Laceys of Liverpool (43 page)

Maeve sighed and supposed that, to keep Martin happy, she’d have to go without children.

Orla managed to escape the guests and make her way round to the side of the church where Vernon Matthews was leaning against the wall, smoking. He threw the cigarette away when she approached and tried to take her in his arms.

She pushed him away and said angrily, ‘Don’t you dare touch me!’

‘Worried your hubby might see?’ His smile was almost a sneer.

‘Naturally, but I wouldn’t want you touching me if we were stranded alone together on a desert island.’

‘You didn’t always feel like that.’

‘Well, I feel like that now.’ She had been mad to sleep with him. It had happened two years after the incident with Dominic Reilly. In all that time Micky hadn’t touched her – he still hadn’t, though Orla had got used to it by now. But this was before she’d got used to it, when she used to drive the second-hand Mini Mam had bought deep into the countryside, singing to herself, feeling liberated. Mixed with this was a sense of gut-wrenching frustration, a longing for something even faintly interesting to happen.

After a while she got into the habit of stopping at out-of-the-way pubs for a drink of lemonade or orange juice.
It made her feel sophisticated, a woman of the world. She would get out her reporter’s notebook and pretend to make notes, so people would think she was a businesswoman on her way to an important meeting.

The second time she stopped a man approached and asked to buy her a drink. Orla told him politely to get lost. A few weeks later, when she was approached again, she accepted the drink. The man turned out to be a commercial traveller who’d been on the stage in his youth. He was interesting to talk to and asked if he could see her again. Orla refused, though she had quite enjoyed the illicit excitement of the occasion. She hadn’t felt like herself, but a different person altogether.

The next man who bought her a drink asked if she’d like to come upstairs with him to his room.

‘You mean, you’re staying here?’

‘No, but I very quickly could be.’

‘I’d sooner not.’ Orla was beginning to feel like a character in a novel. She called herself unusual, romantic names whenever she met a man, which was happening regularly: Estella, Isabella, Madeleine, Dawn.

Micky wanted to know where she took herself every day in the car. ‘Nowhere in particular,’ Orla said vaguely. ‘Just around. Sometimes I interview people for the paper.’

‘I suppose anywhere’s better than home,’ Micky said nastily.

‘You said it first,’ Orla snapped.

They were nasty to each other most of the time. They slept in the same bed, their backs to each other. They got dressed and undressed in the bathroom.

She told Vernon Matthews her name was Greta. They met just before Christmas in a little thatched pub in Rainford that did bed and breakfasts. There were silver decorations and a lighted tree in the lounge. He was
about fifty, with dark hair and dark eyes, and a Clark Gable moustache. He told her he was a representative for an engineering company and always used the pub as a base when he was in the north-west.

He also told her she was one of the most beautiful women he’d ever met. His dark eyes glistened with admiration when he said this and Orla’s stomach twisted pleasantly. She felt very strange, almost drunk, though she’d only had orange juice. Afterwards, she felt convinced he’d slipped something in her drink.

Orla couldn’t remember agreeing to go upstairs, but she must have, because the next thing she knew she and Vernon were lying naked on a bed together, making love. Her first thought was how to escape, but she knew it was no use trying to push away the heavy body on top of hers. She thought about screaming, but if someone came they might call the police and it could get in the papers – it was the sort of situation she was always on the lookout for herself in her role as a reporter.

Eventually, Vernon reached a noisy, gasping climax and collapsed on top of her. Orla slipped wordlessly from beneath, got partially dressed and went into the bathroom where she washed herself from tip to toe. When she came out, Vernon Matthews had emptied her bag on the bed and was going through the contents.

‘How dare you!’ she expostulated.

He merely laughed and picked up her driving licence. ‘Orla Lavin, 11 Pearl Street, Bootle,’ he read aloud. ‘So you’re not Greta, after all. And according to this, you’re married. Does your hubbie know you spend your afternoons playing the whore?’

‘I don’t think that’s any of your business.’ She snatched the licence out of his hand.

‘I could make it my business pretty damn quick.’

Orla began to push the things back in her bag. She said
threateningly, ‘If you say anything to me husband he’ll kill you. He might kill me first, but then he’ll kill you, I promise you that.’

