The Whiskerly Sisters (16 page)

Not that Fresna needed to go; not that she had anyone or anything to go home to. Verity, now an accomplished actress, was on tour in Canada and would not be home for at least another three months. There was no class to be late for tonight either. She thought she might drop in on Tiffany for a coffee on her way home to catch up with the latest gossip and discuss the state of her friend’s love life. Perhaps she would share a glass or two of red wine with Celia and be bombarded with all the latest goings on at Dumbleton’s. She could suggest that she and Jax catch a film. The evening was young and full of possibilities. She had plenty of time to plan her evening. It was time to go.

Carefully, and with practiced stealth, she eased her way out of his bed. She retraced her way to the front door, dressing as she went; each discarded item a reminder of the tumultuous passion she had so recently enjoyed. She left silently and without a backward glance.

Quite by accident, she ended up spending the evening with Bex. She had pulled up beside her at a set of traffic lights, hooted with delight and invited her friend into the warmth of her car. Since Malcolm was away and Bex felt at a loose end, they decided to go into town to share a meal and a very long coffee. They talked animatedly together until the restaurant was empty and the staff made it clear that it was time to go.

Fresna was humming to herself as she parked her Tigra on the driveway. Content with her day, sure of her life, a tad smug even. As she switched off the ignition, she glanced across the road and saw him – a lone man, lurking in the shadows beneath the trees.

The man with Verity’s eyes.

As Fresna got out of the car, the man edged forward toward the street lamp and spread his hands in a conciliatory gesture, palms open towards her. She tiptoed a little closer towards him, peering into the gloom at the man the night had sent her, making sure to keep well within the confines of her territory, making the best use of the scant rays thrown out from the night lights that marked the edge of her driveway.

Without warning, he took a step towards her, moving further into the light. She backed away at once. Shocked, she turned and, fumbling for her key, fled into the welcome security of her hallway, locking herself inside; her back pressed against the door and her eyes tight shut against reality. Her heart pounded in her mouth and she felt unable to breathe or move. She stood frozen, pinned to the woodwork by fear, waiting for the rattle of the door knocker to frighten her into action.

It didn’t come. After a while, her body damp with a cold patina of sweat and her stomach empty with dread, she moved cautiously up the stairs and into the front bedroom. Keeping the lights off, she sidled slowly towards the window and, oh so carefully, peeped out towards the edge of her garden and then further, across the street, to where the unexpected figure had stood.

He had gone. She looked up and down the street as best she could from her half crouched position by the window. She could see no one. Growing more daring, she straightened up and, moving the net aside, took a good look around the area. There was no one there; he had disappeared. Sweet relief flooded her veins, making her tremble so that she slumped shakily onto the edge of her double bed and rubbed the sweat from her palms off onto the duvet. Thank God – he had gone.

Or had he? Fear forced her upright, stabbing at her stomach with renewed energy. He could be on the driveway round the corner by the front door or, worse, in the back garden. Shit! What should she do? Almost reflexively, her hand stole towards the telephone at the side of the bed and, impulsively, she followed it. She was dialling 999; as she caught herself. Just exactly what was she going to say to the operator? Some old flame that had got her pregnant and then jilted her a thousand moons ago was back and might be hiding in the back garden. Could they please come and arrest him. Feeling stupid, she put the phone down.

In the end, she found the big torch she kept in the cupboard under the sink and courageously took a tour of her garden, front and back, checking in the shadows and under the bushes for a glimpse of a man she had not seen in over forty years. Satisfied he was not lurking anywhere, she returned to the house, bolted the doors and tried to relax in a hot bath.

He was back again the following evening on her return from work. Sitting across the road on the stump of an old elm tree that had come down in a storm a few years previously and which the council had turned into rather an attractive seat. This time, she didn’t hesitate to walk over to him and, as she did so, he stood up.

“Hullo,” he said, the whisper of a smile touching the corners of his mouth.

“Alex,” she breathed in wonder.

