Chapter 20
As usual, Bonnie woke up early on Monday to breakfast with Stephen, wash up his cereal plate and cup and wave him off like a dutiful wife. Things were once again calm because order had been restored the previous night when she had served up a delicious dinner at exactly seven, with carrots, and then soothed any remaining ruffled waters by asking about his fishing expedition as they ate. He showed off the trout he had caught, gutted and frozen for next Saturday’s tea and Bonnie had wondered if she would be still here then to have it.
When Stephen drove off to work, Bonnie sat at the kitchen table and began to plan out her future properly in an A4 pad. She wrote down all the things she would take with her and the bare essentials she would need to buy and found that she could get away with very little. She could make do with a flip out chair-bed that unfolded into a makeshift mattress. Even a sleeping bag would do for a couple of nights. She found a plastic box on a high shelf in the garage and put a couple of towels and some soap and toilet rolls in it, a few teabags, a pan to to cook from and to boil water in until she got a kettle, a spare toothbrush and toothpaste and one each of the following: a mug, a plate, a dish, a spoon, a knife and fork. She’d keep it under the bed for now, ready and waiting.
Then she pressed some confetti at the table and took photos of it, downloading them to eBay. The Rainbow Lady was open for business. She tipped her two-pound-coin jar onto the table and counted it to find that she had actually £304 in it. She nipped to the bank in Maltstone to update her passbook and found that with interest she had a few pounds more than she’d thought; not enough to go wild and buy the latest sort of smart TV, but every little counted. Her dad’s voice came to her as the counter assistant was printing out her new balance, Poor men throw away their pounds, Bon, and rich men look after their pennies. She deposited the two-pound coins in her account so they were safe and started to feel a stir of excitement that she could really do this. She had taken the next step towards leaving Stephen, after merely wishing she could. There was a giant leap to the third, though; she was under no illusions.
She packed a few of her clothes in a suitcase and gathered up her treasures into a box: family photos, her parents’ wedding rings, her mother’s modest pieces of jewellery, her dad’s notebook, his giant watch and the locket he had bought for her twenty-first birthday, plus Bear’s ashes, and put it in the bottom of her wardrobe. Stephen thought it was oversentimental how she kept the ashes and gave her permission to put them in the garden if she must, but she didn’t want to. She and Joel had bought Bear together as a pup. He’d been a tiny ball of red fluff that had grown into a huge teddy of a dog, as gentle a soul as Joel but with no crippling demons. She had cried into his fur when she found out that Joel had left her and he had stood there, letting her use him as something to hold on to as if he knew that she might slip off the edge of the world if she let go. Her father had loved Bear and Bear had loved him too. Even when her dad sometimes failed to recognise her, he always knew Bear. The place at her side had grown very cold when she’d had to let Bear go, and like Joel and her father – he had gone far too soon.
She had an eBay notification at two o’clock that she had her first order: three packets of rainbow hearts for table scattering. The money was already sitting in her PayPal account. She pressed out the pieces at the dining table, although she knew she wouldn’t be able to fulfil any future orders in front of Stephen, as he’d get annoyed by the constant clicking sound and he’d wonder what she was up to. She packaged the order and took it straight to the post office, rather than put it in the post box, so she could get a proof of sending. A clear profit of about six pounds was hardly putting her in the Alan Sugar bracket, but her little business was up and running. As she hoped she would be soon.
There was a florist on the same row of shops. Bonnie picked two bunches of freesias. Alma loved them. When she was at the end of her life, she had a bunch on either side of her bed so she could smell the scent. She’d been so very poorly with that horrible imprisoning disease. You get what you deserve in life, I always say. That’s what Alma had said to her once, deliberately provocative, when she heard that Bonnie’s father had pneumonia, on top of everything else. She’d said it in front of her friend Katherine, her audience, her witness. To this day, Bonnie didn’t know how she’d stopped herself from tearing across the room and slapping her round, flabby face, sending her jowls juddering. See that look in her eyes, Katherine? She’d kill me if she could, Alma had smirked at her friend. And Bonnie had played right into her hands by answering, Yes, Alma, right now I think I could kill you if I had the chance. If only she hadn’t.
Alma had hated her from the off. Even at her wedding, she had dressed from head to toe in black, refusing the pink carnation corsage which Bonnie had bought for her to wear. She’d done her best to ruin the day with her far from whispered remarks to Katherine, who’d been invited because Alma said she wouldn’t attend otherwise. Alma had taken her son aside before they went into the registry office, but not too far away that Bonnie couldn’t hear what she was saying to him. ‘It will end in tears, Stephen. Do not marry this woman. You are worth more. She’s after your money and she does not love you. It is not too late to back out. You’ve only known her two minutes and she’s saddled with an invalid father. Look at him. And don’t you be thinking now you’re wed to her, you’re going to stuff me in an old people’s home like she did that poor thing sat dribbling who hasn’t a clue where he is or why.’
It was her wedding day and she had said her vows with tears pricking at the back of her eyes. And afterwards, Harry Grimshaw, who had sat with her dad, holding his hand through the ceremony, had told her that he would drive her away right now if she wanted and help her undo the binds of the promises she had just made.
She should have taken him up on the offer and gone.
Bonnie gave her head a small shake to dislodge the picture of Alma from her inner vision because the tears it brought with it were clouding her eyes as she drove to the cemetery just outside the town centre. Despite all the money Stephen had inherited, he hadn’t splashed out on a fancy stone for his ‘beloved mother’ as he’d called her in his eulogy at the funeral service. She rested in the next plot to her husband who had had a much taller, grander headstone, paid for by his widow.
Bonnie placed the freesias in the pot and tore up the long grass that was covering the dates and the words: Alma Elizabeth Brookland. Into your Care, my God.
‘Happy Birthday, Alma,’ said Bonnie. ‘I came to tell you that I’m going to leave your son. As you knew I would.’