A Mersey Mile (36 page)

‘True. Shall I make you some toast?’

‘Please, but not much butter.’

‘Oh, and I’ve changed my name to George, thought I’d better let you know.’

Polly offered no reply.

‘I killed the dragon.’

‘Did you? Well done. But not the toast – I don’t want that well done.’ It was easier to eat food that tasted of nothing. ‘George?’

‘Yes?’

‘Do we have hot water at the flat?’

‘Yes. I bought a new dragon. This one came housetrained. It doesn’t even spit.’

‘Good. Go and get my toast.’

Alone, she stretched out again. Life was a little bit out of order, and Frank was worried about something. She hadn’t pretended not to love him for half her life without learning the
signs. Too bloody full of jokes and empty laughter, he was. On top of that, she had a life inside her and she’d given up hairdressing. Somebody was coming along tomorrow to buy all her stuff,
and she was sad, because she’d been excellent at her job. ‘I’ll be a great mother,’ she said. ‘I can be good at more than one thing.’ Furthermore, this baby
would have a brilliant father.

Downstairs in the kitchen, Cal was making toast for all three of them. Linda was currently at home with her family, and the two men were deep in conversation. ‘Is there a word for the way
she is?’ Cal asked.

‘I can think of half a dozen,’ Frank answered. ‘Mad, creepy, tenacious, obsessive, bloody nuisance. She’s also as gorgeous as any film star, and she uses her looks to
wield power over men. What she doesn’t understand is that most of us want to see a bit of furniture when we look through the windows. I don’t mean she’s thick, far from it, but I
think she had her personality surgically removed. I can say in all honesty that I never met anyone like her before.’

‘What’s it like being a sex symbol, Frank? She must see something in you. Go on, tell us the secret.’

‘Shut up. I’ve got the only woman good enough for me upstairs with heartburn and a bad attitude. I’ve made us a nice enough home in the flat above the shop, and it’ll
suit us fine till the baby’s walking. After that, I’ll let the flat and find us a house with a bit of garden. Well, that was the plan till Elaine Lewis turned up like a bad penny.
There’s something unreal about her. She’s scary.’

‘Hmm. And she’s watching your shop and flat.’

‘Yes.’

Cal buttered the toast. ‘This is Polly’s on the blue plate. Too much butter makes her sick. Elaine Lewis will know you’re not living down Rice Lane now.’

Frank grinned. ‘Never underestimate your own people, lad. I’ve a neighbour down there who’s seventy if a day, and he sneaks in and messes about with lights and curtains. The
wireless works, so he’s got a bit of entertainment, and I’ve told him he can light the fire, but he has to keep checking front and back for a mad woman. As long as I leave him tea,
milk, a box of biscuits, coal and kindling, he’s happy to do the job for thirty bob a week. By the time I roll up for work in the morning, little Miss Sunshine will be at her office in the
city.’

‘What about your car? She’ll see it’s not there now.’

‘But it is there. I’m using the shop van. I keep it in a garage nearby.’

‘Right. Stick your toast and cocoa on that tray. Oh, and she’ll find out you’re here, by the way. And she’ll soon know you’re expecting a child, which could make
matters worse.’

‘I’ll let people round here in on the problem by bringing the matter up under any other business at the next Turnpike meeting. They’ll all watch out for her. If she has as much
sense as I think she has underneath it all, she’ll not tackle Scotty Road. Even Hitler couldn’t frighten this lot. Ida would have her eyes out, Hattie might clobber her with that
rounders bat she keeps for emergencies. And that’s just the women. Yes, she’ll have to watch out if she wants to poke about round here.’

‘I agree with that. Some of the women terrify me, Frank.’

Frank laughed. ‘It has to be just the women; very few Scotland Road men would clobber a female. Are you OK getting yourself to bed now you’ve sacked the attendant, or do you need
me?’

‘I’m OK, thanks. You see before you an almost upright citizen with a lot less pain. This wedding’s going to be a scream. I’ve to walk Polly up the aisle with
Linda’s dad walking her, and after that I swap over and become a bridegroom. Mad. Linda’s funny. She said there’ll be a wheelbarrow in the porch in case my legs go on strike. I
asked her what people might think if a man got delivered to his destiny in a wheelbarrow, and she said the alternatives are a general anaesthetic or a shotgun. Too clever for me, is that young
woman. Mind, I’ll sort her out once my legs start working full time.’

