Chapter 35
Lew insisted that Bonnie leave at four.
‘Lew, I can’t afford to lose any more pay,’ Bonnie said.
‘Do you actually think I’m going to dock your wages?’ he asked. ‘Please!’
‘Ken Grimshaw would have.’
‘I’m not Ken Grimshaw,’ said Lew sternly.
No, you’re most definitely not, said Bonnie to herself. Ken Grimshaw didn’t have deep blue eyes, the colour of a twilight sky, or thick black-brown waves of hair that her hands wanted to plunge into. Ken Grimshaw didn’t smell like a fresh forest and have a smile that make the heat rush to her cheeks. Ken Grimshaw didn’t make her heart feel as if there were something on this planet worth beating for.
‘Make sure your phone is charged up and do not hesitate to call the police if your husband turns up. Does he know where you’ll be living?’
‘No,’ said Bonnie. ‘Not yet. But it won’t be long before he finds out.’
Lew picked up one of the business cards from the counter and scribbled on the back of it. ‘Here’s my personal mobile number. Only a few people have it and I’ll always pick up if it rings.’ Apart from one notable occasion, added his brain for his ears only.
‘Thank you,’ said Bonnie, reaching out for it and then pulling her hand back quickly before he caught sight of the state of her nails, which had been bitten down to the quick when she had been locked in the room. They had pulsed with pain all day.
‘I’ll get your luggage out of the back room.’
‘Lew, you’ve done enough, I’ll—’
‘I’ll get your luggage out of the back room.’ He was insistent. They walked across the square to her car and Lew lifted the bags into the boot for her.
‘I’d better not forget to give you these,’ he said, pulling out two sets of keys tied together with ribbon. ‘The blue ones are for the back door, the red for the front.’
Bonnie took them from him and felt a fizzy thrill zip around inside her. She’d done it. She’d actually done what she had wished she could do. These were not only keys for the doors of a little house, they were keys to a new life, a life without Stephen. Her freedom. She wouldn’t be going back to him, whatever he said, whatever he did. A Queen of Wishful Thinking would only ever move forwards.
‘You take care,’ Lew said and bumped her shoulder because he’d wanted to touch her in some way to convey his concern and it wouldn’t have been right to close his arms around her again as he had that morning. He would swear he could still feel the imprint of her against his chest.
With every yard she covered towards the house on Rainbow Lane, Bonnie felt a further notch of exhilaration, like a child on her way to see Santa. She knew that when she walked in, the house wouldn’t be the same as the one in her head, an explosion of cheerful colour, but it didn’t matter. She parked up in front of the green gate and took the keys out of her pocket, having another moment of disbelief that she was actually here and about to open the bright red door. Her bright red door. Inside, instead of the huge cosy inglenook fireplace of her imagination, there was a small low tiled one in the lounge and the carpet was dark brown, the walls magnolia, but it was still lovely. She brought in her luggage and shut the door behind her. She was home, and her lungs expanded and she breathed in the slightly damp air and it felt wonderful. The kitchen was tiny, but it did have a two-ring hob set in the work surface and a small fridge underneath it. She switched it on and it whirred merrily into life. Upstairs there was one large bedroom with built-in wardrobes either side of a chimney breast. The window afforded a view of a considerably overgrown square of garden, two posts standing upright and a droopy washing line strung between them. There was a bathroom with a cheap but new-ish white bathroom suite. It felt wonderfully unfamiliar.
Now came the part she had been waiting for, the exciting part. She needed things and, thanks to The Rainbow Lady sales, she had extra in her budget to buy them with. She set off down to the small retail park just outside town where the big Argos was. She already had the product codes saved on her phone for a kettle, a single quilt, cover, pillow and the flip-out bed that doubled up as a chair. The bed, in the brown colour only, had twenty pounds off. The colour didn’t matter to her at all. The young male assistant kindly carried it to the back of her car for her. Then, across the road in Asda, Bonnie bought some milk and coffee, bread and butter and basics, including a can opener that she realised wasn’t on her list. She found a toaster for ten pounds and when she saw a microwave with a large scratch on the side for the discounted price of thirty-five pounds on a gondola end, she couldn’t resist. She unloaded her new purchases at home as if she were unwrapping surprise birthday presents. Her evening meal consisted of a cheese toastie and a mug of tomato soup and it was a feast because she didn’t have to eat it opposite a man chewing his jaw off and pontificating about subjects he pretended to know more about than he did.
