Lost Innocence (16 page)

Georgie shrugged. ‘I wouldn’t let anyone mess me around like that,’ she commented.

‘That’s because you’re not in love.’

‘I so am, well kind of, anyway. I was thinking, why don’t you invite your cousin to the party? It would be amazing if he came, wouldn’t it?’

Annabelle’s eyes narrowed, and catching the wickedest of wicked gleams, Georgie started to grin.

‘I have to meet him outside the Shell garage at three,’ Catrina stated, dropping her phone on the floor.

‘You know he’s just going to shag you and take you home again,’ Georgie told her.

‘You’re just jealous,’ Catrina retorted. ‘So what’s going on?’ she asked Annabelle.

‘Georgie has had the most brilliant idea,’ Annabelle informed her. ‘We’re going to ask my cousin, Nat, to the party.’

Catrina looked distinctly unimpressed. ‘Big deal,’ she said, rummaging through her make-up. ‘Do you think he’ll come?’

‘We won’t know unless we ask.’

‘If he does, then he’s mine first,’ Georgie piped up.

Annabelle’s eyes flashed. ‘You know what you can do,’ she told her hotly.

Georgie laughed, showing she’d been teasing. ‘Question is, how do we get rid of the ginger one?’ she said. ‘We don’t want her dragging along, and I, for one, definitely don’t want to see her in the nud, snooty bitch.’

‘Oh, yuk, rusty pubes,’ Catrina commented, applying mascara.

Annabelle giggled. ‘Who cares about her? All we’ve got to do is find out his mobile number so we can invite him.’

June Downey-Marsh could feel the intensity of Sabrina’s gaze even before she looked up from the computer screen in front of her. With a sleek cap of dark blonde hair, caramel-coloured eyes and a girlish tilt to the corners of her mouth, June didn’t look her entire forty-six years. However, despite her attractive appearance, since her divorce she still hadn’t been able to find a wealthy man to replace the one she’d so foolishly let slip. So she was currently living in a modest apartment on the second floor of a grand stately home, halfway between Shepton Mallet and Holly Wood. This was where she and Sabrina were now, not in the apartment, but behind the grand house in one of the offices that they leased from the National Trust. It was from here, with its eye-catching views of a water garden, a magnificent sweep of lawn and several Renaissance-style statues, that they ran the bi-monthly freesheet they’d devised and largely financed to serve the surrounding area.

‘Do you really want to do this?’ June asked seriously.

Sabrina’s expression hardened. ‘That shop only has a licence for retail,’ she stated tightly, ‘which means she will be operating illegally if she starts up a manufacturing enterprise.’

‘Does sculpting qualify as…?’

‘What’s more, she has it in her mind to start bringing tourism to Holly Wood, and the people of Holly Wood don’t want it.’

‘Have you asked them?’

‘I don’t have to. I live amongst them, so I know how they feel about the village being invaded by coachloads of Japanese and check-trousered Americans.’

‘Sabrina, get real, one little art shop isn’t going to put
Holly Wood on anyone’s tourist map, and even if it did, no one would come, because Holly Wood doesn’t have anything else to offer.’

‘I thought you were supporting me over this,’ Sabrina said crossly.

‘I am, I’m just trying to point out the holes in your argument. And this letter,’ June added, indicating the one on the screen, ‘is too emotional. You need to tone it down and put forward a rational case for why the shop should not be used as a…
manufacturing
unit.’

Sabrina looked at her own copy of the letter she’d drafted before coming here.

‘The point is,’ June went on, ‘even if you manage to stop her turning it into a workshop, she’s still entitled to sell her sculptures, and anything else she might choose.’

‘Not if the rest of the village don’t want her to reopen the shop. I could get up a petition.’

‘Sabrina, save yourself the embarrassment. She’s from that village. They’ve all known her since she was knee-high to a grasshopper, and everyone loved her mother. I’m telling you, for your own good, they won’t take your side against her, not over something like this.’

Sabrina’s eyes closed in frustration. ‘June, I have to do something to get rid of her,’ she groaned. ‘We can’t exist in the same village, you know that as well as I do, so help me out here, come up with a plan.’

