by Mia Dolan
He tried again. ‘Hey! You fat cow!’
Usually if he called her that she’d turn round and catch him a blinder around the kisser. But she didn’t.
Her face was very still and very white. He touched her face. She felt like ice.
His blood turned cold. His face paled.
‘What the fuck …?’
He looked closer and tried the procedures he’d seen on Doctor Kildare on the telly. No pulse. No breathing. It didn’t take a doctor to know that she was dead.
Being a canny sort of guy, he knew what he had to do. He had to prepare some kind of defence. The cops would question the pills in her body so he had to come up with a reason for them being there, and he had a corker.
Chapter Thirty-three
JUST BEFORE GOING down to Sheppey to bring Joanna to London, Marcie nipped along to the King’s Road to do some window-shopping. The exotic costume business had gone off with a bang, but she still had a yen to design dresses. Going along to the King’s Road, gazing in the windows and fingering the rows of blouses, skirts, dresses and accessories were fodder for her own designs.
There was a risk in doing this, of course, though she reasoned that since she’d left Daisy Chain and the Camilleris, Roberto had no reason to visit his parents quite so much.
Even so she kept a sharp lookout and hid her features behind dark glasses and the broad-brimmed felt hat that she’d bought the last time she’d been in Daisy Chain. Her new dress was of a psychedelic design, swirls of purples and mauves diffusing into strawberry pink and pistachio green.
‘Marcie? Is that you?’
The voice was familiar and took her by surprise. She presumed the worst. My God! Roberto?
She didn’t wait to find out. Without looking back she hightailed it in the direction she’d come.
I’m not looking back!
What good would it do if she did? A second less speed could make all the difference.
Out of breath and flustered, she caught a taxi for home. It occurred to her that he would follow. His car was fast. The taxi did well to press its way through the midday traffic. On arriving home, she dashed up the metal stairs at the rear of the shop, pushed the key in the lock and fell through.
Once the door was closed, she lay against it, still panting but feeling safer.
But you didn’t actually see anyone.
You didn’t see anyone; you just heard him and set off like a frightened rabbit. Now how stupid was that?
Feeling silly now, she began to giggle. Running away because someone called to you! Silly cow!
Gradually her breathing abated, her panic subsided.
The footsteps were faint at first, no more than a slight clinking of leather on metal. Someone was outside. Someone was climbing the metal steps to her door.
Her breath caught in her throat. One metallic step followed another. She began to shiver at first.
No! Stand up to him! It won’t be the first bully you’ve stood up to.
The voice was back again. The words seemed to come out of nowhere. They didn’t seem to be inside her head. It was more as though someone or something unseen was whispering into her ear.
It won’t be the first bully you’ve stood up to.
She remembered Bully Price threatening to torture Garth’s pet cat if he didn’t steal for him. And how she had finally dealt with Alan Taylor’s unwanted advances.
The clanking of heavy shoes against metal was getting higher, coming closer.
The best form of defence is attack.
That whisper again. Was she hearing voices like her grandmother did? Whose voice? Her grandfather’s? Her mother’s? Or perhaps Johnnie’s?
The idea that her mother was dead and helping her face Roberto caused Marcie to grit her teeth and swallow her fear.
She grabbed a heavy onyx vase from the table and raised her arm, ready to bring it down on Roberto’s head.
Before he had chance to knock, she swung the door open.
She gasped. ‘My God!’
Father Justin O’Flanagan flinched. ‘No. Just his earthly representative. My word, Marcie. Am I that unwelcome?’
Marcie lowered the arm wielding the vase. Her grandmother would offer tea, so Marcie did the same.
‘Your father hasn’t been home much. His wife is irked to say the least.’
Marcie pulled a face. ‘I bet she is.’
Barbara would be hell to deal with. She’d been bad enough the last time she’d seen her.
‘I thought I’d go round and have a talk to him – man to man. Your stepmother seems to think he’s got a lady friend – a black lady friend. I think she’s one of these immigrants coming over from the West Indies. There’s been hordes of them in the last twenty years since the end of the war. Barbara is very put out.’
Marcie almost smiled. She liked the thought of Barbara being put out. The smile didn’t break through. If Barbara was put out, how must the boys be feeling? They worshipped their father. They must be missing him and hurting bad inside.
The eyes that Marcie had likened to addled egg yolks scrutinised the living room of the flat.
‘This is a very nice place you have here, Marcie. I went to the address your grandmother gave me, but they said you’d moved on. It was sheer chance that I happened to spot you and follow your cab.’ His slack lips spread into a self-satisfied smirk. ‘The hat and glasses threw me for a moment, but I still recognised you. It’s about body shape you see. Everyone has a definite body shape; once I commit that body shape to memory I never fail to remember its basic structure.’
The words were slightly shocking coming from a priest but she gave away nothing of what she was thinking; she clenched her jaw and put up with it. The way he kept looking at her was making it very difficult not to wrap her arms around herself as though she were suddenly naked. But she didn’t. Working and living in the city had made her harder. She could cope with the old devil and was even able to look into his yellow, devilish eyes.
