Dancing in the Dark (32 page)

“But we’ll still be Miss Clancy and Mr Fritz back in Liverpool?”

He looked at her quizzically. “I think that would be wise, don’t you? Friends at home, lovers in the Isle of Man. That way, you’re less likely to tire of me. It can be our little monthly treat, our little adventure. You know,” he breathed happily, “I’ve always been a tiny bit in love with you ever since the day you came to the laundry for an interview all those years ago.”

So Bel had been right, after all. Flo squeezed his arm.

“I’ve always been very fond of you.”

“Let’s hope Stella didn’t notice, eh?”

She couldn’t be bothered telling him that Stella had, because it was too late to do anything about it.

“I suppose we should get some sleep,” he suggested. She slid under the covers and he bent and kissed her forehead.

“We have to be up early to catch the boat home.”

He had fallen asleep immediately, but Flo had lain wondering what she’d tell Bel when she went away again in four weeks’ time. She wasn’t sure why, but she preferred keeping her relationship with Mr Fritz a secret, even from her best friend. Right now, Bel thought she’d gone on retreat to a convent in Wales. I’ll say I’m going on another one. It fits in with the image she’s got of me.

Let her go on thinking I’m as dull at ditchwater . . .

“The boat’s just about to dock, Mr Fritz,” she called.

He came out of the bathroom smiling, a towel tucked under his chin, patting his cheeks. His kindly, good-natured face looked young this morning, almost boyish.

“I think we can dispense with the Mr, don’t you, Flo?”

As she smiled back, she felt a surge of emotion, not real love but almost. “I’d sooner not, if you don’t mind. I’ll always think of you as Mr Fritz.”

Millie

I’d been so engrossed in Flo’s love letters that I’d forgotten about the time. I’d be late for work if I didn’t hurry. I dragged on the red suit and T-shirt I’d worn the day before, and combed my hair in the car when I stopped at traffic lights. The car behind hooted angrily as I was putting on my lipstick.

Halfway through the morning I answered the phone for the umpteenth time, doing my utmost not to sound as harassed as I felt.

“It’s me,” James said humbly.

If I followed my instincts and slammed down the receiver, he would only ring back. “What do you want?”

I snapped.

“To see you, to apologise.”

“I’ll take the apology for granted. There’s no need for us to see each other.”

“Millie, darling, I don’t know what came over me.

Let’s have dinner tonight. Let me explain.” He sounded desperate, but I hadn’t forgotten that he’d raised his fist to strike me. I wasn’t interested in explanations or apologies.

I could never forgive him.

“I’d sooner not.”

“Please, Millie.” He was almost sobbing. “Please, darling, I have to see you.”

“Look, James, I’m very busy. I don’t like to be rude, but I’m going to ring off. Goodbye.”

An hour later, a van drew up outside the office and a girl came in with a bouquet of red roses for Miss Millicent Cameron; two dozen, surrounded by fern, wrapped in gold paper and tied with copious amounts of scarlet ribbon. There was no card, but only one person could have sent them. I thought them ostentatious, but Diana was impressed. I dumped the flowers on her desk. “In that case, they’re yours. Your father might like them.”

“But they must cost the earth!” Diana protested.

“I don’t care. I don’t want them.” I changed the subject.

“How’s your father?”

Diana’s face brightened. “Much improved. We think he might be in remission. It happens sometimes with cancer. Yesterday I took him to Otterspool, and we had a picnic in the car. I can’t think why we’ve never done things like that before.”

“My mother was talking about moving away from Liverpool, and I suddenly realised how much I’d miss her.” I’d never mentioned anything about my family to Diana before, and felt that I’d made the first gesture towards friendship.

We came to the conclusion that most children took their parents too much for granted, and agreed to lunch together if we could get away at the same time. Diana hissed, “Is George still cross with me over those notes? I suppose I’ve blown my chances with that job I was after.”

“The job’s Oliver’s. It always was. As for the notes, I bet George has forgotten all about them.”

“God, I hope so.” Diana pursed her lips. “I made a terrible cock-up there. I envy you, Millie. You never do anything to rock the boat. You’re always so meek and pliable. Men prefer women they think they can control.