Frank carried the tray upstairs, treading softly so that he would hear if Cal fell. But Cal’s mind was so strong and so set that he seldom stumbled. He was ready now for a made-to-measure
support for his left leg, while the right needed no help at all. His spectacular progress had been supervised by Linda and Polly, though both insisted that Cal would have made it happen anyway.

He gave Polly her toast and cocoa.

She eyed him with distrust. ‘Right, spill the beans,’ she commanded.

‘I didn’t do beans, it’s just toast with butter. How’s my son?’

‘She’s fine. I’m the one suffering. Sit down and try to behave yourself.’

He perched on the edge of the bed. ‘Right, here’s what’s happening.’ He gave her an edited version of recent developments, holding back his own fears and his
near-certainty that Elaine Lewis might well be criminally insane. ‘She thinks she’s God’s gift, but she’s like an empty diary, no appointments, no events and definitely no
friends. She needs a few months in a mental institution.’

‘Are you sure she’s the full quid, Frank?’

‘Educationally and academically, yes. I reckon her quids are guineas when it comes to her job and knowing stuff. But behaviour-wise, she’s deficient unless it’s business.
It’s been embarrassing, believe me. She drives past a couple of times a day, hangs about in her car at night. I might go and see her mother. Though I wouldn’t like to upset Mrs Lewis,
because she’s a lovely woman. She’s enough on her plate working for my mother.’

Polly agreed about Christine Lewis. Although everyone along Frank’s mile had missed him, folk in these parts had grown used to their gentle, pleasant rent collector. ‘Yes,
she’s liked round here, though her daughter sounds like one of those psychopaths. So what are you going to do?’

‘No idea. She is a lawyer, remember. But she’s got herself mixed up in the Billy Blunt compensation case, said I had to have a meeting with her. I refused, and that was possibly a
mistake on my part. I suppose I knocked her off the pedestal she built for herself. Why she fixed her sights on me I’ve no idea.’

‘You’re handsome.’

‘I know.’

Polly hit him again. ‘You love yourself, too, so you’re the same as she is.’

‘Shut up and drink your cocoa.’ He couldn’t frighten her, mustn’t have her worried, because he was here to protect her. The other bedroom, her salon, would be made into
their sitting room, and here they intended to remain until after the birth of their child. His reasons were clear only to himself: he was staying with Pol because a crazy woman might just turn and
try to hurt him, his fiancée, and anyone else connected to him.

He could well be endangering Polly and Cal by being here, but at least he was available and could keep an eye on the outside. The shop van was housed where horses had been kept for a hundred
years or more, in stables down the road. His main problem was disturbed sleep. He seemed to have trained himself to wake several times in the night, and he would creep about looking out of back and
front windows to check for Elaine Lewis. He should tell someone. Convincing police that a lawyer was crazy could be hard, though Peter Furness might listen.

‘What are you thinking about, Frank?’

‘How brains can’t stop a person being crazy. Or how brains can make a person crazy. And what if she scares the old man who watches the place for an hour or two every
night?’

‘Is she dangerous?’

‘I don’t know. I may talk to her mother. If I do, I’ll go softly, because she doesn’t deserve to suffer.’

After a pause for thought, Polly asked, ‘And Elaine?’

‘Needs to be stopped, love. I’ve riled her by not doing whatever it was she wanted. Just keep an eye open for her, eh? While I’m at the shop, be alert.’

‘Alert’s my middle name.’

He sighed dramatically. ‘Some parents have a lot to answer for.’

She was cold to the bone. A wind had whipped up over the Irish Sea; even the inside of her car was chilled. ‘How did you get here, Elaine?’ she asked herself. The
journey from Liverpool to Southport had not registered in her memory. Always, she had been in control. In her job, she needed to be streets ahead, because she was only a woman. ‘Pull yourself
together, Lewis.’ She was furious with herself for showing all her cards to Frank Charleson. His refusal to want her had numbed her to the bone, and her thinking processes had been affected,
as had her memory. Had she come here along the coastal road or via Lord Street? She had no idea.

