Beth noted that Susan’s voice took on a husky, sensual quality as she spoke of Liam. This was the adult woman she didn’t know, so very different from her childhood friend.
It struck Beth then that she was at a real disadvantage. Susan’s character had changed and been remoulded by circumstance, events and the influence of others, and the image she had of it in her head was hopelessly out of date.
She thought it incongruous that a shy, middle-class, somewhat frumpy woman would fall for a man who looked and lived like a gypsy. She wouldn’t have expected her old friend to have a baby outside of marriage, or to get involved with the long-haired leader of a commune. And as for killing anyone…
Steven was equally baffled, but he didn’t have his opinions clouded in the way Beth did. His first view was that Susan was as soft as butter, and a willing victim of her parents, her brother and Reuben. But if that was so, how did she leap out of that docile stance to become an avenger of her child’s death?
The answer to this had to be something they hadn’t tapped into yet. Beth guessed she and Steven would just have to keep digging until they unearthed it.
‘Liam must have been very shocked that both your parents had died?’ Beth asked, wanting to be convinced that this man was not another fortune-seeker like Reuben later on.
‘He was astounded,’ Susan agreed, and smiled as if the memory of that still pleased her. ‘Oh, Beth, he was so lovely, I’d never had anyone concerned about me before. He felt bad that I’d handled two funerals without any help, he was furious that Martin was being so evil. But what really made me feel none of that mattered any more was just his presence. He understood how I felt, he wanted to make things better for me.’
Beth wanted to believe that. But she knew that Susan had ended up in Bristol without him. It was a bit like reading the last page of a novel first. ‘And so there was nothing any longer to prevent you having a love affair?’ she said, raising an eyebrow.
Susan giggled. ‘No, nothing and no one,’ she said. ‘I was very wicked. I opened a bottle of Father’s best wine, and we slept in Mother and Father’s bed that night. It was so lovely.’
‘You deserved something good to happen after all you’d been through,’ Beth said. She had a picture in her mind of Susan in a winceyette nightdress under her parents’ rose-pink satin eiderdown. Gypsy Liam didn’t fit well into that picture at all. ‘Was he your first lover?’ she asked.
‘Yes.’ Susan grinned, a little shamefaced. ‘I never met anyone stuck at home. I’d given up hope that I ever would. So I had to grab it, didn’t I? To hell with the consequences.’
‘Did you even stop to think about contraception?’ Beth asked.
As she said that, she remembered how she and Suzie had discussed what they’d do if they got pregnant. They were only fourteen at the time, and neither of them had even kissed a boy, so it was purely hypothetical. Suzie had claimed she would kill herself!
‘I don’t remember.’ Susan giggled. ‘But even if I had, I wouldn’t have known what to say to Liam about it. Besides, at my age it hardly mattered anyway.’
It would have mattered very much to Beth. But then she had every reason to be suspicious of men.
‘So you just leapt into it then?’ she prompted.
‘Yes. Without a second thought. It’s odd how you can remember every detail about some things, but nothing about others,’ Susan said pensively. ‘There was a full moon that night and it was frosty. As I was drawing the bedroom curtains, Liam came up behind me and we looked out at the garden together. The moon was shining down on the river, it was like there was a silver bridge across the darkness of it, and the frost on the grass was glistening.’
‘It sounds very romantic,’ Beth said awkwardly.
Susan barely heard what she said. She wasn’t listening, she was remembering. Liam had slipped his arms around her and kissed the back of her neck. ‘There’s magic in the air tonight,’ he whispered. ‘Everything is just right for us, so don’t be scared.’
He slid his hands up under her sweater as they stood there and unfastened her bra. As his hands cupped round her breasts she gasped with pleasure. She entered into a brand-new world that night, one she had never imagined in her wildest dreams. The thrill of his bare chest against hers, the soft wetness of his mouth, the hardness of his body pressing into her soft flesh. There, in her parents’ big soft bed, the same one she’d been conceived in thirty-four years before, she discovered what rapture really meant. All her inhibitions left her as he explored her with his fingers and his lips, she heard herself begging for more, and she didn’t care if she was behaving like a slut.
