Donna shook her head in distress. ‘Stop it, Georgio, stop talking like that. Swearing and carrying on. It frightens me. I don’t like it.’
Georgio grabbed her hand again, gently this time. ‘I’m sorry, Don Don. It’s being in here, with all these.’ He swept his hand out dramatically. ‘It makes you like them. It makes you full of hate inside. I shouldn’t be here, you know that as well as I do. When they bang us up of a night, I could scream the place down.’
His face was like a little boy’s, bewildered, unable to take in what was going on. It was a painfully handsome face, one that had captured her heart when she was a young girl, and her love and adoration of him had increased over the years. Until now, he’d been the very air she breathed. Without him, she felt she was nothing. With him, she was a somebody, Donna Brunos, wife of Georgio, the man everyone liked, wanted to be with, vied with each other to befriend. At least, they had until all this had happened . . .
As if reading her mind, Georgio asked: ‘Have you heard anything from the honourable town planner or the magistrate? My so-called friends.’
‘Not a word. Bunty and Harry cut me dead in the village.’ Donna shook her head sadly.
Georgio’s eyes narrowed. ‘Oh, they did, did they? I might open my trap about him yet - do what Wilson did. You ring him and tell him I want me stuff back. Say I have a buyer. Do that for me, will you? Say just that. Georgio wants his stuff, he’s got a buyer. Do that for me, Donna, promise?’ His face was dark, earnest.
‘What stuff? What are you talking about?’
Georgio waved a hand at her. ‘Never mind what stuff. When he tells you he’s got it, send Davey for it. He knows the score.’
Donna pushed her hair back off her face, a gesture she always used when agitated. ‘What on earth are you talking about?’
Georgio took a deep breath and held it, then kissed her on the cheek. ‘Forget what I said. It was temper talking. We had a few scams, nothing serious, but I was annoyed that he cut you dead like that. He has no right to judge me, he’s more crooked than a corkscrew. They all are. They make me sick.’
Donna watched her husband as he opened his KitKat. His big hands ripped the packaging apart.
‘Calm down,’ she said nervously. ‘Once we get to appeal, this will all be sorted out.’
Georgio laughed gently. ‘Oh, yeah, course it will.’
His attitude scared her; this new Georgio scared her. Never before had she seen him like this - beaten, out of control. It was a shock, a revelation. For the first time she admitted to herself that Georgio didn’t hold out much hope now the trial was over. He had depended on an acquittal; Wilson had seen that he didn’t get one. She was aware now, fully and irrevocably, that Georgio was in an even more dangerous situation than she had thought. He had lost heart. She pushed these worries from her mind and attempted to change the subject.
‘I started work at the car lot . . .’ She was interrupted by Georgio choking on his KitKat.
‘You what!’
Donna smiled at his incredulity and said, ‘I started work at the car lot. Davey and Carol, everyone, even your family, said I ought to take an interest in the businesses. So that’s what I’m going to do. It was really funny. I tidied up the office and Davey nearly had a heart attack. I must have made an impression, though, because he cleared out the storeroom last night. It was all spick and span when I went in this morning.’
She was smiling at him, aware the smile was sticking to her face, frozen there with the need to have done the right thing. Then Georgio laughed out loud.
Shaking his head, he said jocularly, ‘Poor old Davey, I bet he didn’t know what was going on.’
On the defensive now, Donna said quickly, without thinking, ‘Look, Georgio, I am a part-owner of the businesses, as everyone keeps telling me. I thought you’d be pleased I was trying to help out. You can still run the businesses through me. I don’t know why you and Davey think it’s so funny.’ Her voice was hurt, she felt a fool.
Georgio hugged her tightly. ‘I’m sorry, but it seems - I don’t know, funny, to think of you in the car lot. I know you’re only trying to help, but forget it. I can run the businesses through my brothers. Patrick is coming in tomorrow, and Mario. I’ll sort it out with them. You forget all about it, love.’
