Sunshine Over Wildflower Cottage

by Milly Johnson

  Viv went downstairs to make a sandwich. She hadn’t had anything for forty-eight hours but she could have eaten all day and never filled her hungry heart.

  Stel insisted on making her a toastie. She was fussing too much, as if she were a battery-operated doll and someone had tweaked up her speed. Viv ate it quickly, less so because her stomach was empty and more because she felt in the way of her mother’s new set-up. Ian was sitting opposite her at the table with the paper held in his hands but Viv noticed that he wasn’t reading it because his eyes weren’t moving across the words and his finger was tapping beats of impatience on the edge. He was killing time until she left them alone, that much was obvious.

  ‘I think I’m going to have a drive to Meadowhall,’ Viv said.

  *

  Stel felt Ian’s outward breath fill the room when Viv left the house.

  ‘You can’t have her staying here,’ said Ian, flapping the paper as if that gave special emphasis to his words.

  ‘She’s my daughter,’ said Stel with quiet defiance.

  ‘Well, she’s not mine,’ said Ian. ‘Get shut, unless you want your daughter to be the first to see what her mother gets up to behind her back.’

  Chapter 94

  Just as Viv reached her car, she heard someone calling her name and she turned to see Al jogging towards her, bear arms extended ready to envelop her.

  ‘I shouldn’t do this because I’ve just done a five-mile run but I’m not missing out on a cuddle,’ he said, nearly breaking her ribs. ‘When the bloody hell did you get back, lass?’

  ‘This morning,’ said Viv, smiling. But then Al was one of those blokes who had always made her smile.

  ‘Are you here for good now?’

  ‘No, I’m just parking for a bit until I can work out where I’m going next.’

  ‘I’m off as well, did you hear?’ said Al, thumbing behind him at the For Sale notice. ‘June the seventh I leave, so I’ve started packing up.’

  ‘I had heard, and I hope you’re very happy in your new home, Al. You deserve to have a fancy house. My mum will miss you though.’

  Al stroked his stubble and it made a scratchy rasping sound against his hand.

  ‘Me and your mum had a bit of a falling out,’ said Al.

  ‘You and Mum?’ Viv wondered if she’d heard that right. They’d never fallen out. ‘What about?’

  Al checked over his shoulder to make sure there was no one spying out of Stel’s front window.

  ‘That new fellow of hers more or less told me to back off. He said that your mum had complained to him that I’d pestered her for years and she didn’t know how to stop me.’

  Viv screwed up her face in disbelief. ‘Al, Mum would never have said that. You don’t pester her at all. She’s really fond of you and she likes living next door to you as well. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard her say that she always felt a lot safer knowing you were only a knock away through the wall.’

  Al put his hands on his hips and shook his head.

  ‘He said your mum couldn’t stand the sight of me . . .’

  ‘That’s absolute rubbish, Al.’

  ‘I tell you, I was so embarrassed, Viv. I felt sick . . . I felt hurt. I’ve never overstepped the mark with your mum. I was so upset when I’d heard she’d said that. I went over and over in my head conversations I’d had with her in the past . . .’

  Viv knew her mother, and Stel wouldn’t have pulled Al down like that. She wouldn’t have been disloyal on that scale, even if she had thought it. But she also suspected that Al might have believed it because deep down a part of him was still a little skinny kid with no self-worth in a constant state of amazement that a lovely woman like Stel would bother to give him the time of day.

  So why had Ian lied, then? That was the burning question, because it was a lie. Viv would have put her life savings on it.

  ‘I don’t like him, Viv. I didn’t from the off. You keep your eye out for your mum,’ said Al, reaching over and giving her shoulder a squeeze. ‘And you can tell her from me that talking or not talking, if she needs me, I’m still just a knock away through the wall.’

  Viv walked around Meadowhall, tried on some clothes, looked at some books but she didn’t want to be there. She bought herself a coffee and sat in the Oasis food court and felt as if she were moving at a different pace to the rest of the universe. She felt dry, faded as if she were made of dust and the slightest single breeze would send her scattering into the air as a trillion motes. She might have cried had she had any tears left inside her.

