“Who’s there?” I shouted crossly. It must be a drunk who’d come to the wrong house. I looked blearily at my watch—ten past two—and wondered if I should have woken Tom.
The banging stopped. “It’s James. Let me in.”
James! I was wide awake in an instant, and leaned against the door. “Go away, James, please.”
“I’ve no intention of going away.” He began to hammer on the door again. “Let me in!”
“I don’t want to see you,” I yelled, but he almost certainly couldn’t hear me above the noise he was making. A police siren sounded in the distance, and just in case it had been alerted by a neighbour to investigate the disturbance in William Square, I opened the door.
“You’re not . . . ” I began, as a wild-eyed James, smelling strongly of alcohol, brushed past me into the room, “ . . . coming in.” Too late. I switched on the main light.
Flo’s room looked so different with every corner brightly illuminated.
James stood in the middle of the room. I’d never thought him capable of such anger. I shrank before it, terrified, my heart racing. His face, his neck, his fists were swollen, as if at any minute he would explode. “What the hell do you think you’re playing at?” he demanded furiously.
“I don’t know what you mean.” I kept my voice mild, stifling my own anger, not wanting to provoke him further.
He glared at me, as if I was the stupidest woman on earth. “I’ve been outside your flat since five o’clock waiting for you,” he raged. “When it got to midnight, I decided to come here, but I couldn’t remember where the fucking place was. I drove round and round for ages before I found it.”
I didn’t know what to say, so remained silent. Once again I thought about rousing Tom, but it seemed weak.
I was determined to handle the situation on my own: with Tom there, things might turn ugly. James began to pace the floor, waving his arms, his face scarlet. “Last week, after you threw me out, I thought, I’ll give her till Sunday, then that’s it. If she doesn’t phone, it’s over.” He thrust his red face into mine. “You didn’t phone, did you?
You didn’t give a fuck how I was.” He mimicked my voice, which seemed to be becoming a habit with all the men I knew. “ “I’m taking a shower and I expect you to be gone when I come out.” And I went, like the good little boy I am. Then I waited for you to get in touch, but apparently you were willing to let me just walk out of your life as if I’d never existed.”
“James.” I put my hands on his arms to try to calm him.
The police car screamed along the main road, William Square obviously not its destination. “You’re not making sense. You said it would be over if I didn’t phone.
Perhaps that would be the best thing.”
“But I love you! Can’t you get into your stupid head how much I love you?” His eyes narrowed. “You know, all my life I’ve had girls throw themselves at me. I’ve never gone short, as they say. But you, an uppity little bitch from Kirkby, you’re the one I fell in love with, wanted to marry. How dare you turn me down?”
This wasn’t happening! I closed my eyes for a second, then said quietly, “I don’t love you, James.”
At this, his hands and arms began to twitch, his blue eyes glazed. He raised his huge fist, ready to strike.
I felt myself grow dizzy. I was a little girl again, wishing I were invisible, waiting, head bowed, for a blow to fall.
It was no use trying to escape, because wherever I went, wherever I hid, my father would find me and then the punishment would be even worse. I wanted to weep because this was the story of my life.
The blow I was expecting never came. The dizziness faded, reality returned. That part of my life was over. I took a step back. James was still standing, arm raised.
“Christ! What’s the matter with me?” he gasped, in a horrified voice.
“What the hell’s going on in here?” Tom O’Mara came out of the bedroom fastening his trousers and bare to the waist.
James’s face turned ashen, his shoulders slumped.
“How could you, Millie?” he whispered.
Tom wasn’t quite as tall as James, or so broad, but before I knew what was happening, he had James’s right arm bent behind him with one hand, the other on his collar, and was propelling him roughly towards the door.
Despite the way James had just behaved, I was shocked at the sheer brutality of it. “There’s no need for that,” I cried.
The door slammed. After a while, I could hear James stumbling up the concrete steps. I switched on the lamp, turned off the central light, and sat in the middle of Flo’s settee, trembling and hugging myself tightly with both arms.
“What was that all about?” asked Tom from behind.
“Can’t you guess?”
“Hadn’t you told him about me?”
“It was nothing to do with you until you appeared,” I sighed.