Only his eyes had not changed. Gone was the glossy mane of black curls, the ruddy complexion, the lantern jaw and the darkly curved brows, framing those lovely eyes. Gone was the upright posture, the broad shoulders, the narrow waist and the athletic eyes. In their place stood an old man. Grey-white wispy tendrils surrounded a balding pate; his jaw was jowly and his complexion dull. He was stooped and thin yet with a slight beer belly; his legs seemed to be permanently bent at the knees. He looked like a man down on his luck and yet with a hopeful gleam in his eye. A man who thought he might have seen a tenner in the gutter but, on closer inspection, suspected he might well have discovered this week’s winning lottery ticket.

“Back from the dead like a bad penny,” he said, shrugging his shoulders to hide what Fresna took to be slight embarrassment.

“What are you doing here?” she asked incredulously, not wanting to hear the reply and yet hardly able to wait for it to announce itself.

“I was just passing,” he began, his face creasing into a half apologetic smile and his eyes screwing up in concentration.

Just passing?
thought Fresna to herself.
What, he was out taking a stroll in the early evening air and just happened to find himself in her area and thought it might be nice to look her up; maybe have a cup of tea and a cosy little catch up kind of just passing? Forty plus years down the road just passing?

“I mean,” he hesitated. This was hard. Just how do you approach these sorts of circumstances? Just what is the correct form of etiquette for such an occasion? Just what do you say to the person you dumped at the altar three months pregnant more than a generation ago?

“I mean I thought it was time,” he asserted, straightening up and finally deciding on the line he was going to take with her. “I’ve been meaning to come and see you for a while since I’ve been back in the country but, you know, somehow time passes and before you know where you are…” he trailed off, possibly because he had seen the disbelieving look in Fresna’s eyes.

Oh yes, she knew all about how time passed and she knew even more about before you know where you are – probably better than most.

“You’re looking well,” he offered, changing the subject and it was true because, unlike Alex, the years had been extremely kind to Fresna. She certainly did not look anywhere near her age. Her posture was upright; she was still reasonably flexible and lithe from her commitment to exercise. Admittedly, her glorious strawberry blonde hair owed more to a bottle than it did to nature these days, but her complexion still glowed and her blue eyes were bright and clear.

“What do you want?” she asked. She had decided to face it, whatever it was – the bottom line.

“Well,” he began and she waited. She could hear it coming in the distance and she could see it in his face, in his smile, in the way that he stood and in the way he was dressed. Eventually, after messing about on the fringes for a few more minutes, out it came.

A sorry little monologue from that well known character, “poor me”!

His wife had sadly died of cancer, his children had grown and flown and he had retired from business and moved to the South of France to pass the rest of his days in warm, tranquil, comfortable retirement. He’d had a bit of bad luck with a couple of investments and somehow his warm, tranquil, comfortable retirement had come to a cold, brutal, painful end. The kids were busy with their lives, raising their children, working hard and with no time for pops. There was no spare cash to ease his distress. “You know how it is,” he’d suggested, oblivious to her stunned yet undivided attention.

He’d come back to Britain with what little he had left of his savings and was living in a small flat on the outskirts of town, etching out a living at a variety of dead end jobs, washing up in a café here, temporary work at a factory there. He would do whatever it took to supplement his small state pension. He’d heard on the grapevine that she was only living a few miles from the village in which he had courted her and had decided it was time to look her up, he explained and their eyes met. He wanted to meet his child; he wasn’t sure if it was a girl or a boy and he felt there was no time like the present so he had decided to come round to see how she was doing, to find out how the child had fared and, Fresna’s head told her, to see if either of them were up for a bit of soft soaping.

Fresna, who somewhere between the wife dying and the retirement fund drying up found that she had invited him into the kitchen, was fascinated. Here he was after all these years sitting in her home, drinking coffee as if nothing had happened, asking about her health, asking about their daughter and wondering if maybe she had a little nip of brandy to add to his cup. She was in a whirl; her brain in over-drive. What was Verity going to say? What was she going to do? Here was her father back from the void after over forty years. How was she going to react? Was she going to welcome him back into the fold, grateful that he had finally come for her or tell him to sod off, that she didn’t want a damn thing to do with him?

