by Ellis Major
“Cheers. Mary, you’re going to fill us in? I could tell from your faces that you’re on the same wavelength.”
Mary ran both hands through her luxuriant hair and sighed.
“It sounds,” she began. “As if Georgina knew herself from a very early age, but has never been able to persuade anyone else of this, especially her mother. Annette Lane is utterly convinced that Georgina was perverted at school and can be ‘cured’ as long as she gets ‘straightened out’ by the right sort of man. It sounds like the worst kind of nightmare imaginable. She won herself something of a reputation at school and girls used to find it a challenge to be, er, ‘initiated’ by her. The criminal conviction arose from some younger girl’s idea of revenge. She lied to Georgina about her age before they did the deed, later told Georgina the truth, then retaliated when Georgina wouldn’t repeat the performance. Georgina was eighteen and about to leave school. There had been rumours before that. The parents wanted to press charges and Georgina decided to plead guilty because her idiot of a lawyer advised her to. She was given a suspended sentence, tagged, all the rest of it.”
“Bloody hell,” Charlie said. “That all sounds pretty rough.”
Mary shook her head. “That’s nothing.” She told them. “She was diagnosed as predatory, so there’s all this therapy she’s been put through by the official types as well as some really, really strange people her mother has come up with.”
“Poor kid,” Charlie sympathised.
“Yes, they watch her all the time to make sure she doesn’t get too close to another woman. She’s tagged so she can’t get out at night. It’s so depressing.”
Charlie was scratching his head. “I don’t quite get it. Why does she stay with her parents? She must be well over eighteen now?”
“Nineteen.” Mary confirmed.
“There you are – and not all criminals have parents who are alive or even know who their parents are. She could live somewhere else.”
“Somewhere cosy like a bail hostel, perhaps.” Lance suggested.
Mary frowned. “Word gets around. A lesbian sex offender.......... Besides, she has expectations.”
Charlie sat up. He knew all about expectations. They could be difficult things to live up to. “Really?” he said.
“Yes, her grandfather put a very substantial sum in trust for her but she has to wait until she’s twenty five, when she gets it absolutely. Of course, by then she won’t be tagged and will be free to do what she likes, but she feels she’s stuck where she is, with her parents. Even once she’s free to move out, who will want to employ her? Who would want to work with her? A sex offender. You know how small-minded people can be.”
Charlie thought of the Sproates. He nodded. Somehow he couldn’t see them being interested in hearing Georgina’s side of the story.
“So she’s planning to mope around for years at home, waiting until she hits twenty five and gets the drinking vouchers!”
Mary turned to him. “She might get some dead-end job eventually, but she’s bright, intelligent. She’d like to study, be taken under the wing of a more experienced, slightly older woman. That’s what’s perfect. We’re made for each other, Charlie, but if she runs off with me, the judicial system grinds into action. If she waits and waits, these stupid courses go on, these stupid attempts to purge her of perversion continue. It’s a nightmare, a living nightmare, something Kafka could have written.”
Having listened carefully, Lance had a question.
“Mary,” he began cautiously, “Are you completely confident that she is genuine. An independent, wealthy woman would seem an ideal escape route to a girl like her. She may have spotted an opportunity and be taking cynical advantage of your feelings.”
Now Mary turned to Lance, her eyes shining. “I am certain, Lance, if only because of the anguish she is experiencing at not being able to get away. She loves me just as much as I love her. I’ve stared into her eyes. She’s not faking it – I know it in my bones. But neither of us can see a way out of her predicament. She’s desperate to get away from all of it, but can’t see how. We will just have to wait, at least until she won’t become a hunted criminal. She says she’s prepared to.”
Lance pondered for a moment or two. “There is a possible solution,” he told the two of them. They stared at him, agog. “We’ll need to move fast whilst Charlie continues to go after Georgina. Mary, I foresee that you may be spending more hours in the boot so you can talk to her. However, I can see a way out and I think it could work.”
Lance tapped Charlie’s arm. “Think, Charlie. Remember that Mr Smith you told me about after that anorexic girl with halitosis had been snivelling to you about having lost her cat.”