‘A thirty-four-year-old virgin,’ Susan said with a giggle. ‘I thought I was too old to fall in love. But it was like being a young girl all over again, Beth. I never guessed it would be like that. I thought I’d be scared, that it would turn out to be smutty and I’d feel bad. I didn’t, though, it was wonderful, the best thing that’s ever happened to me.’
‘And after that night?’ Beth was unnerved by the rapturous glow on Susan’s face.
‘He stayed with me from that night, right through Christmas and on till half-way through January, and we never seemed to sleep.’
‘What were your plans?’ Beth asked. She knew now why Susan hadn’t felt able to tell Steven all this. ‘Did your brother know you had a man there?’
‘I didn’t know or care if Martin knew,’ Susan laughed, showing those small, even teeth Beth had so often envied her for as a child. Surprisingly, they were still as white now as they had been then. ‘I felt so strong, so happy, he hardly even crossed my mind. I didn’t have any plans. I was living right in the present, the past and the future weren’t important any more.’
‘But you said Liam only stayed until mid-January. How did you manage when he went away?’
‘It was tough to be alone again, but he had to work,’ Susan said carefully, as if this was something she’d told herself a hundred times before. ‘You see, he looked after gardens all over the place, some he’d been doing for years. He couldn’t let his customers down just because of me. Sometimes he was gone as long as four weeks, but mostly it was only one or two. I tried hard not to get upset by it.’
‘So how long did this go on for?’ Beth asked. If Annabel was born in April of 1986, she had to have been conceived the previous July, around eight months after Susan’s parents died.
‘Right up till Martin finally sold the house in August,’ Susan said. ‘The fun we had that summer! We used to go skinny-dipping in the river at night, we’d get drunk and dance out on the lawn, we often made love out there too. I’ve never had so much fun. He made me feel so sexy and naughty. That’s what I meant about the glimpse of the woman I’d always wanted to be.’
Beth began to feel irrationally irritated. She didn’t want to hear above love-making on dewy grass, or dips in the river. She wanted to know whether Liam was on the make, how Susan came to live in Bristol alone, and all the relevant details. ‘Oh, come on, Sue,’ she said impatiently. ‘You must have been in the early stages of pregnancy by August. You weren’t children, for goodness’ sake tell me what happened to Liam.’
A cloud passed over Susan’s face. ‘Martin turned up unexpectedly one day. Liam wasn’t there at the time, but Martin had found out about us, and he was furious with me. He said I was a half-witted slut and asked how I dared have some gypsy living in his house. He said I’d got to get out.’
‘Are you saying Liam skipped off before you left there then?’
‘No, he didn’t.’ Susan riled up in indignation. ‘We were in love, everything was wonderful between us. He was only working away for a few days. When he returned I told him what Martin had said, and we talked about what we should do. He wanted me to find a place in Stratford, but I knew it was hard to find flats or houses to rent. I also thought I’d be happier making a new start somewhere else, where no one knew me. I didn’t want people gossiping about me.’
Beth nodded. ‘But why Bristol?’
‘We used to go there sometimes when I was little,’ Susan explained. ‘We stayed with some relation of Mother’s in Clifton. It had always seemed a wonderful, exciting place to me, what with the zoo up on the Downs, the parks, the big shops and the docks. It wasn’t too far for Liam to travel to his customers, and we thought he’d soon find new ones there too.’
‘So Liam came with you then?’
‘Well, no.’ Susan faltered momentarily. ‘You see, I didn’t realize I was pregnant then, and as he had a big job he had to finish, I said I’d come here to find a place for us.’
Beth wondered how a woman who had hardly been out of her home town before could possibly trek off alone to a big city. And if Liam was so caring, why did he let her?
‘Right! You came to Bristol and found the house in Ambra Vale. Now, what about Liam?’ she asked bluntly.
