That'll Be the Day (2007) (48 page)

Christmas proved to be even more of a nightmare than she’d feared. There was no hope of seeing Terry over the holiday and Lynda certainly wasn’t in the mood for a turkey dinner with all the trimmings although Ewan insisted upon it and she had no choice but to obey. She sweated for hours cooking the meal all alone in the kitchen, aching for her mam to be there beside her joking and laughing and exchanging gifts, as they’d used to in the old days.

At least Jake ate every scrap even if the lad did look hollow-eyed, and conversation between the three of them was at an all time low.

Feeling brave after a glass or two of port and lemon, Lynda demanded to know who was providing her mother with food on this special day of the year, if she really was locked up somewhere.

‘Where is she? Where’s Mam? What have you done with her?’ tears filled her eyes but yet she persisted. ‘Did you really kidnap her and lock her up in some dirty hole by the docks? It’s a rabbit warren down there. You know we’d never find her without help. Tell me the truth, I want to know!’

But her courage earned Lynda no answers, only another beating. Ewan knocked her off her chair with the flat of his hand, and when she lay crying on the floor, kicked her in the back and stomach till she stifled her tears and finally shut up.

Jake sat like a stone throughout, seemingly dazed by events, unable to bring himself to react or even defend his sister.
 

Then Ewan dragged Lynda upstairs and locked her in her room. He’d bought a padlock for the purpose and whenever he considered she was getting out of hand, or irritated him with her constant litany of questions, Ewan would lock her up, sometimes for hours, not letting her out until it was time for her to go back to work.

Even so, Lynda continued to take the precaution of blocking the door from her own side as well, using the chest of drawers as a barrier since Ewan kept the key.

The reality was that she’d become a prisoner in her own home, allowed out only to run the flower stall, under strict orders to behave as normally as possible in public. And Lynda was far too afraid to do anything but obey. She couldn’t tell anyone about what was going on behind closed doors because somewhere her mother too could well be a prisoner, and Betty’s safety, her very life depended upon her son and daughter doing exactly as Ewan said.

From time to time in the week before Christmas and the days after, Constable Nuttall would call at the house to tell Lynda how their search was progressing. She always looked startled when she saw him, half expecting bad news. Finally he came to warn her that she must accept the fact Betty was dead and gone, just like poor old Queenie.

‘I’m sorry to say that it’s highly unlikely your mam will be coming back, Lynda love. She’s a goner for sure. The poor lady must have slipped in the canal when she was out doing her morning exercise. I told her to take care on them slippy wet cobbles, but when did she ever listen to advice?’

This annoyed Lynda so much that for once she came out of her shell of misery and shouted at the policeman. ‘She wouldn’t have got into this mess in the first place if
you’d
ever listened to what
she
had to say. Where were you when my so-called father was moving in and making himself at home and Mam wanted rid?’

Constable Nuttall looked stricken by guilt, as well he might. ‘It’s not easy getting involved in a domestic, or in a situation concerning divorce.’

‘Utter rubbish! You abandoned her, abandoned us all. Nobody had ever given a monkey’s, not the police, not the social, not even the flaming doctor. They’ve none of them ever lifted so much as a finger to help her, not in all of her life. They just turn a blind eye, talk a load of nonsense about their hands being tied, about it being a private matter between husband and wife, as if a woman has no rights to safety, even in her own home. Sometimes I think Mam was absolutely right in her opinion of men. When have they ever treated women well? Bullies and cads the lot of them.’

‘Nay, Lynda love, that’s not true. There are some good apples in the barrel. We’re not all bad.’

‘Oh? And what did you do to help when Ewan put her in hospital with a broken leg?’

‘Ewan did what? I thought Betty fell downstairs?’

And as Lynda froze, realising her temper had taken her too far, a voice at her elbow said, ‘She did fall. You must forgive my daughter, constable, but she’s got herself into a right state over losing her mam, she’s distraught, you know? Gone a bit loopy. It’s understandable, of course, but her imagination is running riot and she really shouldn’t say things which aren’t true.’

‘Aye,’ said Constable Nuttall, his tone thoughtful as he watched Ewan Hemley draw the girl back into the house and start to close the door. ‘I can see she’s a bit upset, and has every reason to be. I’ll keep popping in, Lynda love, just to see how you are.’

But by this time he was speaking to a closed door.

Lynda’s careless mistake earned her another beating and she spent all the next day locked in her room, even though it meant losing valuable trade on the market. Ewan was always circumspect as he dealt out the blows, making sure there were no bruises on her face but Lynda ached in every limb, vomiting into her wash bowl from the pains in her belly.

She cried for a long time after the policeman had gone, so filled with misery she couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat, couldn’t concentrate on anything. She yearned for someone to help her, for Terry to come and rescue her and be her St George.

This was all her fault, Lynda told herself over and over. She’d brought about this terrible situation by being so desperate for a father she’d insisted on inviting Ewan in for that fateful Sunday lunch. If only she’d listened to her mother.

Now Betty was gone and Lynda had no one. Even Terry didn’t seem able to help but then he didn’t know the half of what was going on. She’d told him very little and he knew only that her mother was missing, probably as a result of an accident. But in the depth of her despair, and somewhat unrealistically, Lynda felt that if he truly loved her he ought to be doing more. She longed for Terry to beat up Ewan and force him to divulge the information about what he’d done to Betty.

Why didn’t somebody guess what was going on and offer to help? Why didn’t her daffy brother do something? Why did Constable Nuttall never believe a word she said to him?

That was men for you, as her mother would so often say, always choosing the easy path. Bullies and cowards the lot of them.