“Lance, you’re a genius,” Charlie declared.
Lance raised his eyebrows. “Charlie, hardly. I’m probably the only person who listens to what you say and parks it away in his memory, that’s all. If you hadn’t mentioned his name to me, I wouldn’t have thought of it now, would I?”
Charlie noted Mary’s confused expression and explained that Mr Smith was a private detective.
“Amazing bloke,” Charlie confirmed. “Helped a friend out of a mess a year or two back. He’s very dodgy but very good. I’ve got his number on my phone somewhere.”
“Well, whatever it takes,” Mary told Lance hopefully. “Whatever it costs. Let’s get on with it as fast as we can. I don’t want my darling to suffer a single minute longer than she has to!”
Chapter 9 – Break for the Border (Year 1 – Early July)
All of which machinations brought Charlie and Lance under the window of Georgina’s room, two days later, equipped with a ladder and a variety of cutting tools. Georgina, unfortunately, could not simply leave by the door. Her father, who owned a small electronics company, had, on Mrs Lane’s instructions, commissioned a portable door alarm which would wake the dead – a claim the local Trading Standards Office might have found interesting.
As instructed, Charlie had continued to woo Georgina who, also on instruction, gave every impression of softening her attitude towards him. They were able to play the nap routine once more, but dared not do so too much. However, on the second day, having been tutored on building up John’s expectations, Charlie was able to have a revealing chat with Georgina’s brother. He was distracting the boy with a dazzling prospect, at least for a teenage gaming fanatic. A vast variety of games were categorised as suitable only for those aged over eighteen, and Charlie could sense a hunger for them in John Lane. Charlie was only too willing to assuage the hunger so long as John coughed up. The pair of them had been reviewing the selection in a specialist shop.
“You must be pretty fed up with acting as a guard dog for your sister,” Charlie began.
“Yeah.”
“So you’d be happy to see the back of her?”
“Yeah.”
“As long as she was safe and happy”
“Yeah, s’pose.”
“And especially if you received a reward for helping out?”
“What reward?”
“All those games you can’t get until you’re eighteen.”
John’s eyes widened. “I could try and get ‘em off the internet, but Dad’s pretty sharp on that stuff.”
Charlie waited.
“What?” John wondered.
This was a key part of the plan. Charlie didn’t want to screw it up.
“Where does your mother keep Georgina’s passport and that sort of stuff?”
John looked up at him in some surprise.
“You really want to run off with her?” he began, and then the games tugged his eyes away. He shrugged. “She seems to like you. Perhaps Mum was right all along. She just had to meet the right man. Why not just get married?”
Charlie managed a disingenuous smile. “She’s all embarrassed about admitting your mum was right all along, so she wants to run off and get it over with without all the fuss. She’s worried your Mum will say something really dumb at the wedding. I think
they often do, or snivel.”
This seemed good enough for John. He told Charlie that passports and all the rest of it were stored in a small fireproof box. Crucially, he knew its exact whereabouts in the Lane residence. Charlie was as good as his word. He sent John back to the car and purchased every adult game in which John had shown the slightest interest.
“I do love a bit of sex and violence, don’t you?” he murmured to the spotty and bemused shop assistant, whilst touching the brim of his Panama.
“Don’t forget your card, Sir,” the assistant told him.
Charlie’s periodic jousting with the Sproates had continued. Mrs Sproate had started to talk about taking up the piano and wanted advice on how much a good piano would cost for a sound Yorkshire woman who could drive a hard bargain. Charlie has mentioned a figure. All colour had drained from Marigold Sproate’s face, an impressive outcome given her normal ruddiness, and the worthy Arnold had been left gasping for breath – less of a surprise given he’d walked briskly from his car to catch up with his wife. Charlie worried about Arnie’s heart and hoped that Lance had some basic paramedic training. Fortunately, mouth-to-mouth wasn’t required. When Arnold Sproate did recover the ability to breathe it became obvious that whatever plans they might have been harbouring were abandoned on the spot. The sweets, it seemed, would remain the focus of their efforts for the foreseeable future. “By ‘eck,” Arnold Sproate had muttered. “It’s nowt more’n a few bits o’ wire in a box.”
