Faye's Spirit (17 page)

“I do remember what you both went through, you told me.”

Monica smiled and nodded. “You were always at the end of the phone for us. And now you must let us be there for you. Promise you won’t bottle it up?”

She nodded. Monica reached into her pocket and handed over a tissue.

Faye took the hint, looked at herself in the mirror and used the tissue to scrub under her eyelids where her mascara had streaked.

“I have to get back out there now,” Monica said. “Will you be all right?”

Faye looked at her sister’s reflection in the mirror. “Yes. Thanks.”

“It’s not easy, but if they can come to terms with sharing you and you have come into this as three single people, talking it through is the way forward.” With that final encouragement, Monica left.

Faye frowned at herself in the mirror. Yes, she’d done the wrong thing shouting her mouth off then marching out on them. But they had been at each other’s throats. She couldn’t bear it. If that’s what she’d done to them, it was better she ended it and quickly. Monica was right, she couldn’t just run away, but she could nip it in the bud now.

Stupid, stupid woman
. Sadness swamped her and she wished she’d never kicked the relationship off in the first place. It was wrong, bound to end in trouble. Nevertheless she couldn’t bring herself to regret the crazy few days she’d spent with them and the sexual experimentation, but she did regret causing tension and bad feeling between the two men.

When she reached for the phone and glanced at the screen, something she often did to comfort and distract herself, she discovered both Garth and Jai had inundated her with text messages and voicemail.

It was with an even more weighty sinking feeling that she realised she was going to have to work her way through them, in order to check to see if her contact at the adoption agency records department had left a message.

There it was. She played the message and pulled out her pen and notepad to scribble down the details. Maud’s son had been adopted by a Mr and Mrs Butterfield. They’d kept www.total-e-bound.com

FAYE’S SPIRIT

Saskia Walker

111

the Christian name given to him by his natural mother, and he’d been brought up in Bromsgrove in Kent as Harry Butterfield, one of five adopted children in a large catholic family.

“Bingo.” Faye smiled, even though her eyes smarted. If she could find Harry Butterfield, she could move forward. That meant she could try to resolve Maud’s issue and finish her work for Garth. It also meant she could attempt to tidy up the mess she had created with Jai and Garth, bringing them back to the sound friends and colleagues they had been before, and then they could all get back to their regularly scheduled lives.

It should have made her feel better, so why did it make her feel so bad?

www.total-e-bound.com

FAYE’S SPIRIT

Saskia Walker

112

Chapter Fourteen

“It’s a message from Faye?”

Garth nodded.

“What, what did she say?”

Garth stared down at his phone, scanning the message.

I am trying to find Maud’s son. She gave him up for adoption and needs to know what
happened to him. Let’s just take a step back while I do this. Please give me some space to think. I
promise I’ll try to sort things out with Maud then we’ll talk about what went down between the three
of us. I want you to be okay with each other, like you were before I met you.

“She said… Oh, read it yourself.” He handed the phone over.

Jai paced the floor. Garth forced himself to watch. Jai, Mr Cool, would normally laugh something like this off. Instead he walked back and forth, his eyebrows drawn down and his expression serious.

“Wants us to be okay, what the…” He lifted his hands, and for a moment Garth thought he was going to throw the phone across the room.

Instead he drew it back and went over the message again.

A weight settled on Garth’s shoulders, adding to the one that was already there. Guilt that he hadn’t realised Jai was every bit as involved with this as he was, and regret at the way he’d handled it.

“The rest I get, but…what the fuck? We weren’t any different with each other than we were before Faye came long. We’re always arguing. That’s just the way we function.”

Garth nodded. “I know that, you know that, but Faye doesn’t know that.”

“True, I suppose.”

“You know what she said to me, she said we’re like an old married couple, and she was right, that’s exactly what we are.”

www.total-e-bound.com

FAYE’S SPIRIT

Saskia Walker

113

Jai looked kind of shocked by the revelation and so he might, considering how it undermined his cool image.

Garth resisted commenting.