  *

  Stel walked into her attic bedroom with an armful of fresh sheets to make up the narrow single bed for Viv. She sat next to the ginger curl of Basil and stroked his fur. He was always up here these days, and hardly ever came into the lounge any more. She wondered if that was because he could sense what a sadistic bastard Ian Robson was.

  Stel had agreed to take Viv to one side and tell her that she had to find somewhere else to stay. But though she’d nodded submissively at Ian’s instructions, inside she had reared up at last. As if she would deny her daughter a place in the house she grew up in! Enough was enough. Stel would take her daughter to one side all right, but instead she would let her know what Ian Robson was doing to her. Knowing Viv, she’d drive straight to the police station and hopefully they’d do what they had to before he plastered those pictures all over the public domain. It was a risk she had to take because she couldn’t handle any of it any more.

  Stel took her time putting on the covers, glad to be out of his sight and temporarily free from being checked up on. He’d found her diary with all her passcodes in it and used them to access the search history on her PC, her emails and online bank statements. As well as her mileage, she knew he recorded how long she spent in the supermarket and scrutinised what she bought from the till receipts. She wasn’t even allowed to lock the bathroom door any more. She felt compressed under the weight of his surveillance; but then he wanted her to feel controlled and demeaned, she knew. She hadn’t mentioned her future Sundays with the Old Spice Girls because she didn’t want to inflame him, but she could have guessed he considered those were at an end.

  Stel plopped Basil back on the bed when she’d finished making it and sat at Viv’s desk where she had parked her box of bottles and test tubes and felt herself lifted up by a crest of euphoria that she was going to be out of this mantrap of misery soon. Today.

  One of the phials caught her eye: Dancing Sunshine. She’d feel like sunshine was dancing inside her as soon as she and Viv walked out of the front door together. Whatever misery Ian planned to unleash when he realised she’d broken free from him would be better than staying in this hell. Stel’s eyes moved across the rack of perfumes. Viv thought of some lovely names for her mixtures: Storm-on-the-Moors, Misty Morning, Wildflower Cottage . . . There was a larger bottle with ‘Geraldine’ on the label. Stel unscrewed the lid of the bottle and inhaled. Oh that’s lovely, she said to herself. She tipped it upside down to put a dab on her finger but Basil jumped up on her lap and she dropped it, down her shirt and over his back before it fell to the floor and started glugging all over the beige carpet.

  Stel bounced to her feet. ‘You silly lad, Basil,’ she said, picking up the nearly-empty bottle and setting it back on the desk. ‘I’d better get a cloth before you start licking yourself.’ He was already bending his head back and trying to dry himself off. Stel ran down to the bathroom for a cloth before he made himself sick.

  Chapter 95

  Viv set off back to Pogley Top but she didn’t go straight to her mum’s house as it felt more Ian’s than Stel’s territory now. His stuff had invaded the house like a rampaging weed. She didn’t fancy enduring the atmosphere there any longer than she had to and thought she’d pass another hour or so in a place she had always liked to go to. But tomorrow, without fuss or ceremony, she would suggest they went out for Sunday lunch – alone – mum and daughter for a catch-up. She wanted to check that everything wa
s all right, especially after what Al had said.

  There was a little-known clearing by the Stripe, so-called because it was a pathetic ‘stripe’ of river that dribbled through the wood. ‘It’s hardly worth its bother to flow,’ her Nana Blackbird used to say. ‘It’s even too bloody lazy to dry up.’ There was a commemorative bench there with a brass plaque on the back. Edith Crabtree. She Loved this Place. Viv and her Nana used to come here with a bag of homemade egg and salad cream sandwiches and a net from the corner shop and Viv would sit on the bank and try and catch one of the sticklebacks that journeyed down it; approximately one every six years. Halley’s comet was spotted more than fish in Pogley Stripe.

  Viv sat on the bench and opened a bottle of cold pop. And tried not to think about Wildflower Cottage and everyone there, because that’s where her thoughts veered whenever they had any freedom to travel.

  Chapter 96

  Ian was trying to watch the highlights of the match, but the sound of Stel’s feet tip-tapping up and down the attic stairs was doing his head in. He gave the ceiling a nasty glare, switched his attention back to the screen, then heard her at it again.