“It’s the ivory,” Charlie had explained in a low voice. “You wouldn’t believe the money the manufacturers have to pay the poachers, and there are all those middlemen who want a cut.”
“You’d think the daft boogers would use summat else,” Arnold grumbled.
“Perhaps they will one day,” Charlie had whispered. “But nothing else would feel quite as good.”
Both the Sproates seemed to be avid soap fans, for all their commercial acumen and associated absence of gullibility. They viewed Charlie’s budding romance as something akin to a slightly duller live version of the real thing, as customarily seen on television.
The pair took up station in Reception and seemed to expect a potted version of the day’s events when Charlie returned each afternoon. That still gave them plenty of time to catch up with the latest goings-on in their favourite soaps later in the evening. Lance was only too keen for Charlie to oblige the Sproates and Charlie, therefore, did as he was told – it was Lance’s scheme, after all. Lance would usually add a few details when he came marching in after parking the car.
Charlie found it entertaining to see how the Sproates huddled closer in Lance’s presence, two plump ginger pigs threatened by the big, bad wolf. Lance clearly did not fit the mould of stereotypical soft southern pooof. Charlie could smell the fear. If Lance huffed and puffed the house that the Sproates had built might be blown down around their ears.
So here they were, in the early hours, ladder at the ready, Charlie dithering over which of the two windows was the correct one.
“Lance, sod it,” he whispered. “I’ve got my left muddled up with my right like the Liberals. I don’t know if it was second to the right of the corner or the left.”
“Then let’s be careful.” Lance replied calmly. “I reckon she’ll be awake and will be at the window the moment she hears any noise. But it’s always possible she could have fallen asleep. Once you’re up there, lift the sash very slowly and call out softly. At least we know it can’t be her parents’ room as that’s next door to Georgina’s and third either way. Let’s go for the right hand one to start with.”
They manoeuvred the ladder, muffled against rattling by a mix of rags and tape, until it was in position. Lance had judged the height to perfection, and Charlie scurried up the rungs. As the lighter and the nimbler of the two, he’d been selected for this important part of the mission. He waited at the window for a few seconds, but heard nothing – just a powerful snore which sounded quite muffled from the outside. Hoping that such a minor imperfection in her beloved wouldn’t ruin the romance for Mary, he eased up the sash. “Georgie,” he hissed. “Georgie, are you ready?”
The snoring continued. ‘Just the thing,’ Charlie thought to himself. ‘A heavy sleeper. I hope love can overcome that and snoring’. He hauled himself carefully into the room. “Georgie,” he hissed again, feeling his way carefully over towards the sound of the snoring. “Georgie, are you ready sweetheart?”
“Yoo wat?”
Charlie froze. He knew that voice only too well, although not yet its gender. There was a brief fumbling and the bedside light came on. Horror of horrors, there was Marigold Sproate, sitting up in bed, hair neatly netted, with her dental plate in a glass beside her! Her flimsy and partially transparent nightie revealed rather more of the female Sproate physique than Charlie cared to admire, even from a fairly safe distance.
Mr Sproate slumbered on, oblivious to the march of events.
Charlie smiled, winningly. “Sorry, Mrs Sproate,” he mouthed at her. “Wrong room I think.”
Mrs Sproate frowned at him. “A reet sorry fool you are.” She spoke at her normal robust conversational volume. Charlie started in alarm and pointed at Mr Sproate’s recumbent form.
“Don’t tha worry about ‘im. Ee’s ‘ad his nooky for t’night. Nowt short of a bomb would disturb ‘im.”
“Even so,” Charlie whispered, “We wouldn’t want to disturb the other guests.”
“Ee, they principally bein’ yon lassie’s parents.” Mrs Sproate had, however, now dropped her voice to a whisper.
Charlie nodded, “We’re planning to elope,” he confided. “Her parents think she’s a bit young.”
“A Yorkshire lad would pick t’right window,” she told him, tartly. “Not climb oop and startle a respectable woman half out of her poower wits.”
