Frankie gave Johnny a mock-pained look. ‘For fuck’s sake, get her back up to bed before she drowns the lot of us.’
‘Thanks, Frankie,’ Johnny said, helping her to her feet. ‘I’ll pay you back every penny – that’s a promise.’
‘Too right you will,’ Frankie chuckled, winking at him. ‘Make sure she’s ready when I get home and I’ll take youse round to see it.’
8
The house was in the middle of a run-down little terrace on the outskirts of Hulme. It had two windows, one up, one down, and the brown front door still bore the scars of where it had been kicked in by the police after the foul smell had been reported by the neighbours some months earlier.
‘It doesn’t look much, but it’s better inside,’ Frankie said. He double-checked that he’d locked the car as Johnny used the key he’d given them to open up the house. Casting a hooded glance around, to make sure there were no shady fuckers watching, Frankie followed the kids inside.
The living room was immediately behind the front door, and it was dark, even though there was only an old grey net curtain covering the narrow, filthy window. The walls were covered in wallpaper that had probably once been bright and cheerful but was now the colour of a heavy smoker’s lungs and teeth. An ancient dust-coated corporation gas fire hung at an angle off the wall, and the floorboards were heavily stained. But one big patch under the window was particularly ominous, because that was where the previous owner’s fluids had leaked through his chair before his badly decomposed body had been found a month after he’d died.
That was why the place had been so cheap – because nobody had wanted to touch it, knowing its history. But Frankie wasn’t superstitious about the death of a stranger. As far as he was concerned, the old man’s loss was Ruth and Johnny’s gain, and a lick of paint and a couple of bottles of bleach would soon shift the smell.
‘What do you think?’ He squeezed in behind Johnny and walked into the centre of the room.
‘I love it,’ Ruth said quietly as she gazed around, already picturing where she would put the furniture, and what colour she would paint the walls.
Frankie exchanged a surprised glance with Johnny. That wasn’t the reaction he’d expected. The house was poky and dirty, and he’d thought that she would turn her nose right up at it.
Johnny was thinking pretty much the same, and all he could see as he gazed around in despair was the mould in the corners of the ceiling, the numerous cobwebs, and the clusters of dog and cat hairs coating every visible surface. It was going to take months to bring it up to being anything like liveable.
‘Is that the kitchen?’ Ruth headed for the door at the rear of the room. She stepped through it, stopped and grinned back at Johnny. ‘We’ve got a dining room!’
Johnny smiled, but there was no joy in his expression. He already hated the house and was thinking back wistfully to his days in the flat, with its big windows, spacious rooms, fantastic central heating, and totally chilled atmosphere. This was a little shit-pit, and he didn’t want to live here. Hell, even the Hyneses’ house was preferable – Rita and all.
The kitchen was little bigger than a cupboard, and whoever had removed all of the old tenant’s junk from the other rooms had stopped short of coming in here: it was crammed with rubbish. The sink was hidden beneath a mound of mouldy plates, cups, and pans, and the ledges and floor were littered with pizza boxes, chip wrappers, newspapers, and empty cans of dog and cat food that stank to high heaven. And, amongst it all, every spare inch of space contained empty cider bottles, fag ends, and little dried heaps of what looked to Johnny like shit – and it was anybody’s guess as to whether it was human or animal.
‘I know it’s a tip,’ Frankie said brightly. ‘That’s why I wasn’t going to tell you about it just yet. I was going to send some of the lads over to clear it out first. Even bought some paint so they could give it a quick lick.’ He gestured towards some cans heaped in the corner of the dining room behind them. ‘I know how much you like your yellows, Ruthie, so I played safe and went for lemon, and that magnolia shite.’
Johnny’s hopes had soared at the thought of someone else doing the dirty work, but they quickly fell again when Frankie went on: ‘Now you’ve seen it, you might as well crack on with it yourselves, eh?’
‘When can we move in?’ Ruth asked, already itching to get at it.
‘Soon as it’s ready,’ Frankie told her. ‘Then I’ll sort a van to move your stuff over.’
‘Can you get it tonight?’
