A Proper Charlie (22 page)

‘
Your dream still doesn’t have to be impossible,’ he said softly. ‘There are writing courses you can go on. And, I can pull a few strings,’ he winked, looking pleased with himself. ‘Leave it with me.’

‘
I can’t afford college fees –’ she began to say apologetically.

‘
Don’t worry about that, the company will pay. And before you get all insulted,’ he smiled as she opened her mouth to protest, ‘the company often pays for such courses.’

Charlie nodded dumbly.

‘
That’s settled then. How do you think the merger is going?’

Why was he asking her? ‘Fine, I – I suppose. Our office doesn’t seem that affected, although I’ve heard a few grumbles.’

‘
Keep your ear to the ground, eh? I suppose there are, er, rumours circling the building regarding me?’ He sounded, and looked, embarrassed.

‘
Rumours?’ Charlie managed to look wide-eyed and guilty all at the same time. ‘No. I can’t say I’ve heard any.’

Mr Middleton sighed. ‘I thought so. It’s nonsense, of course. A misunderstanding.’

‘
Of course,’ Charlie agreed.

They sat in another silence with Charlie feeling his tension and intense thought. She looked at him askance and took in his broad shoulders and wide chest, which she had a sudden compulsion to rest her head against…

Charlie pulled herself up short. She picked up her coffee and took a sip, then finished her sandwich. She wished she bought the chicken salad. It wasn’t her, the ham
was
like cardboard.

Mr Middleton finished his coffee, aimed and threw the cup towards a bin attached to a large tree. It missed. ‘Bugger.’ He stood up to retrieve it, and dropped it into the bin.

My, he’s tall, Charlie mused. Get a grip, woman, she mentally shook herself.

‘
Mr Middleton…’ she hesitated. Should she confront him with what she knew about him? She looked around the park. There was only a handful of people around, would they come to her aid? She knew she was being ridiculous. There was no way he could have anything to do with the abductions. She judged people with her heart and not her head, but even so she couldn’t be
that
wrong about a person.

‘
Call me Ben,’ he was saying.

‘
Not Burt after all, then?’

Their eyes met, smiling at one another.

‘
Not Burt, no. So please call me Ben. Mr Middleton reminds me of my dad, and that’s not a good memory, believe me. What was it you were saying?’ he asked.

‘
Nothing really, just that I know it’s a misunderstanding, for what it’s worth.’

He looked touched at her words, and turned his head as if to mask the emotion. He turned back. ‘Thanks, Charlie. That means a lot to me.’

‘
I mean it,’ she said, and she did. ‘And it’ll all blow over soon.’

‘
I hope so.’

‘
And thank you, for the chance to go on a writing course, I mean. I really appreciate the thought.’ She felt him look at her quizzically, and then he nodded, turned and strode across the park.

She watched him go as she finished the last of her sandwich, and chewed without taste. He cut a lonely figure, even lonelier than her.

*

Her parting words meant more to him than Anthony Lord’s assurances that all police charges against him had been dropped.

But what prompted him to approach her? And more, offer to help her achieve her dream? The Middleton Group offered journalism courses, but usually only to promising staff. And Ms Charlie Wallis was, if John Fanton could be believed, an employer’s answer to care in the community.

Ben would pay for her to go on a creative writing course out of his own pocket. Why he wanted to do that he didn’t exactly know. He could feel her incredible green eyes on his back as he walked across the park. She intrigued him. She was scatty, vivacious, and she made him laugh even when she was angry. He liked Charlotte Wallis and knew that was dangerous.

His mobile vibrated and he pulled it out. It was Kevin Locke. He
had heard about Saturday’s imprisonment and was complaining that Ben’s interference would impede on all his strategies.

‘
What exactly are you doing to find my sister?’ Ben interrupted his moaning, feeling the bubbles of anger rising again.

There was a heavy sigh on the other end of the telephone. ‘Ben,’ he said, in a tone that suggested Ben was a child that Locke was simply humouring, ‘I have exhausted my contacts. Your sister may simply not want to be found, have you thought about that?’

‘
No,’ said Ben and he terminated the call.

At the gates of the park, Ben turned around for a final glance at Charlie. He couldn’t see her. Trees blocked his view.

He didn’t care what others thought of him; not really. But somehow, Charlie Wallis’ thoughts were very important. He was drawn towards her time and time again. Even when he wasn’t with her, he thought he could see her: on the street corner, dashing across a road, sitting in the window of a late night café…

THIRTY

C
harlie jumped off the bus towards the end of the week, and headed to work mulling over a conversation between Melvin and Dean from last night. They had been watching the news and listened to how a father had resorted to hunting down his daughter’s rapist and beating him up instead of contacting the police. The broadcast triggered a debate between Melvin and Dean involving the rights and wrongs of vigilantes. Although, Charlie had been horrified that the father was serving a sentence while the rapist was allowed to walk free, she didn’t contribute to the debate. Instead, she had sat quietly thinking hard.

‘
He should have left justice to the police,’ said Melvin.

‘
To get a suspended sentence?’ sneered Dean. ‘The law’s a joke.’

‘
As a civilised country we can’t go around dishing out punishments ourselves,’ Melvin said.

‘
If the courts did their job properly, we’d not have to!’

An idea had tossed through her mind while they were debating, but she knocked it away as too dangerous before she could convince herself otherwise. She was lucky to have spent her few weeks as a prostitute unscathed, and realised now how stupid she had been, and this idea was ridiculously risky.

But now the idea came back; bigger and more possible than ever. And if it wasn’t for Jan; the sassy and brazen teenager who believed what she was doing was a normal way of life the idea would have stayed shelved.