  He launched himself from the sofa and took the stairs two at a time.

  ‘What the frigging hell . . .’

  He walked into a fug of too familiar scent. Her scent. As it swirled around in his head, graves in his memory started to yawn open and the contents sprang alive. The bitch nearly killed him. She came out early from prison, slipped through his fingers.

  He thundered into the attic to see Stel on her knees dabbing at the carpet.

  ‘Where’s that smell coming from?’

  ‘Viv’s case,’ said Stel, shoulders hunched, arms tucked in, making herself small.

  Ian started to plunder through it.

  ‘Don’t, that’s Viv’s stuff,’ yelled Stel, making a grab for his arm. Then she grunted as the backhander sent her flying.

  He was pulling stoppers out, sniffing, throwing phials and bottles everywhere.

  ‘Which fucking one is it?’ He was snarling like a dog.

  ‘It’s the one with “Geraldine” written on it. There,’ Stel pointed, hoping to stop him damaging Viv’s precious things. ‘I’ve spilled most of it.’ She touched her face and there was blood on her fingers but adrenalin was numbing any pain.

  Ian picked it up and inhaled. Then his head made a sudden sinister twist to Stel. She lay hunched like a kicked dog on the floor, but her eyes were defiantly wishing him dead.

  ‘Where was she staying?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Who do you think, you fucking moron.’

  Stel’s mind fell blank with panic. ‘I can’t . . . I can’t –’

  A punch. She grunted. A kick. His hand clamped onto her throat and she was lifted to her feet that way.

  ‘It was called Ironmist,’ gurgled Stel. ‘Wildflower Cott . . .’ She couldn’t breathe and her heart was thumping so hard that she could hear it in her ears. Her last thought before she passed out was that he was going to kill her.

  Chapter 97

  Viv stared down at the Stripe, following the passage of a leaf as it bumped against the bank and waited for the spit of water to dislodge it so it could resume travelling to wherever it was going, when she heard an alerting cough behind her.

  ‘Didn’t think anyone knew about this place.’

  Viv twisted round to see a girl, younger than her – about eighteen, she guessed. She was wisp-thin and pale-skinned with grey eyes and long white-blonde hair and carrying a dog lead.

  ‘I’ve been coming here since I was a child,’ said Viv.

  ‘Have you?’ said the girl. She plonked herself down on the bench and Viv shuftied up, because she was taking up most of the middle.

  ‘Where’s your dog?’ asked Viv.

  ‘Haven’t got one,’ said the girl. ‘I just carry this with me in case I bump into any undesirables up here. Not that I ever have, but there’s always a first. If I did, the plan would be to whistle “Come on, boy”.’

  ‘And pretend you’ve got a Rottweiler?’ suggested Viv.

  ‘Got it in one,’ said the girl.

  Viv lifted her face to the bars of sun straining through the leaves and for a moment imagined she was sitting outside the kitchen door of Wildflower Cottage and in the distance were the moors and Ironmist Castle.

  ‘Can’t handle the sun, me,’ the girl said. ‘I prefer the shade. It’s my colouring.’ There was a pause then she asked, ‘You smell nice. What’s your perfume?’

  ‘I can’t remember putting any on,’ Viv answered.

  ‘Well it must be you, it’s not me.’ The girl leaned over and sniffed at Viv as if she were a pig searching for a truffle. ‘It’s on your clothes. Is it a fabric conditioner? Which one?’

  Viv lifted the neckline of her top up to her nose. She still couldn’t smell anything – and if she couldn’t, she doubted anyone else could.

  ‘Smells a bit like the seaside,’ said the girl. ‘Have you just come back from your holidays?’

  ‘I’ve been staying on the moors,’ replied Viv.

  ‘Near Haworth? That’s the only place I know on the moors.’

  ‘No. It’s a place called Ironmist. I doubt you’ll have heard of it,’ said Viv.

  The girl tilted her head one way then the other as if the name were a ball and she were trying to place it in a relevant hole in her head.

  ‘Nope, I haven’t heard of it. Was it nice?’

  ‘Yes. Very.’ The loveliest place you could imagine, Viv added to herself.

