Faith (69 page)

It had been so strange seeing her old shop again, for Angie had insisted they all went to see it before going back to her flat. Very little had been changed, just a fresh coat of paint and a new carpet, but Angie was taking in more expensive designer clothes now, and a big range of costume jewellery. Ivy was thrilled to find a black leather Chanel handbag, and Meggie bought a dark red Jaeger jacket.

But while her sisters were gleefully raking though the clothes, Laura found herself looking at a chair she’d found in a junk shop and sprayed gold, and remembering how Jackie had helped her re-upholster the seat with cream velvet, and that they’d laughingly called it the ‘Versailles’ look.

She wondered then if she’d ever make another friend as close as Jackie had been. Some of the very sweetest moments in her life had been just sitting around chatting and laughing with her. Always so much laughter, and they had believed it would go on until they were very old ladies.

Once they had even joked about sharing a home when they got to seventy. They imagined themselves going on coach trips to Blackpool or a day out on the Yorkshire Moors, only they’d be going into pubs for brandy while all the other old ladies had cream teas.

It was only now she was free that it really hit home how empty life would be without Jackie. Meggie and Ivy were great, but on a different level. She and Jackie had always been on the same wavelength, they could pick each other’s brains, tell each other off, even have a blazing row and it was forgotten in half an hour. They were in so many ways twin souls, they understood each other without lengthy explanations. How could she ever find anyone like that again?

Meggie and Ivy were sleeping on the bed-settee in the lounge, and through the open door Laura could hear Meggie snoring softly, just the way she did when she was little. Forty years had passed since the three of them slept in one bed. Laura didn’t think either Meggie or Ivy remembered those days – at least, they never spoke of it. They never spoke about their father either, or Mark and Paul, but perhaps that was because they’d been so young when they were taken away by the police that they had little recollection of them.

It had been a very strange day. So much waiting around, first for the flight, then at the court for the hearing, and all the time her stomach in knots with nerves. Right up till the judge said she was free to go, she’d half expected something terrible would happen and she’d end up being taken down to the cells under the court to await the prison van.

Yet tucked away beneath the fear and trepidation there had been bubblings of excitement, and they were about Stuart, and what was going to happen next. Maybe if Meggie hadn’t drip-fed the idea that he still had feelings for her, she wouldn’t have allowed herself to slip into little rosy daydreams about him. She really ought to have known better: what man would want to try to relight a fire with someone who had not only hurt him badly once, but was also likely to be something of a liability?

He’d been there for her when she most needed someone, and maybe that had clouded her judgement about her feelings for him too. She would just have to keep on reminding herself how fortunate she was: she wasn’t destitute, she had two loving sisters, she even had the legacy from Jackie coming to her. That was enough for anyone.

The day after the appeal hearing Angie asked Laura to go with her to a lawyer to sign a legal document transferring all the rights of the shop to her, and she paid Laura £4,000 for the lease and the fixtures and fittings. Laura felt awkward about taking the money, but both the lawyer and Angie insisted she was entitled to it, and it would also prevent her having any claim on the shop at a later date.

The money couldn’t have come at a better time as Laura had only a couple of hundred pounds left in her bank account, and although Meggie had offered to lend her some more so she could buy a decent car, she’d been reluctant to do that. But now, instead of getting an old banger, she was able to buy a three-year-old red Ford Fiesta which would be far more reliable.

Once she’d got her car she went to collect her belongings from Angie’s mother’s house. Yet on sorting through the many stored boxes, she found that most of the pictures, china, ornaments and lamps reminded her of times and a person she’d rather forget, so she donated them to a charity shop.

All she kept was albums of photographs, most of them of Barney, books she’d loved, some bedding, a small case which she’d filled ten years ago with things of Barney’s – a sweater, a pair of pyjamas, his old teddy bear and paintings he’d done at school – and a beautiful cream leather jewellery box Jackie had given her on her thirtieth birthday. It was much the same with her clothes, shoes and handbags. Most were unfashionable now, and the little reminders that came with them had nothing to do with her future. She kept the cashmere camel winter coat, boots, sweaters and trousers, and some of the best underwear. But the rest she bagged up for Angela’s mother to give to a jumble sale.

