Faith (31 page)

‘Sexy daydream?’ Frances giggled.

‘A real hot one,’ Laura replied and smiled. Frances was a nice kid, only eighteen, a Goth and something of a hard case, but she was bright and often very funny.

‘I’ll let you get back to it then,’ Frances replied. ‘Any good?’ she asked, waving her copy of
Cover Her Face
by P.D. James.

‘Great,’ Laura said. ‘But you might find English village life a bit tame after Glasgow, even with Inspector Dalgliesh on the prowl.’

‘Is there any sex in it?’ Frances asked.

Laura half smiled. ‘Do you want there to be?’

‘There’s nae point reading it unless there’s some.’ Frances shrugged.

Later that same day, when she was back in her cell after supper, Laura put down her pen and notepad as she found herself thinking about Stuart. She wondered where he was and what he was doing, and smiled to herself thinking how smart he was to have found Meggie. She would love to know what they talked about – Stuart had a way of making women open up. When they were together she almost told him the whole truth about Greg many times, and now she didn’t know what possessed her to keep it to herself.

Was it her ego? Afraid she would look less shiny and whole? Or because she never wanted anyone to feel sorry for her?

She really didn’t know. She knew now that there was no shame in admitting hurt and fear or in showing another person you could be vulnerable. But at twenty-seven she had been something of a hothead.

That night when she left Chelsea, she drove all the way to Brixham in Devon. It was astounding that she got there, considering her injuries. She remembered that she cried on and off all the way.

‘Funny how people run to places they were once happy in,’ she murmured to herself.

She could have gone over to Meggie and Ivy’s, to Jackie too for that matter, any one of them would have comforted her, tucked her into a bed and taken care of Barney too. But it was that pride thing. She didn’t want them to see her that way.

It was just on dawn when she got to Brixham and she parked her car in the harbour and watched the sky gradually lightening. She was in such pain she could barely focus her eyes, and she was dreading Barney waking because she didn’t know how she was going to be able to look after him. In her rush to leave she’d forgotten his pushchair, and she doubted she’d be able to carry him.

But as the sun rose she took comfort in the symbolism of a new day. She might be badly hurt but she’d finally got away from Greg. She had to embark on a new life now, and she’d make sure it was a better one.

Later that day she found a studio flat to rent. Just one room and a bathroom but it was spacious, light and bright and close to the harbour. She stayed there right up till the end of June when the owner had a holiday booking, spending most days on the beach with Barney, or going for long walks. In the evenings when she’d put Barney to bed, she read and watched television. As each day passed her injuries hurt less, and as the bruises faded she realized she felt happier than she had for a very long time.

She sent cards to Jackie and her sisters, just saying that she’d left Greg and would be in touch when she was settled. She didn’t dare give Jackie the address as she was afraid Greg might winkle it out of her. She thought it best that Meggie and Ivy didn’t know it either; they might turn up to see her and she didn’t want to be questioned.

Barney became toilet-trained while she was there, and she taught him to eat with a spoon and fork and drink from a proper cup. Every day he learned more new words, and delighted in putting whole sentences together. They both became brown as berries, and Laura found herself revelling in the new closeness she had with him. Greg had never liked her playing noisy or messy games with Barney when he was home; in truth his own upbringing had been so formal and regimented that he expected Laura should be the same with Barney.

Laura set off for Cornwall when she had to give up the flat in Brixham. She would have liked to stay there, but she couldn’t find anywhere to live that was cheap. Although she had the money she’d taken from Greg – there had been £1,500 in the envelope – she had to be really careful with it until she could find somewhere permanent and get a job and a childminder.

It was in Looe that she met the bunch of Scottish hippies who told her about the commune in Castle Douglas. They were fun people, warm and feckless, camping out on the cliff top, drinking too much, smoking a great deal of dope, but they welcomed Barney and her and didn’t ask too many questions. She stayed with them in their tent, because like Brixham, flats or rooms in Looe cost too much in the summer season.

