Hope's Vengeance (23 page)

Hope screwed the lid firmly and dropped the container back into her pocket, finally noticing Dawn’s incredulous interest. “Brandy, helps keep me warm on shitty days like this. Want some?” She gestured needlessly at the coat.

Dawn had brought her car, as always, she wasn’t one to drink and drive, especially in conditions like this. She was at work, and, ever the professional, didn’t drink during work hours. Anyway, she had a rule, no alcohol before seven at night. “Yes, actually! Go on then, I’ll have some.” Whatever! She wasn’t due to drive for a few hours, and Hope was right: life’s too short.

Dawn savoured the chestnut gold, warming, biting, soothing, the quality flavour slipping down beautifully. She rarely drunk spirits, let alone neat, and felt her nose throbbing within seconds, knowing it had reddened by the inner sensation of heat. This was wrong, she was behaving badly, but there was something extra rebellious about Hope today, a challenging inner strength, and she needed to be part of that naughtiness, and to do that she had to be maverick too.

The shared misbehaviour lasted until the final dregs of the bottle had been drained by the giggling, glowing women, Hope replaced it in her pocket, and they sat, faces flushed, smiling and calm, basking in the wooziness. Finally Dawn began the session properly, her body flopping with pure relaxation, eyes slightly glazed, but ears still eager to listen. “You seem free, freer than I’ve ever seen you. It’s like you’ve dropped a huge weight from your shoulders.”

Hope’s face transfixed from hard to gorgeous easily when she smiled, her eyes twinkling, and mischievous. “I have. I reported him. After twenty five years I finally reported him.”

Dawn’s face, although attractive, was masculine, each feature wide and strong, big lips covering big teeth, a perfectly shaped roman nose, large cow eyes framed by heavy black lashes, but her smile warmed the room further. “I’m so proud of you. Were the police helpful, are they taking it seriously?”

“Well, I was interviewed by a Jackie Goodman in Norwich at first, and I don’t think she believed me, but I found out yesterday she’s been taken from the case anyway, so her opinion’s irrelevant. The woman in Bedfordshire’s been great, though, really supportive.”

“Good. It’s obviously made a big difference to how you feel about yourself, there’s so much less tension about you.” Dawn was aware she was still grinning, but she just couldn’t get the smile to leave her face.

“It’s been amazing, so cathartic, like twenty five years of oppression has lifted. I’m well aware that it’s his word against mine, and obviously he’s not going to admit it, is he, but my sisters have both given statements, which back my case. Mum refuses to give one though, she says she doesn’t want to be involved.”

“That’s rough, Hope, you’d think she’d want to support you through a hard time like this.”

“Hey, you know yourself what it’s like, I mean, you fell out with your parents irretrievably over yours, didn’t you?”

Now the smile had gone, the pools of chocolate tinged green forlorn, reminiscent. “Yes, but I think that might have been what propelled me to ensure he was convicted. I wanted to show them that he’d get his comeuppance with or without their help.”

“I can understand that, I feel the same. But, as I say, Faith and Charity are both backing me, and, from what I’ve been led to understand, they’ve found Tracy with the intention of her giving a statement too.”

“Fantastic, the more support you can get, the more they can push on him. Have you had any thoughts about what you want to talk about today?”

Hope smoothed her jeans, the first time she’d shown nerves since arriving. “I’ll tell you what I would like to get off my chest; my daughter, Penny.” Dawn crossed her arms, encouragement on her face. “She’s gone really weird all of a sudden. As you probably know I’m dating Rick…”

Dawn was stunned, horrified. She’d been completely innocent to that, her brother obviously, and rightly, had concerns about telling her. She faltered. “No… no, I didn’t. How… how long?”

Hope was oblivious to Dawn’s discomfort, she continued brightly, in lust, in love, and enjoying it greatly. “Well, this is the problem, we went out for the first time on Boxing Day, went to a restaurant in the town centre, Pinocchio’s, do you know it?” Dawn nodded, still in shock, the idea of Hope with her brother appalling. “Then we dated twice during the next week. After the third date I was relaxed enough with how things were going between us to introduce him to my kids, so I invited him round for dinner.”

Dawn shifted in her seat, she wanted Rick away from Hope, away from her inner anger. As a counsellor, she often questioned her own motives, and, aware she had no real reason to object to Rick seeing Hope, she realised she was torn between sisterly concern for Rick, but also jealousy that he was stealing Hope from her. The revelation shocked her.