It was Saturday afternoon so there was no sound from the sewing machines. The girls didn’t work on Saturday afternoons. Thank God for that, thought Marcie. If Father Justin had heard machines he would have wanted to inspect the workshop. Even without the holy water to hand he would have resorted to tap water in order to give her venture a blessing. His eyes would pop out of his head when he saw the tiny G-strings and the exotic outfits she made. The last thing she wanted was him poking his nose around in there!
‘So you run up these mini-dresses that all the young girls are wearing, do you not?’
‘That’s right,’ she lied. ‘I’m doing very well.’
‘I would love to inspect them,’ he said. ‘To see your working operation so to speak.’
I bet he would!
The last thing she wanted was Father Justin inspecting a replica Victorian corset or a lustrous pair of panties with a narrow crotch and a spray of ostrich plumes sprouting out the back. He’d probably blow a fuse, or at least turn the colour of a turkey gizzard.
She was suitably apologetic. ‘I’m sorry. I can’t do that. One of the girls has gone home with the keys by mistake. I can’t let you in there.’
His eyes dropped to the saucer and his fingers resting on its rim. He’d turned thoughtful, his mind going elsewhere.
‘You know that Garth has been let out of the institution where he’s been spending these last merry months? The police have dropped all charges.’
Marcie gasped. ‘That’s wonderful news! What happened?’
‘The police found the real arsonist.’
‘They did?’ Marcie had to know more. ‘So who did set fire to the shop? Do the police know who it was?’
There was something ominous about the way Father Justin O’Flanagan leaned forwards, almost as though the information he wished to impart was straight out of a James Bond novel, like Doctor No. She’d been to see the film. The shooting and chasing was all very well, but best of all she’d loved the bikini Ursula Andress had been wearing.
/> Father Justin took his time answering, supping the last of the tea before raising his eyes, and this he did only very slowly.
‘Apparently the witness changed his story. He’d been lying to save his girlfriend, and didn’t she get what she grossly deserved!’ He crossed his broad chest. ‘Mother of God forgive me. One shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, but …’ He shook his head and tutted like an old woman. ‘I heard this only second hand, but it seems this girl wanted revenge on someone so set fire to the shop, and it might also be that she killed someone. Her father as it happens. Now isn’t that a cruel and dreadful thing?’
Marcie sat very still, as though a frost had suddenly encapsulated her whole body and if she moved she would surely break. Father Justin did not need to state the name of the female perpetrator. Marcie knew it. Rita had set fire to Angie’s Boutique. She’d lied to save her own skin, and what was that Father Justin had said?
One should not speak ill of the dead. Rita was dead?
‘How did she die?’ Her voice seemed far away, just like the past that she and Rita had shared.
‘Drugs. Some kind of pills she was taking at the same time as drinking alcohol. That’s what I heard. But terrible don’t you think that she murdered her own father? That’s what the witness states. Terrible,’ he went on shaking his head. ‘Just terrible.’
Marcie shook off the numbness she was feeling and asked the Catholic priest if he would like another cup of tea and a piece of fruitcake. As he’d already devoured two pieces of cake plus two cups of tea, he declined.
‘Must think of the waistline,’ he said jovially.
She considered it too late for that but did not say so. Father Justin O’Flanagan, she noticed, smelled of fruitcake on account of eating so much of it on his parish rounds. His belly was as round and firm as a fruitcake just fetched from the oven.
‘So what have you come here for?’ she asked him.
She noticed that her sudden enquiry seemed to throw him off balance. His mouth, which had opened merely to laugh or utter some inane comment, hung open before he regained his power of speech.
‘Ah well. Time I was leaving. I’m off to see your father don’t you know.’
Marcie nodded. ‘Ah yes. My father hasn’t been going home to see his lady wife. I wonder why? But there it’s a man’s world and a woman is not supposed to question either her husband or her father.’
Her sarcastic tone was not wasted on the priest.
‘Now, now, Marcie. A little Christian charity if you please. Your step-mother has a point. Husband and wife. Those whom God have joined together let no man put asunder.’
Or a motorcycle on the North Circular.
Marcie wasn’t sure whether the thought was her own or she was hearing things again. Too much work, she decided. At least having Joanna here will stop me from designing and sewing all the time. We can have some time to ourselves.
‘Do I mention to your father that I found you?’ he asked.
She thought about it. When she was younger and with fewer responsibilities she would have stuck to that first inclination. Now she felt more sure of herself, more able to cope with whatever her father’s opinion might be.
‘Tell him,’ she said. ‘Tell him if he needs someone to talk to, I’m here. Tell him that.’
When Father Justin O’Flanagan got to his feet, he pressed one hand onto her shoulder, his fingers tightening in an ambiguous action that Marcie couldn’t be sure of.
‘You’re a good daughter, Marcie Brooks. A good daughter to your father and a good daughter of Mother Church.’
‘Thank you, Father.’
There was that hesitation again. ‘I was wondering …’ His hand resettled on her shoulder like a homing pigeon that didn’t wish to leave.