Fate stepped in and took a hand when her friends were arrested for allegedly driving away from a petrol station without paying. She went to the police station to see them when she heard, and they told her they hadn’t done it. It seemed the police were trumping up charges for any hippies coming down to Cornwall, their way of deterring them. Her friends told her she’d better move on before she was picked up too. Rob, the guy she liked best, suggested she went up to Castle Douglas.

So that was where she went. It didn’t make any sense, she knew no one in Scotland, but she couldn’t face going to live in a city again. All she had in her mind was the warmth and easygoing, unmaterialistic natures of those Scots, a kind of template of the kind of people she felt she might belong with.

And she found Stuart at the journey’s end.

9

Laura was running through a field of long grass. She could feel the sun biting into her arms and her hair bouncing on her shoulders. At first she was frightened, as if someone were chasing her, but then she suddenly realized she was running to a figure whose face she couldn’t see, and he had his arms outstretched as if to catch her.

She woke to find herself not in a sun-filled meadow, but in her cell, with the faint glow of the lights on the prison fence shining down on her. She closed her eyes and tried to get back into the dream, but it was gone.

Wide awake now and too hot, she threw off her blanket and turned her pillow over to the cool side. This was one of those moments that brought home to her exactly what losing her freedom meant. She couldn’t get up and make a cup of tea, or switch on the light and read a book. She couldn’t even walk out the door.

When she first got here she often had panic attacks at night when she felt she had a band around her heart, slowly squeezing till it would eventually stop pumping her blood. Sweat would pour off her and the walls seemed to close in.

But like most of the hideous things about prison, she’d eventually found a way of dealing with it. She just had to lie still, relax first her feet, then her legs, and gradually, bit by bit, make a conscious effort to work her way right up her body, relaxing it until the whole of her felt like a soft sponge. Then she could let good thoughts come to her.

The lovely dream she’d woken from was a good place to start tonight, for she understood the symbolism in it. She hadn’t exactly been pursued by anyone as she drove up to Scotland all those years ago, but she had the weight of all the unhappiness with Greg still in her head, and the anxiety that she needed to make a real home again for Barney.

She had broken her journey from Cornwall in Bristol, staying the night in a bed and breakfast. The following morning she bought food for a picnic and spent the day with Barney in a park. In the early evening when he was growing tired, she’d tucked him up on the back seat of the car and started off for Scotland.

It was an arduous journey. Her Beetle wasn’t fast and the headlights were dim. As it got dark she became worried that she was losing her way, and she had to stop every now and then to check her map by the light of a torch. She had never been further north than Leeds before, and then only by train, and it was a strange and nerve-racking experience to be bombing along in the dark with no idea what lay to the right or left of her or how far she was from a town or village.

She did turn off the main road when she found herself almost nodding off. She supposed she must have slept for an hour or so, for when she began driving again, the first rays of light were coming into the sky. Her spirits rose as she saw the beauty of the Lake District unfolding before her, and the fresh, warm air coming in through the window was as intoxicating as a glass of champagne.

On the last lap of the journey from Dumfries, where they had their breakfast in a transport café, on to Castle Douglas, Barney was happily singing nursery rhymes and pointing out cows, sheep and geese on farms. Although the small stone cottages, the hills covered in firs and the moorlike wide open spaces with not a house for miles seemed very stark after the lushness of the south-west of England, Laura had an odd feeling of coming home.

She was close to total exhaustion as she spotted a man on the roof of a house which was up a farm track. By then she was afraid she was never going to find the commune. When she’d asked for directions in Castle Douglas, she’d met a touch of hostility, and only vague instructions just to take the road to Dalbeattie.

Although she couldn’t see the man’s face as he came towards her car, because the sun was in her eyes, his long coppery-brown hair, bare chest and cut-down Levis all made her heart leap, for at least he was unlikely to be affronted when she asked where the commune was.