A few seconds later, Tom sat on the settee beside me and put a glass of sherry on the coffee table. “Drink that!” he commanded. “It’ll do you good. Flo took sherry for her nerves.”
I was actually able to smile. “I get the impression Flo took sherry for an awful lot of things.”
He put his arm around me companionably. It was the first time he’d touched me when I didn’t automatically melt. “So, what’s the story with the bloke I just chucked out? Is he the one you were with at the party?”
“Yes, and there isn’t a story. He loves me and I don’t love him, that’s all. He’ll feel worse now he’s seen you.” I swallowed half the sherry in one go. Thank goodness Tom had been there. Even if James had calmed down he would have been difficult to get rid of. I thought about him driving home, drunk as a lord. The whole thing was my fault. I should have made it plain the minute he said he loved me that I didn’t love him. But I did! The trouble with James is that he’s spoilt, too used to having girls throw themselves at him to grasp that this one wasn’t blinded by his fatal attraction. I sipped more sherry, conscious of Tom’s arm, heavy on my shoulders. I would have let him hit me! I just stood there. I’d never have dreamed James had such an ugly side. He was always so gentle. I watched the lamp, waiting for the girl in the red coat, hating James for bringing ugliness into the place I loved, where I’d always felt supremely safe. I’ll never see him again, I vowed.
“Better?” Tom enquired. “You’ve stopped trembling.”
“Much better.” I snuggled my head against his shoulder.
“Were you happy as a child?”
“That’s a funny thing to ask.” He thought for a while. “I suppose I was. Knowing Flo helped a lot.”
“What was your dad like?”
The dad? Oh, he was a soft ould thing. Everyone pissed him about something rotten—Gran, me mam and me, I suppose, as well as the firm he worked for.” His voice became hard. “That’s why I swore I’d be me own boss when I grew up.”
“Where’s your mother?”
He shrugged carelessly. “No idea. She did a runner when I was five. Went off with another bloke.”
I patted his knee. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” he said carelessly. “It were good riddance as tar as I was concerned.” He kissed my ear. “What about you?”
“What about me?”
“Were you happy—how did you put it?—as a child?”
“Sometimes I wish I could be reborn and start all over.”
“Well, you can’t. You’re here and that’s it, you can’t change anything.”
“Are these your wife’s initials?” I traced the heart on his chest with my finger.
“No. Clare’s always trying to persuade me to get rid of it. You can get it done with a laser.”
“Have you any children?”
“Two girls, Emma and Susanna.” He raised his eyebrows, and I sensed he was annoyed. “What’s this? The third degree?”
“I wanted to know a few things about you, that’s all.”
“What’s the point?” he said coldly.
Just as coldly, I replied, “I thought it would be nice to know a little about the man I’ve been sleeping with for the past week.” I looked at him. “Is there nothing you’d like to know about me?”
“You’re a great fuck, that’s all I care.”
I stiffened and pulled away. “Do you have to be so coarse?”
He dragged me back against him. “The less we know about each other the better, don’t you understand that?” he whispered urgently. “I may be coarse, but I’m not thick. I’ve always taken me wedding vows seriously. I love me kids, and I don’t want to spoil things between me and Clare.” He twisted me around, so that I was lying on his knee, and undid the belt on my dressing-gown. “Let’s keep things the way they are. Getting to know each other could be dangerous.”
His hands were setting my body on fire. I told myself that I had no intention of falling in love with someone like him. But he aroused feelings in me that no other man had. His lips came down on mine, and we rolled on to the floor. The pleasure we gave each other was sublime, and in the midst of everything, when I was almost out of my head with delight too exquisite to describe, I could have sworn I shouted, “I love you.”
Or perhaps it was Tom.
At some time in the early hours of the morning, he carried me into the bedroom. I pretended to be asleep when he tucked the bedclothes around me, and remained like that while he got dressed. It wasn’t until the front door clicked behind him that I sat up. “Did you ever get yourself into a mess like this, Flo?” I asked. “If your bureau is anything to go by, you led a very neat, ordered life.”