‘I was wondering if I could stay here for the night? I do have a bed booked at St Anne’s with an old friend, but …’
Horrified at the thought of the old lecher sleeping close by, she tilted her head back and beamed up at him. ‘I’m sorry, Father. I’ve got a date tonight. He’s coming back here to sleep. With me.’
She got quickly to her feet. His hand dropped from her shoulder. His jaw dropped. She’d meant her comment to pull him up short and it had. A good girl would never admit to a priest that she was sleeping with someone. A good girl would hang on his every word and do everything he wanted her to do. There again, a good priest wouldn’t touch a girl like he did or look at her the way he did.
The message was loud and clear. She was neither available nor malleable. The little girl she’d once been was growing up.
After he’d gone she bolted the door and didn’t open it again until Michael came to take her to dinner.
Over a grilled steak accompanied with a bottle of Beaujolais, she told him what she’d said to the priest.
‘That’s my gate to heaven locked and bolted,’ he said with a grin. ‘Thanks to you I’ve got a black mark against my name for something I haven’t done yet.’
She looked at him, her black lashes forming a frame around her blue eyes.
This message was loud and clear and had to be said. She missed being close to a man. Part of her also wanted to blot out her recent bad experience with Roberto too; she wanted to make love with a man because she wanted to not because he forced himself upon her. On Sally’s advice she’d been to the clinic and had been furnished with a supply of birth control pills. At first she’d been hesitant. Life with her grandmother had moulded her into what she was, or at least what she had been.
Sally was more worldly wise.
‘The Brook Clinic supplies so you don’t have to keep your legs crossed,’ she’d said in that flippant way of hers.
Perhaps wanting a physical relationship was also part of growing up, though it had to be with someone she trusted. She’d thought of it all week and now, she judged, was the time to say it.
Placing her cutlery neatly on her plate, she said, ‘It needn’t be a lie, Michael. We could make it not be a lie.’
She kept her gaze lowered to her plate and the wine glass she reached for.
Michael sat silently across the other side of the table, hardly daring to breathe and fearing he’d misheard.
‘You’re asking me to sleep with you tonight?’
‘Yes. The priest wouldn’t approve of course …’
He laughed. ‘OK. Let’s go to hell together.’
Marcie shook her head. ‘No. Heaven. That’s where we’ll be going. Let’s go to heaven.’
Chapter Thirty-four
JOANNA SETTLED IN nicely and Marcie was glad that her grandmother would not be alone. Garth was with her.
She’d had a funny feeling on that visit that there were colourful auras surrounding the pair of them. It was an odd thing to see and the colours didn’t always seem to be the same. Sometimes they seemed to blend in together, as though they were two sides of the same penny.
Roberto had not found out where she was and even if he did it seemed that Michael would be there to protect her. ‘He doesn’t bother to ask me. I don’t count,’ Michael told her.
Michael was always there for her. He wasn’t the hip guy wearing the right clothes, the right hairstyle and driving the right sports car. Neither was he so brash and keen to project a ‘look at me’ impression the moment he stepped into a room.
Roberto’s half-brother was more reserved, more thoughtful. She took him down to Sheerness and introduced him to her grandmother.
Marcie had watched her grandmother’s reaction, noticing the searching black eyes that seemed to look directly into a person’s soul.
‘He too is Sicilian,’ she said later, at a time when there was just the two of them.
Marcie had nodded. ‘Yes.’
‘He has kind eyes.’
It was all Marcie needed to hear to know her grandmother approved. And she wasn’t often wrong. Michael cared for her. He cared for Joanna too. She could tell that by the way he joined in any game Joanna wanted to play.
The child was
particularly keen on puzzles depicting animals and the alphabet. A is for ant and B is for bear was the usual mantra heard when Michael came visiting, the child having persuaded him to join her down on the floor, the puzzle spread out before them.
Word regarding the new designer and maker of exotic costume had spread like wildfire. Marcie had enough work in her order book to last for months. Most of the orders came through the mysterious Carla.
‘She adds a bit on, of course,’ Sally stated.
Marcie stayed up all night getting her portfolio together. Sally had hovered over her shoulder like a critical parrot, advising her on what girls preferred and what the punters – the men who frequented the clubs – liked to see them wearing. Not much by the sound of it.
‘Your fame’s spread far and wide. Arbroath has heard of you and is coming to place an order,’ Sally said.
‘That’s a funny name,’ said Marcie.
Sally’s face was wreathed in smiles and she looked to be on the verge of a giggling fit. ‘Funny person,’ she chuckled.
Arbroath turned out to be a man. He was at least six feet tall and had smooth gingery hair brushed back from his high forehead.
‘I’ve brought the wig, hen, so we can see the full effect. Sally tells me you have a few samples that can be adjusted to suit individual requirements.’
The accent of the Gorbals in Glasgow had come south with him. The wig was a mass of shoulder-length curls.
Some people might have stood there with a shocked expression on their face, their jaw dropping onto their chest. Marcie didn’t do that. This was her first male customer and although surprised, she made the effort to be polite.
She showed him a mauve lurex outfit that he instantly fell in love with. He came out of the changing room preening like a peacock, hands on hips and mannish feet shoved into purple satin stilettos.
