“Hi Helena, it’s your mother. I hope you are well. I thought I’d pop and see you tomorrow. I’m just dying to see your little cottage! I’ve got my sat-nav and I should see you just before lunch. I’ll take you out - my treat! Bye love.”
Helena glared at the phone, and then at the piles of magazines, discarded jumpers, and elderly coffee mugs that decorated her living space. The big tidy-up wasn’t going to wait.
* * *
Mrs Elizabeth Wright - never Liz, Beth or heaven forbid, Betty - was standing by her red sports car outside the church on the High Street, clutching her “emergencies-only” phone and glaring at a small terrier dog that was staring back at her.
Helena hurried down the road. Her mother had phoned in a panic, as she had failed to find the right street, and had resorted to pulling up in the middle of the village to demand directions.
“Mum.”
“Helena! Darling!” She shoved the phone into her beige and gold handbag, looped casually over one wrist, and surged forward to embrace Helena in a genuine and heartfelt hug. The bag banged off Helena’s back as Mrs Wright hung on for a few long seconds.
“Mum - can’t breathe!” Helena pulled backwards and was released.
“How wonderful to see you! The scenery here is simply amazing. Stunning. I could barely keep my eyes on the road as I was driving up here. Hop in - you can direct me to your house.”
“You may as well leave it parked here, and walk up. Just the end of the road and up a slight hill.”
Mrs Wright pursed her lips and thought about it. Helena was surprised when she said, brightly, “All right then! Lead on.”
Helena was prepared for her mother’s reaction as she sailed through her house, insistent upon a guided tour. She was expecting criticism dressed up as constructive comments. So she was unprepared for her mother’s declaration as they returned to the living room.
“It’s rather bijou, but well done, darling.”
“Well done?”
Mrs Wright perched herself on the edge of the sofa, knees together and lower legs slanting to one side, like she was on a fashion shoot. “Yes, I really mean it. I am proud of you, darling.”
Helena sagged onto a chair in surprise. “Thank you…”
Mrs Wright’s eyes were steely as she said, “You’ve had a rough time. That dreadful business with Kevin - no, don’t worry - we simply shall not speak of it. And you amazed me, you amazed us all, by upping sticks and moving on! True backbone.”
“Oh… well, I didn’t see anything else I could have done.”
“A lesser woman would have wailed and moped and pined. Not you! I gained a new respect for you, darling, and I don’t mind saying so.”
“Oh.”
“Don’t look so surprised. We’ve had our ups and downs, of course, any mother and daughter does. But we move on! That’s what we do! I like to think I’ve always led by example. I always insist on the very best for myself, and I hope you have developed the same sense of confidence.”
Sense of entitlement, more like, Helena thought. This revelation from her mother was too new to be taken in properly, and Helena raised her hand to her mouth, nibbling at a nail nervously, a habit she hadn’t indulged in since leaving college.
“Don’t do that, dear.”
Helena snatched her hand away and clenched her fist in her lap. “Sorry. So, er, what are you up to these days?”
Mrs Wright told her all about her new lover, an older gentleman with a refined taste for opera and fine dining. Helena had to smile. Her mother was of the old school - indefatigable and remorseless in her pursuit of “high class living.” She described her latest travels, her visits to the theatre, and a new boutique that had opened near to her house that was “utterly divine.”
The atmosphere relaxed as Mrs Wright burbled away about all the things that were important to her, and soon she was veering onto another topic dear to her heart: hair.
“So they brought in a new stylist at my salon, and I really wasn’t sure. I always have Suki, as you know. But Suki was away - at peak time, how inconvenient! - and I had no choice. No choice at all!” She patted her immaculate coiffure with the concern of a nurse tending a patient. “And this young man - oh, he was so dreadfully camp, he was an absolute scream - well, he told me I ought to change the shade of my highlights. Imagine! I’ve been Desert Blonde for decades. Well, he persuaded him - he was so very persuasive - to try Sun Glow. What do you think? I was delighted!”