‘Tonight?’ Frankie pulled a face that almost matched Johnny’s look of horror.
‘Yes, tonight,’ said Ruth. ‘I can clean around us.’
Frankie laughed, and Johnny was so sure he was going to say yes that his heart dropped into his feet and on through the shit-caked lino beneath. But Frankie shook his head.
‘I know you’re keen, love, but it ain’t fit for a dog to live in right now, so I’m definitely not letting you move in in your condition.’
‘But I want to move in now,’ Ruth complained.
‘No.’ Frankie put his arm around her and led her back out into the living room. ‘You can start cleaning any time you want – so long as you promise to take it easy. But you’re not stopping here till it’s done. Now, come and have a quick look upstairs, then I’ll drop you back off at home.’
Ruth didn’t want to stay at home for one more second, never mind one more night, or week – or however long it was going to take to clean the filthy new house. But her dad was adamant, so she had no choice but to stay put until it was done.
Barely able to sleep for excitement, she was up at the crack of dawn the following morning. Kissing her dad and Johnny goodbye, she took a load of cleaning stuff out of the cupboard under the sink and sneaked out before her mum surfaced and demanded to go with her.
At the new house, she put on her rubber gloves and got cracking – and she was still hard at it when Johnny joined her later that afternoon.
Expecting her to have made barely a dent, he was shocked to see how much she had done. The living room was still dark, the wallpaper still a depressing reminder of the old tenant’s poor state of health, but the cobwebs were gone, as was the horrible net curtain, and Ruth had cleaned the window so it was now as sparkling as the gas fire – which she’d somehow managed to right so that it was no longer listing dangerously. And while the floorboards were still stained, the unpleasant smell that had been emanating from them had been replaced with the fresh scent of bleach from the numerous moppings she’d given them.
She’d done the same in the tiny dining room, and she’d not only scrubbed the minuscule kitchen, she’d also cleared most of the rubbish out into the back yard, so there was only the ancient cooker and fridge left for Johnny to remove.
‘You should have waited for me,’ he said guiltily. ‘You’re not supposed to be straining yourself, and you definitely shouldn’t have done all this by yourself.’
‘My mum’s still in a mood, so I didn’t want to ask her to help me,’ Ruth told him, refilling the mop bucket as she spoke and pouring in a hefty slug of bleach. ‘And I didn’t want to just sit in the bedroom all day waiting for you, so I thought I might as well get on with it. Don’t worry, I paced myself.’
Johnny gave her a disbelieving look and went upstairs, only to find that she’d blitzed those rooms as well.
‘Leave it,’ he said when she carried the mop bucket into the bathroom behind him.
‘Won’t take me a minute,’ she insisted, pushing up her sleeves to give the lino its third scrubbing of the day.
‘I said leave it,’ Johnny ordered, taking her firmly by the arm and walking her out onto the landing. ‘You’re going home and putting your feet up.’
‘But I need to carry on,’ Ruth complained. ‘There’s not much left to do, and the sooner it’s done, the sooner we can move in.’
‘Leave the rest to me.’ He ushered her down the stairs ahead of him. ‘I’ll come back after tea and make a start on
stripping the wallpaper.’
‘I’ll come with you,’ she said. ‘Four hands are better than two.’
‘No.’ Johnny gave her a stern look. ‘Your dad will go mad if he finds out you’ve been at it on your own all day. I’ll do it.’
‘But, Johnny . . .’
‘Don’t argue.’ He snatched her coat off the back of the dining-room door and pushed it into her hands before herding her out of the front door.
Now that most of the mess had been cleaned up and it didn’t smell quite so much like an abattoir, Johnny didn’t mind going back. So, staying home just long enough to take a quick shower and eat the fish and chips they’d stopped off for on the way back, he tucked Ruth up in bed – and gave her strict orders to stay put. Then he took a bus back to Hulme, calling in at the flat on the way to enlist Dave’s help.
Several lines of speed and a few spliffs later, they whizzed through the wallpaper removal, and soon every wall in the house was bare and crying out for paint. It was one in the morning by then, and Johnny was starting to flag, having worked all day. But Dave wasn’t ready to call it a night just yet.