“Not too respectable, eh,” Charlie winked, and did his level best to leer suggestively at her semi-naked form.
Mrs Sproate wriggled slightly at his words causing various pallid bulges and curves to strain against the fabric of her nightie. Charlie prayed that she wouldn’t burst a seam. He feared he might scream. Still, at least Lance hadn’t come up the ladder. She’d have woken the whole hotel with her shrieks if she’d seen Captain Savage lumbering towards her, intent on some sort of orgy perhaps.
“Best be off,” he said, and then had a brain wave. “You won’t tell on us will you?”
Mrs Sproate’s folded her arms across her ample belly. Charlie couldn’t decide whether the bare arms were worse than the folds which had been challenging the nightie’s design limits to the max.
She looked quite indignant. “Nay, lad,” she told him. “Aa’m a romantic soul, me. Aa loove an ‘appy endin’, me. Yoo be off an’ goood loook, lad. Let’s ‘ope you’re as ‘appy as Arnold and me.”
“You’re a sport. May I kiss your hand?” Charlie approached the simpering female Sproate and did the deed. ‘The things I do for my mates,’ he thought to himself pleased, nonetheless that Marigold Sproate had her heart in the right place.
She wriggled unpleasantly and Charlie smiled politely. He didn’t trust himself to say anything vaguely sensible if he spoke. He had to get a move on. He let go of her hand, shot over to the window, gave her a wave, blew her a kiss and got down the down the ladder as fast as he could.
“Wrong window,” he whispered to Lance. “It was Mrs Sproate, bursting out of her nightie. Bit of luck she’s a believer in true romance. It’s quite sweet now I’m at a safe distance.”
Lance’s teeth glinted in the half light and his shoulders shook for a second or two. He said nothing, merely indicating, by way of gesture, that they should move the ladder. It was a case of second time lucky. It would have been difficult to be unlucky, though, as by the time they rounded the corner, Georgina was waiting for them with her head out of the window, tapping her watch.
It was all pretty quick after that. Charlie ascended the ladder. After some careful use of bolt cutters, Georgina’s t
ag was removed not without a crack from Charlie about hoping she didn’t mind him seeing that much of her bare leg. She punched him in the ribs and he told her that Mary used to be a prison guard so wouldn’t stand for her friends being assaulted. Georgie almost smiled and then told him to ‘fuck off’ before he carried her small bag down to the ground. Georgie followed him down the ladder so fast her feet barely touched the rungs and the three of them took the ladder away as quickly as ever they could.
Lance insisted on taking her case and they ran a couple of hundred yards to where Mary was waiting in a car with the very efficient Mr Smith. A great smile broke across Mary’s and Georgina’s faces when they caught sight of each other and Charlie felt he could have run the gauntlet of any number of Sproates if it helped to make them as happy as that.
Mr Smith came over and presented Georgina with two bundles of documents. “Now, Miss Lane, put these somewhere safe. These are your true identity papers: passport, birth certificate and so on. They’ll obviously be important when you reach the age of twenty five. Your parents will no doubt be upset by the burglary, but we had to make it look as realistic as possible. The other bundle is your new identity. Miss Goldsworthy already has hers.”
Georgina took the new passport and flicked through it. “It looks perfect,” she said.
Mr Smith smiled a thin smile. “It is,” he told her. “It’s a real passport, not some half-baked rip off, using a stolen one. Everything in that bundle is genuine.”
“Simply incredible,” Charlie told him in awe. “I just don’t know how you manage it.”
“As I recall telling you and Lord Mardon that time,” Mr Smith murmured. “It’s probably for the best, for your own peace of mind, that you know as little as possible. Now, we must be off. We have a long drive ahead of us, separate flights, appearances to re-arrange slightly. No time to lose.”
They said their good-byes.
Mary, with tears in her eyes, didn’t know how to thank Charlie and Lance enough, which made Charlie all the more awkward, an awkwardness added to by Georgina’s smiling acknowledgement that perhaps men weren’t so bad after all. She even gave him and Lance a peck each on the cheek - without throwing up.
