Deleilah

by Bowes, K T

  Leilah always wondered if she spoiled it for him, knowing inwardly he ruined her for love with anyone else. Expectation hung around the neck of her marriage afterwards, sowing discontent between her and Michael like a weighty albatross, gathering disappointment with each passing year when her new husband couldn’t match up.

  “Stay with me?” His tone held an edge of pleading and he picked her up, grunting at the effort and pushing her backwards until her spine met the resistance of wallboard. Leilah hung to him like a siren, teeth and nails, legs clasped around his thighs until gravity forced him to tumble sideways on top of her, banging elbows and knees on the floorboards. “You can’t leave me again,” he whispered, his voice hushed. “Promise you won’t?”

  Leilah closed her eyes as soft kisses followed the line of her ribs, forcing herself to drive back the real world and its trials. “We shouldn’t make promises we can’t keep,” she sighed, tensing as his fingers roved across her creamy breasts with curious, silky touches.

  “Then keep the promises,” he demanded, his tone urgent. “Stay with me this time.”

  “There’s so much you don’t know,” Leilah groaned, reality forcing distraction into the foreground and threatening to push the pivotal moment aside. He sensed it, nibbling a line from her sternum to her pubic bone and listening to the gasp of reward.

  “I don’t care,” he whispered. “Promise you’ll stay.”

  Leilah knew she’d promise him anything at that moment. She felt the tender beginnings of a love bite as he teased and sucked the flesh next to her right hip and she gave in to his possession, knowing the mark would anchor her next morning when his ministrations seemed like a dream.

  Chapter 47

  Sorting Out a Mess

  Leilah woke alone in the master bedroom, Hector’s old blanket from the truck draped over her nakedness. He’d left as she knew he would, old habits too hard to break without exacting the promises she refused to give. The floorboards felt hard under her bum but the house hummed with humidity and Leilah sighed and let her head fall back onto the pillow Tane lent her from a cell in the police watch house. The fabric smelled weird encased in its hygienic rubber cover.

  If she closed her eyes and kept still, Seline’s father was there with her. His masculine scent mingled with the soap from Leilah’s shower the evening before, musky and warm like fresh cut grass, overlaying the floral bouquet. “Way to go, Deleilah,” she muttered. “How to make life even harder for yourself.” She moved her legs and felt the dull throb between her thighs, burying her face in the pillow. The delicate tendrils of her mind sought the ready strains of guilt and regret but found none. “You’re a ho-bag, Deleilah Dereham,” she sighed. “You don’t even have the decency to feel bad anymore.”

  The sound of a car door slamming sent her out of her makeshift bed like a missile, yanking her head through the neck of her tee shirt and hauling yesterday’s jeans and underwear over her bare legs. Leilah hopped around the room swearing as the fabric bunched under her bum and hearing loud voices approach the French doors of the bedroom, she dived into the wardrobe and fell onto her face.

  “She’s been here,” Tai’s voice said, muffled against the glass as he peered through. “Do ya think she changed her mind and don’t want us?”

  “Na,” Claus replied. “Let’s get started clearin’ up outside and finish what we started yesterday. Mebbe she’s gone for breakfast.”

  Their footsteps moved away and Leilah listened as they beat a track around the other side of the property, discussing wood rot and borer beetle. She pushed herself onto her back and wrestled the knickers and jeans over her bum, wiggling like an upturned tortoise.

  Creeping back into the bedroom to fasten the zipper in daylight, Leilah stopped to examine the spots of tenderness over her stomach and groin. A line of slitty, purple love bites formed a lazy trail, arching around her body like a reel of tinsel. Leilah shoved the bedroom door closed to expose the spotted mirror fastened to the back, lifting her tee shirt and baring her bra-less breasts. The line continued, taking in her right breast with a bite to the underside nearest the nipple. Her breathing quickened with the memory of her powerlessness and the wretched vulnerability he always produced in her. Girl and woman; her flaws were the same. The love bites stopped below the neckline of her tee shirt, his silent, tactful message of possession accurate in its execution.

  Leilah dropped the tee shirt over the coded love letter and sighed, padding through to the kitchen to find her tradesmen. She found them navel gazing on the front driveway, Claus scratching his head at the realisation her car sat in front of his.

