by Ashe Barker
My eyes roll skyward. I can just imagine Nathan’s reaction to my mother setting up her next knocking shop down the lane from us.
“Right. And what will you do for money?”
That’s a good question from Connor. Excellent question, in fact. I wait with interest.
“Floristry.”
My jaw drops. I blink, look at her again. Did she say floristry?
“I beg your pardon.” Connor is polite, but equally incredulous.
“I’ve been re-training. There’s an education program here. I’m learning to be a florist. I’ll be qualified by the time I get out. I could start a little shop, or maybe just a stall at first. I like flowers.” Her last sentence is delivered with a note of defiance, our expressions of disbelief not lost on her.
“Flowers?” I’m not sounding especially incisive just now, I do know that. But…flowers?
“I think that sounds…like a good plan.” Connor is rallying more quickly than I am. No doubt his reflexes have been honed by his experiences with the Taliban. I’m finding it a real struggle to imagine my mother being able to tell one end of a tulip from the other.
She seems encouraged, though, by Connor’s guarded response. “Yes. I think so. It’ll be difficult to borrow any money to get started, not with my record, so I’m going to build it up slowly. Start small, see what happens. They buy flowers in Yorkshire, don’t they?”
Her last remark is directed at me. I shrug. “Yes. Maybe. I expect so. But…” My voice trails away, I just don’t get it, really can’t see it. My mother is silent too, her efforts at convincing us apparently at an end. She’s tried. I’ll grant her that. It was a good effort. But…floristry?
“If you’re still not using drugs and still keeping your head straight when you get out, I’ll let you have the start-up money for your business.”
I turn in time to catch the serious frown on his face as Connor makes his offer. He’s silent now, regarding our mother with considered interest. And I watch him.
This is no rush of misplaced altruism. I believe he sees a chance here, a real possibility of rehabilitation. I’m not convinced. Really I’m far from it. But I can do no less than back my brother up, surely. I don’t trust my mother, regardless of the promising signs. But I do trust Connor, and that’s a start. I remain silent while they talk, and Connor sets out his terms.
* * * *
Connor and I walk slowly back across the car park. Dan spots us from his vantage point as he leans against the bonnet of the Discovery and comes across to meet us.
“So?” His one word says it all.
I shrug, shaking my head, still not sure what to make of our conversation. Certainly, it didn’t go as I expected it might. Or feared it would. “So, she says she’s reformed. She wants to be a florist.”
“A…?”
“You heard.” I fall into step beside him as he turns to head back to the four-wheel drive, and we all three make our way back over to the Land Rover.
“Right. That’s nice. I like flowers.” Dan seems less surprised than I expected.
I grin up at him. “Yeah, she said that.”
“How does your mother know I like flowers?”
“Not that, idiot. She likes flowers. Connor’s going to lend her the money to start up her own shop when she gets out.”
“Oh?” Dan looks to Connor, clearly seeking a little more explanation for this apparent rush of filial generosity.
“I made a deal with her. I’ll stump up the money, provided she stays off the drugs. And she wants to come and live near Summer, in Yorkshire.”
Dan chuckles at that. I take the opportunity to dig him in the ribs—I don’t think it’s funny at all.
“Nathan’d love that. We’d have to warn him to lock up his silver. He’d probably fire me for bringing down the tone of the neighborhood with my ex-con family. No, that’s not happening. She’ll have to sell her daffodils and daisies and suchlike somewhere else.”
“Not happening? Why not? It’s a free country, she can live where she likes can’t she?” Dan stops as we reach the vehicle, but doesn’t unlock it yet. He turns to me. “Don’t you believe her that she’s a reformed character? Or going to be one?”
I frown up at him, considering his question. In truth, I’m just not sure. It was all so unexpected, I’m still assimilating. But, she did seem sincere. She did seem as though she genuinely wanted to start afresh.
“Well?” Dan prompts me
“Maybe. Possibly. I think she wants to try. It’s not that simple, though.”