Helena couldn’t see a single shade of difference from her previous blonde-with-lights to this new blonde-with-lights. “It’s very… warming.”
Mrs Wright smiled. “Thank you. So what I was thinking, was this: we’ll go for lunch and then this afternoon I can take you to a salon and we can have a proper girlie afternoon. Highlights, as you say, can be so warming! Although for you, maybe some darker shades. A few extra tones in your hair will really lift your features. It’s a shame it’s so short - there’s not a lot we can do with your pixie look - but a decent stylist will salvage something, I’m sure. Will Ingholme suffice? Or should we go further afield?”
“We can have a great pub meal at the White Hart here in Arkthwaite. It’s a gastro-pub with a chef and everything. But I don’t need my hair doing, thank you.”
“Darling. I know how you feel. I do! I watched you grow up, I know you’re different to me. However, since the debacle with - no, I shan’t say his name! - you will have had some time to reflect on what happened, and why. Now, you must realise a little more why I’ve always encouraged you to make an effort.”
“Are you telling me that he jilted me because I don’t have highlights in my hair?”
“No, of course not! It’s just one piece of the puzzle, don’t you see? Oh Helena, Helena. I want you to be happy.”
“I am happy.”
“You’re single and alone.”
“I’ve got friends here!”
“Friends will pair off, have children, leave you alone and sad. Please. I’ve seen it happen and it breaks my heart to see it happen to you, too.”
Helena felt rising tides of anger and frustration fill her throat with acrid bile. She knew her mother really did mean well. But God, the woman was selfish, rude and insufferable. “Mum. Leave me to live my own life!”
Mrs Wright tried another well-used tactic. “Am I happy?”
“Yes, but we are different people who are happy in different ways,” Helena spat out, trying to head her off.
Mrs Wright sighed and crossed her ankles. “Please, Helena. All right. I’ll leave it. Let’s go to this pub. Is it far?”
Helena knew she was angling to be able to take her sports car and make a dramatic entrance. It was walkable, but in a concessionary gesture, she said, “We can drive.”
“Splendid.” Mrs Wright rose to her feet and extended her hand. “Helena. Darling. I shall not speak of it again.”
For today, thought Helena, but she managed a tight smile in return.
* * *
Helena strode up the lane to the manor house, a cardboard folder of embryonic ideas pinned under her arm. It was still light, though the sun was sinking and dusk would be falling early in the valleys. She nodded at the few folks she saw as she went, and smiled, mostly to herself.
Richard was already waiting in the office, the door propped open and some cans of drink lined up on the desk. He stood up as she walked in, like some kind of ancient formality.
“Hi there. How are you?”
“I’m fine,” she answered, pushing the folder onto the desk. “Sorry, Vicky couldn’t make it. How are you?”
“Good, good. Busy as always.”
“Oh. You don’t need to do this, you know. If you’re busy. I’ve spent a bit of time thinking this through-”
“No, no, sorry. I didn’t mean anything by it.”
There was an awkward pause as both stared at each other, trying to work out the next move without inadvertently causing offence. Helena seized the initiative and plopped dow
n into a wooden chair. She flipped the folder open. “Okay then. This Local Exchange Trading Scheme… I’ve been looking at how other schemes are run around the country, and here are my rough ideas.”
Richard sank down into his own chair, and began to scan through the papers she passed to him. He nodded and muttered and made some notes as she popped open a can of drink and soon they were nestled into a happy hive of industrious plotting.
“We’ll get onto that this weekend,” Helena said in approval once they had worked out a bullet-pointed list of actions. “We’ll go door to door and compile a directory, and find some cheap printers who will do us a deal for printing out the credits in exchange for advertising in the directory. Once that’s done we need to start everyone off with a number of credits…”
“Working out the value of each task will be the tricky bit.”
“I still think we go by hours. If something takes fifteen minutes, that’s one credit.”