Everything she wanted to keep fitted into one suitcase and two cardboard boxes. She put them in the boot of the car and drove back to the shop to say goodbye to Angie.

‘You’re not going already?’ Angie exclaimed. ‘I thought you’d at least stay till the weekend.’

Laura didn’t want to admit that she felt a little uncomfortable hanging around a shop that had once been hers, and constantly running into women she knew from the past. Her face had been on the front page of all the newspapers, and though she knew that by next week those same newspapers would be wrapped round fish and chips and her story would be forgotten, she still felt exposed and vulnerable.

‘I want to go out to Crail and visit Barney’s grave,’ she said. ‘I’m less likely to run into anyone I know there during the week than at the weekend. Besides, there’s nothing here for me in Edinburgh now. I’ll take my time going back to London, maybe stay a couple of nights somewhere in the Borders, walk a bit and get my head together.’

Angie put her hands on her hips and studied her friend closely. ‘You’re disappointed about Stuart, aren’t you?’

Laura shrugged. ‘I don’t know why everyone kept thinking we could be an item again. It wasn’t as if we’d been childhood sweethearts, separated by some cruel stroke of fate. I was unfaithful to him, that’s it and all about it. Some things can’t be mended.’

‘I don’t think that’s the case with you,’ Angie said, shaking her head. ‘No man goes to all the trouble Stuart did for you unless he’s still in love.’

‘You saw him after the court hearing. He hugged me once, told me I looked lovely and kissed me on the cheek when he left. Is that a man in love?’

‘Maybe he was waiting for you to make the first move?’

‘It’s men that have to do that.’

‘That, if you don’t mind me saying, is a quaintly old-fashioned idea.’ Angie sniffed. ‘You’ve got bags of courage, so use some of it. Go to him.’

‘I don’t know where he is.’

‘Well, find out. Someone’s bound to know – his old landlord, Patrick. Use your imagination.’

It had been drizzling in Edinburgh but once Laura had driven over the Forth Bridge the sun came out, and she was acutely reminded of the last time she made this trip. It turned out to be the last time she drove anywhere of course, and it had been May then, a lovely spring day. Now it was the start of October and autumn was on its way, with the leaves beginning to turn yellow and orange on the trees.

But she was determined not to dwell on what happened that day in May. It was over now.

There wasn’t much traffic and she made good time to Crail, drove past Kirkmay House, studiously not looking at it, and parked her car in Marketgate, close to St Mary’s church.

She had brought some potted cyclamen and spring bulbs for Barney’s grave, along with a small fork and trowel in Edinburgh, to avoid having to go into a shop here. As she entered the churchyard she filled up her water bottle from the tap at the gate and hurried over to his grave.

As always in the past, the sight of the small white marble headstone with just Barney’s name, followed by ‘born 1970, died 1981’, brought tears to her eyes. She hadn’t known what to put on the headstone, and the mason had advised her to keep it simple. But it looked so stark, with no hint of what Barney had been like, or even her feelings about him.

It was Good Friday in ’93 when she had last visited the grave. He would have been twenty-three then if he’d lived, and she could remember wondering what sort of career he would have chosen. She’d planted masses of polyanthus that day and tucked some little fluffy chicks among them, because Barney had always loved it when she made chocolate nest cakes for Easter and put miniature eggs and chicks in them.

After she was arrested, she’d worried about his grave being neglected. It wasn’t until Stuart turned up and came out to Crail that she heard it was very well kept. She assumed Belle had been looking after it.

As it was over a month ago that Belle was arrested, Laura had expected it to be overgrown with weeds, but to her surprise it looked lovely – weed-free and planted with red and white geraniums. She wondered who could have done it.

‘I’m sorry I’ve been so long coming back,’ she whispered, kneeling down on the grass beside the grave. ‘But I’ve thought about you every day since the last time I came. I shall have to take these lovely geraniums away now because they’ll only die when we get the first frost.’

She dug them out, placing them in a carrier bag, then forked over the whole surface and began planting the cyclamen and the bulbs. It was only as she began clearing up, brushing the soil off the marble surround, that she became aware of a man watching her from about twenty feet away. He was around sixty, of slight build, with white thinning hair and a green corduroy jacket.