“I can see that. So, what’s the issue with her living near you?”
“You have to ask that? You know what she did. To me.” My tone is harsh, bitter, my anger surfacing again. The real issue preventing any sort of reconciliation was never resolved back there. We never even touched on the elephant in the room. I let myself be sidetracked by talk of flowers.
“I just don’t want her there. That’s all. She…upsets me. Unsettles me, I suppose. She makes me uncomfortable.” I hesitate for a few moments, then, “She makes me so fucking angry.”
“Ah, is this a forgiveness thing then?”
How does he do that? How does he always manage to hit the nail so squarely on the head? I drop my head, nodding slightly.
Dan tilts my chin back up, forcing me to meet his eyes. We both ignore Connor, who is discreetly strolling away toward a bench overlooking the lawned gardens. “Forgiveness is easy, if someone is truly sorry. And if they’ve accepted their punishment. Does she accept her punishment, would you say?” Dan’s voice is low as he asks his question. It occurs to me this is familiar territory to him, as a Dom. Sort of.
I detected not a hint of resentment from my mother at her incarceration, so this at least seems easy to answer. “I would.”
“So she’s paying her dues to society. Do you want to punish her too? Is that what’s needed to get you past this?”
I consider that for a few moments. “No. I don’t think I do. I want justice, not revenge.”
“So, if you have justice, if you accept that her time inside covers that, there’s a possibility of moving on then? Of finding a way forward?”
“Yes. Perhaps.” I gaze up at him, at a loss what to say next. “It all seems so…messy. I hate mess. You know I hate mess.”
Dan smiles. “You don’t much like mess, but you seem to me to handle it pretty well.”
“But I don’t know where to start.”
Connor steps forward. “I do. Well, I think I do. I know she needs our help. Yours as well as mine, but if you don’t feel you can, I do understand.” Connor looks thoughtful, troubled, as though he doesn’t think his financial lifeline will be nearly enough to keep our mother on the straight and narrow. I rather fear he’s right.
“Summer, look at me.” Dan’s tone has that familiar hint of Dom in it, and I turn to him automatically. “Assuming you can forgive her, what else do you want from her? What would she need to do? What does she need to convince you of to get your support?”
I think for a few moments, chewing on my lower lip. “I just need to know she’s sorry. That she realizes what she did to me, and that she takes responsibility for it. I want her to apologize and mean it. And I have to be quite be certain that she’s telling the truth now. And that she won’t try to get my sisters back. I want her to promise me that Maisie and Lucy are safe with me forever.”
“So those are your terms then?”
“Yes, those are my terms.”
“In that case, get back in there and tell her how it’s going to be.”
“I…”
One eyebrow tilts upwards. It’s enough. I square my shoulders, drawing in several deep, steadying breaths as he’s taught me to do.
“Yes, Sir. Thank you. I can do that. Would you excuse me for a few minutes? I want to talk to my mother again.”
“Would you like me to come with you? Or Dan?” Connor makes the offer. It occurs to me that if he finds it odd that I would call Dan Sir he has
n’t said so. Yet. Sooner or later he’ll realize the true nature of our relationship, but that’s an issue to be faced another day.
I thank him but shake my head, quite certain of my ground now. I turn, walk back across the tarmac to the main entrance, alone this time but perfectly at ease.
“We’ll be here, love. Waiting for you. Take your time.” Dan’s low, sexy voice drawls across the car park.
I wave to him as I slip back through the prison door.
Also available from Totally Bound Publishing:
What’s her Secret?: The Three Rs
Ashe Barker
Excerpt
Chapter One
It looks official.
White envelope. It’s made of heavy paper, expensive looking. My name and address on the front, and some other words in large, bold letters. I recognize some of the letters. A word starting with ‘P’ and with a ‘v’ in it. Probably ‘Private’. Not so sure about the other word, that’s just a jumble. As if someone simply grabbed a handful of the alphabet and dropped it onto the paper.