Donna pursed her lips and said in a low voice, ‘Look, Georgio, I’m not being funny, but on the headed notepaper at the car lot, I’m down as Managing Director, and the same thing with the building business. I looked through your desk at home last night. I’m on an awful lot of headed notepaper. If Carol can be trusted to work in the car lot, I don’t see why I am judged too stupid to be there. I didn’t even want to go but everyone was saying how I should take an interest, even your mum and dad . . .’ She was upset. Very upset. Over the years she had taken a back seat to Georgio, always had. It was expected of her. Now his cavalier attitude to her trying to help hit a sore spot inside her. A spot she had just realised had been with her for years.
Georgio closed his eyes and wiped a hand across his face. ‘I’m sorry, angel. Honestly, I’m deeply sorry. It’s not that I don’t think you’re capable, it’s just that you’ve never worked, you never had to work, and you certainly don’t need any money. Every penny we have in the bank was earned fair and square. They couldn’t prove the houses, the cars, or anything else was ever bought with stolen money. That’s the big joke of this situation. Every year I do will be on the say-so of Wilson. They couldn’t prove I had ever done a dodgy deal in my life. All my businesses were legit. So you just carry on as you have always done. Leave the businesses to me.’
Donna’s head was down now, and as Georgio looked at the glossy brown of her hair he sighed. She was such a child in a lot of ways. It was this vulnerability that had attracted him.
‘But what about me, Georgio?’ she said in a low voice. ‘What do I do all day while you’re in here? Our friends treat us as if we have contracted the plague. I’ll rephrase that - your friends. I never liked any of them. I keep getting lectures about men coming out of the woodwork - Davey’s expression, not mine. I am told by all and sundry to look out for my husband’s interests. So you tell me, Georgio, what do I do, eh? Do I sit at home like Cinderella, all dressed up and nowhere to go, or what? I realised yesterday that I need a job of some kind. I can’t sit in that house every day waiting for you to write to me or to come up here for a visit. You don’t come home any more, remember? I am alone, completely alone, except for Dolly. I don’t even have a child to occupy me. Now I try and take an interest in the businesses and you laugh me off like I’m a silly girl. So you tell me, my love, what do I do?’
In twenty years Georgio had never heard his wife talk like this. Before, she had always told him what he wanted to hear. He realised that the nine months leading up to the trial had been a testing time for her. He suddenly saw how beautiful she was, how poised, saw her as others did: the lovely wife of Georgio Brunos. She was an ornament to him, the passion he’d felt, the real passion, having been smothered by familiarity. She had stood by him, and he was grateful to her for that. Other wives of her ilk would have lined their pockets and been batting away from home before the case had even come to trial.
He took a deep breath. His soft brown eyes boring into hers, he said gently, ‘I’m sorry, Donna. You’re right. I am so full of myself. I was always too full of myself. It’s a bad habit I picked up when I was a child. I know my faults, no one better. Forgive me. You do whatever you think you need to. I just didn’t want you to knock yourself out when there’s no need.’
She swallowed heavily, her throat full of tears. She seemed to spend her whole life crying lately.
‘I need to do something,’ she told him. ‘The house is so big, so empty without you. Before all this, I knew you were coming home, and I kept your home for you - not me. Now I feel like I’m in prison - a different kind of prison perhaps, but a prison just the same. I walk around the house, touching things. Dolly keeps the place like an operating theatre i
t’s so clean. I do a bit of gardening, maybe read a magazine or a book. I go to bed at nine, accompanied by a sleeping tablet and a glass of scotch. Is that what you want for me, Georgio? I’ll die slowly of boredom, worry and regret. For the first time in twenty years I’m on my own, really on my own, and I don’t like it. I hate it! But it’s how things are. Once you come home, we’ll get back on our old footing, but now I want to work. I think it would probably be the best thing for both of us.’
He nodded. ‘I’m sorry, girl, I open me mouth without putting my brain in gear. You do what you have to. In fact, once you get a bit more involved I’ll probably be glad. If I can’t trust you, then who can I trust?’
