Sunshine Over Wildflower Cottage (32 page)

‘I told you,’ said Stel. ‘I was giving him a birthday card.’

‘Why didn’t you just post it through the letter box?’

‘I wanted to say Happy Birthday in person.’ It came out as
happy birdie
. She couldn’t talk properly.

‘He fancies you,’ said Ian. ‘He’s got the hump now that I’m on the scene.’

He had manoeuvred her nightdress nearly over her head. Her limbs felt too heavy to stop him.

‘Don’t. I don’t want to.’

The room was spinning. There was something wrong. This wasn’t normal drunk.

Ian’s hand cupped her face. ‘Just a word of warning, Stelly. I don’t share.’

His fingers were as tight as a clamp on her cheek.

‘Ian, get off.’

‘I don’t think so, Stel,’ he said.

Chapter 69

Stel swam to consciousness the next morning with the hangover from hell. She felt as if someone had emptied out her head and replaced her brain with rocks that crunched painfully together at the slightest movement. Sound hurt her ears, light hurt her eyes, her mouth was bone dry and her breath smelled foul when she exhaled.

Her eyes focused on Ian standing at her side holding a mug of tea.

‘Morning, love. How do you feel?’ His voice was smooth as honey.

Stel didn’t answer. How could he behave as if nothing had happened?

He laughed. ‘What are you looking at me like that for with your lip all curled up?’

‘You . . .’ she coughed up something thick and nasty. She reached over for the box of tissues on the bedside table.

‘How very attractive,’ Ian tutted. ‘Now, what were you saying?’ He sat down on the side of the bed.

‘I didn’t want sex last night,’ said Stel.

‘I know, you said,’ he replied.

‘So why did you . . .’

‘Why did I what?’ He looked as if he had absolutely no idea where this was going.

‘You made me,’ Stel yelled and then wished she hadn’t because her head thrummed as if someone was hitting it with a drumstick.

‘I beg your pardon?’ said Ian crossly.

‘You heard,’ said Stel.

He put the mug down on the cabinet so roughly that the tea slopped over the top and into the tissues.

‘Now wait a minute. What exactly can you remember about last night, Stelly?’

‘I remember you stripping me,’ she hissed, her voice gravelly in her throat.

Ian snatched the bedclothes down. ‘You’ve still got a nightdress on.’

Stel smoothed her hand down and felt her pants were in place too.

‘Do you remember being sick, Stelly? Do you remember me holding your hair back and you screaming at me to get off? Do you remember doing this?’

Ian stuck his cheek next to her eye and she saw the long red scratch. ‘It bloody hurt as well.’

She couldn’t remember any of that.

‘It was like you were having a nightmare,’ Ian said. ‘You came for me like a fucking tigress shouting, “I don’t want sex tonight, I don’t want sex tonight.”’ His parody of her voice make her sound pathetic. ‘And I’m sorry but I didn’t want sex with you anyway in that disgusting state.’

Could she have got all this mixed up? That scratch on his face looked nasty but her nails were bitten down. Her head hurt when she thought. She wanted a drink so badly.

‘Stelly, I’m going to tell them at work that you’ve had a migraine.’ His finger came out to tenderly nudge a wave of hair out of her face, then he handed her the cup of tea. ‘You drink this and get back to sleep. I have to say you shocked me last night.’ His eyebrows rose and he shook his head as if recalling a particular incident. ‘I’m not used to being labelled a rapist.’

The word hung in the air and felt too big for the room.

‘I didn’t say that,’ said Stel.

‘It’s what you meant,’ Ian barked. ‘Remind me next time you’re chucking up your guts to leave you to get on with it. I think if you can’t handle your drink, Stel, that you should give it up. You’ve obviously got a problem with it. I didn’t recognise you last night.’

Stel was horrified. There were big holes in her memory. She could remember being in bed, but she couldn’t remember climbing up the stairs to get to it, or putting on her nightie. She usually had a shower, but she couldn’t remember taking one. She certainly couldn’t recall being sick or scratching him. After insisting that she didn’t want sex with him and trying to fight him off, her mind was a total blank.

Ian stood up. ‘I’ll see you after work,’ he said and left the room after giving her a look of such revulsion that she felt ashamed. And when she struggled out of bed to shout after him and caught sight of herself in the mirror, she slipped further down into a well of self-loathing – baggy, panda eyes, whey-face, hair like a busted sofa. She looked like the sort of feral woman who would have attacked a man.