  “The shower spat cold water over me last night,” she announced without preamble. “Please tell me you can fix it?”

  Tai looked doubtful, flapping his hands like a baby bird but Claus nodded with confidence. “I’ll give it a go, missus.” He screwed up his olive face until his bottom lip almost touched the underside of his nose and Leilah shook her head.

  “Today maybe?” She gritted her teeth against the wide-eyed direction of the teenager’s rapt gaze and turned, returning to the bedroom to pick through the clothing in her suitcase and find a bra before Tai’s eyeballs fell out. Dressing in the privacy of the wardrobe, Leilah rolled the false panel back and stared at the safe, dreading the contents and the misery they could wreak. Vaughan’s precarious residency bit at her sense of fairness and Leilah sighed, knowing she needed to make a phone call.

  Making a call turned into a mission as her cell phone refused to connect to any form of service provider. “How do you get reception out here?” she demanded, aiming her comment at Claus as he pulled his phone from a baggy trouser pocket.

  “Mine’s fine,” he said, peering at the screen. “Who’re you with?” He turned the handset outwards and Leilah gaped.

  “The same one as you!” Irritation burgeoned and she scowled, creating an ugliness in her features which even Botox might struggle to subdue. “I bought a new bloody sim card too!”

  “Mebbe need a new phone,” Claus commented, swallowing at Leilah’s thunderous expression. He held out the bright red handset with an apologetic smile. “Borrow mine,” he said, “unless youse callin’ them Mericans.”

  “I’m not calling America,” Leilah reassured him, moderating her tone. “Just Hamilton.”

  “Same bloody difference then,” Claus joked, a steady rumble beginning in his chest. A smoker’s cough wrested itself from his damaged lungs and Tai’s face looked conflicted as he debated slagging off his hometown.

  Leilah took the phone from the outstretched hand and turned back to the house. She wiped the illegible buttons on her tee shirt and listened to the sounds of the men talking in the bathroom. Footsteps clomped along the hallway and the airing cupboard door opened.

  Claus had enough data on his phone for her to search the number for Bertrams Lawyers in Hamilton. Nothing. Exasperated, she sat for a moment and pondered. Other internet searches revealed no lawyers of that name attached to any local business. Leilah sat cross legged on her bedroom floor with the phone in front of her. She rubbed her eyes and contemplated face planting on her sleeping bag and starting the day again. Perhaps if she started it earlier, she’d be awake to stop Seline’s father leaving and the sound of his motorbike firing up wouldn’t cause her so much heartache.

  ‘I’ve missed you so much,’ he’d said in the darkness, his stubble grazing her shoulder as he cuddled her from behind. ‘I’m sorry about before.’

  ‘It’s ok.’ She arched her back and pressed her bum into him, hearing a hiss and groan as his interest grew and his hands roved again.

  Leilah pushed at the phone with her finger, blocking out the lascivious memories which tumbled through her addled brain. So many things in life she should have done and didn’t. So many awful choices she didn’t seem able to salvage anymore. She picked up the phone and dialled a number, holding it up to her ear and hearing the sizzle of a bad connection.

  “Hello?” He sounded cautious, not recogn
ising the number calling his cell phone.

  “Hi, Uncle Derek,” Leilah said, her tone rushed. “It’s a terrible line so I’ll be quick. I think we might get cut off.”

  Derek chuckled, his emphysema thickening his voice and the cough which followed. “Ah yes, how’s life going as a free woman? Are you somewhere remote and exciting?”

  Leilah looked around the master bedroom and sighed. The remains of the floral print wallpaper her mother hung months before she died were welded to the wallboard by age and determination. Hector changed nothing in the years of raising Leilah, as though convinced if he removed any of his wife’s nik-naks, even the fading memories of her would disappear forever. The dodgy builders managed to put holes in the walls from a game of cricket but apart from that, it looked the same dilapidated heap she’d purchased.

  “Good,” she lied, hoping the crackles masked the untruth.

  “Na.” Her perceptive lawyer called her out straight away. “I can hear that’s not the case. What’s wrong?”