But the letter is definitely for me. I do recognize my name, my address. Maybe I should open it, try to decipher whatever’s inside.
I put the envelope, still unopened, back on my table. It leans against the cereal packet as I take a sip of my coffee and contemplate it grumpily. It’s been two days since the imposing looking white envelope plopped onto my doormat, and I’m no closer now to knowing what the contents might mean than I was when it first arrived. It could just be junk mail. Some organizations deliberately make their rubbish letters look real and important just to trap unwary or gullible people. I like to think I’m neither of those things, but the fact remains I have a letter propped against my cornflakes box which may or may not be important—it certainly looks the part—and it’s spent the last two days occupying pride of place on my fireplace taking the piss out of me. It’s likely to continue taking the piss for another week, until my friend Wendy who lives upstairs comes back from visiting her sister in the Cotswolds. Wendy does my reading for me when it can’t be avoided. Because I can’t.
Can’t read, don’t read. Never really learnt. And now it’s too late. Probably.
Childhood leukemia effectively wiped out the first two years of my schooling. I was nearly eight before a bone marrow transplant finally did the trick and I was eventually pronounced cancer free, but by then the other children in my year were miles ahead of me. They all seemed to be able to read, and I still couldn’t. My school did try. They sent work home for me, and a teacher came to see me quite regularly. I was often too ill to listen to her though, and I didn’t feel like concentrating. In that cunning, manipulative way that children have sometimes, I soon realized that all I had to do was lie back and close my eyes, look a bit helpless, feeble, pained, and they’d back off immediately.
“Oh, she’s tired. Let her rest.” My mother was sick with worry about me, and fiercely protective. I milked that relentlessly, idle little slug that I was. Being ill was crap most of the time, but it had its up-side. No one hassled me, and if I didn’t want to bother with school stuff, no one would make me. My health was the only thing that mattered—I just had to concentrate on getting better.
And when I was better, school tried again. I had a special reading recovery tutor, they put me on accelerated reading programs, spent a fortune no doubt on my remedial education, but none of it made much impression. I learnt the alphabet, learnt to recognize my own name then to write it. I can string together short words, simple words, and I’m sort of okay at guessing how to fill in the gaps. I’ve had a lot of practice at that over the years. But it’s an unreliable system, I make a lot of mistakes and I completely miss the meaning of most things. I never read newspapers, not even the red tops which I understand are written for people with a reading age of about seven. They’re too hard for me. I struggle to understand cooking instructions on food packets, but these days most are done with symbols so that’s easier. I can recognize a picture of a microwave, and single numbers are okay. Even double numbers at a pinch, but beyond that I get hopelessly lost. So I’m pretty much unable to read or write anything. Functionally illiterate, is the label they give to people like me, or so I understand.
I’m perhaps slightly better with numbers. I can add up in my head. Adding, subtracting, multiplication—I’m very good at all that mental arithmetic. It’s just that I struggle to untangle the lines of numbers when they’re written down.
My mother was just so relieved that I was alive, she was prepared to overlook my slow learning. Did I say slow? Of course, I mean I went at the speed of a dead snail. My mother insisted I’d catch up, but she thought I was delicate, and they needed to make allowances. It’s true that I had to continue to go back to the hospital on a regular basis for years after I was pronounced clear, for blood tests to make sure there was no recurrence. There never was, and in truth I felt fine.
School wasn’t all bad. I loved sports despite my mother’s anxiety that I might get over-tired, and I played in the netball team. I was the goal-shooter and pretty good. Nothing wrong with my hand-eye co-ordination. I could draw too, really well, actually. I quite enjoyed the practical aspects of art lessons. I did some nice work, but my art folder was a mess. I recall a lot of red pen in it—the teacher’s attempts to set me on the right path, obviously wasted on me.