“Let’s go to her place, come on.” Jai fronted up to him.

“No.” Garth stood up. “She’s asked for space. If we don’t give her that now, she’ll definitely think we don’t respect her. She’ll dump us for good. I want more than a few days of kinky sex. If you want to walk away I understand that, but know this, I don’t, and I won’t.”

“You know I don’t want to walk away.”

“It’s about what she wants now.”

Garth stared at Jai. Part of him wanted his old friend to declare that there were plenty of other fish in the sea and to waltz out. Then he’d be there to pick up the pieces with Faye, he’d make it right. God knows he would give all he had to make it right. But he’d had time to think, and part of him also knew that if Jai went there would be a massive hole in the relationship, one that he might not be able to fill no matter how hard he tried. He had no idea how this was going to work out. The bottom line was that Faye had to have her say, or she’d walk away forever.

Jai’s head lowered, and he nodded. “You’re right buddy, you are right.”

When he eventually met Garth’s stare there was a searching look in Jai’s eyes that made Garth prickle with tension. Doubts assailed him, but he felt alive, more alive than he ever had. He’d always wanted goals, something to fight for, and now he really had the chance—
they
really had it. “Good things are always worth working hard for.”

He closed on Jai and put his hand on Jai’s shoulder. “She’ll come back, she said she would.” How strange it was, he realised, that he was comforting Jai, the one who normally led from the rear. “We’ll talk then.”

Jai stared at him, then humour briefly flashed in his eyes. “Promise?”

Garth grinned. “Arsehole.”

“Yeah, and you.”

* * * *

www.total-e-bound.com

FAYE’S SPIRIT

Saskia Walker

114

It took Faye less than two days to track down Maud’s son. She considered that good going. It also gave her time to calm down about the mess she’d got herself in with Jai and Garth. Calm down she did, but somehow that only made her ache for them all the more.

Focusing on the task she had to complete, the promise she had to fulfil for Maud, was the only thing that kept her moving forward. If it wasn’t for that goal, she’d have been staring at the walls in her flat thinking of them right around the clock.

Thank goodness for Harold Butterfield, or Harry, as Maud had called him.

Luckily there were only two men by the name of Harold Butterfield in the correct age group, and the first one she found turned out to be a false lead. That only left one, the Harry Butterfield who lived in a village in Kent and ran a small bespoke shoe manufacturing company located in the east end of London. This was Maud’s son, and the notes had shown that he’d been informed that he’d been adopted, but hadn’t pursued it. That didn’t bode well.

Faye opted to visit him at work, to keep this separate from his family. His business was located in an old mill in Shoreditch. She looked up at the building as she approached and it made her think how much Garth and Jai would love the place. Damn them. They’d got in her head—under her skin and in her blood—and now every funny thought she had and every building she looked at she wanted to share with them. She wanted to ask them about the architecture, loving the way they had educated her about things she’d never even thought about before she met them, just a few days before.

The place had been modernised internally, but kept many of the original features.

How odd it was that he’d started his business here in the east end, where his mother’s line had come from. It was a coincidence. No doubt he got good terms on the site during the regeneration years, but it felt poignant to Faye nonetheless. Such was her own emotional involvement now, an involvement she knew had grown too deep, but she couldn’t stop it and didn’t try.

He hadn’t moved far from his beginnings, but Harry had done well for himself in life.

If she didn’t get any further than this, she had that news for Maud. But Faye wanted to give her more than that.

She braced herself and stepped into the building. An austere, mature receptionist looked up from her keyboard as Faye entered. “How can I help you?”

www.total-e-bound.com

FAYE’S SPIRIT

Saskia Walker

115

“I wondered if I could possibly see Mr Harry Butterfield?”

“Is he expecting you?”

Thankfully, he was there. One bit of weight lifted from her shoulders. That had been her first concern. “No, he isn’t.”

“Can I ask what it is concerning?”

“It’s a personal matter.”

The receptionist eyed her warily. “Mr Butterfield will not see you if your intention is to try to sell him something.”