Yet throughout the whole sorry soliloquy, Fresna was able to keep her nerve. She sat composed, listening carefully, head tilted, managing to look concerned and giving nothing at all away. In fact, to the sad sack in front of her, she appeared quite soothing, sorry for him even, possibly even anxious to please.

But then appearances can be deceptive, can’t they?

After she had finally managed to prise Alex out of his chair and send him home, Fresna took a slow walk around her garden, deep in thought. She had a lot of reflection to do and some very serious decisions to make. This was not just about her; it concerned her daughter and family had always been very important to Fresna. She had to weigh this all up very carefully, taking her time and bringing into play her good judgement and keen instincts. It was essential she made the right decision for everyone. This was not something she could rush at like a bull at a gate. She sat down on the swing chair under the pergola, absent-mindedly watching the shadows play across her garden as the moon waned and the clouds trawled slowly by, turning things over and over in her mind. She stayed there for a long time, wrapped up in an old blanket, one foot trailing on the ground as she swung herself to and fro in the moonlight. She held tight to the cup of cold coffee laced between her fingers. She would not rush this; she would give herself plenty of time to think things through; she needed to be spot on.

In the end, she decided to tell Verity about her unexpected visitor. In the end, she was glad she did and she was grateful too that she chose to tell her friends, to inform the Whiskerly Sisters.

The very next evening, having put down the phone on Verity fully aware of her daughter’s attitude to this unpredicted intrusion into her life, she called the Whiskerlies round for a council of war. She apprised them of her new circumstances and brought them up to date with the differing reactions to these uncharted waters.

Her daughter and her partner, Sam, were flying home, cutting short their time in Ontario. They would settle their affairs and get back as soon as they could. It had been agreed that they would not come directly to Fresna’s, but they would lodge with Sam’s brother a few miles away. That way their homecoming would hopefully remain unnoticed. After all, Alex had managed to track Fresna down after more than forty years; he might be able to do the same with Verity and she wanted no surprise visitors on her doorstep – at least not until she was ready to face them.

In the few short weeks since ‘the awakening’ as they like to call it amongst themselves, the solidity of the little group of friends had become second to none. Having shared their innermost secrets with one another, there was nothing any of them could say or do to each other that would breach the loyalty they shared.

After the mind blowing revelation of Bex’s secret life, there had been a slight hiatus. There was general concern that Bex might have gone too far, might be out of control, might in fact be mentally ill. It was discussed in gentle, hushed tones, touched upon with delicate strokes and hinted at by the merest tip of the toe in the water.

Bex convinced them otherwise. She regaled them with tales of Malcolm’s petty tyrannies. How she had to stand in front of him, on a quarterly basis, to explain the telephone bill; any call over six minutes needing an interrogation worthy of the Spanish Inquisition. Why she was not allowed to use more than two inches of hot water in the bath – did she not understand anything about the alarming rise in the cost of utilities these days? God forbid, Malcolm should find the dustbins out of alignment during his daily inspection of the back yard or dust on top of any of the picture frames that were displayed with symmetrical precision throughout the house. Sheets and towels were to be folded with hospital corners to a military standard in the linen cupboard. He would not tolerate out of date tins in the kitchen cupboards and heaven help her if any of the labels were not facing forward. There were to be no half empty, untidy packets on his shelves. Everything, right down to the washing powder, had to be unpacked into the requisite plastic container and stored hygienically. Even the pots and pans in the kitchen had to be stacked according to the Book of Malcolm.

In the end, the girls figured he was getting his just desserts and nothing further was said. On the other hand, wonder of wonders, it seemed they had a genius in their midst and, when it came to the planning of Fresna’s particular Waterloo, she was delighted to have her very own Wellington on board.