Richard sucked the end of his biro. “I’m not sure. So fifteen minutes of pet-sitting is the same value as fifteen minutes of a qualified electrician’s time? A teenager raking leaves the same as an experienced hairdresser performing a style in someone’s home?”
“I want people’s efforts to be seen equally whether they have the benefit of education, training or even, let’s face it, intelligence.”
“All very noble, but the ultimate conclusion of such a society would be no one would feel inspired to better themselves.”
Helena sat back and screwed up her face at him. “We’re not creating a new society, though. We’re just improving, a little bit, on what we’ve got.”
“I suppose.”
Helena looked at him with curiosity. Richard’s face had stilled and he had a far-away, glazed glint to his eye as he rested his arms on the table and chewed his lip. “What’s up?” she asked.
“Nothing. Why?”
“You look… a bit sad, really. I mean, I sort of understand. Sometimes when I look at the world and all the problems I do think, well, what’s the point of this project, of any of it. It can get overwhelming. Why bother, when millions of people don’t even care as long as they have their comfortable houses and warm cars.”
“It’s not that. Perhaps it is, a little bit.”
“Tell me.” The friendly hour they’d spent had made her bold, and she held her breath, waiting for him to finally unbend a little to her. He seemed to tussle with himself for a short while before he spoke.
“It’s something I think about a lot. Society, and my place in it. I think it’s because of ending up with this title, and growing up with all the burdens of duty and obligation that came with it. I wouldn’t want anyone else to go through it. This strait-jacket of expectation.”
“Oh God, we all have that,” Helena half-laughed. “I don’t think it’s a lord of the manor thing. My mum was here at the weekend…” she trailed off. She didn’t want to think about it.
He didn’t notice her sudden hesitation. He was still looking far away and pensive as he said, “Mothers are the worst. Because even as you grow up and you see them honestly, you can’t help but be bound to them for ever, in spite of it all.”
Helena expelled air through her nose, like a derogatory sigh. “It’s hard, isn’t it, when you see your parents’ faults and you realise they aren’t the gods you thought they were when you were growing up.”
Richard’s eyes met hers, and he was frowning. “I never did see mine like that. They were always remote. But yes, godlike, perhaps.”
There was an undercurrent of anger in the way his cheek was twitching and his large hands clenched, and Helena was both curious and reluctant to ask any more. She tried to lighten the mood by saying, as if it was casual and something to find funny, “Oh, my mum’s just obsessed with turning me into some shallow doll, just like she is.” As she said it, she felt guilt. Her mother wasn’t a shallow doll, not at all. That was just how she seemed on the surface.
And yet, wasn’t that the definition of shallow?
Richard raised both eyebrows. “I can’t imagine anyone trying to make you into what you’re not.”
“Hell no.” What am I? And how do you see me? She swallowed the gauche questions. “She still tries, though. I suppose she always will. She cares, but she can’t see how anyone might live in a different way to her, that’s all.”
“She’s not local…?”
“No, she lives in Leeds. Far enough away that she can’t turn up unannounced and get in the way.” Again, that was uncharitable, and she knew it. It was easy to badmouth someone when they weren’t there. Helena was still smarting from the painful visit at the weekend, and she knew she was speaking more in spite than in truth. “Anyway. Families, eh?” She tutted and smiled, hoping for a reciprocal nod of acknowledgement.
Richard glowered and Helena was anxious. That wasn’t following the conventional script. He splayed his hand on the desk, and appeared engrossed in digging his thumbnail into a dark vein of wood. He spoke quietly, almost idly, but the drawn brows revealed his tension. “I did everything I could to escape my family. I went to London and enrolled in a run-of-the-mill old Polytechnic to study science. They were horrified. That’s why I did it. I had no intention of coming back, not at all. But then father died and my mother couldn’t cope - I’d get these long, rambling phone calls, all hours of the day and night. I thought it was grief. We all did. She’d call and cry and get confused. It turned out to be dementia. So now I’m here, because what else could I do?”
