Chapter 67
On the Friday of that week, Mart Deco staggered into the shop like a drunken bumble bee with a large square electrical appliance, which he almost dropped by the counter. He was purple-faced when he straightened up again. Mart might have been a massive bloke but he had ‘a glass back’. He was waiting for an operation on a disc.
‘Martin, what on earth . . .’ Bonnie rushed towards him. ‘You’ll be doing yourself a mischief. Here, sit down.’ She pulled a fiddleback chair from under a nearby table and pushed Mart down on it whilst he took his asthma inhaler out of his pocket and drew the spray into his lungs.
‘It’s a washing machine,’ said Martin, in between puffs.
‘Shut up talking for a minute,’ Bonnie commanded.
Martin nodded and then when he got his breath back he continued. ‘As I was saying, it’s a washing machine. It sits on your work surface. It’s a couple of years old but it works smashing. It’s the wife’s sister’s. She’s just won a proper one in a competition. Dead lucky she is. She won a week in the Isle of Wight in April. Anyway, she said that it was a waste to dump it because it’s a cracking little thing and I said I know just the home for it. She’s cleaned it up and the instruction book is inside.’
‘Oh Mart, that’s so lovely of you. How much do you want . . .?’
‘I don’t want owt for it,’ Martin tutted. ‘It’ll save me a trip to the dump. And it would have been a shame, because as I said, it works.’
Lew appeared from the back room where he’d been taking a private call from the estate agent telling him that Woodlea would be up on their website within the hour.
‘Mart’s brought me a washing machine,’ said Bonnie, attempting to pick it up and move it out of the way. It was a dead weight though and it didn’t budge.
‘Whoa, you’ll do yourself an injury,’ yelled Mart and Lew together.
‘Stand back please and leave it to the experts,’ said Lew, lifting it far more easily than either of the others. ‘I’ll put it in the back room for now.’
‘Or I can put it straight in my car?’ suggested Bonnie.
‘You won’t be able to lift it out at the other end though, Bonnie. I’ll drop it off for you after work,’ said Lew.
‘I don’t want to put you to any troub—’
Lew cut off her protest. ‘I insist.’
‘Eh, did you hear that Grimshaw is packing up?’ said Mart, suddenly excited. ‘He’s bought a bar abroad. He’s sold the shop to a bloke who does kitchens.’
‘That’s an end of an era,’ said Bonnie with more than a hint of sadness. Her world was changing beyond recognition. Even Grimshaw’s shop, as dingy as it had become, was familiar and it was those constants that gave her reference points of stability. They were buoys in cold, uncertain waters whose current was dragging her every day towards the edge of something that made Niagara Falls look like a trickle.
As soon as Bonnie got home, she scurried around the house straightening things, hanging up the cardigan she had left draped over the arm of her sofa, gathering up all the pieces of craft items she had left out on the coffee table, giving the work surface in the kitchen a wipe down, spraying some Febreze into the air to mask the faint damp smell. The little house was clean and tidy but it was a few country miles away from what Lew was used to and Bonnie felt slightly shamed that he’d see her in the midst of all her hotch-potch. He arrived at the door five minutes after she had with the washing machine in his arms and she guided him through to the kitchen. It took up half the available work surface but there was nowhere else for it to go. And it would be a big improvement on washing things in the sink and drip drying them on the short line outside.
‘Thank you,’ said Bonnie, rubbing her hands together nervously. ‘Can I get you a coffee or something?’
‘A coffee would be lovely,’ said Lew. Anything to delay going back to the Holiday Inn for a very long evening alone.
Whilst Bonnie went to fill the kettle, Lew sat on the sofa and looked around. What a mix of furniture, he thought with a smile. And yet strangely, all the pieces sat harmoniously with each other. The table and chairs were the perfect size for the recess at the side of the kitchen door, the sofa was snug under the window, the coffee table just right for the space available. Bonnie had hung some curtains at the window, Lew recognised them from a house clearance haul he’d acquired. They were dark blue velvet, and she had secured them to their tie-back hooks with red rope twists. The small hearth had a burst of fake flowers where logs would crackle in winter. The mantelpiece above had photos on it in frames: an old colour photo of a couple at their wedding; a big stocky man in a suit, a little girl, about seven he reckoned, in a new school uniform holding his hand. There was an adult Bonnie cuddling a large red bear of a dog. Next, a mother in bed holding a newborn baby, a father cradling the same baby. That last image seared on his retina and even when he looked away, he could still see it.