“Well, the kids were all looking forward to meeting him, they know I’m happier in a relationship than single, and they all scrubbed up ready for his arrival. We prepared a really nice meal, we were excited. Anyway, Rick turned up at six, the table was set, everything ready to go, but as soon as Penny clapped eyes on him, she went into a tantrum, crying, shouting, I couldn’t believe it. She was calling him a bastard, telling him to fuck off out of her house. I was stunned.

Well, after a while I managed to calm her down enough to tell me what was going on, and she just said she knew him because she’d been to see Reveal on one of the nights she’d slipped out of the house behind my back. I couldn’t get angry because she would have stopped talking, but I was furious inside, I mean, what was a thirty two year old bloke doing knowing with my attractive thirteen year old? What would you do, Dawn!”

Dawn knew better than to answer, she knew exactly what her brother was capable of when it came to getting laid, and once again the thought of him with Hope disgusted her, but nowhere near as much as the thought of him with a child in her first teenage year. She swallowed hard, needing to hear more of the sickening event but wishing she could run away, far, far away.

“I was angry at him, angry at her. She’d sneaked out, lied to me, put herself in danger while I thought she was in bed, sleeping. My baby, in danger. I was angry with him, he should have told me he knew her, although he swore blind he didn’t. He had to, she was so emotionally charged, that had to come from somewhere. You know, I’m so worried about her at the moment, she’s becoming unhinged. She’s put on so much weight in the past few months, she looks terrible. She never stops eating, all day, she’s eating everything, tonnes of it, cereal, toast, chocolate, biscuits, seconds at dinner, she’s getting so fat. She used to be such a skinny little thing, scrawny, petite. I’m worried about her, Dawn, it’s like the opposite to anorexia.”

Dawn leant forward, her emotions churning inside. “So what happened?”

“Eventually he left. We’re still seeing each other, but I won’t bring him, well, he won’t come, actually, he won’t come back to mine any more.” A wistful look shadowed her. “She’s always been such a tiny little thing, just six pounds at birth, tiny, skinny. Always eaten like a sparrow, pecking a little bit before leaving the rest. Now it’s like she can’t fill her mouth enough.”

Dawn was nodding, pleased to steer the conversation away from Rick, adamant she was going to have words with him later. Now for the current issue, she had two choices. Either she believe the account verbatim, accept that Penny was on the route to obsessive eating, or she dismissed the whole thing discreetly, labelling Hope as obsessive about weight and fat, a problem Dawn had already experienced from the woman. Her professionalism kicked in, and she decided to sit on the fence for a while, let Hope spill more before judging.

“I know all children get puppy fat, well, the way I’ve seen it with the three of them growing up, is that they get all podgy, then have a growth spurt, like that. But Penny’s fully grown, she’s taller than me, and until she started putting the weight on, she was perfectly balanced.” Hope was inadvertently contouring Penny’s body with her hands, and Dawn hoped her client was exaggerating her daughter’s size, else she’d be grotesquely overweight. “Dawn, I don’t know what to do, she gets bigger by the day.”

“Have you talked to her about it, asked if she’s aware that she’s overeating?”

Hope nodded, frown lines deepening. “She says she doesn’t know why she’s doing it, she just feels madly hungry all the time. I’ve told her to chew each mouthful, eat slower, all the ways to ensure you don’t continue eating once you feel full up. I can see her trying, but then she ruins it by bingeing.”

“Are you concerned about bulimia?”

“No, she wouldn’t be gaining so much weight if she was honking it down the loo after eating.”

Dawn’s face twisted at the image, she clasped her hands together, keen to give the correct advice, aware that her head was still swimming with the revelations about Rick, and the alcohol having soothed her slightly too far. “How long has it been going on? The overeating.”

Hope sighed, her eyes darting as she mentally worked it out. “I’d go as far as to say six months, you know. Five, six months. It wasn’t so noticeable at first, just the odd extra bag of crisps here and there, but it’s been the past month that the weight gain has been so quick.” Hope’s eyes met Dawns, the answer was obvious. “Doctors, right?”

Dawn nodded. “Get her a blood test. Urine test. Just as a precaution.”