‘We might as well finish it now we’ve started,’ he insisted, using a screwdriver to pop the lid off a can of emulsion. ‘Won’t take long to slap a few coats on. But baggsy I do the walls, ’cos I can’t be arsed with all the fiddly woodwork shit.’
It was gone four by the time Johnny got home, and slashes of daylight were already breaking through the darkness of the sky. Conscious of Frankie’s car being parked on the path, he crept in and tiptoed up the stairs.
Ruth was still awake. She and Johnny might not have been married for overly long, but she was already used to the warmth of his back against hers and the soft sound of his snores, so the bed had felt too big and empty without him. She had fallen asleep for a short time at around eleven but her mum had soon woken her up again. Rita usually stayed in her parlour after sundown, only venturing out to get a fresh bottle if her alcohol ran out before she conked out. But tonight she’d decided to come upstairs and have another go at Ruth while they were alone.
‘Think you’re smart, don’t you?’ she’d hissed after bursting into the room and shaking her daughter awake. ‘Not good enough that you’ve got those idiots feeling sorry for you, you thought you’d dip your thieving hands into my retirement fund an’ all, didn’t you? Well, nothing good’ll come of it, I’ll tell you that for nowt. You got that house by dishonest means, and it’ll bring you nothing but tears and heartache. God knows what you’ve done, and He’ll punish you in kind – you watch if He doesn’t.’
Ruth had been terrified after her mum had staggered back down to her lair, and she’d tearfully begged God’s forgiveness, praying that He might understand her reasons for doing what she’d done and take pity on her. Taking comfort from the thought that at least she hadn’t killed a real baby, because that really would have been a sin too far, she’d eventually stopped crying. But her eyes were still raw and swollen when Johnny crept in.
‘I thought you’d be asleep,’ he whispered. ‘Did I wake you up?’
‘No, I couldn’t sleep,’ she told him, cuddling up to him when he climbed into bed. ‘I missed you too much.’
‘Sorry,’ he murmured, praying that she wasn’t expecting a shag, because there was no way he was going to get it up after the graft he’d done today.
‘Did you get much done?’
‘Finished it.’
‘Really?’ Ruth raised up onto her elbow and gazed down at him. ‘Everything?’
‘The whole lot,’ he affirmed with a grin. ‘You won’t believe it when you see it. It looks like a brand new house.’
‘How did you manage to do all of that on your own?’
‘Dave gave me a hand.’
‘What was he doing there?’ Ruth demanded.
‘I asked him to come,’ Johnny told her, having decided that he’d had enough of tiptoeing around the subject of his best mate. They’d had a right laugh tonight, and he felt a little bit like his old self again, so there was no way he was letting her criticise him back into submission.
‘That was nice of him,’ Ruth said tersely.
‘Yeah, it was,’ Johnny agreed. ‘But you can thank him when you see him, ’cos he’s coming round for dinner on Monday.’
‘You can’t just invite him round like that,’ Ruth blurted out. ‘You know how funny my mum is about anyone from outside the family coming to the house. And we’ve got the baby’s wake on Sunday, so she won’t want to see anyone straight after that.’
‘Don’t worry about it,’ Johnny replied smoothly. ‘Your mum’s got no say in who we invite round to our house.’
‘Eh?’ Ruth frowned. ‘How am I supposed to make dinner over there without a cooker? And where are we supposed to sit? On the floor?’
‘I thought I told you not to worry about it,’ Johnny said, grinning slyly. ‘Me and your dad have got it sorted.’
‘Meaning what?’
‘Wait and see. It’s a surprise.’
‘I don’t like surprises,’ Ruth snapped, desperate to know what was going on. ‘Tell me, Johnny. Or I’ll go and wake my dad up and ask him.’
Johnny’s good humour began to fade. He shouldn’t have said anything, but it was too late now. He doubted that she’d carry out her threat to wake her dad, but now that she knew he was hiding something from her she would nag him until he told her, and he was too tired for playing games.