‘I couldn’t contact him when he was working, he always phoned me. I found the house, got back to the house in Luddington to pack, but he still didn’t phone. I was getting panicky then, but I figured if the worst came to the worst and he hadn’t phoned by the time I had to leave, I would leave the Bristol address with the neighbours and they’d pass it on to him. But I never saw him again.’
‘So the last contact you had with him was before you went off to Bristol?’ Beth felt she had to get that straight.
Susan nodded glumly. ‘I should have left my address with other people too, left a letter for him at The Bell in Shottery where he used to drink. I reckon Martin told the neighbours not to tell him where I was.’
Given what Susan had already said about Martin, Beth thought it was quite likely he did put his oar in, but it didn’t say much for Liam’s love for her that he was so easily deterred. She thought the most likely explanation was that he was already feeling trapped before the Luddington house was sold. Maybe he even encouraged her to go to Bristol so that he would never run into her again by accident.
But she wasn’t going to air that view. It was kinder to let Susan think he really couldn’t find her.
‘It must have been awful for you,’ she said instead. ‘Especially when you discovered you were pregnant too.’
‘Oddly enough, finding I was pregnant helped me get over him,’ Susan said pensively. ‘I know he did really love me, but he was a free spirit, he’d lived like a gypsy for most of his life. Even if he had managed to find me, I don’t think he would have fitted into an ordinary sort of life.’
‘I’m glad you can be so generous towards him,’ Beth said with a touch of sarcasm. ‘I don’t think I’d have been if I’d had to bring his daughter up alone.’
‘If it wasn’t for him coming along when he did, I would never have known love,’ Susan said, almost as a reprimand. ‘You must know what I mean, Beth? Falling in love, making love, that’s what turns you into a real woman, isn’t it?’
Beth felt inexplicably angry as she drove back to the office later. She couldn’t understand why Susan was so accepting of Liam’s desertion. All that twaddle about how falling in love made her into a real woman was just so much hogwash. She was pathetic! She’d let her brother take that beautiful house without so much as a protest. She should have taken legal action against Dr Wetherall when Annabel died, but instead she lay down and waited for some hippie guru to fleece her!
Then, when she was left with absolutely nothing, she finally decided to take some action and shot two people!
She had to be mad!
Beth’s mood wasn’t helped during the afternoon by a series of clients who were either blatantly lying to her or so cocky about what they’d done that she felt like slapping them. By the time she left the office at five, she was tense with anger and frustration.
When she arrived home and opened the front door to find two inches of water in the hall, that was the last straw.
It was clear the washing machine she’d left running that morning was the culprit. The water had run out into the hall, and now it was seeping on to the living-room carpet too. She let out a bellow of pure rage, punched the wall with her fist and burst into hysterical tears.
‘Beth!’
She turned on hearing her name being called to see Steven running up the stairs. ‘What on earth’s the matter?’ he called out.
‘Look!’ she snarled, pointing a shaking finger at the hall floor. ‘The bloody washing machine!’
He leapt up the last few steps, peered into the hall, then put one hand on her arm. ‘Calm down. It probably looks worse than it is.’
‘Calm down!’ she yelled at him. ‘This has just about put the hat on the day I’ve had. Any minute now I’ll get the people downstairs complaining their ceiling’s coming down.’
‘No you won’t, I expect the floor is concrete,’ he said calmly, and without any hesitation he slipped off his shoes and socks and waded into the flat.
Beth slumped against the wall, still sobbing. Steven reappeared a couple of minutes later with a bucket and cloth and a couple of towels. He put the towels down by the living-room doorway to prevent any more water running in there, and began mopping up.
‘It’s not that bad,’ he said from his bent-over position. ‘It’s mostly run out here, the kitchen floor has a slight slope. Lucky it’s all tiled. The carpet will soon dry, and as it’s clean water, it won’t leave a mark.’
His optimistic view did nothing to help Beth. She knew she was showing herself up, but she couldn’t stop crying, or even help. She stood there helplessly, tears streaming down her face as he mopped and wrung out the cloth again and again.