He shifted his attention to Bonnie’s profile in the tiny kitchen, spooning coffee into two mugs as the kettle boiled beside her and just looking at her warmed his heart. She was so . . . understated. What you saw was what you got with her. She displayed more of a reaction over the old secondhand mini washing machine than Charlotte did over the Tiffany earrings. She brought the drinks through and set them on the coffee table.
‘Would you like a biscuit?’ she asked. ‘I think I’ve got some KitKats in the cupboard.’
‘No, I’m fine thank you,’ said Lew. ‘I don’t want to spoil my appetite. At the prices they charge for dinner, it’s best if I’m very hungry to enjoy it.’
‘They?’ asked Bonnie, sitting on the brown bed-chair.
‘Sorry . . .’ He realised he hadn’t told her any details about his new living arrangements. ‘I’m staying at the Holiday Inn.’
‘I see,’ smiled Bonnie. ‘Very nice for a couple of nights but I imagine it’s not so relaxing if you don’t have your own things around you.’
‘I’ll swap you,’ said Lew. The coffee was good. He suspected it was flavoured with the lovely surroundings in which he was drinking it. ‘Your house is very cosy.’
‘I like it,’ said Bonnie, looking fondly around at all the things so kindly donated. ‘I love coming home to it in the evenings. It feels . . .’
‘. . . Welcoming,’ supplied Lew. ‘Woodlea is a new build and there’s no imprint of lives lived in it, if you know what I mean.’
Bonnie nodded. Stephen’s house had been a new build when he bought it and it had only absorbed his energy. It had refused to soak up any traces of her.
‘The house I had before that was a hundred and seventy years old. It creaked at night and one of the rooms was always extra-warm when you walked into it, and I mean when there was no central heating on. And it was north-facing. Odd, wonderfully odd.’ Lew smiled, as he always did, when he thought of The Beeches.
‘The house I grew up in was like that,’ said Bonnie with a sigh. ‘Victorian, with a monster staircase. If I stood halfway up on the turn, something used to ruffle my hair, like a summer breeze. I know it was haunted, but by something benign. We didn’t mind sharing with it.’ She smiled. She used to stand there sometimes, close her eyes and pretend it was her mother touching her.
‘I suppose really I ought to go and find somewhere to rent. I’m fed up already living in a hotel.’
‘There’s no—’ Bonnie cut off what she’d been about to say and apologised.
‘Go on,’ urged Lew.
‘I was going to say . . . there’s no chance of a . . . reconciliation then?’
‘None,’ said Lew. ‘Absolutely none.’
‘I’m sorry about that. I had no idea your marriage was in trouble.’ She sipped her coffee.
‘Neither did I, Bonnie,’ said Lew. ‘But I found out on the same day that not only had my wife been sleeping with her best friend’s husband, but that she’d been lying to me for years about miscarrying our baby when she’d aborted it because it would have been too inconvenient to have it.’ His tone was bitter, arctic cold.
Bonnie opened up her mouth to say something, realised she had no words and shut it again. Lew gave a long apologetic sigh.
‘I didn’t mean to say that, forgive me.’ He should go before he made her feel even more uncomfortable.
‘It must have been ready to come out,’ said Bonnie kindly. ‘Don’t worry, it won’t go any further.’
‘I don’t doubt that,’ said Lew. His eyes drifted again to the photo of the dad and the little girl in the school uniform. If his baby had been a girl, she would have been about the same age now. He coughed away a throatful of emotion. He shouldn’t burden this woman with his worries and really ought to leave because sitting here with her felt too comfortable.
‘I can’t imagine what a shock that must have been for you, Lew,’ said Bonnie, gently, carefully.
‘I’m not even sure I’ve taken it all in yet,’ he replied. ‘My brain is still spinning from all the lies she told me over the years.’ He pushed the waves of his hair back with his fingers. ‘I’ve chewed it over and over in my head, Bonnie. Did I want a child so much that I ignored what she wanted? She said I pushed her into it and though I know I didn’t, I’m starting to doubt myself. I couldn’t have, I wouldn’t have . . .’
He stood up quickly because he could feel tears pushing at the back of his eyes. ‘Sorry, I don’t know what’s the matter with me.’