Charlie hadn’t seen Jan since she’d ‘stolen’ her trick, and Charlie was more than worried now. It would have been so easy to fall into the kind of life Jan had, growing up with the state for parental guidance.

Illegal drugs were dished out like sweets between the kids in care. Abuse, sexual, mental and physical was also abundant in the home, and not always between staff and the children, it was often between the children themselves.

It was everyone for yourself, which Charlie had soon learned. She had been an angry little girl growing up to become an angrier teenager. The so-called experts had often given her, and the other children in the home, long and boring sermons about the demons of alcohol, drugs, smoking and being promiscuous; most of the kids sat at the back giggling while rolling weed, Charlie included. It was all right for these well-meaning lecturers, but what did they really know? They went back to their warm, comfortable homes, with their warm, comfortable families. What did they really know about the life of a child in care?

Whereas the others thought their life was normal, Charlie knew there was more than what had been shown to her so far. She had clung on to Melvin’s stories about his parents and how wonderful it had been before they had been killed, and she knew there just had to be more to life than simply existing.

At first, Charlie would have done anything to belong and fit in, and if that included smoking pot like the other pre-teens in the home, then that’s what she did. And if a boy said he loved her she would happily sleep with him, relishing thoughts of a happy home life and babies while lying in his arms. But then the carers coerced her to have a coil fitted and so that put a stop to that romantic idea.

Charlie supposed her bad mood was mainly down to the dream she had last night. It started out with Jan and Charlie standing on the street corner touting for business, but then a car pulled over to reveal a group of her old friends from the home. They jeered, telling her that they had known all along this is where she belonged – in the gutter.

‘
You might as well get paid for it, rather than give it for free,’ a boy had scoffed from the back of the car.

On waking she remembered that this is what an old boyfriend had actually said to her once. They had just made love in the back of his car and he’d casually sat up, rolled a joint, and told her that he knew someone who would give them forty pounds if she shagged them. All she had to do was pretend to be a virgin. She was fifteen, and he was eighteen, and her first love. He had a mop of curly brown hair, and bright blue eyes. Charlie had been envied among all the other girls in the home.

Melvin hadn’t been about; by that time they had lost touch. His adoptive parents had decided he should cut all contact with his institutional life, and that meant not seeing Charlie. Charlie had lost her only true friend, and when Ricky Gates dumped her after she had done what he had asked of her, and hating it, she felt ashamed and used. Violated. And for a long time she was so disgusted with herself, she believed weed and booze were her only friends.

She’d sorted herself out, but she couldn’t retrain her gullible heart and fell in love easily only to have her heart broken when a relationship crumbled. She’d clung to Andy Chambers while knowing subconsciously that it was a dead relationship because the reality was being on her own, and she had wrongly believed it was better to be with someone than alone. It was a slow dawning, but she realised now that had she agreed to marry Andy, had he asked her, it would have been the biggest mistake of her life.

Charlie crossed the road with other pedestrians when the green man began bleeping, and headed towards her office block. Her old car wouldn’t start this morning, and that was another reason for her bad mood. It had rained all night, going by the evidence of puddles, and so she supposed the engine had become damp. It often failed to start after a downpour. Still, she was lucky to own a car, but if her finances didn’t pick up soon she knew she would have to sell it.

Also in her silly teen-years and after she’d been ‘set free’ by the state and housed by the local council, someone foolishly offered her a store card; then she got a credit card; and another; and then a bank offered her a loan. For two years, she thought she was rich!

It was during these years that Melvin found her again. She was eighteen, and only just realising that the credit, store cards and loans weren’t the answer, and that she’d have to pay them back. She was in a state, drinking and smoking too much. Melvin had brought her to London and gave her some straight talking that included the words ‘stupid’, ‘pathetic’ and ‘sort yourself out or else’. He’d persuaded his adoptive parents to give her a home for a few months, and helped her with her finances. It was tough. She’d learnt the hard way. No more credit cards for her. She didn’t even smoke any more. Melvin’s parents had forbidden it in their house, and she felt guilty buying cigarettes when she could be paying Melvin back some of what she owned.

‘
Oomph!’

All the wind was knocked out of her as she crashed into someone. She had been too engrossed in her thoughts to watch where she had been going, and now she watched horrified as someone’s briefcase fell to the floor and all its contents scattered over the wet pavement.

‘
Oh my God,’ she muttered, and immediately bent down to pick up the strewn items.

‘
It’s OK,’ a familiar voice said, and Charlie looked up into a pair of chocolate eyes.

‘
Oh,’ she said. ‘Mr Middleton.’

‘
It’s Ben, remember?’

Charlie nodded, feeling confused. Her thoughts had been going over the blackest period of her life, and they’d been invaded by someone she thought of as unbranded by the cruelties of life. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said, picking up soggy papers from the ground. ‘This is totally my fault. I wasn’t looking where I was going.’ She stood up with a bundle of dripping documents in her arms. She looked down at Mr Middleton’s bent head as he picked up the rest, lying forlornly against a lamppost. He rose, clutching them to his chest and Charlie placed the documents she’d retrieved on top of the ones he’d gathered together.

‘
I wasn’t looking either,’ he admitted. ‘I was rushing about, and … did I hurt you?’ He must have noticed her rubbing her shoulder.

‘
No, it’s nothing,’ she said. She noticed a calculator on the floor, along with a few biros and unopened letters. She picked them up, and placed them on the bundle in his arms. ‘You need tentacles not testicles to carry that lot,’ she said with a laugh, which died instantly when she realised what she said.