Vernon laughed again. ‘Oh, I’m shaking in my shoes, I really am.’

He lay on the bed and watched her leave, and Orla drove back to Bootle like a maniac. It was weeks before she could bring herself to use the car again, and then it was to do some genuine reporting for the
Crosby Star
.

She thought the whole horrible experience was over and done with until three months later, when she got the first phone call.

‘Hello, it’s me, Vernon. Love in the afternoon, remember?’

Orla was alone in the house and the hairs prickled on her neck. ‘What do you want?’

‘To see you. I keep thinking of those happy hours we spent together. I can’t wait for a repeat.’

‘Then I’m afraid you’ll have to wait for ever,’ Orla said shortly. She put the phone down.

It rang again almost immediately. She left the receiver off the hook until the children came home from school.

The phone calls continued for ten days, usually in the mornings. Perhaps he had too much sense to ring when Micky was home. They stopped for three months and Orla thought she was rid of him, until they started again. He must call when he was in the Liverpool area and he only called to torment her, have some fun. Orla would be reminded of their afternoon together, which Vernon would describe in sickening detail if she held on and tried to plead with him to stop.

Sometimes he wrote letters: horrible, explicit letters that she burnt immediately, without opening, once she realised who they were from. It was awkward when
Micky was home and he picked up the post before she could get to it.

‘Aren’t you going to read it?’ he would ask when she stuck the letter on the sideboard, unopened, waiting to be burnt.

‘I’ll read it later. It doesn’t look important.’

One day, not long ago, she’d driven to Crosby to deliver some reports, wondering why a grey Marina stuck to her tail the whole way. When she came out, Vernon had been waiting, smiling, holding out his arms.

‘You’re crazy,’ Orla had shrieked hysterically. ‘Haven’t you got a job to go to? Why won’t you leave me alone? I never want to see you again.’ She’d got in the Mini and driven away before he could reply, terrified, knowing she was trapped in a situation entirely of her own making and unable to think of a way out.

Now he’d had the brass cheek to turn up at her daughter’s wedding, to spoil everything, at least for her. He must have seen the announcement in the
Bootle Times
.

‘I’d like you to go,’ she said shakily.

‘And I’d like to stay.’ She could tell he enjoyed getting under her skin, hearing her voice shake. ‘I was wondering if I could inveigle my way into the reception.’

‘I’d stop wondering if I were you. I’m not the only person who knows exactly who’s been invited.’

His mouth twisted. ‘That’s a pity.’

‘You’re the one who needs the pity. You’re crazy. Anybody sane would have better things to do with their time. Perhaps it wouldn’t be a bad idea if I found out where you lived and told your wife what you were up to.’

‘I haven’t got a wife.’ His eyes flickered and she knew he was lying. She felt she had got one up on him for a
change, but it was useless knowing he was married. There was no way she could discover where he lived.

‘Orla!’ Bernadette came round the corner of the church. ‘They’re going to take a photie of everyone together.’ She smiled at Vernon. ‘Hello.’

‘Hello, there,’ he said charmingly. ‘’Bye, Orla. See you again one day soon.’

Cormac and Vicky managed a quick tour of the three Lacey’s salons before sitting down to a ham salad in Hilton’s Restaurant, where the reception was being held and where Cormac had celebrated his twenty-first.

‘The salon in Opal Street is a bit off the beaten track, but the other two on main roads will make wonderful showcases for our products,’ Vicky enthused.

Cormac grinned. ‘Our products! That sounds very grand and businesslike, Vic.’

Vicky went pink, something she was apt to do very easily, particularly if Cormac was around. ‘I suppose it does, for a business about to be started in my parents’ garage. Still, I think grand and businesslike is what we should aim for, Cormac.’

‘I think so too. And “Lacey’s of Liverpool” sounds very grand indeed. You don’t mind your name being left out, do you?’ Cormac said anxiously.

‘Not under the circumstances – and I’ve never liked the name Weatherspoon. If our products are associated with an already long-established hairdresser’s it will help get them off the ground.’

‘You talk like a business manual, Vic.’

