by Susan Lewis
Marian’s eyes filled with tears. Their predicament was now so bad that she no longer knew which way to turn. Buying the lottery ticket had been a gesture of defiance that had given her only a moment’s pleasure, and now she regretted it bitterly.
Madeleine expelled her irritation in a loud sigh. ‘I’m sorry. Come on, don’t cry. We’re in this together. And besides, you know I didn’t mean it.’
‘Didn’t mean what?’
Neither of them had seen Paul come in. He was standing over them, his blond hair dripping rain onto the collar of his jacket and his black brows drawn together in a frown. Madeleine’s heart turned over as he smiled and tucked Marian’s mousey hair behind her ear. Then noticing the tears, he sat down quickly.
‘How did it go?’ Marian asked, before he could ask why she was crying.
He shrugged and used a paper napkin to wipe the rain from his face. ‘The secretary couldn’t find the script, and my money ran out before she came back to the phone.’ His voice was light, but Marian knew how disappointed he was. It had been over two months since he’d taken his manuscript to London, and still there was no word. She started to speak but he put his finger on her lips and shook his head. ‘So now my last pennies have gone on a fruitless telephone call,’ he sighed, ‘I’m what you might call brassic. How about you two? Any chance of a coffee?’
‘Marian has spent our money on a lottery ticket,’ Madeleine spat.
Marian tensed, praying Paul wouldn’t be angry with her too. But he smiled and held his hand out for hers. ‘What am I going to do with you?’ he chuckled, and her face glowed her adoration as he leaned over to whisper in her ear.
Madeleine wanted to scream, and as Marian’s face turned as red as the tablecloth she sprang to her feet, hugging her bag to her chest. ‘Well, while you two sit there behaving as if you haven’t got a care in the world, I’m going to sort out this bill. And you, Marian Deacon, are off to Devon tomorrow to beg some money from your mother.’
Instantly Marian’s glow was swallowed into the greedy throat of misery. ‘But what about the rail fare?’ she protested feebly.
‘Write a cheque and say you’ve lost your card. And don’t come back until . . .’
Marian had turned back to Paul. ‘I can use the phone there!’ she cried. ‘I’ll call the publisher, try and sort out what’s happened.’
On a snort of disgust, Madeleine stalked off across the café. From the corner of his eye Paul watched her go, knowing exactly how she was going to get out of paying the bill. He wondered if the owner would be content with just looking at those magnificent breasts.
– 5 –
Marian watched her mother with a heart-rending mixture of pity and love. Her small, creased face was smiling happily as she poured tea from her best china pot, while chattering on about the little cleaning job she’d managed to get herself over at the school.
‘You remember your old teacher, Mrs Webb, don’t you?’ she said, putting the cosy back on the pot, then cutting off two slices of home-made angel cake. ‘She asks after you and our Madeleine, regular like.’
As Marian took the slice of cake she felt a lump rise in her throat. She knew her mother rarely baked these days – there was no one at home to bake for now. ‘How is Mrs Webb?’ she asked.
‘Still having trouble with her leg.’ Celia’s grey eyes twinkled. ‘And her back, and her stomach, and her neck.’
Marian laughed awkwardly, then sat down in the corner of the sofa that was closest to her father’s armchair, where she’d always sat as a child. The guilt she felt at having neglected her mother since she’d met Paul was gnawing at her heart, making it difficult for her to speak. And knowing that it had taken Madeleine over two weeks to persuade her to make the trip to Devon, only intensified the feeling.
The room they sat in hadn’t changed in all the years they’d lived there – small and cluttered, with rose-patterned wallpaper, display cabinets of ornaments, souvenirs and photographs from over the years. Dad’s old armchair was still beside the hearth, cushions plumped out and crocheted arm-covers neatly in place – it was as if it were waiting for him to come home, Marian thought sadly. She watched as, out of habit, her mother took a duster from her apron pocket and ran it over the grate. She was approaching sixty now, and though she looked it, she still kept herself smart, visiting the hairdresser’s every Friday for a wash and set, and always putting on a tidy dress for her twice-weekly game of bingo down at the British Legion. She felt such a surge of love for her mother that she had to look away in case she cried. She was the kindest, gentlest woman, who would put herself out for anyone and never expect anything in return. She wasn’t particularly well-educated, neither of Marian’s parents were – ‘There wasn’t the money nor the opportunities in them days’, was what her father had always said.
