‘Nicely put, Johnnie!’ she laughed. ‘We both know it wasn’t a holiday, I was packed off to stay at the Wheatons before I went really doolally and ended up in the loony bin … but yes, it was just what I needed. Everything had built up inside me, it was just too much, but I had a lot of time to think and I feel as if I know what I’m going to do’.
‘Thinking can be good and bad,’ said Johnnie.
‘I know, but this was mostly good!’
Gracie looked sideways at the young man she had come to think of as a brother; he was good company and had a good business head on him but mostly she liked and envied the way he unconditionally loved Ruby. It was how she had wanted her husband to be, but she could see that Sean simply hadn’t loved her enough.
‘How are the boys? And your sister?’ she asked, to deflect the conversation away from herself.
‘They’re fine. Betty is doing a great job with them, especially after the Sadie tragedy, but they need to be with me now. She’s still hostile to the idea of me and Ruby having them but she knows it’ll happen. It has to. They’re my flesh and blood, and should be with me. And with Ruby; she’ll be a fantastic step-mother.’
‘Are you still planning to live in the house next door?’ Gracie asked.
‘Probably in the basement flat when it’s finished, though we have talked about making the basement of the hotel into a flat as well. Depends where we can find most space. It’s hard when there has to be some staff accommodation …’
‘I’m sorry, I know I take up too much room now I have Fay. I need to find somewhere else for us.’
‘Don’t be daft, I didn’t mean you! You’re not staff, Gracie, you’re family and you earn your keep. Ruby couldn’t have managed in those early days after Leonora died without you.’
Gracie felt a blush rise up over her face but it was a pleasant glow, brought on by the welcome compliment. After all the bad things that had happened it was just what she needed.
The journey continued in companionable silence. Gracie watched the passing countryside and towns with half an eye while at the same time thinking about her imminent confrontation with Sean.
She also wondered about Edward, but common sense told her it was for the best that their meeting had been thwarted. Regardless of Sean’s behaviour, she was still a married woman with a baby. It would have been wrong to even think about meeting him again. Two wrongs never make a right and Edward Woodfield would have to be put back in the box of memories; the ship that sailed without her.
As they pulled up at the Thamesview Gracie felt the nausea rising all over again, and she hoped against hope that Sean wasn’t hanging around watching. She needed to get inside, get Fay settled and then hear the whole story from Ruby before she decided what she was going to do next.
That evening, after hearing all the details about Sean’s crazed visit, Gracie had gathered herself together emotionally and, going against everything Ruby and Johnnie counselled, she left Fay with Jeanette and went to see Sean. She wanted to see him on her own terms and she also wanted to visit without telling him so she could see if Jennifer was there with him.
Gracie felt really uncomfortable as she knocked on the door of the rundown old house in nearby Westcliff, which had been converted into several bedsits with a shared bathroom and kitchen on each floor. The paint was peeling off the whole building, there were cracked panes on some of the windows and the front garden looked like it was a dumping ground for the whole street. As she waited, a mangy dog appeared from the overgrown hedge at the side of the house, her teats hanging low. She had three small puppies around her feet. Gracie remembered the piece of cake that Babs had given her for the journey and pulled it out of her bag just as the door opened. She threw it quickly towards the hedge.
‘Which is the door for Sean Donnelly?’ she asked the angry-looking old woman who pulled the door back.
‘Is he the Irishman? Upstairs, first door on the left.’
Gracie started to thank her but she disappeared straight into the nearest door and slammed it hard. She walked into the darkness of the hall and then gingerly made her way up the decrepit staircase to the next floor.
She found the door and tapped gently on it. When there was no answer she knocked properly. It was a good minute before it was opened and she found herself face to face with Sean.
‘Gracie! What the fuck are you doing here?’ His voice was flat and she could smell the alcohol on his breath.
Glancing over his shoulder Gracie quickly scanned the room; she had been so convinced that Jennifer would be there she wasn’t sure if she was relieved or disappointed to see the room behind him was empty. But regardless, she was mortified to see what he had gone down to.