‘Right. Come on in now,’ he said as he finally stood up. He held out his hand to her. ‘Go and sit down. I’ll just finish off in the kitchen and make you a cup of tea.’
A few minutes later Beth had a mug of tea in her hands and her sobs had turned to mere occasional sniffs and gasps. ‘I’m sorry you had to see me like this,’ she said, feeling very embarrassed. ‘I don’t know what came over me.’
She had never imagined Steven to be so practical, he had always struck her as one of those men who couldn’t change a car wheel or even put in a new light bulb. She supposed that was purely because he was always so untidy. But he had been so quick and thorough, and his blue eyes didn’t hold a trace of mockery.
‘We all have days like that sometimes,’ he said sympathetically, perching on the edge of the couch as he sipped his tea. ‘Want to tell me about it?’
She looked at him and felt ashamed. His feet were still bare, his trousers rolled up to show very white, bony ankles. He’d taken his jacket off, and the shirt beneath it hadn’t been ironed on either the sleeves or the back. His hair needed cutting. He looked like the one who needed looking after.
He had such a nice face, she thought, kind eyes, full lips that suggested a generous nature. She really couldn’t understand why she’d been such a bitch to him in the past.
‘There’s no sensible explanation,’ she admitted. ‘Susan irritated me this morning, then I just got more and more wound up this afternoon. When I opened the door and saw the water, I just flipped. What brought you round here anyway?’
‘I tried to catch up with you as you left the office, just to ask how you got on with Susan today, but you were going like the clappers.’ He grinned. ‘My car was in the multi-storey near here, and as you’d left the front door open, I just came in on the impulse. I heard you yell out, and I thought you’d been burgled or something.’
‘I feel stupid now,’ she said sheepishly, dabbing at her eyes with a tissue and finding to her further shame that her mascara had smeared all over her face. ‘But thank you for mopping it up.’
‘It was nothing,’ he said. ‘I’ll pull the machine out in a minute and see if I can see what went wrong with it. I’d better push off then and let you have a lie-down or whatever.’
‘No, don’t go yet,’ she said, aware she owed him at least a bit of news about Susan in return for what he’d done. ‘I’ll just go and wash my face. I must look awful.’
In the
bathroom Beth stared at herself in horror. It wasn’t just her white face streaked with black, but the realization she’d completely lost control of herself. And in front of Steven of all people!
She could hear him pulling the washing machine out in the kitchen, and she was reminded of how often she’d been sharp with him in the past. She really didn’t deserve his kindness now. She fervently hoped he would keep this incident to himself. She could imagine how gleeful some of the other office staff would be to hear she was capable of hysterics.
As she went back into the kitchen, Steven had pushed the machine back under the work surface. He had the hose in his hand.
‘It’s split,’ he said, showing her a small hole. ‘I’ll take it away with me and get a replacement, it’s an easy job to refit it.’
‘You’ve been so very kind,’ she said. ‘I really appreciate it.’
‘Maidens in distress have always been my thing,’ he said with a smile. ‘Do you feel like telling me about Susan, or has that got to wait?’
‘Liam, Annabel’s father, deserted her,’ Beth said tartly. ‘She’s so pathetic she thinks he did her a favour just by making her pregnant.’
‘I wouldn’t say that’s pathetic,’ he said indignantly. ‘Most women want a baby, maybe she wanted one far more than she wanted a permanent relationship.’
‘It was irresponsible,’ she retorted.
Steven smiled. ‘We’re all guilty of that sometimes,’ he said. ‘So are you saying Susan wasn’t cut up about him vanishing?’
‘She didn’t appear to be, she was too full of little homilies like “Love turns us into real women”. I found it all really annoying.’
‘Ah, so that’s what set you off.’ He laughed. ‘Shall I make us more tea? You might as well get it all off your chest in one go.’
Over a second cup of tea, Beth told him everything Susan had told her, including what Liam was like, and how Martin inherited the house and threw her out. ‘She should have stuck up for herself,’ she said angrily. ‘Why do people let others walk all over them?’