She shuddered when she recalled the visit to his shop. Weakened by desire, she had opened herself to rejection. Her position at work might well be threatened if he reported her for harassment.
Frank Charleson was determined to put a stop to her. He was fiercely protective of Polly, and he was fast becoming Elaine’s worst enemy. She needed an ally.

‘I have an ally,’ she said.

Having sidestepped the attentions of Bob Laithwaite for some considerable time, having forbidden him to come anywhere near her home, she now had to do a complete turn, and he must become her
first. He was handsome, intelligent, and not as boring as he had first seemed. But she would be breaking her own rules. Sex for pleasure should take place between a woman and a man she desired. Sex
within marriage was merely a duty, and Bob was marriage material.

But her philosophy was already distorted, since she had made the decision that Frank could have fulfilled both roles. What she felt for Frank had to be ignored; what he felt for her must be
addressed. She now had to admit to Bob that for personal reasons, she couldn’t work with Frank. Perhaps the new boy might cut his teeth on Mr Charleson?

‘You are a stupid woman,’ she said aloud.

For a while, she sat and marshalled her thoughts into some semblance of order. ‘There is but one small step between love and hatred,’ she said. In three weeks, Frank would be married
to his real childhood sweetheart. ‘And I’ll be stuck with Lanky Laithwaite.’ He was malleable, at least. Frank was not about to reshape himself for her, was he? Whereas Bob . . .
Bob wanted her. His work was suffering, because his brain had moved south for the winter. Clearly, she was not suffering alone.

Elaine Lewis closed her eyes. ‘You may be the centre of your own universe, but you’re not even a crease on my map,’ Frank had said. So he despised her. Rather too tired to
summon up the energy required for temper, she kept herself on simmer. Mum knew there was something amiss with her. It was time to pull herself together with the help of a man who clearly adored
her. That had to involve a sexual relationship she neither wanted nor needed, though the longing for physical contact with a man grew stronger every day. ‘It should have been Frank.’ It
would never be Frank. He was lost, almost as finally as her father had been lost for eight years.

She concluded yet again that Frank Charleson might well complain and ruin her chances with the firm. He didn’t want her involved with the defending of children and the upholding of their
innate rights. He didn’t want her anywhere near his and Polly’s lives. She must stop this rocking; her personality disorder had to remain where it belonged, under her pretty shoes,
trampled on, ignored, squashed to death. And she should go home. It was late at night, and Mum might even send for the police if she continued to go missing on a regular basis.

The threatened blot on her copybook needed to be erased before it soaked in and set. He had to be removed in case he got the chance to spoil her career. Murder? Did he deserve to die because he
had refused to bed her? The answer was probably yes. It was rather radical, though, and what if she got caught? Oh, her weary mind was going too fast. Shouldn’t having Bob Laithwaite as an
ally be enough? Not if Frank submitted a complaint in the morning, she thought. Her brain was moving in circles; this had to stop.

She must go home, take herself up to bed and sneak out again. Her thoughts were becoming even further out of control. There was a can of petrol in the boot for emergencies. This was an
emergency. It was regrettable, but she must remove Frank from the scene. He hated her, had rejected her, and the only way of preventing further difficulties involved petrol, a funnel, some rag and
a match. This was a foolish and dangerous way to think, her sensible side was saying. What else might she do?

Her loud, uninhibited self was screaming for her to commit murder. Sense must prevail. There had to be another way.

Christopher Foley heard the bell at his front door. His housekeeper was outside with Kaybee, so he hastened downstairs before finishing his morning prayers. It was ten minutes
past eight, he’d been up in the night ministering to the sick, and he wasn’t dressed. After fastening the belt on his dressing gown, he opened the door, looked straight ahead, and
lowered his gaze until it fell on a child. The child was Billy Blunt, and Billy needed to be at school by nine o’clock. ‘Is this you leaving St Anthony’s and transferring to
us?’ he asked. ‘Because this school’s not as convenient for you. Are you in trouble at all?’

‘No, Father. What’s a bothy?’

‘A what?’

‘A bothy. That’s where he keeps all the newspapers with his photos in. He has a big suitcase thing hidden under planks of wood and stuff. In a bothy.’

‘I think it’s a Scottish word for a shed or a derelict cottage on a farm. Away inside with you before we both freeze to death. This is what my poor old mammy used to call pneumonia
weather.’