After tea Marian and Celia walked arm-in-arm down to the church so Marian could put flowers on her father’s grave. On the way back Mrs Cooper was out by her gate, so they stopped to chat. She wanted to know all about what Mrs Deacon’s two girls were up to in Bristol, and did Marian have a lovely job now she’d finished at the university? Marian had to admit she didn’t, and no, neither did Madeleine. Mrs Cooper didn’t show any surprise about Madeleine. ‘After all, she didn’t go to the university, did she?’ Mrs Cooper had never been too fond of Madeleine, ever since Madeleine had called her a nosey, interfering old bag. Madeleine had been thirteen then, and she’d said it because Mrs Cooper had rushed up the road to tell Mrs Deacon she’d just seen her niece going off over the Bluebell Field with one of the boys from Dundridge Farm.
People had always been complaining about Madeleine then, but neither Marian nor her mother and father would believe anything bad of her. Oh yes, she was a bit of a tearaway, Celia was ready to admit that, but she was young, and hadn’t it been hard enough for the girl being abandoned by her parents like that when she was only eight?
But no one could ever say Madeleine had been starved of love. Since the day she had come to live with them in their little two-bedroomed terraced house just outside Totnes, she had been the apple of everyone’s eye, particularly her uncle’s. Marian was sure that was why Madeleine was the way she was now. She rarely talked about him, but Marian knew that Madeleine missed her uncle terribly, and longed for someone to make her feel secure and loved in the same way. Suddenly Marian found herself thinking about the first time Paul had told her he loved her, and her heart turned over painfully. She was missing him already.
‘You thinking about that young man of yours, are you?’ her mother asked.
Marian looked up as her mother came in from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a teatowel.
‘When am I going to meet him, then?’ Celia asked.
‘I’ve got some photos here,’ Marian said, opening her bag. ‘We took them in Rome.’
‘Oh yes, I’d forgotten you’d been to Rome, the three of you. Let’s have a look, then.’ She leafed slowly through the first few, then lifted her head. With a faint colour staining her powdered cheeks and a sheepish smile that made her look more huggable than ever, she asked: ‘’Tis in Italy, Rome, isn’t it?’
Marian smiled. ‘Yes.’
Her mother’s eyes widened. ‘Italy. There’s nice. Looks a bit rough, though, all that damp on the walls and tiles falling off roofs. Oooh, Marian, is this your young man?’
Marian looked over her mother’s shoulder. ‘Yes, that’s him,’ she answered, her voice faltering on a wave of pride.
‘Well, what would our Dad say if he could see him? Real good looking he is. How old is he?’
‘Thirty.’
Celia frowned. ‘Bit old for you, isn’t it?’
Marian laughed. ‘I’ll be twenty-three this summer, Mum.’
‘Ah, I suppose so. So it’s serious between you, is it?’
‘Well . . .’
‘No wedding bells yet?’
Marian’s mouth was pursed in a smile as she shrugged. ‘We’ll see,’ she answered.
; Celia looked at the picture again. ‘Why didn’t you bring him home with you?’
Marian’s eyes shot to her mother’s, then slowly she broke into a grin. ‘I could always give him a ring now,’ she said. ‘He can get the first train tomorrow.’
Celia’s eyes were sparkling too. ‘Go on, then. Give Mrs Cooper something to gossip about, won’t it, you bringing your boyfriend home. I’ll go and put the chops on while you use the phone.’
Marian was already in the hall before she remembered. Their phone had been cut off. Paul couldn’t pay the rail fare, and she had yet to tell her mother the real reason for her visit. She sat down on the bottom stair and dropped her head in her hands. What a God-awful mess this was. She hadn’t been able to get any work, Madeleine was still recovering from another bout of flu, and these past two weeks only Paul’s dole money had kept them from going hungry.