Donna smiled. She had a feeling she had won something. Just what, she wasn’t sure. All she knew was that her husband’s attitude had cut her to the quick. And another thing she’d realised was that she had power now. Power over Georgio. For the first time ever she was more or less her own woman. Even though the way it had come about hurt her deeply, another little part of her was secretly pleased. She would become expert at running the businesses if that’s what it took to get that look on his face once more. For the first time in years she had surprised him, he had really taken notice of her. He pampered her, petted her, but very rarely took a deep interest in her. Now he was looking at her with surprise, a grudging respect lighting up his deep brown eyes.
That alone was heady stuff.
Maeve drove into the driveway and screeched to a halt. She looked at the imposing residence belonging to her eldest son and sighed. Nearly a million the house was worth, though Georgio had had it built for next to nothing ten years before. Unlike most new houses, it had been constructed with character. A brick-built mock Georgian mansion, it sported a tennis court and swimming pool in the three-acre grounds. The house had six bedrooms, three bathrooms and a self-contained granny flat where Dolly lived. The conservatory on the back was fifty feet by twenty. That alone had cost more than her place in Canning Town.
She got out of her Lada and slammed the door. The car was full of rubbish - old ice-cream wrappers from the grandchildren, and cigarette ends overflowing from the ashtrays. It was tatty, rusting, and she loved it. Georgio had hated her driving it, offering to buy her a new car. She had always got a wicked pleasure from screeching up his drive in it. The pleasure was gone now, gone with Georgio.
Slinging her worn leather bag on to her shoulder, Maeve crunched across the gravel, past the garage block towards the front door. Dolly was waiting for her and the two women embraced.
‘Hello, Dolly love, where’s your woman?’
Dolly’s face crinkled into a smile. ‘She’ll be in soon. I told her you were coming. I made us a nice casserole.’
They wandered through to the kitchen and the appetising smell made Maeve’s mouth water. Like most cooks, any food presented to her that she had not had to prepare was like ambrosia. Also, she grudgingly admitted, Dolly could cook.
‘How is she, Dolly?’
‘She seems better now. When he was first sentenced she was terrible, God love her. But this last couple of weeks, she’s picked up quite a bit. She works in the car lot during the day, though she has been seeing the fella who’s running the building sites. Everyone’s had word from Georgio to humour her. That’s the expression he used, Carol told me. But she seems all right. If it gets her out and about, then it can only be a good thing.’
Maeve nodded. ‘He’s me son and I love him, but Dolly, he never deserved that girl. Humour her, my eye! And him stuck in Parkhurst like a big galoot. He told Mario not to let on to her about too much. The girl’s a fool where my son is concerned. If he’s so clever, what’s he doing rotting in that prison, I ask meself?’
Dolly didn’t answer, just carried on making the tea. Maeve needed to sound off about Georgio and the only place she could do so in peace was here, provided her daughter-in-law was out.
‘You know it’s a terrible thing to say, and if my old man heard me he’d go mad, but I’m not so sure my Georgio was as innocent as he said. Over the years he came along in leaps and bounds, and even though the police could prove nothing much, I still feel in me gut there was more to it all than anyone knows or guesses. Donna told me the other day that this house was in her name. Solely in her name. Now why would he have done that? That’s the puzzler. And she had known nothing about it! He gave her papers to sign and she signed them. She said that’s how it had always been.’
Dolly sighed heavily and said, ‘Look, Maeve, we both know Georgio was a ducker and diver. Whatever he’s done, he’s more than paying for it now.’
Maeve was stopped from answering by the front door opening and Donna’s cheery hello as she came in. She walked into the kitchen with a stack of books held against her chest.
‘Hello, Donna love. What’s all those?’
‘Hello, Maeve. Oh, these are the books from the car lot. I’m going to look them over, see if I can make head or tail of them. Hello, Dolly, how about a nice cup of tea? I couldn’t half do with one.’
Dolly poured her out a cup and listened to her chattering on.
