora frowned slightly.
‘Who can that be?’ She glanced at the heavy wooden clock on the mantelpiece. ‘Too early for Mr Brown.’
Apparently Mr Brown only lived a couple of doors away. Holly recalled Cora telling her he’d been taking care of the heavier garden duties for the last few months.
‘Shall I see who it is?’
‘It’s all right, dear, I’ll go.’ Cora sighed and clambered awkwardly out of her chair.
Holly eased herself back down onto the sofa, her heart pounding at roughly twice its usual speed at the interruption.
What if it was…?
She shook her head to dispel the unhelpful thoughts. It was important to keep up with this more positive frame of mind; it was going to do her no good at all to fret over impossibilities. She was safe here.
She was safe, because nobody could possibly know of her whereabouts.
The back door opened and she relaxed as she recognised the bright tones of mutual greetings. The visitor was obviously someone Cora was pleased to see.
‘Come through, dear,’ Holly heard her say as the back door thudded shut. ‘It’s been far too long.’
‘Yes, it has, and I’m sorry about that,’ a woman said, her voice drawing closer. ‘I was going to pop round this week anyway, and then David said he’d seen a young woman – oh, hello!’
Holly guessed that the woman standing in front of her was in her early sixties. She had mid-brown hair that was shot through with grey at her temples, and her entire outfit also consisted of varying shades of brown.
‘This is Holly, my visitor,’ Cora said without hesitation. ‘She’s staying with me for a while. Holly, this is Pat. She lives next door.’
‘Hello.’ Holly stood up.
Pat reached cautiously for her outstretched hand as though she was about to pet a dog whose intentions were ambiguous.
‘Hello… Holly,’ she said softly. ‘I’m very pleased to meet you. My son – David – he’s spotted you in the yard once or twice, so I thought I’d pop round and introduce myself.’
‘Oh, I haven’t seen anyone else in the other gardens,’ Holly remarked.
‘No, he saw you from upstairs.’ Pat’s cheeks flushed a little. ‘He… spends a lot of time working in his bedroom.’
There was a beat of silence until Cora jumped straight into her tea duties.
‘No, no, I’ll make the tea,’ Holly insisted, glad to get out of the room. ‘Give you two a chance to catch up.’
She stepped outside the door and pulled it to, but not fully closed, behind her.
The two women’s voices dropped lower, but she was able to catch certain phrases, like ‘poor girl’ and ‘lovely to have some company’. Then she heard Pat’s concerned voice: ‘We’re going to have to watch David.’
Holly forced herself to loosen her jaw and walked into the kitchen.
She wasn’t quite sure whether she wanted to meet this David person or not.
It reminded her of the day she’d left Nottingham with Markus. She hadn’t got a clue what kind of people they’d meet in Manchester; it was a leap of faith. Markus had already spent some time there, but he’d only been there long enough to make tentative contacts.
It had been a milestone because it was the moment all her plans and intentions had finally turned into hard action. Both terrifying and exhilarating at the same time.
Chapter Eleven
Holly
The coach journey to Manchester had been something of a nightmare. It had taken four long hours in total, as they’d had to make a change at Leeds.
The second they boarded and found their seats, Holly’s heart sank. She’d imagined a pleasant, rather exciting trip, but already seated behind them was a young family with a screaming baby and a boy of about six years old who Markus insisted was the image of the child, Damien, from the horror movie The Omen.
The boy did indeed prove to be a little demon, persisting in kicking Holly’s seat for what felt like the entire duration of the journey.
‘Sorry, love,’ his ineffective, harassed mother kept leaning forward and saying to Holly in between half-hearted attempts to chastise the little monster.
In front of them sat two teenagers who’d brought two enormous bags of McDonald’s takeaway onto the coach with them. Holly could almost feel the saturated fat settling into the pores of her skin as the entire oxygen supply seemed to quickly convert to burger and chips fumes.
Infuriatingly, virtually as soon as they’d finished the vodka and the coach had pulled away, Markus promptly fell fast asleep despite the commotion that surrounded them.
On reflection, Holly realised, too late, that his suggestion that she travel to Manchester with him had come so quickly that she hadn’t stopped to properly consider the implications.
She had precisely fifty pounds folded away in the pocket of her rucksack, and another thirty-five pounds in the bank. That amounted to all her worldly goods and available funds.