Vicky tried to discern if there was the faintest hint of flirtatiousness in Cormac’s tone, but decided there wasn’t. She was nearly thirty and Cormac was the first man she had fallen in love with. Not that he knew. Not that he would
ever
know, because she would never tell
him. She might have done had she been as remotely pretty as any one of his three sisters. Even his mother looked gorgeous in a lacy lilac dress and little matching hat. Vicky sighed. If Cormac so much as suspected she was in love with him he’d probably run a mile.

They’d met three years before when Cormac had started work in the research department of Brooker & Sons, a large company in St Helens where Victoria Weatherspoon had worked since she finished university with a degree in chemistry. Brooker’s, a household name, were primarily the manufacturers of domestic cleansing agents: washing-up liquid, washing powder, scourer, bleach, soap. They were also famous for their baby products and produced a small range of cosmetics, including shampoos and conditioners.

For most of the three years Cormac and Vicky had done no more than pass the time of day. They had never been involved in the same research project. While Vicky concentrated on ways of making the washing-up liquid more bubbly or the scourer more ruthless, Cormac was involved in different experiments which could lead to the world being rid of every speck of dirt and every known germ.

Two and a half months ago – Vicky remembered the day precisely, it was January the fourteenth – she and Cormac happened to be working late together. He was sitting on a stool at a table at the far end of the laboratory, writing, presumably a report on his current project. Vicky was using the shaker, a piece of machinery that gripped containers and tossed them about crazily for two minutes so that the contents were thoroughly mixed.

‘What’s that you’re doing, Vic?’ Cormac enquired.

‘Mixing shampoo for my mother. Sorry, is the noise getting on your nerves?’

‘No. I was wondering what the smell was, that’s all.’ Cormac sniffed appreciatively. ‘It’s very nice. What is it?’

‘Geranium oil.’

‘Do we make geranium oil shampoo?’ He put down his pen and came towards her.

Vicky felt her heart quicken. ‘No. This is Brooker’s basic mixture before the perfume’s added. I didn’t steal it, Cormac. It’s been paid for, I can assure you.’

‘Gracious, Vic. I wouldn’t give a damn if you pinched a ten-ton container. I’m just interested in what you’re doing, that’s all.’ He looked with surprise at the row of plastic bottles on the worktop. ‘There must be enough there to last your mother the rest of her life. Sorry, Vic,’ he said apologetically, putting his hand on her arm. ‘I’m being dead nosy. It’s just that I’m bored witless writing up a report. I was looking for a diversion, that’s all. Even so, I wouldn’t mind knowing what your mother’s going to do with so much shampoo.’

‘She sells it, Cormac. She belongs to the Women’s Institute and they have a sale of work every month to raise money for charity. Aromatherapy oils have a heavenly smell. The shampoos go like hot cakes. I usually make a couple of dozen a month, using different fragrances. This time I’m using geranium, lavender, lemongrass and rosemary.’ Vicky wondered if her dull, monosyllabic tone was as evident to him as it was to herself. She sounded as if she was reading the lesson at a funeral.

‘Aromatherapy oils?’

‘The Egyptians first used them, possibly as long ago as 3000
BC
. They can be used for massage and, oh, for all sorts of things, as well as making cosmetics.’

‘Hmm! Interesting.’ Cormac rocked back on his heels. ‘Fancy a drink when you’ve finished, Vic?’

Over the next few weeks they went for several more
drinks after work. Vicky could hardly believe it when he told her about his life on the road belonging to a group called the Nobodys.

‘I must have smoked every known substance. We didn’t know where we were most of the time.’

‘I would never have guessed.’ His neat good looks didn’t fit in with the life he’d just described.

‘What about you, Vic? What have you been up to since you left university?’

‘Working in Brooker’s,’ she confessed, slightly ashamed.

‘Ah, an upright, conscientious member of society, unlike myself.’

‘I wish I’d been a bit more adventurous, if only in my job. Brooker’s is so . . . so . . .’

‘Mindnumbingly dull?’ Cormac suggested, making a face, and she laughed. The more they saw each other, the more relaxed she became.

‘I suppose so. I once had visions of doing something as spectacular as splitting the atom.’

‘Or discovering penicillin. I know, Vic, me too.’

A few days later Cormac said, ‘Is there anything unique about Brooker’s shampoos, Vic?’

‘No. Most shampoos contain the same basic substances: aqua, sodium laureth sulfate, cocamide, hydroxy-propyltrimonium, glycerine.’