It was ages before I had to leave for work but I got up, ran a few inches of water in the bath and splashed myself awake. I made coffee in the microwave and carried it into the living room, where I tried, unsuccessfully, to empty my mind. But as soon as I got rid of Tom O’Mara, James would take his place, followed by Mum, Alison, Declan, Trudy—what were the things my sister couldn’t talk about to Colin?
I was back to Tom again when I noticed that the rising sun was shining through the rear window and the walls of the little yard were glowing a rosy pink. I’d never been up this early before, and it looked so pretty.
So far, I hadn’t ventured into the yard. I went outside, wondering if Flo had sat here in the summer with her first cup of tea of the day, as I did on my balcony. A black cat regarded me benignly from the wall and graciously allowed me to stroke its back. The wooden bench was full of mould and needed scrubbing, and the pansies in the plant-holders were dead now. I nearly jumped out of my skin when a head covered with untidy black curls appeared over the neighbouring wall.
“Hi,” Peter Maxwell grinned. “Remember me? We met the other week at Charmian’s party.”
“Of course! You said you lived next door. What are you doing up so early?” I could only see him from the shoulders up and he appeared to be wearing a sleeveless Tshirt.
He flexed a bulging muscle in his arm. “I work out every morning. I’m off for a jog in a minute.” He winked.
“You can come with me, if you like.”
“You must be joking!”
He rested his arms on the wall and said conversationally, “Are you all right?”
“Don’t I look all right?”
“You look great, even without my glasses. It’s just that I heard a commotion in your place last night. I contemplated coming round, but the sounds died down.”
“It was a drunk,” I said dismissively. “I soon got rid of him.”
“By the way, I’d like to apologise for Sharon.”
“Who’s Sharon?”
The girlfriend—ex-girlfriend. I tore her off a strip for dragging me away when I was dancing with you at the party. She was very rude.”
“I hardly noticed.”
He looked dismayed. “And I was quite enjoying our little chat. I thought you were, too.”
“Well, yes, I was,” I conceded.
“It means I’ve got a spare ticket for the school concert in December. I wondered if you’d come.”
I pulled a face. “I hate schools.”
“So did I, but they’re different when you’re an adult.
No one will test your spelling or demand the date of the battle of Waterloo. Come on,” he coaxed, “it’s Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol. I’d love you to be there.”
“Why?”
“Because you used to know me as Weedy and I want you to see me as Peter Maxwell, MA, economics teacher, and scriptwriter of genius—I wrote the script for A Christmas Carol and set it in the present day. Tell you what,” he said eagerly, “if you come to the concert, I’ll let you show me round a property and we can negotiate.
Then we’ll have both proved to each other that we’ve made it.”
I smiled. “How could I possibly refuse?”
Still smiling, I went indoors. Peter Maxwell had cheered me up. We’d both been through the mill and emerged unscathed. I paused in the act of pulling down the front of Flo’s bureau, which hadn’t been touched since the night Tom had arrived with a Chinese takeaway.
Unscathed?
Was that true? Until that moment, I’d never thought I’d ever get over the tragedy of my childhood.
I’d thought that, along with Trudy and Declan, I’d been irreparably damaged. But maybe time was fading the shadow of my father, and perhaps one day it would go away altogether. One day, the three of us would emerge, truly unscathed.
I decided not to think about it any more on such a lovely morning. I fetched a chair up to the bureau and took out the bundle of letters held together with the elastic band. It was rotten, and snapped when I pulled it off.
William Square began to wake up to the new day: cars drove away, others came to take their place; feet hurried past the basement window; children shrieked on their way to school—a football came over the railings and landed with a loud clang on the dustbin. But I was only vaguely aware of these activities. I was too engrossed in Flo’s letters. It wasn’t until I returned the last letter to its envelope that I remembered where I was. The letter was one of several from the same person, a Gerard Davies from Swansea, in which he implored Flo yet again to marry him. “I love you, Flo. I always will. There’ll never be another girl like you.”
Which was more or less what every other letter had said. They were love letters from a score of different men, all to Flo, and from the tone of quite a few, the relationships hadn’t been platonic.
And Bel had claimed that Flo had led the life of a saint!
I remembered the mysterious receipts from the hotel in the Isle of Man. “Oh, I bet you were a divil in your day, Flo Clancy,” I whispered.