  The girl rocked to her feet and coiled the lead around her hand.

  ‘I’d better get back,’ she said, heading off towards the path. ‘Been nice talking to you. See you again, sometime.’

  ‘Bye,’ smiled Viv. ‘Was nice talking to you too.’

  She thought the girl had gone so she didn’t expect to hear her voice again.

  ‘If it was that lovely, you should go back. Really you should. Now.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  Viv turned round but all that was there was the faintest trail of mist that dissolved as soon as her glance touched it.

  Chapter 98

  Viv left the clearing, walking quickly down the path to catch up with the girl, but she reached the long straight main road without seeing anyone. There were no other cars on it but her own, nor any walkers or cyclists. That was odd, she thought. As was the feeling that she should get straight back to Stel’s. She was gripped by an inexplicable sense of urgency and she knew she’d been right to rush when she opened the door to her mum’s house and found it weirdly flooded with Geraldine’s perfume.

  ‘Mum?’ she called, her scalp prickling with anxiety.

  She edged into the lounge, hearing voices, but it was only a football match on the TV turned down low. No one was in the kitchen either.

  ‘Mum?’

  Viv ventured upstairs into her mum’s bedroom but it too was empty, as was the bathroom and her old room, now completely taken over by Ian’s belongings.

  Something shifted above her head.

  ‘Mum, are you all right?’ she called again.

  The aroma of Geraldine’s perfume was becoming more overpowering with every step towards the attic bedroom. As she opened the door, she found Stel on the floor, back propped against the wall, blouse stained with oil, in a sea of smashed test-tubes. Her hands were trembling and covering her throat protectively. Her breathing was laboured as if her windpipe was barely open and her usual smiling grey-blue eyes were a mass of exploded blood vessels.

  Viv dropped to the floor and threw her arms around her mother. ‘Mum, what’s happened? Did Ian do this?’

  ‘Oh Viv,’ said Stel, clinging to her darling girl. ‘He wanted the name of the place where you’d been living.’ Her voice was a terrified, damaged rasp. ‘He kept asking me who Geraldine was.’

  Then Viv knew.

  Chapter 99

  Viv closed her eyes and willed herself to concentrate. Focus, Viv. She ne
eded to decide what to do first.

  Stel was her priority. She flew down the stairs, leaped over the communal fence and rapped on Al’s front door urgently, and again. He opened it within the half-minute though it felt like much longer.

  ‘Viv, love, you all right? I’ve just come out of the shower. What’s on fire?’

  ‘It’s Mum, Al. Can you come? That Ian has beaten her up.’

  Al didn’t say a word. He was straight out of the door and into Stel’s house. He took the stairs like a Olympian and his face creased up when he saw her.

  ‘Aw Stel,’ he sighed. ‘Viv, I think we should get her to hospital. I’ll take her in the car, it’ll be quicker.’ He looked at Stel’s face and he could only recognise one side of it as being hers. It was as if the other had been pumped up with air. He helped Stel to her feet but her legs were crumbling. ‘Sod this for a lark,’ he said and lifted her up. He took her down the stairs carefully and it was a testament to what a state Stel was in that she didn’t protest.

  Behind him Viv was ringing Wildflower Cottage on her mobile. No one answered, but then Geraldine avoided answering the phone like the plague unless she recognised the name on the display. Heath had programmed some in for her, but not Viv’s. Then the answer-machine responded and she heard Heath’s voice. This is Wildflower Cottage Animal Sanctuary. Please leave a message after the tone and we will get back to you. Thank you. But this was no time for sentiment.

  ‘Please pick up if you’re there, it’s Viv, it’s urgent.’ She waited a few beats before continuing, but no one picked up. ‘Geraldine, if you’re listening, please lock all the doors and phone the police immediately or get out of the way. Ian Robson is on his way over to you. He’s been seeing my mum. He’s in a red car. Heath, if you’re there, please keep Geraldine safe. He’s dangerous. You must ring the police. Please ring me back to let me know you’ve got my message. This is urgent. I have to know you’re safe.’ And she left her number slowly and clearly, unlike the garbled, hurried message which preceded it.