Hope nodded, scanning the carpet, mentally writing the additional task in her diary. “Yes. I’ll do that. Of course” They both fidgeted, one conversation over, the next undecided. Hope stroking the velvet of her fitted top, the silky sensation comforting her, Dawn, hands clasped loosely, lost in the grain of the coffee table. Hope sighed, and Dawn knew from past experience that the next line would be difficult. “It’s Mum and Belinda’s anniversary in six weeks, they’ll have been married four years. We’ve just received an invitation to go to Cornwall for the weekend, they’re having a party to celebrate.”

Dawn surveyed Hope’s forlorn expression, she raised an ironic smile. “I can see you’re overwhelmed with excitement with the idea!”

Hope chuckled, standing, smoothing her skin tight clothes, strolling to the window to watch the coldness, the grey. She crossed her arms. “You know, when I first mentioned Mum and Belinda’s wedding to you, I surprised myself that I sounded so prejudiced, because the truth is, I have no problem with gay, or lesbian, or bi. I have no problem with race, gender, age, I don’t carry ‘ism’s’. Getting this invitation, and that was a shock in itself, Mum and I aren’t on the best of terms at the moment since all this Griffin business raised it’s ugly head, it sort of reminded me back to their wedding.”

Hope stared at the water cooler, swallowing, she was thirsty, but the idea of iced water in the depths of winter made it easy to postpone refreshments a little longer. Glancing at her watch, she sat back down, hands expressive in advance of the explanation. “This’ll take a while, but I want you to know how it happened, then maybe you can explain why it hurt so much, because, being honest, I’m struggling to understand my bitterness.”

Dawn crossed her lean legs, head cocked, listening intently. “Tell me how it went, then we can analyse it.”

Hope swallowed again, her hand digging around in her pocket for a mint, the alcohol having dried her mouth too much to wait any longer for refreshing. “We, all of us, me, Faith, Charity, Happiness was still living at home but she had no idea what the event was, or at least that’s what she told us. We got an invitation just after Christmas from Mum, said she was hosting an important event on the eighteenth of February, and we were all invited. It seemed quite exciting, cloak and dagger, and we were all phoning each other, Mum, Happiness, trying to glean some information, get an idea what it was all about. On the invite it stated formal dress, so we all went shopping, got ourselves spruced up.

We went down to Cornwall the night before, the Friday. No-one was allowed in the ballroom, there were people in there setting up, but we were all kept well away in Mum’s private quarters. The refuge was in its early days then, she only set it up, well, only had the money to set it up after Honesty.” The words tailed away, Dawn despaired because she thought they’d got past the stage where Hope retreated, she thought they’d gained more mutual trust since those days.

The pause lasted from one minute, to two, three, Hope swallowed hard, beating the pain away, controlling herself. Eventually. “The next morning we were instructed to stay in our rooms until ten forty five exactly, when we were to make our way to the ballroom. It was all very mysterious, and I was as excited as the kids. Outside our room the caterers had left a tray loaded with toasts, jams, croissants, meats, you know, a sort of continental stroke English, without the grease! The kids piled in, as kids do, and they finished the lot, greedy little buggers!” With the gentle laugh lighting her eyes briefly, Dawn understood the memory was a treasured one.

“Well, we all went to the ballroom at the right time, we were so eager to find out what was going on. In all honesty, I thought it would be a formal opening for the refuge, so you can imagine how surprised I was when Brahm’s Wedding March began playing.” Hope fed another mint into her dry mouth.

Spreading her arms wide, Hope elaborated, grand gestures to effect the scene, portray it to Dawn, who remained still, listening. “It was beautiful, no doubt about that. Mum’s not very tasteful, but we’ve since discovered that Belinda is, she’s a real homebody, mothering, caring. It was her who designed the setting. Everything was white, the only contrast the cushions on the seats, and the flower arrangements that were scattered everywhere. It was regal, but not ostentatious, you know, just enough without rubbing your nose in it, Beckham style, you know.”

Dawn was unsure why her client needed the reassurance suddenly, but she nodded in appreciation, and anticipation. “Brahms started up, it was being played by a string quartet. Not my kind of thing…” Hope indicated her clothing, verging on gothic, verging on a direct imitation of Dawn’s outfit. “…as you can tell, but it was fitting. I could place the song in my head, and my instant assumption was she’d met another man and just hadn’t mentioned him. She appeared, I was looking back over my shoulder, and there she was, more beautiful than I’d ever seen her. Slim, elegant, demure even. She had a full length ivory dress, it was Indian silk, and it was befitting to a mature woman, not a fairy tail meringue, just subtle, and she strode up to what we now realised was the altar.”