  With a sigh which seemed to come from the soles of her feet, Leilah lay back on her blanket and told the truth. It spilled from her lips like a catharsis, encompassing the buying of her father’s place, the dodgy builders and assault, right down to her freezing shower. She left out her rampant fornication with an old flame in her father’s bedroom but felt sure the emotion carried through her voice.

  “I saw the news the other night,” he said, disgust permeating his words. “Saying you were found safe and sound. I didn’t know you were missing; been in the hospital for a few days.”

  “I wasn’t missing,” Leilah reassured him. “Michael’s calls became a problem, so I avoided them. It was his way of flushing me out but I went to the local police station and a friend killed the report. That was ages ago. Why are they reporting it now?” Her eyes narrowed as she fell for the distraction. “What’s wrong? Why were you in hospital?” She sat up, anxiety making it impossible to lay down while Derek lied to her about his health.

  “Ah, nothing. Just a wee cough. So, you bought Hector’s place then?” Derek’s voice sounded emotionless and Leilah tried to listen for his real opinion beneath the platitudes. “You did get proper reports on the place, didn’t you girl? I assumed you did but Lloyd dealt with it.”

  Leilah swallowed. “Not exactly.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “No. I got no reports done.”

  “Deleilah!” Anger rippled across the airwaves like an electrical current. “You know better than that! What if the place is due to fall off the bloody mountain? What if there’s a motorway about to pile through your bedroom? Geeze woman! What were you thinking?”

  “It’s fine.” Leilah closed her eyes to avoid the wreckage of her former home. “It’s not much different to when I left.” She squeezed her eyes tighter shut and crossed the fingers of her left hand to protect herself against the sin of untruth.

  “Get yer fingers uncrossed!” Derek snapped and Leilah inhaled with shock that he knew her so well. “The Good Lord doesn’t ignore lies just because you put yer fingers behind yer back and cross ‘em!”

  “They’re not behind my back,” she grumbled, not wanting to admit they were crossed so securely she used her lips to detach them. “It’s a bit of a mess but things will work out.”

  “Hmmmn,” he growled. “I never would’ve helped ya if I’d known you were being so foolhardy! So, if the deed is done, what yer calling me for? Found a hole in the lounge floor and want yer money back?”

  Leilah picked her words with care. “I found a safe in Dad’s room and it has documents in it.” She rushed on before he could interrupt. “He wrote me a letter and left the deeds to the house and some things like that.”

  “You didn’t need them. There’s electronic copies; that’s how Hanover sold it.”

  “Yeah, but Dad also left ownership papers for an adjacent property which he paid cash for. I’ve searched for the firm of lawyers he mentioned but can’t find it. Have you ever heard of Bertrams Lawyers?”

  “Hector owned another property?” Derek scratched his sparse hair and Leilah heard the scratching sound through the phone as he employed his thinking pose. “He never said.”

  “It looks like he did it a few months before he died,” Leilah said. “The lawyer’s address was a street in Hamilton which doesn’t exist anymore but I thought the firm might have moved. The council made Carson Street into Cobham Drive when they created the bypass about eighteen years ago. We studied the impact on businesses in my third year and there were protests and lots of public outcry. Maybe the firm moved to Auckland; I wondered if you knew it.”

  “No.” Derek sounded perplexed, hurt at his old friend’s lack of trust in him and Leilah rushed to make excuses for her father.

  “Sounds like it happened real quick, Uncle Derek. I figure if he’d lived, he’d have told you.”

  “Maybe.” Derek sounded tired and guilt burgeoned in Leilah’s chest.

  “I didn’t mean to keep you out of things either. I wouldn’t do that, Uncle, not on purpose.” Leilah sighed and her shoulders slumped as the weight of her troubles bore down on her in an overwhelming sense of being buried under concrete. Self-pity licked at the fringes of her soul. “My life is one big pile of crap,” she breathed. “I thought it couldn’t get any worse but I’ve managed to ride through it and turn it into a disaster.”

  “Now, now.” Derek resumed his role as fixer and took up the reins. “What do you need from me?”

  “Please find Bertrams Lawyers for me, Uncle Derek? They’ve got an account somewhere with twenty years of monthly rent in it that belongs to me. Plus the official documentation to back up Dad’s story.”