‘Ian,’ she called. ‘Listen. I am so sorry. I don’t know what happened. I don’t usually drink that much.’ She suddenly felt sick, really sick. Her hand flew up to her mouth.

‘Into the bathroom,’ ordered Ian, appearing at her side, pushing her quickly in there where he managed to flick up the toilet lid just in time. Wine-red vomit pumped out of Stel’s stomach and Ian held her hair, rubbed her back and said, ‘This is becoming a habit.’ She felt turned inside out at the end of it and she sat on the side of the bath hunched and limp whilst he patiently wiped the loo seat and floor tiles with toilet paper. Then he ran a cold cloth under the tap and pressed it to her forehead and it felt like heaven.

‘Get some sleep, Stelly,’ he said and led her like a child back to bed. Stel felt as near death as she had ever been.

Ian kissed her cheek and checked his watch.

‘I’ve fed Basil and changed his litter. I’ve got to go because I’m late so I’ll see you later, okay? I’ll ask Pete if he’ll get out of my house and I’ll move back over the weekend because this obviously isn’t going to work, is it?’

Stel’s brain went into reverse thrust. She must have got this whole situation wrong. A man who treated her as lovingly as this could not have done what she thought he had. She’d had too much to drink and it had all become distorted. She couldn’t bear that it would end like this and that he’d tell people they split up because she was an unhinged, violent drunk. What was going on inside her head? Was she having a mini-breakdown because of the mixed bag of things that had happened to her in such a short time: Basil’s disappearance, Viv leaving home, the romance with Ian?

‘I don’t want that,’ she said. ‘I really don’t.’ She felt drained. Tears were sliding down her face, and her head and her stomach were aching so much.

‘Just get some sleep,’ he said. ‘I’ll have a good think about it all at work and I suggest you do, too.’

She heard him talk softly to Basil just before he left: ‘Look after your mum, Bassy, because she’s a bit poorly in the head today.’ And Stel thought there wasn’t a better description to suit.

Chapter 70

Linda stared at the pile of cards and presents wrapped up in jellyfish- and spaceship-themed paper and the tears sprang to her eyes. It was Freddie’s fourth birthday today but they wouldn’t be able to see him till Andy came home. Whatever Dino said to pacify her, Linda
knew
that at some point in the future, Freddie would recall how he didn’t end up with his birthday presents from his paternal grandparents until well after the event. She hadn’t been able to sleep thinking about it and she woke up in the sure and certain knowledge that she
had
to see her grandson today. It was a compulsion that would not be put to bed.

‘I can’t stand it,’ said Linda, pacing up and down her lounge carpet. ‘How dare Rebecca deprive that little boy.’

‘Look love, he’ll enjoy the presents when Andy takes them over. It’ll be like a second birthday for him,’ said Dino, sounding diplomatic, but it was killing him, too.

‘It won’t be his birthday though. He should have his presents on the actual birthday,’ said Linda. ‘Kids remember stuff like that.’

Iris looked at her daughter brushing the tears away from her cheeks and she felt awful that she’d further soured relations between the Hewitts and the Pawsons.

‘I’m so sorry, Linda. I’m just an interfering old bat.’

‘Yes you are, Mum,’ said Linda, wagging her finger at her mother, ‘but you did what you thought was right and I’m not blaming you. In fact, I wish I’d done it myself instead of waiting for any scraps they chose to throw us from their bloody table. They were never going to play ball so I might as well have done. In fact . . .’

Linda marched out of the room and came back with her jacket. ‘ . . . Dino, get me a carrier bag. Mum, get your shoes on. We are going to see our lad for his birthday. Freddie is having his presents today and if that pair of bitches decide to take them away from him then I’d rather he remember that than not getting them from us at all.’

Linda had her
do not argue with me
face on. Dino got the carrier bag and Iris put on her shoes.

Linda’s face was set in steely determination as she drove to Maplehill. She pulled up on the quiet, leafy Tennyson Lane and whilst Dino helped Iris unfold herself from the car, Linda grabbed the huge bag of presents from the boot.

‘Steady now, love,’ warned Dino. ‘Enid’s liable to call the police on us.’

‘Let her,’ said Linda. ‘Let Freddie see the police drag his nana away for the crime of loving him.’

She swaggered up the path and hammered on the front door with her closed fist. There was no response. In her mind’s eye, Linda saw Enid Pawson sitting tight until her unwanted visitors went away. Well, they weren’t going to. Whatever had pulled Linda Hewitt here today would keep her here until she saw Freddie. Linda tried the door but not surprisingly it was locked. She battered on the glass panel with the side of her hand until it hurt.