Sitting back in her chair, June folded her arms and regarded her sadly. ‘You won’t want to hear this,’ she said, ‘but I’m afraid I agree with Robert. You should try to make peace with her. No, hear me out,’ she said, as Sabrina looked about to erupt. ‘The chances are she won’t want to have anything to do with you…’

‘Save your breath, June,’ Sabrina broke in. ‘There’s no way in the world I’m going to speak to her. Would you, if you were me, after everything that’s happened? Craig and I
loved
one another. If it weren’t for her…’

As her eyes filled with tears, June gave a murmur of sympathy. More than anyone, with the exception of Robert, she knew how Sabrina had suffered after her break-up with Craig. The heartbreak had consumed her as voraciously as
the affair itself, though whether Craig had been equally distraught, or obsessed, June had never been sure. It had obviously meant something to him while it was happening, though, because they’d spent every available minute together, travelling back and forth across the country, meeting halfway in fancy hotels or cheap motels, in one another’s houses, sometimes even in the car. Secretly June had always been afraid of how it would end, because relationships of such intensity were almost always doomed to disaster, and when the dreaded explosion did finally come, she had rarely seen displays of emotion like it. Many and long were the days and nights she’d sat with Sabrina, watching her tearing herself to pieces, so desperate to see Craig, or even hear him, while swearing the worst imaginable revenge on Alicia, that June had been afraid to leave her alone.

‘I have to speak to him,’ Sabrina choked, slopping her wine as she reached for the phone. ‘I can’t go on like this. I need to tell him how I feel.’

‘He already knows,’ June said kindly, ‘and it’s gone one o’clock in the morning.’

They were in Sabrina’s bedroom, Robert was next door in the guest room, where he’d been sleeping since the day Craig had told Sabrina it was over. Three months banished from his own bed was more than most men would take, but Robert was hiding his own heartache while trying to be patient and understanding, and asking for June’s help when he needed it, because, when drunk, Sabrina couldn’t stand to have him near her.

‘It doesn’t matter what time it is,’ Sabrina slurred. ‘I know he’ll be lying awake thinking of me.’ Her face crumpled as more tears spilled on to her ravaged cheeks. ‘I can’t bear to think of him hurting too,’ she wailed. ‘We have to be together. It’s wrong for us to be apart like this.’ She poured more wine into her glass. ‘You know she blackmailed him into going back to her, don’t you?’ she ranted. ‘She threatened to tell the children about us and turn them against him, and he couldn’t have stood that. Nat and Darcie mean everything to him.’ She drank some wine and hiccuped. ‘We used to talk about how
wonderful it would be if they could come to live with us,’ she ran on, ‘how we’d be a family, all of us. Annabelle used to get along so well with his two. They were like brother and sisters already, but that bitch wouldn’t let him go.’ She was swaying badly and as her head went down she started to cry again. ‘He never really loved her,’ she sobbed, ‘but it wasn’t until he met me that he realised how shallow their marriage actually was. What we had together … It was like nothing I’ve ever experienced before. Nor had he. We just couldn’t get enough of one another.’ Seeming to register the phone in her hand again, she looked down at it blearily, and suddenly remembering why it was there she opened it up.

As she dialled the number she was hardly able to see, she’d cried and drunk so much, and June could only watch helplessly, knowing she’d turn violent if she tried to stop her.

‘It’s me,’ Sabrina slurred into the phone when he answered. ‘I know it’s late …’

June heard him say, ‘I can’t speak to you now. You have to stop ringing here.’

‘Craig, please listen to me. I’ll do anything …’

‘I don’t want you to do anything. I’m sorry …’

‘Please, let’s just talk,’ she begged. ‘That’s all I’m asking.’

‘There’s no more to say.’

‘I know you still love me. It’s only because
she’s
there that you can’t say it.’

‘I have to go.’

‘No! Don’t hang up. Craig,
please
. I’ll drive up to London …’

Alicia’s voice came down the line saying, ‘If you call here again I’ll report you for harassment,’ and the line went dead.

‘Oh God, I can’t bear it,’ Sabrina seethed, rolling on the bed and clutching her knees to her chest as she sobbed. ‘She won’t let him speak to me. She knows how much I mean to him and she’s afraid he’ll leave her. If he doesn’t, June, I swear I’m going to kill myself. I mean it, I can’t go on like this. There’s no point to anything without him.’

Hoping Robert wasn’t able to hear, June went to try and comfort her.

‘Mum? What’s the matter?’

Startled, June turned round and her heart burned with pity to see poor young Annabelle standing in the doorway. Though
it wasn’t the first time she’d witnessed her mother in this state, it was plain to anyone how much it was scaring her.

‘It’s OK,’ June said, going to her. ‘She’ll be fine.’