  Derek gave a low whistle. “Twenty years of rent for a farm, girly. Leave it with me, Deleilah, Uncle will sort it out.”

  “I should pay you a retainer,” Leilah said, a smile breaking into her voice at Derek’s eagerness to get busy.

  “Just a wee hug next time you’re up this way,” he said. His tone changed. “The tenant might not have paid ever since your father died. What will you do then?” His worry wasn’t unfounded and Leilah bit her lip and felt her chest tighten.

  “I don’t know, Uncle. Let’s cross that bridge when we come to it.”

  She sat for a while after ending the call, misery blossoming in place of relief. Twenty years back rent would be enough to wipe Vaughan out and leave him on the roadside with nothing but a rucksack. Corey said he paid a regular debt but it might be for something else. Leilah pitched back onto her sleeping bag and pressed the pillow over her face, wishing for the millionth time she’d never come back.

  Chapter 48

  Unexpected Arrivals

  “It’s a fuse on the boiler, missus. It’s blown is all.” Claus’ deep tones pulled Leilah from her pillow and she flushed with embarrassment. She shoved the fabric away from her face and sat up, snatching his phone and holding it out to him.

  “Thanks. I’ll pay for the call,” she said.

  Claus shrugged. “It’s all good, missus. I’ve got a phone plan.” He took the phone and hung around in the doorway, his feet shuffling as he shoved it in his trouser pocket. Leilah heard Tai moving around in the hallway behind him. “I don’t wanna run up to Hamilton just for a fuse, missus, so why don’t we walk around and see what them jokers did with all the supplies. Then I can get a decent amount from the wholesalers while I’m wastin’ time driving around the wop-wops on your money and in your truck.”

  Leilah nodded and dragged herself upright. “Let me get some boots on and we’ll do a walk through.” Her tone sounded flat, the job overwhelming with her in the role of project manager, instead of distant admirer from the safety of Vaughan’s house.

  On the porch she pressed her feet into the borrowed boots, feeling Vaughan’s socks prickling against her toes. She should return both at some point but the realisation only added more worry to her woes. She followed Claus around the property in a reversal of their first meeting, the dau
nting volume of work no longer filling Leilah with hope. “This barn is still sound,” Claus said with enthusiasm. “Why don’t the boy and me clear all the junk to one end and use the other as a workroom?” Excitement lit his tone and forced a reluctant smile onto Leilah’s face.

  “I guess.” She glanced around her at the broken furniture stacked to one side. “Dodgy and Co went through everything and syphoned off the stuff worth anything, so why don’t we just biff all this?” She kicked at a dresser with a smashed mirror and a plank of wood slid down the corrugated wall behind, clanging wildly on the concrete floor.

  Claus nodded his head. “You know what? Them losers might have done youse a favour here. How do you feel about a bonfire? We can get this place cleared out fully and set up shop. All the building supplies is still outside and we’d have room to bring them all in afterwards.”

  “No bonfire, sorry.” Leilah wrinkled her nose. “I’d need a fire permit because we’re too close to the bush.”

  “Go get one then.” His eyes sparkled. “Waipa District Council office is in Te Awamutu. If you’re going across there, you can visit the wholesalers and pick up a fuse.”

  Leilah pulled a face. “I don’t know what I’ll need.”

  “Yeah, ya do.” Claus patted her arm, his missing tooth giving him a dark space in his smile. “Take the old one with ya and I’ll write it down. You can do it.” His encouragement made her feel like a stage struck five year old and something in Leilah responded to the paternal nurturing.

  “Ok,” she agreed. “I’ll head over there this morning. Then you can pick up the rest of the supplies from Hamilton this afternoon. I’ll fill the truck with petrol on my way back.”

  The sun baked the earth into a dusty wasteland, shrivelling the fading grass into shades of autumn. Farmers irrigated through bore holes and rainwater tanks, ranking water along with platinum and gold. The road shimmered under the glare of the sun and potholes developed as the metal peeled itself away from the tar underlay. Leilah drove with the windows down, enjoying a rare sense of freedom as the countryside whipped past amidst heat mirages.