‘You’re going to break that bloody thing in a minute,’ said Dino.

‘Good, she might come out then. I would have thought she’d have made an appearance by now, if only to stop the neighbours talking.’

‘Last time I went round the back,’ said Iris. ‘She wasn’t expecting that.’

‘Dino, get round to the back,’ barked Linda. She stepped over something horrid and prickly in a plant pot in order to look through the front window. Snagging her tights on it didn’t help her mood. She shielded her eyes from the sun and peered in.

‘The side gate’s locked,’ said Dino.

‘Huh. They’ll have done that in case I ever came back,’ huffed Iris.

‘Can you climb over?’ asked Linda.

‘Linda, it’s six foot high. There’s no chance of me doing it, love.’ Dino was off work with sciatica as it was. He could barely lift his foot to get up a step.

‘Not you specifically, but you in general. I mean: can it be climbed?’

‘Yeah, by Edmund Hillary.’

Linda adjusted position to make sure that what she could see through the window wasn’t a trick of the eye.

‘Dino, I think Enid’s lying on the floor.’

‘What?’

‘I can see a part of her leg, I’m sure.’

‘Part of it? Has she been cut up?’ enquired Iris, then she sniffed. ‘Hope so.’

‘Something isn’t right,’ said Linda, brow furrowed in escalating concern. ‘I felt it this morning. Dino, let’s err on the side of caution. Ring an ambulance.’

‘
Linda
. . .’

‘Just do it. Where the hell is Freddie?’

Iris’s hand leaped up to her throat. She went to the side gate and shouted his name.

‘Shit. That bloody French door is open,’ yelled Linda. She stepped back over the snaggy plant and laddered her other leg. ‘I’m going to have to climb over that gate.’

‘How the hell are you going to do that? No, no, you can’t,’ Dino protested but Linda was insistent. She might have been eighteen stone but she had to get into that back garden.

Iris’s cry alerted them. ‘Linda, Freddie’s here, on the other side of the gate.’

‘Oh thank God,’ said Linda trying to see through the wooden slats, but there were no gaps. ‘Freddie, are you all right, love?’

‘Nana’s fallen,’ said Freddie. ‘I can’t wake her up.’

‘It’s okay, sweetheart. It’s Nana Hewitt. I’m here to help her. Freddie, do you know where Mummy keeps the key for this gate?’

‘Hello, can I order an ambulance . . .’ Dino was saying into his mobile. He sounded as if he was ordering a Chicken Bhuna from Edwina’s Curry House, thought Linda, as she scouted around for something either to bash down the gate or enable her to climb over it.

‘I know keys,’ Freddie said, his voice shrill with excitement. ‘Shall I get them?’

‘Yes please, my lovely. Then I want you to try and throw them over.’

‘There’s a step-ladder resting against next door’s wall,’ said Iris, pointing over the hedge.

Linda strode as fast as she could down the path, out of the gate, up next door’s path and back again with the ladder.

‘They’re sending an ambulance,’ replied Dino, coming forward to take the ladder. He propped the ladder against the gate and said to his wife, ‘How the bloody hell are you going to get up there?’

‘Freddie,’ Iris called. There was no response. Then a picture loomed in her head of that hideous gnome, and what he was holding . . . ‘Oh, please, no,’ she said.

‘What’s up, Mum?’

‘There’s a statue in the middle of that pond. A big ugly gnome with a set of keys in his hand. You don’t think that—’

‘Dino, hold that ladder,’ shrieked Linda.

‘Freddie, don’t go near the pond, will you, love?’ Dino thumped on the gate.

Linda started to climb up the steps.

Dino groaned. ‘You’ll break your bloody neck.’

‘Good job there’s an ambulance coming then,’ said Linda, as she managed to haul herself over somehow and scraped down the other side. ‘Stand back. I’m throwing a brick over. Bash the bloody gate in, Dino.’ She picked up a loose brick from a stack and threw it as gently as she could over to her husband then hurried round to the back of the house, scanning for Freddie. He wasn’t in the garden, thank goodness. He must be looking for keys somewhere inside. Enid Pawson was lying on the kitchen floor unconscious. Linda dropped to her side and checked for a pulse in her neck. She found it and it was strong. And so was the smell of alcohol on her breath.

Behind her Dino and Iris poured into the kitchen.