‘No I won’t,’ Sabrina choked. ‘Nothing will ever be fine until I’m back with him.’

Annabelle turned her bemused eyes to June. ‘Who’s she talking about?’ she asked.

‘No one,’ June answered, trying to usher her out.

‘I’m dying,’ Sabrina gasped from the bed. ‘My heart is breaking and no one in this house cares.’

‘Sabrina,’ June said sharply, hoping to make her stop.

‘I care, Mum,’ Annabelle said shakily.

‘Just go away,’ Sabrina cried. ‘I don’t want you here.’

‘She’s had too much to drink,’ June whispered, as Annabelle started to cry. ‘Come on, I’ll take you back to bed.’

‘She’s really stupid, the way she carries on like that,’ Annabelle wept, as June tucked her in. ‘She shouldn’t drink, because she says horrible things and hurts people’s feelings.’

‘I know,’ June whispered, ‘just as long as you understand she doesn’t mean them.’

‘Anyway, I don’t care if she does, because I’ve got my friends and everyone.’

‘And Robert,’ June reminded her.

‘Yes, and him.’

After pressing a kiss to her forehead, June returned to Sabrina’s room to find her on the phone to Craig again. ‘If you won’t see me I swear I’m going to kill myself,’ she was crying.

June didn’t hear his reply, so could only imagine how angry, or afraid, or guilty he was feeling.

‘I
will
,’ Sabrina shouted. ‘OK, then tell me you love me. Yes you can. I don’t care if she’s there. No! It’s not over, Craig. It never will be and you know it, because it’s not what either of us wants.’

Since June had never discussed anything about the relationship or the break-up with Craig, she had no idea how he’d really felt about it all. She only knew that until the day he’d died Sabrina had never allowed herself to stop believing that somehow they’d be together again.

‘The last words he said to me,’ Sabrina murmured, as June went to pour them both a coffee, ‘were “I love you.” I never spoke to him again after that, but it was still as though we were soulmates, two halves of the same person. I know he didn’t share any of that with her.’

Yet he stayed with her
, June was thinking,
and if you believe it was because of the children, I’m sorry, but you’re deluding yourself, because children survive divorce and if two people love one another as much as you seem to think you and Craig did, then nothing would keep them apart.
‘You’re happy with Robert though,’ she said, aloud, making it a statement rather than a question.

Sabrina sighed. ‘I suppose so. I mean, yes, of course, but it’s not the same as the feelings I had for Craig. Not even close.’

‘Maybe it’s… healthier, the way things are with Robert?’

Sabrina nodded, but she didn’t seem to be listening. Then her eyes focused again on the letter she’d drafted about Alicia’s workshop. ‘I have to get her out of Holly Wood,’ she said forcefully. ‘The place isn’t big enough for both of us, and as far as I’m concerned she has to learn that she can’t have everything.’ She looked up as June passed her a coffee. ‘She might have taken Craig away from me,’ she said brokenly, ‘but I swear I’ll kill her before I let her do the same with my home.’

Alicia was about to leave the house when her mobile rang on the hall table, providing a timely reminder to take it with her. Grabbing it, she tucked it under her chin as she riffled through the mail Sam had just sent cascading through the front door.

‘Hi, is that Alicia?’ a voice came cheerily down the line.

Recognising Annabelle’s voice, and wondering what happened to the ‘Aunt’, Alicia said, ‘Yes, it is. How lovely to hear you. You’re up early this morning.’

‘Oh yeah, well, I’m staying with a friend, you met her, Georgie, and we kind of haven’t really been to sleep yet. Anyway, that’s not why I’m ringing. I was hoping you’d be able to give me Nat’s mobile. There’s this party that loads of his friends are going to, and we thought he might like to come too.’

‘You mean the one in the Copse, because I think he’s already going to…’

‘Oh, no, that’s not for another couple of weeks. This one’s on Saturday. Everyone’s going to be there, and I thought, if he’s going to be living here now, that it would be a good chance for him to catch up with everyone. They all want him to come, and they’ve made me promise to make him, so if you could let me have his number…’

Suspecting Nat might prefer her not to have it, especially while Summer was around, Alicia said, ‘I could probably take my phone up to him now. I think I heard him moving around a few minutes ago.’

‘Oh no, it’s OK,’ Annabelle responded. ‘I don’t have the actual address yet, so if you can just give me his number, I’ll ring later to give him the details once I have them.’