Helena drew in a long, shuddering breath. The guilt and frustration was rolling off him in every jab of his finger onto the hard wood. And she knew there was nothing she could say, nothing at all.
So she let the silence draw out and it was hard to keep her thoughts to herself but the longer she managed it, the prouder she felt of herself. Eventually he looked up and slammed his hand flat on the desk. He sat up straight and tipped his head back. “Hey. God I’m a boring, maudlin fucker,” he said harshly.
She had two options for reply, and chose the third. “Sometimes.”
He guffawed with laughter, throwing his head back still further so that his adam’s apple bobbed with his hoots. “Thanks. Thanks for that, and for…” He dropped his chin and let his laughter fade to a warm, wide smile. “Just thanks.”
She thought he was thanking her for not probing him with questions about his mum, and nodded in return. Something hung between them in the air, something shared, something unspoken.
Helena had to break it; the tension, the moment, the potential. She grabbed a fresh can of fizzy drink and pulled the ring with a loud snap. “Right. It’s getting late and we’re pretty much sorted on the LETS scheme…”
He looked at her for a silent second, a question on his lips. But he passed his hand over his mouth, almost as if he were wiping his curiosity away. “LETS. Not LETS scheme.”
“What?”
“The ‘s’ already stands for ‘scheme’. So it’s redundant to say LETS scheme.”
She stared at him, trying to work out if he was being seriously pedantic. “Are you messing with me?”
He answered with a straight, serious face. “Yes.”
“Ha!” She balled up a piece of scrap paper and bounced it off his head. “You probably write letters to the paper when you see a public sign where the apostrophes are wrong, too.”
“Of course I do,” he said, deadpan. “As a public figure and local person of authority and good standing…”
“God. You give one interview to the local press about the broadband, and it’s gone right to your head. Right to it.”
He shrugged, and she laughed. “Anyway,” she continued, drinking the last of her drink. “It’s been fun but I really ought to go. Some of us have work to do tomorrow.” She wondered if it was a dig too far, but he smiled.
“Of course. Do you want walking home…?”
She stared at him as she rose to her feet. “What’s so scary in Arkthwaite?”
He stood
up too, and thought for a moment. “Only me,” he said. “I am the one the villagers warned you about, remember?”
The unspoken warmth hung between them again and Helena’s stomach felt like it was churning. She gathered up her papers and tucked them back into the cardboard wallet. “Thanks for this. It was really helpful.”
“You’re welcome. Any time.”
“Thanks. Cheers.” She backed out of the office into the cool night air, feeling awkward and elated and embarrassed and confused, and mostly relieved to be on her way home.
Chapter Six
All was dark in Helena’s kitchen. Rain pattered against the window, the rivulets reflecting the dim dancing candle flames. One long thin candle was listing on a plate, and a tea-light wavered to her left. She sat at the small pine table, and closed her eyes, breathing steadily and deeply as she visualised her intent.
She played images in her mind, conjuring them up in as much detail as she could. Images of strength and images of freedom. She saw ropes unravelling, string being cut, and branches snapping.
She opened her eyes slowly and stared into the candle flame. It had been surprisingly hard to buy a black candle, but all her research led her to believe the colour was vitally important.
Vicky hadn’t been much use when Helena had mentioned her planned ritual. “Be careful,” she’d warned. “Banishing rituals have a tendency to … well, not go wrong, exactly. But be very clear on what you are banishing, you know?”
Helena had dismissed her fear but now, sitting in the quiet kitchen, and watching the candle wax melt, she felt a tinge of nervousness. For a start, she’d never actually performed any kind of ritual or spell before, and a small voice in the back of her mind was telling her it was all nonsense anyway.
Is there anything out there? More than the sum of our collective fears and hopes? She wished that there was but she suspected that there wasn’t. How easy it would be if a god or goddess or spirit would just speak up and make contact! Then she would know what to do, instead of having to make up her own mind and take responsibility for it.
Bad Boys and Billionaires (The Naughty List Bundles) Page 48