‘I do, you’re grieving, Lew,’ Bonnie said. She pulled at his hand for him to sit down again and he did. ‘Let me top up your coffee.’
And because Lew felt as if this little house was wrapping its arms around him, he said, ‘Thank you. That would be nice.’
*
Stephen Brookland was in ecstasy. He thought he’d got it wrong about his wife and her boss. He’d been doing spot-checks on them both since she walked out but he hadn’t seen any out-of-work meetings between them until now and he really had begun to think they weren’t carrying on after all. But now he knew his instincts had been correct. Bonita wouldn’t have left him off her own back. He supposed they’d stayed away from each other so they could do what other cheating bastards did, pretend that they’d only got together respectably when their previous relationships had ended. But he knew that Lewis Harley was now living in a hotel. It was obvious that he had left his wife for his tramp of a mistress. It would have been too much of a coincidence for his marriage to have broken down for any other reason. He was doing what the family liaison officer advised him to, i.e. not harassing his wife, but he could still do his own undercover investigations. The more damning evidence he could find on her, the more mud would stick because he knew the case against her wasn’t definitive.
He checked in his book the time that Harley had arrived and carried in that white block, whatever it was. He’d been in there over an hour. Even allowing for a cup of tea he should have been on his way by now. He would have left had it all been innocent and above board. Yet he was still there.
*
In Bonnie’s cosy little lounge, Lew spilled the whole of the sorry story of Charlotte and Regina, Patrick, Gemma and Jason. And she listened patiently.
At the end he apologised yet again. ‘I’m not used to baring my soul, Bonnie,’ he said. ‘Never mind two full loads of dirty washing. I’m more your bottling-up sort of guy.’
‘Maybe that’s why you had a heart attack,’ she replied. Then her stomach grumbled really loudly and they both burst into some well-needed laughter.
‘I’m keeping you from eating,’ said Lew, draining the last from his third cup of coffee.
‘No, you’re not. I always have a Chinese on Fridays. They don’t open for another ten minutes anyway.’
‘It’s been ages since I had a Chinese,’ said Lew, thinking how good that sounded. He stood up to take his mug into the kitchen and by the time he had returned an idea had come to him.
‘Can I share a Chinese with you, if I buy it? It feels only right I should use some of the money from the Chinese cup and saucer sale.’
‘Er, yeah,’ Bonnie said, unable to think of an excuse why not. She pulled the takeaway menu out of the retro magazine rack at the side of the TV and whilst Lew was choosing from it, she remembered something with mortifying embarrassment.
‘I’ve only got one plate and one fork,’ she said. He chuckled and said he’d be sure to pick up some chopsticks and they could eat their meals out of the cartons.
As Lew was waiting in the Great Wall of China on the High Street, it came to him that he’d chewed her ear off and not asked her about her own situation, something which he decided to rectify when he arrived back at her house and they were opening up the banquet that Lew had bought.
‘We’ll never eat all this,’ gasped Bonnie.
‘We can have a good go at it,’ grinned Lew, popping a whole prawn won ton in his mouth and crunching down on it. Then, when he could speak again he asked her, ‘Have you seen anything of your husband?’ Which was ironic as, unbeknown to him, Lew had just passed him hiding in his car around the corner. Stephen had sold his Mondeo and replaced it with a black Aygo so he could spy on her unnoticed.
‘No, thank goodness,’ said Bonnie. ‘He isn’t playing ball in the divorce, which is no less than I expected. He hasn’t signed the papers but Adriana says I haven’t to worry about it. He can’t stop it happening.’
‘She’s very thorough, you’re in good hands,’ said Lew, expertly picking up a mound of egg fried rice with his chopsticks. It smelt delicious. Sitting at the tiny table heaving with cartons was so much more enjoyable than having a fillet steak in the hotel restaurant. Especially when his dining companion had such beautiful eyes.
‘As I said, I have a Chinese every Friday,’ said Bonnie, struggling with the chopsticks but not giving up. ‘It’s my weekly treat. I didn’t have takeaways at all when I was married.’ Stephen doubted the hygiene of places like the Great Wall of China, which incidentally displayed on the walls all the top awards it had won for cleanliness.
‘Are those your parents in the photos, Bonnie?’ asked Lew, pointing his chopstick towards the mantelpiece.
‘Yep,’ replied Bonnie.
‘You look like your mum.’ Her mother had the same large, bright eyes.