Her very first thought was that he was a bit simple, for he stared at her vacantly for some moments before answering her question. But when he did speak, his voice was like music and she realized he was a little stunned by her.

She ought to have been horrified by ‘the hoose’, as everyone called that place. A few days later she overheard a man in Castle Douglas call it ‘the hoose where all those dirty hippies stay’. It was almost falling down, with weeds growing up through the roof, no electricity or hot water, and precious little furniture. Yet she felt no horror, for the sun was dazzling, there were trees and lush long grass, and someone had fixed a gaily striped awning above a rough table and benches outside.

The man who introduced himself as Stuart told her it wasn’t a commune but a mere squat, without any other children there. The fact that everyone else in the place was still sleeping meant drugs and heaven knows what else, so any sensible mother would have got back in her car and driven off. But there was something about Stuart, with his kind grey eyes, strong chin and a gentlemanly quality that made her feel she could trust him with Barney while she just slept for a while.

It was in the evening that she felt herself being drawn towards him, and even though she tried to tell herself that he was too young for her and too unworldly, she had a feeling she was in the grip of destiny and she had no choice in the matter but just to flow with it.

His feelings showed openly on his face – a good face, she thought, as she watched him covertly in the light of the campfire while he played his guitar. She’d already been told by Josie, a hard-faced Londoner with squaw-like plaits, that Stuart had made the rough table and benches from some fallen trees and had fixed the ancient range in the kitchen so they could cook on it. Josie had joked he was the ideal man to be shipwrecked with, as he’d build you a house and catch you food without any trouble. She also added that she thought he was sexy.

Laura thought he was sexy too, though not in the strutting, narcissistic way of the men she knew around Chelsea, who had honed their skills as lovers through endless loveless practice. Stuart’s sexiness was of the innate kind, which extended to everything he did. As he bent over his guitar he was almost making love to it, and while eating earlier he’d shown the same passion, enjoying every mouthful.

His lean hips, the width of his shoulders and the muscles in his arms had not been achieved by weight-lifting or strenuous sport, only through his work. He was a man at peace with himself, uncomplicated, honest and joyful.

She’d observed him playing with Barney earlier, throwing him up in the air, playfighting and rolling around with him, a natural father even though he professed to have had no previous experience with small children. She found that touching, for Greg had never been comfortable or at ease with his son.

Stuart wouldn’t stand out in a crowd – his complexion was unfashionably ruddy, and his teeth weren’t too good. But the thoughtfulness of his grey eyes, the sensuality of his wide mouth and the straight, rather aristocratic nose, made her pulse race. If he didn’t attempt to seduce her, and she doubted he would, for he seemed a little shy and in awe of her, then she intended to seduce him.

It happened seamlessly. They went into Stuart’s room to put Barney to bed and suddenly they were kissing. Laura had never known that kind of instant, all-consuming passion before. In the past, when she felt she desired someone enough to go to bed with them, there was always a period before peeling off her clothes when she felt tense and apprehensive. She would take herself off to a bathroom to wash and clean her teeth, often prolonging this to put off the moment when she’d got to go back to the man. She had often semi-jokingly told Jackie that she’d like it better if she could get undressed in the dark and slip into bed without being seen, or seeing her partner.

But Stuart just blew away all her inhibitions. Her clothes came off effortlessly and without embarrassment, and just the touch of his bare chest against hers, the smell of the bonfire on their skin, those hard, manly hands caressing her was all the aphrodisiac she needed.

His chin was stubbly, they were both sweaty and in need of a shower, but that only seemed to give the lovemaking an extra edge. Greg had made love to her as if he was following a sex manual; he knew the right buttons to push, but it was predictable and lacking in fire.

The fire was so hot with Stuart that she felt she might explode. They devoured each other like ravaging beasts, yet there were moments of such sweet tenderness that she found herself crying and felt his cheeks too were wet with tears. It was incomparable with anything that had gone before; no man had ever touched her soul the way Stuart did, and she had never wanted to please anyone more.