‘I’m getting to like working there. I think it’s because I’m getting the hang of it. Even Carol’s started leaving me alone now to get on with it. I still don’t understand a lot of stuff, but I’m getting there. Also Carol has started taking calls at home, which takes the pressure off. Davey can concentrate on the buyers, and travelling round looking at motors. So really, I think it’s working out well!’
Maeve smiled. ‘What kind of calls is Carol taking? Surely there’s no reason for that if you’re there all day?’
Donna shrugged and sat at the scrubbed pine table. ‘I don’t know. I think it’s the regular customers - they think I might bodge it up or something. Once I get more experience I expect everything will be much easier for all concerned. I had a lovely letter from Georgio this morning. He’s settled in at Parkhurst and his appeal should be in about eight months. He sounded much happier than he has for ages.’
She smiled widely at the two older women and they smiled back at her. Maeve sipped her tea, all the while wondering what kind of calls Carol could take at home, that couldn’t come into the office any more?
‘Look at her! What’s she doing here?’ Mark Hancock’s voice was loud. The men all looked at the woman walking towards them in a white hard hat and designer Wellingtons. Her legs encased in tight black ski pants, with a heavy rib white jumper over them, made her look as if she should be at a race meeting at the very least. Not on a building site in Ilford.
‘What can I do for you, Mrs Brunos?’ Mark said aggressively, and the men nearby sniggered.
Donna picked up the tone and smiled tightly, embarrassed already. ‘I understand from my husband that the footings should have been in six weeks ago. So the contract is behind schedule—’
Mark interrupted her, his voice impatient. ‘I assume your husband can see what the weather’s like from his new abode? It’s been raining. The planning officer wouldn’t let us sink the concrete until the footings had been bailed out. Anyway, we’re not over schedule. The work’s picked up now the warmer weather’s here. The houses will be built on time, I can assure you of that. Now, if that’s all?’ He raised thick red eyebrows and Donna felt her stomach lurch at his rude attitude.
Pulling herself up to her full height, she said with as much dignity as she could muster, ‘Actually, that’s not all. I received the invoices for the cement and it seems we ordered three hundred yards more than anticipated. As we are building four detached three-bedroomed houses and not a whole council estate, perhaps you would be so kind as to enlighten me as to exactly where the other concrete has gone? Also, I would like the names and addresses of the so-called lumpers employed. Two plastering firms have already been paid and the brickies aren’t even up to the damp course yet, so I assume they have been paid in advance? Would you like me to carry on, or shall we go to your office and finish this conversation there?’
Mark stared into her fa
ce, his eyes bright with malice. He stormed past her and Donna had to run to keep up as she followed him. But she was aware of the workmen’s laughter, and knew that this time it wasn’t directed at her.
Her heart was in her mouth at her own audacity, her daring. Mario had pointed out discrepancies in the invoicing, and explained everything to her as he saw it. There was an inordinate amount of ripping off going on at the different sites. Donna had told him she would sort it out. She was supposed to be looking out for her husband’s interests and she was determined that she would. It was this that gave her the courage needed to take on men like Mark Hancock. Also, the knowledge that Mario was ready to back her up whenever she needed it. In the last six weeks her life had been turned upside down, yet there was an up side too. She had actually started looking forward to getting out of bed.
Inside the office she smiled sweetly at Hancock, and was gratified to see he was looking decidedly worried.
Chapter Four
Paddy Donovon was enormous, over eighteen stone, but as his height was nearer seven feet than six, he could carry it. His huge leonine head was covered in reddish curls, with a liberal sprinkling of grey. His beard was long, bushy, and also going grey. His eyes were slate-blue, steely, and surrounded by sandy lashes.
His hands were like shovels, his shoulders broad and muscular. He was nearly fifty-five years old. There was nothing anyone could tell Paddy about the running of a building site. He had come to England in the early 1950s, established himself in Kilburn, reared a family and lost his wife to cancer, all the while working on different sites around the country. The only thing in his life that had stayed the same was the Irish Post, even though he only bought it these days for the obituaries.