‘That’s what my dad used to say,’ Bonnie smiled. ‘I wish I could remember her. Dad used to tell me loads of stories about her so I’d have something of her, if not memories. He wrote lots of things down in a notebook for me when she died. He was full of sayings and apparently so was she.’
‘Like what?’ asked Lew, intrigued.
‘Oh all sorts. Dad used to tell me to smile at rude people and look after my pennies, that kind of thing. Mum told him that the one thing she was going to make me grow up believing was that I could do anything if I put my mind to it, defy the odds, break the barriers.’
‘She was right,’ grinned Lew.
‘She didn’t mean you just had to wish for it and it would be yours, though. Real life isn’t Aladdin.’ She had Lew chuckling at that. ‘She said that you had to back up your wishes with action. If there was something you really wanted, and if you could picture yourself doing it, then you should pull out all the stops and go for it. There’s skill involved in proper wishing, and my mother was queen of it, according to my dad. Long story but it was true, she was.’
‘You’ve inherited her crown, then, Bonnie, because you broke away from Stephen, didn’t you?’
‘I did.’ Though she had many moments when she didn’t believe she’d actually done it and thought she must be dreaming.
‘You are my beacon that there is life after splitting up. I’ll have to do some proper wishing now,’ smiled Lew and Bonnie thought how very handsome he was. How could Charlotte Harley have slept with anyone else when she had this lovely man in her bed?
‘It was the best thing I’ve ever done,’ said Bonnie. And it was, even though it had kicked off the police enquiry. ‘When I was still living with him and imagining what life would be like if I left, I didn’t expect I’d end up with all this.’ She looked from one side of the room to the other. ‘I know it doesn’t look much . . .’
‘Your kingdom is lovely,’ said Lew. And it was. He wished he could bottle the friendly essence of the little house and take it with him to the hotel.
Bonnie gave a soft chuckle at that. ‘I love it. I can shut the door on the world and forget everyone outside it. I can breathe here.’
They ate in companionable silence for a few minutes, then Bonnie remembered something she had to tell him.
‘There are some flats at the complex in the Town End. I know a lot of footballers rent them. They’re furnished and there’s secure parking and I know they have some vacant ones because they were advertising them in the Chronicle last week.’
‘That would be ideal,’ said Lew. ‘Living in one room is driving me crazy. I’m hoping the house is sold sooner rather than later. I’ve priced it for a quick sale. Then I’ll buy something for myself.’
‘Old or new?’ asked Bonnie.
‘Old definitely.’
‘How many bedrooms?’
‘Three, four maybe.’
‘Not big enough,’ said Bonnie, wagging chopsticks loaded with lemon chicken. ‘You could meet someone and have a house full of children, just like you wanted. You’re only forty-four. Some rock-stars are having kids in their seventies. You’ve got time to have loads.’
A vision of The Beeches rose up in Lew’s head. She was right. He could, couldn’t he? There would be another woman for him, as surely as there would be another Beeches. The heart attack hadn’t ended his life nor his hopes and dreams and neither would the divorce.
‘Six bedrooms then,’ said Lew. ‘And enough land for two huge dogs and a playhouse and a man-cave so I can escape from all the noise.’ He laughed and Bonnie’s laughter joined his. That house sounded like heaven to her as much as it did him. The difference was that he would have it, she was sure. She wanted him to be happy with a nice lady. One who wanted children and loved the same things he did and who had never seen the inside of a prison cell.
*
Stephen was just about to set off back home, presuming that Lewis Harley was staying the night when he saw him walking back to his car wearing what he supposed would be described as a ‘soppy grin’. He wrote that in his book. It might or might not be relevant.
*
Bonnie was also wearing a soppy grin. She thought that when Lew said he ought to get back to the hotel, he did so reluctantly. She hadn’t offered him another coffee, even though she wanted to. She’d had the best-ever evening in his company but she had to be careful because the closer she got to him, the more it would hurt when she had to leave.
‘Thank you for this evening, Bonnie,’ he had said to her at the door. ‘Thank you for letting me talk and for listening, thank you for your lovely coffee and making me feel so welcome in your wonderful home.’
‘It’s a pleasure, really,’ said Bonnie, the last word lost in a quiet gasp as Lew’s arms came around her and he crushed her to his chest and he placed a soft kiss on her cheek. Then he was quickly gone, but she could feel his lips upon her skin for much longer, and relished it until it faded.