‘Your dad’s mate owns a furniture warehouse down Cheetham Hill,’ he told her. ‘And we went over there this lunchtime and picked out a load of stuff. It was supposed to be a surprise but you’ve ruined it, so you can tell your dad why you’re not shocked when he tells you.’
‘You’d better be joking!’ Ruth spluttered. ‘That’s my house, and I wanted to choose what went into it.’
‘It’s ours, actually.’
‘You know what I mean. The woman looks after the house, so she gets to decide how to furnish it. It’s traditional.’
‘Yeah, well, we’ve created a new tradition,’ Johnny replied coolly. ‘It’s called taking the strain off the woman when she’s too ill to do it for herself.’
‘I’m not ill,’ Ruth moaned. ‘And it’s going to be horrible if my dad’s chosen what he thinks I’ll like. And you’re no better,’ she added accusingly. ‘Your room at Dave’s was disgusting. Nothing matched, and that bedside table wasn’t even proper furniture; it was just a dirty old box you’d found in a skip.’
‘It did what it was supposed to,’ Johnny informed her.
‘That’s not the point,’ she cried. ‘I wanted my house to be really nice and classy.’
Johnny had heard enough. He’d worked his arse off all day and night, and he was exhausted. But, more than that, he was pissed off that Ruth was being so ungrateful when he and Frankie had tried to do something nice for her. She might be feeling under the weather, but that didn’t give her the right to act like a spoiled little bitch.
‘Don’t turn your back on me,’ Ruth said when he did exactly that. ‘I’m talking to you.’
When Johnny pulled the quilt up around his head, making it clear that she was getting nothing more from him, she balled her hands into fists and gave a strangled cry of frustration. It wasn’t fair, and she felt like telling him to go back to the warehouse first thing tomorrow and cancel whatever he’d ordered.
But she knew she couldn’t do that, because it would offend her dad. And that would be unforgivable after he’d been generous enough to buy the house for her. So, however disgusting the furniture turned out to be, she would just have to smile and say thank you – and then replace everything bit by bit.
And at least she’d be free of her mother, at long last – and that was worth any amount of discomfort.
9
Lisa’s eyes were brown, but they were shining a deep envy-green as she entered her cousin’s new house on Monday evening.
She hadn’t seen much of Ruth since the wedding and would hap
pily have kept it that way if she hadn’t been forced to attend the so-called wake for the baby that Ruth had lost – the baby none of them had even known about until then. Well, not for sure, anyway, although Lisa had suspected all along that Ruth was pregnant, because that was the only reason she could think of for a gorgeous man like Johnny to have agreed to marry her.
Lisa had never seen the point of mourning something that probably hadn’t even had arms and legs yet, never mind a face or a brain. An old person, yes. Even a kid that you’d at least had the chance to smile at before it snuffed it. But there hadn’t even been a coffin at this one, which just made it all the more ridiculous.
But that was the Hyneses’ way. If the baby had lived it would have been one of their own, so that made it worthy of grieving over as you would have done for a real person. And since her Uncle Frankie was one of only a few Hynes men who’d had the balls to break away from the poverty and come to England to make his fortune, while the rest had stayed firmly in their ruts back home in Ireland, it was important to him that the relatives who had followed him over came together on these occasions. Nothing short of being on your own deathbed was excuse enough to miss one.
So Lisa had dutifully donned her wailing weeds and gone along to pay her respects. Then she’d parked herself in a corner of Rita’s parlour and watched in disgust as her mum, aunts and cousins swilled their drinks and pretended to be sad. Her mum had been play-acting to the max but she’d never have admitted it in a million years, because she was Frankie’s sister and he as good as kept them – and God knew they needed whatever he threw their way, because they’d have been destitute if it had been left to Lisa’s useless father.
But that was another Hynes tradition: the men looked after their womenfolk, even after they got married. And their husbands – unless their families were from the same village – were classed as outsiders. Hence Lisa’s dad not being invited to the wake, despite having been married to her mum for twenty-odd years. But it was his own fault for being such a pathetic loser.
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