She was tired out by ten o’clock and settled down on her new bed in the front room, which wasn’t the most comfortable thing on the planet, but she didn’t care. She snuggled under the cheap quilt, rested her head on the pillow which was soft and bouncy with its newness and savoured a different sort of quiet from the one in Greenwood Crescent. She hadn’t realised the sounds her ears registered there, until she could no longer hear them: Stephen’s muted padding across his carpet, the faint play of voices or music coming from the radio in his bedroom, the neighbour’s garage door opening and closing when he arrived home from work. Here there was only a sporadic rumble of cars on the nearby High Street, but she didn’t mind that at all.
She would wake up in the morning not having to see Stephen over the breakfast table. It really would be the first day of the rest of her life, as the old saying went. Further thoughts of him flittered to her brain, like moths drawn to a light. She thought about what Lew had said about him manipulating her and she explored that from her new safe vantage point in the little house. She rolled back to thirteen and a half years ago and again tried to fathom what had made her so thirsty for the attentions of a man like Stephen Brookland. She’d been a wreck, on the precipice of a nervous breakdown. Physically she was so drained that Harry Grimshaw had sent her home on full pay for a fortnight to have a good rest. Mentally she was so wired she was barely sleeping, yet she was exhausted. She was battered too from the beatings she had given herself for not being able to help Joel or see through the ‘I’m perfectly fine’ act her father had put on. He’d been her rock, her daddy who had brought her up with all the love he had to give and made sure she had the best of what he could afford. All that to cope with and Bear’s illness thrown on top. She had loved her dog so much and had to watch him growing weaker as the silent, sly cancer took hold. And though she’d known her final kindness to him had been to let the vet send him to his forever sleep, it had still been a hard duty. If she closed her eyes, even now all these years later, she could still recall him falling backwards into her arms and see the light draining from his eyes. She could still imagine her face pressed into his darling fur made damp with her tears and the voice of the vet above her saying ‘Sorry for your loss.’
Stephen was fourteen years her senior, but she hadn’t felt the age difference until they were married. She’d been adrift, floating around helplessly, about to drown and he’d appeared like a lifeboat and led her into a harbour. No wonder she’d fallen in love with him. He had designed himself to make her do that.
Funnily enough when she had a ring on her finger, he hadn’t been as keen to help her with her duties to her father. And his chivalrous ways were sadly lacking when his mother attacked her for not being good enough for her son, for being a gold-digger (that amused rather than hurt), for being a leech. There had been a slow slide from treating her like a lady to a housekeeper then further down the scale to a mere sounding-board for his inflated theories and pompous opinions on everything.
Even with less than a day’s distance from Stephen, she could see clearly how she might very well have been manipulated, as Lew had said. The real Stephen had been the one post-marriage, the fake one had led her to the registry office with a crumb trail of kind words and gallantry. He didn’t even want to sleep with her before they were married and she’d presumed he was an old-fashioned gent. She’d been so easily hoodwinked. And why? Just so that he didn’t have to be alone? She’d been nothing more than a pet to him. And not even one that he’d treated with any respect, or love.
And so what would he do now that they were apart? She pictured him today in an empty house with no familiar smells of Friday chicken coming from the kitchen at teatime. He would have made himself a sandwich and eaten it at the table with no one opposite to speak at – not to or with: she was there to speak at. He would have watched the Discovery or History channel, as per normal but his plate would not be washed up when he went into the kitchen to lock the door at half-past ten. He would have retired to his bedroom then to listen to the radio with the precisely placed socks in his drawer and his boxes of shoes in the wardrobe, and his mind would be spinning on the events of the day, just as hers was now.
Mental exhaustion soon made her eyelids shutter down and sleep drifted towards her in thickening mists. Just as she was surrendering to it, she heard Stephen’s voice cut through them, as sharp and loud as if he were beside her, his lips close to her ear.
You’ll be back. You’ll have to be back. There is no life for you if you don’t, as well you know.
And she shuddered because it was not the way of things that she went and she had absolutely no doubt that he would be planning how to restore order.