George doesn’t like me because I’m too independent.” It might have been unintentional, but there was a strong note of spite in her voice. She touched a rose. “No one’s ever sent me flowers like this.”

Whether she meant it or not, I still felt affronted. Meek and pliable? Me? I bent my head over my work, and decided to be too busy when Diana suggested it was time for lunch.

After work, I drove to Blundellsands to do some washing and take a shower. There was a message from. James on the answering-machine, which I refused to listen to. I switched off the machine and rang my mother. “Is everything okay, Mum?”

“Everything’s fine, luv. Why?”

“It’s just that my answering-machine’s broken, I’ll be out most nights this week and I didn’t want you to worry.”

Nor did I want a repeat of the Birmingham episode.

During the week ahead, a minor crisis of one sort or another was bound to occur in the Cameron household and Mum would need someone to talk to. “Call me at the office if something important crops up,” I told her.

“As long as it won’t get you into trouble, luv.”

It wouldn’t, I assured her. “What will you be up to the nights you’re out?” she asked.

I imagined telling the truth: that I would be sleeping with the grandson of the man who’d broken Flo Clancy’s heart almost sixty years ago. I said, “I thought it was time I put in a few more hours at Auntie Flo’s. I’m getting nowhere at this rate.”

“I’m sorry you were landed with it, Millicent. I never thought it’d turn out to be such a mammoth task.”

“I’m quite enjoying it.”

“Gran said you’d met Bel Szerb.”

“Bel who?”

“Szerb. At least, that’s how I knew her. I think she got married again. She was a dead scream, Bel was.”

“She still is.” After impressing on her that she must nag Declan to apply for a college course, I rang off. The washing had finished its cycle so I hung it over the bath, packed a bag and made my way to William Square and Tom O’Mara.

When I got out of the car, Peter Maxwell was going down the steps to his flat with several files under his arm.

He wore jeans, a thick check shirt and a donkey jacket.

He grinned at me through the railings. “Hi! Fancy a coffee and a chocolate biccy?”

“I wouldn’t mind.” His laid-back, easy-going manner was welcome after James’s histrionics.

His flat was completely different from next door: red-tiled floor, red curtains and white walls hung with abstract paintings. It was a man’s room. Apart from the paintings and a single white-shaded lamp, there were no other ornaments and the furniture was minimal, mainly of natural wood. Two armchairs were upholstered in black and white check. The effect was cool and airy, tranquil, giving the impression that the occupant was at peace with himself, which I envied.

“This isn’t a bit like Flo’s,” I remarked. Another difference was that everywhere was warm due to the two large radiators, one at each end of the room.

“I know. I’ll just put the kettle on.” He took off his coat, hung it behind the door and disappeared into the kitchen.

When he came back, he said, “I used to see your auntie at least once a week. It was my job to get rid of the bottles.”

“What bottles?”

He grinned. “The sherry bottles. She didn’t want Charmian, the binmen and that aged but gorgeous redhead to know how much she was drinking. Flo was knocking back more than a bottle a day over the last year. She was a nice old girl, though. I liked her.”

“I only saw her once, at another great-aunt’s funeral.”

“I wish I’d known you two were related. Flo would have been tickled pink to know we’d been in the same class at school.” He disappeared into the kitchen again, returning with two mugs of coffee and a packet of Jaffa cakes. “I’m a lousy house-husband. I’m afraid my cupboards are bare. I hope you’ve eaten.”

“I keep forgetting to eat.”

He ran his fingers through his beard, which already looked like an untidy bird’s nest, and said thoughtfully, Tin sure there’s a tin of corned beef and a packet of instant spuds out there. I’ll knock you up a plate of corned-beef hash if you like?”

“No thanks.” I shuddered. “That’s one of my mother’s favourite dishes. It would remind me too much of home.”

“I used to feel like that about Coronation Street,” he said. The mam never missed a single episode, and the house had to be dead quiet. You daren’t sneeze else you’d get a belt around the ear. For years afterwards if I passed a house and heard the music I got goosebumps.”

We stared at each other and laughed. “Memories, eh!” he said wryly.

At the end of the room, I noticed there were french windows leading to the tiny yard.

“I had them put in last year.” He looked quite houseproud.

“It’s nice to have them open in summer, brightens up the place no end. That’s how I met Flo. We used to gab to each other over the garden wall.”