The room was noticeably damp and dingy with just a single bedstead, a battered old armchair that looked on the verge of collapse and a chest of drawers; a heap of his belongings were strewn around an open suitcase and he had a candle burning precariously in an old saucer. On the floor beside the armchair was an open bottle of whisky but no glass and it was obvious he’d been drinking straight from the bottle.
‘Ruby said you wanted to see me so here I am,’ she said, trying to ignore the state of the room. ‘I didn’t think the hotel where I work was the right place for this, not after what you did. Are you going to invite me in?’
‘No, I’m not,’ he slurred.
‘Oh Sean,’ Gracie sighed as she stared at him. Despite everything, she wanted to reach out and hug him. He was still her husband and it upset her to see him like this. ‘You don’t have to live like this, Sean. There’s stuff from the flat stored in the shed at the hotel, you could get another place better than this …’
‘Fuck all of that, and fuck you, slut …’
He slammed the door in her face so hard it rattled on the hinges.
‘Sean …’ she said through the door. ‘Sean, please let me in …’ She rattled the handle and knocked harder but the door was locked from the other side and there was no response, other than a loud ‘Shut up’ bellowed from behind a door further along the hallway.
Gracie’s hands were shaking as she fumbled in her bag for her diary and a pencil. She tore a page out and wrote a short note which she pushed under the door.
He seemed to have completely forgotten that he had wanted to see her because of Fay. In the fug of drink he had probably forgotten she existed the moment the door closed.
As she walked out of the entrance to the building she saw the dog again; she was sitting on the step looking sad while her pups hung on teats from underneath, desperately trying to feed. It was the final straw for Gracie; she sat down beside the dogs and burst into tears.
Sean was trying to focus on the words on the scrap of paper when there was another knock on the door. He ignored it.
‘Come on, Sean. It’s me, open the door …’
He turned the key and walked over to his bed, leaving Jennifer McCabe to let herself in.
‘Ooooh, pigsty!’ She laughed and turned her nose up as she picked her way through the débris on the floor, then sat down carefully on the edge of the sagging armchair to avoid falling down the dip in the middle.
‘No worse than yours,’ he slurred.
‘What did she want?’
‘You heard. I saw you hanging over the banister like an ape, you’re lucky she didn’t see you as well.’
Sean was already lying flat out on the bed; fully clothed but very dishevelled. He still had the note in his hand.
‘I’m far cleverer than that! I also saw her write you a message. How cute of her, slipping love notes under the door.’ Jennifer waved her fingers at him. ‘Hand it over, lover. No secrets, remember?’
‘How did you know she was here?’ he asked.
‘I was in the kitchen and I heard her. She’s my beloved sister, I’d know that sweet voice anywhere. Now, give me the note.’
He held his arm out and she reached over and snatched it from him.
‘You’re not going to meet her, are you? Actually, let me say it this way: you’re
not
going to meet her. You’d better not, I’ve told you to stay away from her – she’s a slut.
‘I’ve got a daughter and I want to see her, and you can’t stop me …’ he rolled over on the bed as he spoke.
‘How many times do I have to say this?’ Jennifer said coldly. ‘Her or me. You can’t have both …’
‘But the baby …’
‘… probably isn’t yours,’ she interrupted, finishing the sentence. ‘We’ve gone over this so many times, you idiot, so why are you bothering? To appease my dear sister Gracie? Or to keep your precious mammy happy? What about me? I love you the way none of the other buggers ever will. I’ve given up everything for you …’
But as she looked over at him she realised he wasn’t listening. Sean had fallen into a drunken stupor.
As the snoring started she stood up and went over to him. She stripped all her clothes off, climbed over him into the narrow bed, snuggled down in the curve of his back and pulled the covers up over them both. When he woke she would be ready to convince him that he wouldn’t be going to visit Gracie under any circumstances.