‘Don’t worry.’ Markus had shrugged when she’d confided in him. ‘You’ll get a job in no time. My friend, he has many contacts.’
She wondered afterwards why she’d allowed him to be so vague about the ‘wonderful opportunity’ he’d talked about when they’d initially gone for coffee. He’d told her all sorts of stories about the money he
’d made working for ‘the boss’, as he liked to call his mystery contact in Manchester.
‘He’s a very private man,’ he had explained, wiping frothed milk from his top lip with the back of his hand. ‘And he likes to explain opportunities to people himself, rather than you taking my word for it.’
His word for what, exactly? Holly had wondered.
‘It’s nothing dodgy, is it?’ Eventually she’d sought reassurance. ‘I’m not interested in getting involved in anything illegal or—’
Markus had held his hands up.
‘It’s nothing like that. The boss has had me travelling around the north-east, learning the trade in his clubs and pubs. It’ll probably be something different for you… if he thinks you’ve got potential, that is.’
‘Potential for what?’
‘Stop reading things into what I’m saying.’ He’d laughed and waved her away. ‘I’ve told you, it’s nothing dodgy.’
She’d felt a curl of discomfort in her gut, but ignored it. Things had got much worse at home lately, and this opening had come at just the right time.
Aunt Susan seemed to be working longer hours, which left Holly stuck in the house alone with creepy Keith. At college, she’d fallen into the same pattern she’d previously had at school, going straight to the library at the end of each day. But Aunt Susan didn’t get home from her cleaning job now until nine, and the college library closed at six.
It was a constant dilemma, and that was why, when Markus had invited her to go to Manchester, she’d found herself accepting, even though the arrangements were vague. It also meant leaving her college course halfway through.
Still, the pull to get away had been stronger than the sum amount of her concerns.
As they’d sat waiting for the coach to depart, she’d continued to press Markus for more details about his boss and the amazing opportunity he’d found himself chasing.
He’d relayed tales of hopping from club to club, gaining hospitality managerial experience, mixing with VIP customers, with champagne on tap.
He’d looked at her earnestly. ‘My opportunity is probably different to what yours will turn out to be. I don’t have many details, Holly, but you know, you only get places in life by taking risks. So you should think of it as an adventure.’
They’d sat in silence for a short time before he turned to her again.
‘I’ve never asked you about your past. I know we were on friendly terms at school, but we don’t really know each other, and now… here we are leaving town together.’
‘What do you want to know?’ Holly had shrugged, thinking she didn’t know anything about his background either but wasn’t that curious. As far as she was concerned, she was more than happy to leave the past behind.
‘I don’t know. I suppose… did your parents have any diseases?’
Holly burst out laughing, and Markus joined in.
‘What kind of a question is that?’
‘OK, don’t answer that,’ he grinned. ‘I do not ask the best questions, for sure.’
He’d said she would only get places in life by taking risks, but she wanted to ask him what kind of risks he was referring to. Yet he already looked half asleep, so in the end, she didn’t bother trying to reason with him.
She remembered thinking that she couldn’t summon a word in the English language for the way she was feeling right at that moment. It was a sensation that hovered ominously between fear and excitement, dread and anticipation.
Once the coach had begun to move and her aunt and uncle’s two-bed terrace was a good few miles behind her, another feeling began to brew in her stomach. But there were fewer feel-good vibes attached to this one.
She was unable to kick the feeling that risky was how all this suddenly felt. A young woman like herself, venturing into the unknown with no guarantees and no safety net.
As Markus snored softly beside her, all the cautionary tales that had been recounted in her old school assemblies began to emerge from a dark, dusty place in her mind.
Sex slaves, prostitution, violence on city streets… She’d thought at the time that all this stuff had gone over her head, that such concerns would never apply to her. But it was now apparent that her brain had carefully filed all the unsavoury details away and was choosing now as a good time to revisit it all.
Holly ferreted in her pocket for her headphones and turned on her music in a futile attempt to blast away the unwelcome musings. She looked down at her iPod and was reminded that Aunt Susan had bought it for her eighteenth birthday, only a few months earlier.
She felt a stab of remorse then, wondering if maybe she’d been a bit hard on her aunt before she left the house.