“Does that mean you actually own this flat? It’s not rented?” I said, surprised.

“I own about a quarter, the building society has the rest.”

“I can’t imagine anyone choosing to live round here if they didn’t have to,” I said incredulously.

“How dare you criticise my place of abode, Miss Cameron?” he said mildly. “I love Toxteth. I’ve been broken into twice, but that can happen anywhere. The people round here are the salt of the earth, including the girls who hang around the square. Okay, so it’s violent, but otherwise it’s a good place to live, steeped in atmosphere and history. This is the closest to how Liverpool was when it was the greatest port in the world. And did you know that, centuries ago, Toxteth was a royal park where King John used to hunt deer and wild boar?”

“I’m afraid that piece of information has been denied me until now.”

“If you like, I’ll take you on a tour one day, show you precisely where his hunting lodges were situated.”

“I would like—it sounds fascinating.”

He looked chuffed. “Then it’s a date.”

I stayed for another cup of coffee before going next door. A scantily clad Fiona was shivering against the railings. To my surprise, she deigned to speak. “There’s been someone looking for you. She said she’d come back another time. It wasn’t Bel or Charmian. It was someone else.”

“Thanks for telling me.”

Fiona yawned. “Any time.”

As usual the air in Flo’s flat smelt damp, and it was freezing cold. I turned the fire on full blast and knelt before the hissing jets, shivering and rubbing my hands, thinking enviously of Peter Maxwell’s central heating.

When the heat became too much, I retreated to my favourite spot on the settee and promptly fell asleep. It was nearly midnight when I woke up and my legs were covered with red blotches from the fire. Everywhere was still and quiet outside and the flat felt as if it was in a time warp, engulfed in flickering shadows and divorced from anything real.

My life’s becoming more and more surreal, I thought. I scarcely ate, slept at the most peculiar times, spent hardly any time at home, and had lost interest in my job, though I still worked hard and hoped George hadn’t noticed.

Worst of all, I was having an affair with a man who was the epitome of everything I normally loathed about men.

Things that had once seemed important, no longer mattered.

I went into the bedroom and changed into a nightdress, Flo’s quilted dressing-gown, and her pink slippers, then sprayed myself with perfume ready for Tom, who might arrive at any minute. Until he came, I’d sort out a few more of Flo’s papers.

With a sense of anticipation usually reserved for the start of a him or a television programme I was looking forward to, I settled in front of the bureau. The first thing I picked up was a bundle of letters from Bel sent during the war. It didn’t seem proper to read them so I put them to one side in case Bel would like them back.

Next, a large, very old brown envelope with “ Wythenshaw’s Photographic Studios—Portraits a Speciality” printed on the top left-hand corner. Predictably, it contained a photograph and, as I pulled it out, I wondered why Flo hadn’t put it on the table with the others. It was a school photo: five rows of children, the smallest ones sitting cross-legged at the front. A boy at the end of the front row, the only child not smiling, had been circled with pencil.

What on earth was Flo doing with a photo of our Declan? I looked at the back, but there was only a stamped date, September 1945, a third of a century before Declan was born. There was something else inside the envelope, a piece of yellowing paper folded into four. It was a crude, crayon drawing of a woman with sticks for limbs, yellow hair and gooseberry green eyes. Her mouth was a huge upwards red curve, and she wore a blue dress shaped like a triangle with three buttons as big as Smarties down the front. Underneath was printed, in a careful, childish hand, “my frend flo”.

There was a name at the bottom written in pencil: Hugh O’Mara.

Tom’s father must have done the drawing I held in my hand. Despite the stick limbs and the mouth that stretched from ear to ear, there was something undeniably real and alive about the woman, as though the youthful artist had done his utmost to convey the inward radiance of his friend Flo. That both items had been together in the envelope meant that the child in the photograph was almost certainly Hugh O’Mara. I would have loved to have shown it to Tom, but Flo must have had a reason for keeping the photo hidden, and it seemed only right to respect it.

Tom had arrived—I could hear his light footsteps, and forgot about photographs, forgot about everything, as I waited for the sound of his key in the door. He came prowling in, a graceful, charismatic figure, despite the tasteless electric blue suit and white frilly shirt. No words were spoken as we stared at each other across the room.