Celia Deacon’s hands were folded inside her apron pockets and her kind, innocent grey eyes were gazing up at the mantlepiece when Marian finally went back into the room. Her heart leapt at the eagerness in her mother’s eyes as she looked at her expectantly.
‘I can’t make the call, Mum. Our phone’s been cut off.’
Celia looked blank. ‘Cut off?’
‘We haven’t paid – couldn’t pay – the bill.’
‘Oh.’ A moment later Celia smiled and stood up. As she walked over to the sideboard she patted Marian’s arm. ‘You’re a silly girl, you should have told me before. I ’spect that’s why you’re here, isn’t it? So we’d better see what’s best to be done.’ She opened a drawer and took out her purse.
‘No, Mum.’ Marian covered her mother’s hands with her own. ‘It’s worse than the phone. A lot worse.’
Celia was nonplussed, and then became agitated as her daughter started telling her about limits on Barclaycards and Access cards, loans from finance companies, unpaid gas and electricity bills and threatening letters from the bank.
‘We haven’t paid any rent for seven weeks and we don’t have a penny between us,’ Marian finished.
Celia was shaking her head. ‘There’s a fine old mess to go and get yourselves in,’ she said. ‘And you with your education now. Still, there’s nothing else for it, we’ll have to go down the post office first thing tomorrow and draw out some money. Oh dear, what would your poor old dad say?’
Marian knew only too well what her father would say. What are you doing sponging off your mother at your age? You’ve had the best part of her insurance money as it is, the rest belongs to her, not you. Oh yes, she could hear her father’s voice all right, and she agreed with every word he was saying.
‘But what else has she got to spend it on?’ That was what Madeleine had said when Marian had made the very same point a week ago. ‘She enjoys giving it to us, you know she does. It makes her feel needed.’
When they came out of the post office the following morning, Celia handed her daughter an envelope. ‘I left ten pound in there,’ she said in a whisper, ‘didn’t want to close the account right up. But that’s all that’s left, Marian, so you girls are going to have to learn to stand on your own feet from now on.’
Marian’s guilt swelled like a miserable, loathsome creature, and as she gazed down at the envelope she knew she couldn’t do it. She just couldn’t take the last of her mother’s nest-egg and leave her with nothing. She pushed the envelope back into Celia’s hand. ‘I can’t,’ she said. ‘I can’t take it, Mum.’
‘Don’t you be so daft now. You’re in a state, the two of you, that’s obvious. You use that to. sort it out. What about jobs? Does Madeleine still deliver those birthday messages?’ Avoiding her mother’s eyes, Marian nodded. ‘And you? You still temping with the agency, are you?’ Again Marian nodded. ‘Then you’re going to have to learn to live within your means, the two of you. You tell that Madeleine to get down the phone box and ring me when you get home, I’ll talk to her myself. She doesn’t ring me enough as it is. Nor you, madam. Now, let’s go home and have a nice cup of tea before you go, eh?’
Marian eyes were awash with tears. ‘You’re the best Mum in the whole world, do you know that?’
‘Oh, go on with you, you soppy old thing.’
‘I’ll stay another night if I may,’ Marian said as they walked in the front door.
‘’Course you can. You don’t have to ask, this is your home. Now, I’ll go and peel some potatoes for dinner and you go on upstairs and put that money away safe in your suitcase. And you mind, if there’s any left over you’re to share it with our Madeleine.’
‘Of course,’ Marian answered. Then, as she started to walk up the stairs, she turned back. Her mother was watching her, and suddenly her guard dropped and she threw her arms round her and burst into tears. ‘I love you, Mum,’ she sobbed.
‘I know you do, dear,’ Celia said, patting her head.
Madeleine’s eyes moved in an incredulous sweep across the mirror to find Paul’s reflection. He was sitting up in bed, a sheet barely covering his nudity. ‘You mean, steal it?’ she whispered.
His only answer was to smile benignly as he settled his hands behind his head.
Rotating herself on the dressing-table stool, the pressing need for new highlights forgotten, she looked at him, and for the first time since he had seen Marian off at the station, it wasn’t with an eye for sex. His teeth were clamped over his bottom lip, but his eyes were narrowed in the semi-caressing smile he normally reserved for Marian. Madeleine shivered, but whether because the look was so seductive or his suggestion so shameless, she couldn’t have said.