What had started as a bit of spontaneous amusement had quickly turned into something much more serious for the slightly unstable Jennifer McCabe. All she had really intended was to have some fun at her sister’s expense, exert a bit of power and cause a few problems between them. She hadn’t intended to actually have an affair, she hadn’t even liked him very much, but then it had all got out of control and she had quickly and illogically ended up obsessively in love with the man who was still her brother-in-law.
Although they had always been lumped together as ‘the twins’, Jennifer had spent her childhood in the shadow of her much prettier and more exuberant twin sister. From babyhood she had been the Plain Jane of the family and the older she got, the more it rankled that no one seemed to look beyond that. She hated the way that she and Jeanette were always being compared because Jennifer knew without doubt that she was by far the smarter of the two but no one seemed to care about that.
Her sister Jeanette was always the popular one who had a roaring social life and a steady stream of boys chasing her, and her older sister Gracie had landed on her feet with Ruby as a friend and a cushy job for life.
Jennifer meanwhile was the one at home all the time with just her mother for company, and nothing to do but read and fantasise about being a different person in a different life. She had always spent hours gazing into space, weaving stories in her head with herself as the beautiful and popular girl who everyone wanted to be with.
Jennifer resented every single one of her family, and had been looking for an escape route when a boring old bachelor from her office had warily asked her out and then quickly proposed. She had accepted, not because she loved him – in fact she didn’t even like him – but because she wanted the validation of an engagement ring on her finger and a virginal white wedding. She wanted to show everyone that she wasn’t the plain Jane they all thought she was.
She was bored and unhappy but then she’d overheard her parents talking on the day Gracie had been to visit them and discovered her sister’s shocking secret. But instead of using the knowledge straight away she had savoured it and tucked it away for future reference.
It was during her engagement that Jennifer McCabe had discovered the power of sex and seduction. It wasn’t that she enjoyed sex, she didn’t, she hated it, but she enjoyed the power it gave her so she had approached the subject in much the same way as she had passed all her school exams. She had managed to get hold of a copy of the
Kama Sutra
and she studied it, remembered it and where necessary, practiced it and discovered that it worked.
The seduction of her brother-in-law was meant to be just another feather in her hat, a recognition of her power and a point-scoring exercise over Gracie. But then it had all gone wrong, because she had actually fallen for Sean.
As she lay awake tucked behind him and savouring the warmth of his body on hers she started to plan her next move.
The goal posts had moved but she was still enjoying the game.
When they had both been fired from the hotel in Brighton for being late for work two days in a row they had decided to go back to Southend in the hope of getting their old jobs back but neither of them had succeeded. Sean had got a seasonal job in a seafront café and Jennifer was doing filing in the back room of a High Street department store. Even worse, they were living in separate rooms in the decrepit boarding house which, despite its disgusting living conditions, didn’t allow unmarried couples to share. But Jennifer was optimistic that given time they would be married, have a fabulous home and their own baby.
Silent patience and a good imagination had always been her strong points.
‘I said, you’re not going to go and see her, are you?’ she asked the next morning, when Sean was awake and trying to pretend he hadn’t got a hangover. It was the fourth time she’d asked and he was doing his best not to lose patience with her.
‘I said I’m not, I’m going to work. Now are you going to be getting yourself ready for work? We need to be gathering some money together so we can get out of this dump as soon as we can.’
‘Just before we go to work …’ she murmured and reached under the covers, determined to continue to exert her control over Sean Donnelly.
Although Sean did exactly as he had told Jennifer he was going to do and went to work, he quickly pleaded a family emergency to get some time off from the café, and caught the bus to Thorpe Bay to meet Gracie as she’d asked in her note. But to be safe, he had telephoned her at the Thamesview first to make it a much earlier time because he knew without doubt that Jennifer would be checking up on him.
When Sean had phoned to rearrange the time, Gracie had then changed the venue and arranged to meet him at the newly-acquired house next-door to avoid any more disruption to Ruby in her hotel.
The initial meeting up on the doorstep had been embarrassing for both of them after the events of the night before but Gracie had already decided not to mention it. She was there with him only because of Fay.