“I’m not here to sell him anything. It’s a personal issue that I need to discuss with him.”

The receptionist rose to her feet. “Take a seat. I’ll see if he is available.”

“Thank you.”

Faye didn’t sit down. Instead she paced back and forth in front of the reception desk with her fingers meshed together. Silently she chanted
please please, please let me in
.

The receptionist returned and ushered Faye in.

Harry Butterfield was a business man in his late forties, and he appeared to be a down to earth type of man. Tall, with a shaved head and determined looking, he had the kind of energy about him that successful people often did. He wore a smart shirt and tie, but with the sleeves rolled up.

He had an intelligent, sharp look in his expression and Faye warmed to him immediately, because it did remind her of Maud and that assessing look she wore sometimes. It made Faye eager to share her knowledge, even though he regarded her rather warily when she announced she had a personal reason for requesting a meeting, and she knew this might present a few hurdles.

“Thank you for seeing me, I know you’re a busy man.” She took the seat he gestured to in front of his desk. The office was practical and business like, located right in the hub of activity in the warehouse where his workers produced footwear that sold worldwide. She stored every image away for Maud.

“As long as you’re not trying to sell me anything.” He smiled but there was a warning there. He wasn’t a man who wasted time. He took his seat and gave her his full attention.

www.total-e-bound.com

FAYE’S SPIRIT

Saskia Walker

116

“No, I assure you I’m not. I’m here because I’ve been hired by someone to find out the history of their building, and the people who worked there. In the course of my investigation I’ve uncovered some of your family history.”

Harry froze.

“Your birth mother worked in the building, and…and I know her name, as well as your father’s.”

The approachable look evaporated immediately. It was as if shutters came down over his eyes. He rose to his feet. “Miss Evans, I granted you a meeting because I thought you came here to ask about whether there were any jobs going in the factory.”

Faye nodded quickly. “I assure you I haven’t come to sell you anything. I’m working for someone else researching the history of their home and I have revealed knowledge that might be important to you.”

“It’s not important to me,” he retorted, his voice growing louder. He paused as if gathering himself.

“It never has been and it never will be,” he added in a more contained tone. “I think you should leave.”

She’d known it would be awkward, but for a moment she really thought he was going to throw her out. He began to walk around the desk.

She rose to her feet. “Please, hear me out.”

He shook his head. He really didn’t want to know. “You’ve got some spin on this, you’re going to bait me and then sell me the rest, but you’re wasting your time because I’m really not interested in the bastards who gave me away.”

She felt as if she’d been physically slapped in the face. This man had years of silent anger in him, that was obvious, but she had to get tough because she couldn’t let Maud down.

“I have no agenda.” Her heart beat hard in her chest. “Your mother’s name was Maud Radisson. She worked in Highgate as a cook. Your father was an Italian delivery driver called Paulo Albertina. He worked in London briefly, in the early sixties.”

Harry stopped and rocked on his heels. Now it was him that looked as if he’d been slapped in the face. Naming them had hit him hard.

www.total-e-bound.com

FAYE’S SPIRIT

Saskia Walker

117

“They met when he delivered delicatessen supplies from Fortnum and Mason to the place where she worked, but he went home, to Italy, and she found out about you after that, when she was alone.”

He stared at her in disbelief.

Grasping the opportunity, she cleared her throat and nodded. Quickly unfolding the papers that she had kept folded in her hand, documents that she’d picked up from the adoption agency on her way over here, she laid them flat on the desk and gestured. As she did, she noticed that her hand shook. “Take a look at the paperwork and I’ll explain why I am here.”

Harry Butterfield stared down at the pages.

Scarcely able to look, Faye forced herself to stay quiet, and glanced away. In the background she could hear the rhythmic noise of the machinery in the factory beyond. Here in the office all was still, bar the motes of dust that shifted and floated on the atmosphere, visible in the wintry sunlight pouring in at the window. Like time marching on, filling people’s lives with emotions, bringing happiness and tragedy, hope and loss, along the way.