Overall, my education was limited almost to the point of non-existence. And my initial disadvantages of poor health and laziness turned into embarrassment. The years went by and I made no progress—at least none that I could see—and others in my class moved on to read more and more adventurous books. I saw the Narnia films on the television or at the cinema, I loved Harry Potter and later Twilight, but while everyone else could read the books I could only enjoy the films. While others could use the Internet to find out the information they needed to do their homework, my homework just didn’t get done. I was moved into ‘special’ learning groups, and my school continued to make an effort. But it was half-hearted—I was a hopeless case. I certainly thought so, and I suppose that just clinched it. The best school in the land can’t do much with a student who doesn’t believe they can learn. By the time I was fourteen or so, they’d given up and so had I. I marked time with netball and art when I could dodge the zeal of the art teacher. She never quite relinquished the task. I left school at sixteen, with no qualifications and all the job prospects of a lettuce.
So now here I am—a twenty-two-year-old cleaner. Ironically, the place I now work, the only place I could manage to get a job at all, is my old primary school. I heard they were looking for temporary cleaners and it seemed better than staying on the dole, so I called in. Luckily the caretaker, Mr Cartwright, remembered me from when I was a gangly ten-year-old with a mop of ginger hair, and was prepared to give me a chance. I daresay all the staff and pupils at my primary school still remember me—I was ‘the poorly kid’, the one they had to be careful around, the one they had to avoid infecting with any nasty germs. Especially chickenpox.
Mr Cartwright’s leap of faith was four years ago, and I’ve worked hard ever since. I mopped and scrubbed and polished like a maniac, and when my temporary contract was up Mr Cartwright—Dave—was sufficiently impressed to keep me on permanently. So I have regular work, if low paid. And it’s enough—just about—to keep me in a small flat as long as I don’t eat too much or insist on having the place too warm in the winter.
It’s just me these days. For all her frantic worrying about me, my mother herself succumbed to cancer when I was nineteen. It was a shock, she was just fifty years old. I was stunned, I couldn’t believe what had happened. And so quickly. It seemed that one day she was fine, just had a bit of a cough. A persistent cough. She went to see her GP and was referred to a consultant. Within days she had a diagnosis of throat cancer, and it advanced so quickly, neither one of us had any chance to adjust. To come to terms. Not that we could have achieved that, no matter how long her illness had dragged on for. Looking back, perhap
s, things were mercifully swift, though it didn’t feel like that at the time. It just felt horrendous. A mad, headlong dash toward the inevitable end. My mother was admitted to the intensive care oncology ward, and she died within six weeks of being diagnosed.
I got over it. Eventually. Or so I like to tell myself. In reality I had no choice. The Council wanted their three bedroomed family house back—can’t really blame them—but they offered me a one bedroom flat on the seventh floor in a tower block. It’s not bad, I have brilliant views over the rooftops of north Bradford and on a clear day I can just make out York Minster. Well, I think it’s York Minster—Wendy says it is.
So life is relatively untroubled, to the point of boring probably. But I’m safe, secure. I get by.
Then that bloody letter arrives to rock my calm little boat.
And instinctively I know, in my gut I know, that my boat is about to be seriously rocked. What I don’t know is how, why and by how much. I can’t wait for Wendy—I need to find out. Now. Today. I shove the envelope into my bag to take to work with me later. I’m quite good friends with Sally—Miss Moore to her year five charges. Sally’s a classroom assistant these days, but she was in my form at secondary school and also played netball. We got on okay. She knows I can’t read and has offered on many occasions to spend some time with me to help with that. She might even be able to do it—she’s done extra training as a literacy specialist and works with other children who struggle like I did. Sally’s lovely, and if she’d been there to help when I was at primary school, well, who knows? But like I said, it’s too late now.
But Sally will be able to read my letter and at least then I’ll know if it’s junk or not.
* * * *
Sally’s busy stacking books and sorting crayons as I tap on the open classroom door. The children have just left, and she usually hangs around to tidy up ready for the next day. Gina Simmonds, the Year five teacher, is also there, at her desk, plowing her way through a pile of exercise books. Both heads turn as I hover in the doorway.