Holly was forced to admit that, despite her weak will when it came to her husband, her aunt had a good heart. After all, she hadn’t had to take her niece in and give her a roof over her head. She had been estranged from Holly’s mother, Julie, for several years before Julie’s untimely death.
It wasn’t Aunt Susan’s fault her husband was a perv. They’d married very young, as evidenced by the single photograph on the mantelpiece. Keith had actually been skinnier than her aunt in those days, but he’d still had the same creepy eyes.
But Aunt Susan had let him get away with his crude comments. She had always found a reason to leave the room as he sat openly ogling Holly’s legs in the early days, when she’d still, naïvely, worn a short skirt in his presence.
No, she concluded, as she stared out of the coach window into the failing light. She shouldn’t feel bad. Aunt Susan had known what Keith was like and had clearly made the decision to put up with it.
That had been her choice, no one else’s. She shouldn’t have expected Holly to do the same.
Chapter Twelve
Holly
Holly grasped the handle of Cora’s back door and pushed down, but the door was locked.
As she ferreted in her handbag for the spare keys Cora had given her, she found herself hoping beyond reasonable hope that the older woman was out.
Although Cora had evidently become accustomed to spending long stretches in the house without seeing another soul, she’d also told Holly that every few days she forced herself to head into town. She’d stop at the coffee shop on the corner, she said, and then pick up a few bags of shopping before grabbing a cab home.
Holly supposed that today must be one of those days.
She twisted the key in the lock and stepped inside. As she’d hoped, the house was silent. She could even hear the loud tick of the grandfather clock in the hallway, Cora’s pride and joy that had been passed down by her mother’s side of the family.
She closed the door behind her and dumped her bag and keys on the kitchen counter. There, she found a note from Cora.
Popped to supermarket. Back soon x
She felt her shoulders relax a little, and the thumping headache that had developed on the bus journey back from town receded just a touch.
After surviving virtually a full day of Cora’s incessant reminiscing the day before, Holly had thought that she might actually scream if she had to accompany her on one more minute’s meandering down ruddy memory lane.
If she was a decent person, she probably wouldn’t entertain such unkind thoughts. But you couldn’t stop thoughts dead just because they were selfish, could you? If anything, if you didn’t acknowledge them, they’d probably grow stronger.
Holly was overjoyed that Cora had taken her in so readily, but that didn’t mean she had to sacrifice her sanity every single minute of the day from here on in. Or maybe it did. She wasn’t really in a position to be fussy right now.
She poured herself a small glass of orange juice and sat at the scuffed wooden table for a few minutes, allowing the silence around her to trickle soothingly into her bruised ears.
There had been so much noise in town today. Holly had done the rounds of three busy recruitment agencies with their mostly indifferent staff. Her suspicions had been correct. There really weren’t that many decent
job vacancies around currently, certainly not for unskilled staff or with training provided.
Once she had explained in the first two appointments that she didn’t possess a university degree or hold a sheaf of impressive qualifications in her non-existent portfolio, she saw their already sparse enthusiasm fade away before her eyes.
It had taken all her resolve not to give up.
When she had entered the third and final agency, Office Cherubs, she was met at the door by a woman with dry brown hair, over-tanned skin and rabbit-like teeth.
‘I’m Karen, recruitment consultant,’ she said, extending a hand together with her self-important title. ‘You must be Holly?’
Holly smiled and nodded, relieved that she wasn’t going to be treated as a pariah this time. She felt hot after rushing across town to get to the building at exactly two p.m., her appointment time.
Karen led her to a quiet corner in the large open-plan office. Various people sat at desks dotted here and there, but nobody showed any interest in her.
Holly sat down and gratefully accepted the glass of water offered to her. She felt dead on her feet.
They had an informal chat and she was relieved that the woman seemed to accept her brief account of work experience without too many searching questions.
‘I think you’d be perfect for a vacancy we’ve just had in literally fifteen minutes ago,’ Karen said brightly. ‘Sales assistant for an upmarket shop in the centre of town. I could send you over for interview first thing tomorrow if you can email me your references before we close up today. How’s that sound?’
‘Sounds great,’ Holly nodded, trying to ignore the voice in her head that was starting to panic a little. ‘I can email them when I get home, if that’s OK?’