She giggled. ‘You’re not serious – are you?’
He glanced down at the cheque lying beside him on the bed, and read aloud: ‘Pay Miss M. Deacon the sum of seven hundred and fifty thousand pounds.’ He looked up.
Madeleine stared at him. Was he really thinking exactly what she had been thinking ever since the two men from the lottery paid their visit the day before?
‘Miss Deacon?’ one of them had asked. And of course she had said she was, because she was. It wasn’t until she invited them in and they explained why they were there that she realised it was Marian they were looking for. Of course, she should have come clean right away, but she’d let them go on talking, telling her how her request for no publicity was to be respected and that a financial adviser would come round to see her sometime in the next few days. Madeleine had listened to it all, too stunned to speak. Her only thought was that if she hadn’t made Marian go to Devon . . . But she got no further than that.
Coming back to the present, she saw that Paul was still watching her. She heard Matthew Cornwall close a window downstairs, but didn’t give him a second thought. If she was reading Paul right, she no longer needed the Matthew Cornwalls of this world. But Paul couldn’t mean it. It was too . . . It was just too extreme. They couldn’t seriously pick up that cheque and walk out without saying a word to Marian. Could they? But how was Marian to know?
Paul yawned, though he was amused by her evident struggle of conscience.
‘She’d share it, you know,’ Madeleine said.
‘Yes, she would.’
Her eyes moved to the cheque, then slowly back to Paul. As she watched him, and remembered all that he had done to her in the past forty-eight hours, she felt such an overpowering surge of lust and triumph that she couldn’t stop it bubbling from her lips in a harsh, brittle laugh. She would have him, she would have the money, she would have everything!
Seeing the way her nipples were standing out, Paul flipped back the sheet, crooked his finger and beckoned her over to the bed. She stood up, but before she went to him she had to be sure.
‘What will you tell her?’ she asked.
He shrugged. ‘What’s there to tell?’
‘She thinks you love her.’
‘I know.’
‘Do you?’
He studied her, his intense eyes making a slow journey from the tips of her toes to the very top of her head. It was debatable who was the
more beautiful of the two, herself or Paul, but in case he should be at all forgetful of the completeness of her beauty, Madeleine undid her robe and let it fall. ‘Do you want me to tell you I’m in love with you?’ he said.
‘Aren’t you?’
‘No.’
‘You are, you know. I’m Miss M. Deacon.’
His eyes narrowed, just for a fraction of a second, and then he laughed. ‘Sit here,’ he said, pointing to his erection.
Obediently she walked across the room and climbed onto the bed. As she positioned herself over him he took her breasts in his hands and leaned forward to bury his tongue in her mouth. She kissed him back, sucking his lips and his tongue while lifting his penis from his belly. Slowly she lowered herself onto him, then moaned into his mouth as the length of him filled her. He pushed her back to look at her; her hair tumbled over her face and her lips were moist and parted.
‘Move,’ he told her. Then jerking himself hard into her he growled, ‘Come on, fuck me.’
Her eyes clouded and he laughed. ‘Fuck me,’ he said again, and gently slapped her breasts. ‘Then I’ll tell you just how much I love you.’
‘And adore me?’ she murmured, as she put a hand on either side of the pillow.
‘I worship you.’ He pushed his face into her breasts and squeezed her nipples.
‘Oh yes, yes,’ she groaned, rotating her hips. As she moved faster and faster her breasts swung heavily and he lay back to watch them, his hands circling her waist, his own hips jerking to meet hers. Then, as she started to lose control, her head dropped back and she cried, ‘Do it to me! Do it!’ He ran his hands over her thighs, but his fingers stopped before they reached the join in her legs. ‘Do it!’ she screamed. He snatched the hair from her face and pulled her forward. Her eyes flew open and suddenly, in one almighty surge, he felt the seed being sucked from his body. He had never seen anything like it – the power, the hunger, the sheer concupiscence of that look slashed his control so that his whole body was rocketed to the point of explosion.