Lynda began to sob all over again, knowing deep in her heart that she was being unfair, particularly to Terry, but she had to blame someone for this dreadful predicament. It was all very well for people to say she could call on them if she ever needed help, but she needed it now, and where were they?

Chapter Forty-Eight

It was January, snow was thick on the ground and Leo was on his way to see his mother, as usual. A bouquet of carnations lay on the passenger seat beside him which he’d bought from Lynda’s stall, Betty still not having reappeared. He couldn’t find Judy either. It was the start of a new decade yet nothing had changed.

He and Helen were barely even talking and she appeared as slender and elegant as ever with no sign of a thickening waistline despite continuing to maintain that she was pregnant. Leo was feeling deeply frustrated and depressed. His life was a mess and he couldn’t find a way to put it right.

He suddenly realised that the traffic lights ahead were against him and he slammed on the brakes, the car going into a sickening skid before sliding to an abrupt halt.

A woman who’d been about to cross the road cast him a fierce glare and a man shook a fist at him.

My God, he’d nearly caused an accident, could have killed someone. What was he thinking of? Not concentrating on his driving, that was the problem. Leo came to a sudden decision. The roads were unsafe and he was unfit to drive. He’d give the visit a miss today.

He stopped off at a call box and rang the home, so that his mother wouldn’t be anxious. She was perfectly understanding, given the state of the roads.

Leo wasn’t sorry about the change of plan. Every time he called to see her these days, Dulcie would be sure to ask if he’d challenged Helen on the subject of her alleged pregnancy, not to mention the fire that had driven his mother into the home in the first place. Time after time he’d promised to try ringing the doctor again because surely Dulcie deserved an answer, as did he. But somehow he’d never got round to it. There seemed little point without Judy in his life any more, although he suspected that a part of him had no wish to face the truth, and the tantrums and acrimony that would surely follow if his wife really was lying.

He had at least made some enquiries of the fire brigade regarding the kitchen fire. The results had been interesting if inconclusive. Only Helen knew the absolute truth, at least her version of it, but Leo’s patience was wearing thin.

He was tired of being manipulated, of doing anything for a quiet life by avoiding confrontation. And Helen’s own efforts at reconciliation, of behaving like a loving and caring wife were beginning to show signs of strain. Being thrown together over Christmas had revealed the cracks in their relationship for what they were and Leo was once more the subject of a constant litany of complaints over his supposed life-long passion for infidelity.

‘Wasn’t I right all along? How could you do this to me?’ Helen would say twenty times a day. ‘How could you be so cruel? How do I know you aren’t still seeing that Beckett woman while I’m carrying your child?’ And even, ‘haven’t I always trusted you?’ which they both knew to be absolute nonsense.

Even the way Helen preyed upon his kindness, using him as some sort of slave to fetch and carry cushions and drinks for her, making him pander to her sudden fancies for bunches of grapes or smoked salmon - these cravings generally being of the expensive variety - were beginning to grate upon him, and he missed Judy so badly. He loved her, he needed her. God knows where she was living, or what she was enduring but they surely both deserved the right to find happiness together?

While he was standing in the call box in the snow, Leo came to a sudden decision and, on impulse, rang the family doctor there and then. After he’d spoken to Doc Mitchell, he put down the phone, turned the car around and drove straight back home.

Judy was working at a little snack bar for ten solid hours a day, from eight in the morning till six at night. It was her job to make and serve bacon sandwiches, fried egg and chips, sausages, Holland’s meat and potato pies and endless cups of sweet tea to women in headscarves and men who sat silently reading the
Daily Dispatch
. It wasn’t the kind of trendy coffee bar that the young favoured with frothy coffee served in glass cups, and Elvis Presley records belting out at top volume from a Juke Box. It was simply a place where Lancashire folk went for ‘summat warm to fill me belly’.

Strangely enough, Judy found she quite enjoyed the work because the people who frequented it always seemed to appreciate what she cooked for them.

‘Eeh, that’s gradely, love,’ a chap would say as she set bacon and eggs before him.

And then at the end of her shift she would return home through graffiti- decorated stairwells that reeked of urine and boiled cabbage, rushing up the stairs and locking herself quickly into her miserable, lonely little one-bedroom flat, where she would see no one until she went back to the snack bar the next morning at eight.

Not that any of this mattered one jot. Judy could have endured anything so long as she had Tom and Ruth with her. But where was the point even in living if she couldn’t be with her children?

Sometimes Sam would be generous and allow her to have them for an afternoon, although never a whole day, or even every week. And she always had to tell him in advance exactly where she was taking them, aware that at some point during the afternoon he would check up on her, to make sure they were exactly where she said they’d be.

They would be happily playing snowballs in Buile Hill Park, or huddled in the museum, yet again, because it was winter and too cold to sit outside listening to the band or to eat a picnic by the river. Nor could she afford to take them anywhere really exciting like Belle Vue, or the pictures.

And then Judy would suddenly become aware of his presence lurking in the shadows. She was always careful not to react, or to let Sam know that she saw him, too afraid that if she annoyed him he might march over and snatch the children away from her, or not let her have them again.

Judy had discovered that she must obey her husband’s strict rules far more now that she was separated from him, than she ever had when she was living with him as his wife.

It might have been different if she and Leo had got together, as they’d once hoped, but she should have realised that was nothing more than a pipe-dream. In truth it would have been far better if she’d never met Leo Catlow, never had coffee with him, never taken him into her bed.

Now she had lost everything, and had nothing left to fight Sam with.

Leo was filled with renewed energy. Fortified by what he had learned from the doctor, he was determined to get some proper answers this time. He strode into the house, opening and closing doors, calling out Helen’s name as he went from room to room, searching. Even before he heard the rustles and thumps from the direction of their bedroom, some instinct warned him what he would find. And he was right.