She was irritated by his presence, assuming he was someone local who knew about her and hadn’t the good manners to curb his curiosity.

Getting up from her knees, she picked up the bag of geranium plants and toyed with the idea of giving him a piece of her mind. But as she walked away from the grave he came towards her.

‘Excuse me, but you’re Laura, aren’t you?’ he asked.

His deep, almost growling voice struck a chord with Laura. All at once she didn’t mind that he’d been watching her.

‘Yes, I am. And you must be Ted?’

He nodded and looked a little bashful, but held out his hand to her. ‘Yes, I’m Ted. And it is so good to meet you at last, Laura. I hope I didn’t disturb you, but I was so pleased to see you there at Barney’s grave I couldn’t walk away.’

‘Is it you that’s been looking after it?’ she asked.

‘Yes.’ He dropped his eyes from hers. ‘You don’t mind, do you? I met Barney many times when he was staying with Jackie and liked him a great deal. After he died Jackie came here most days, I often joined her and we’d sit on the bench and she’d pour out all her memories of him. So when you were arrested I felt I must continue to look after his grave, for both of you.’

Laura was deeply touched and her eyes prickled with tears. ‘I think that is one of the kindest things anyone has ever done for me,’ she said, her voice cracking with emotion. ‘Especially as you must have believed I killed her.’

‘I was never entirely convinced of that,’ he said. ‘Jackie spoke of you so often I felt I knew you. I found it comforting to have this to do, it feels like part of her is always here.’

‘She should have been buried here too,’ Laura said sadly. ‘I don’t know why she wasn’t.’

‘Belle’s doing,’ he said dourly. ‘Because of the circumstances I couldn’t intervene. But let’s not talk about that, it’s too upsetting to dwell on what she did. I was so glad to see on the television that you were exonerated. You’ve had a terrible time!’

‘It’s all over now.’ Laura smiled at him. ‘And I’m really glad to meet you at last. You were one secret Jackie kept from me. But let’s go and sit down and have a chat.’

They sat on a bench in the sunshine and as they chatted about Stuart investigating on her behalf, Laura felt a real bond with this gentle, thoughtful man. She’d always had a problem with Roger, who’d been against her right from the start because of what she did to Steven, his old flatmate, and over the years jealousy and resentment had been added. There had been many occasions when she’d tried hard to put things right, for Jackie’s benefit, but Roger wasn’t the kind to forgive; he was a bombastic, stubborn man with a big ego.

Ted was so different – sensitive, unassuming – and he wanted to get to know her because they had both loved Jackie. Initially Laura couldn’t see why her friend had fallen for him, for he was an almost complete opposite to her. He wasn’t charismatic, sophisticated, outgoing or even sexy. Apart from his lovely duck-egg-blue eyes and his very masculine voice, he was ordinary, the kind of man you wouldn’t even notice, let alone look at twice.

Yet as he told her about his shock at hearing Belle and Charles had been arrested, how he’d gone to see Stuart in hospital and how anxious he’d been for her, Laura saw exactly why Jackie had loved him. He was one of those rare people who cared more about others than he did about himself.

‘Tell me how things are with you and your wife now. Did you tell her about Jackie?’ Laura asked him after a little while.

‘Yes, I did, I went home straight after seeing Stuart and told her the whole story.’ He winced as if that been one of the worst moments of his life. ‘Predictably Peggie was absolutely furious. She said some dreadful things and told me to get out. I couldn’t of course, not when she had no one else to take care of her. It was hell for some time; the news of Belle and Charles’s arrest wound her up still more. So I made plans to leave. I got a nurse lined up to come in daily.

‘But when I began packing, she did a U-turn. She said she wanted me to stay.’

‘Oh Ted, don’t say you agreed?’ Laura groaned.

Ted chuckled softly. ‘I know! It makes me sound so weak. But she admitted she’d been hell to live with and she promised she’d change.’

‘People rarely change, you should know that,’ Laura said reprovingly.

‘Maybe, but I thought I ought to give it one more shot. So far she’s been much nicer, she’s trying to do more for herself. Of course it’s early days yet, but if she does revert back, then I will go.’