Her Missing Husband (7 page)

‘What’s he got on him?’ Matt asked.

‘Not a lot,’ Vera replied with a sniff. ‘Hardly worth the effort really, just a couple of quid and a few coins. Reckon he was lying about being a paid-off sailor. He’s just an out-of-work navvy.’

‘Still has to pay for his pleasure,’ said Matt.

‘Even if he didn’t get it.’ Vera grinned. ‘But I tell yer something, he’s a big bloke and he’s going to be mad as hell when he does come round. Then he’ll be
your
problem.’

‘Always is,’ said Matt casually, as he picked up the cash that lay on the table and counted it.

‘Hey!’ cried Vera. ‘Half that’s mine.’

‘So it is,’ agreed Matt as he pocketed it. ‘You’ll get it, same as always.’

At that moment there was a crash and the bedroom door burst open. They spun round to see Jimmy, still stark naked, exploding into the room. Seemingly unaware of Matt, he launched himself at Vera, who let out a shriek and tried to scramble away from him.

‘Bitch! Fucking, thieving bitch!’ Jimmy bellowed. ‘I’ll kill yer.’ He lunged at her, catching hold of her mass of hair and yanking her towards him as she screamed in terror and pain.

‘Get off, get off, you bastard. Let go!’ She fought furiously, but she had no chance against his strength as he flung one arm round her neck and squeezed with all the power of his pent-up rage. Vera knew she was going to die as, despite her desperate struggles, Jimmy’s grip tightened round her throat.

Then suddenly she was released as, with an explosion of glass and whisky, Matt slammed the bottle of Scotch into the back of Jimmy’s head. Still fuddled from the drug, Jimmy crashed to the floor, hitting his head on the corner of the hearth. Gasping for breath and shaking with fear, Vera crawled out from underneath him, breaking into sobs as Matt pulled her to her feet and pushed her down onto the sofa where she sat, shaking.

‘Thought you said he was out cold!’ Matt hissed, bending down over the prostrate figure on the floor. ‘How much did you give him, for Christ’s sake?’

‘The usual,’ sobbed Vera, ‘but he’s such a big bloke it can’t have been enough.’ She looked at the crumpled Jimmy and shuddered. ‘What we going to do with him now? What you going to do when he comes round?’

‘He ain’t going to come round, Vera,’ Matt said, a chill in his voice. ‘I think he’s dead.’

‘Dead?’ squeaked Vera. ‘Dead! He can’t be.’

‘Hit his head on the fireplace.’

‘Dead!’ Vera stared at him in horror. ‘What’re we going to do, Matt? We can’t leave him here!’

‘No, ’course we can’t,’ said Matt, shaken but beginning to regain control. ‘We’ll wait until it’s dark and move him then.’

‘Move him? Where to?’ Vera was still shaking and she turned terrified eyes on Matt. ‘Where’ll we take him? Suppose someone sees us!’

‘They won’t. We’ll take him out of the back gate and put him in the river.’

‘The river? Matt, suppose they pull him out!’

‘What if they do? They won’t know who he is and they won’t know how he got there.’

It was another three quarters of an hour before the winter evening closed in and Matt felt it was safe to risk moving Jimmy out of the flat. Lit only by the light of a fitful moon, they carried him across the yard and out through the gate. It opened onto a narrow street lined with warehouses, beyond which ran the dark waters of the Thames. They had dressed him in his jacket and trousers and hung the dead weight of his body between them, his arms draped round their shoulders as if they were supporting a drunkard home. The only dangerous moment was crossing the road through a pool of pale green light from a street lamp. Once they’d regained the darkness, they dragged him down an alley and onto a wooden wharf that stood out into the water. As they manoeuvred him towards the water, the moon sailed out from behind a cloud, bathing them in cold, silver light. And then, just as they reached the edge, the body between them gave a groan. Vera gave a scream, dropping her side of the burden, and Jimmy crashed onto the wooden deck. His eyes flew open and for a moment terror filled them as he saw Matt’s boot the second before it pounded into his head and he knew no more. Vera watched in horror as Matt delivered a second kick and then rolled the unconscious man unceremoniously into the water. There was a splash, a gurgling, a dark shape on the silvered river and then nothing as, weighed down by his heavy donkey jacket, Jimmy Randall sank beneath the eddying water and disappeared.

For a moment they stood listening, but heard nothing.

‘Matt!’ whispered Vera, her voice shaking with terror. ‘Matt, he wasn’t dead!’

‘Well, he is now,’ replied Matt. ‘Come on, Vera, we got a pub to open.’

We hope you enjoyed this short story

Diney Costeloe’s next book is coming in spring 2017

For an exclusive preview of her bestselling
The Throwaway Children
, read on or click the following link

Read preview

For more information, click the following links

Read on for a preview of
The Throwaway Children

Gritty, heartrending and unputdownable – the story of two sisters sent first to an English, then an Australian orphanage in the aftermath of World War 2.

Rita and Rosie Stevens are only nine and five years old when their widowed mother marries a violent bully called Jimmy Randall and has a baby boy by him. Under pressure from her new husband, she is persuaded to send the girls to an orphanage – not knowing that the papers she has signed will entitle them to do what they like with the children.

And it is not long before the powers that be decide to send a consignment of orphans to their sister institution in Australia. Among them – without their family’s consent or knowledge – are Rita and Rosie, the throwaway children.

Belcaster 1948

Raised voices again. Rita could hear them through the floor; her mother’s, a querulous wail, the man’s an angry roar. For a moment she lay still in bed, listening. She couldn’t hear what they were saying, but it was clear that they were arguing.

Rosie, her sister, was peacefully asleep at the other end of their shared single bed, the stray cat, Felix, curled against her. She never seemed to wake up however loud the shouting downstairs. Rita slid out from under the bedclothes and tip-toeing across the room, crept out onto the landing. Limpid green light from a street lamp shone through the small landing window, lighting the narrow staircase. A shaft of dull yellow light, shining through the half-open kitchen door, lit the cracked brown lino and cast shadows in the hall. The voices came from the kitchen, still loud, still angry. Rita crouched against the banister, her face pressed to its bars. From here she could actually hear some of what was being said.

‘...my children from me.’ Her mother’s voice.

‘...another man’s brats!’ His voice.

Rita shivered at the sound of his voice. Uncle Jimmy, Mum’s new friend. Then Mum began to cry, a pitiful wailing that echoed into the hall.

‘For Christ’s sake!’ His voice again. ‘Cut the caterwauling, woman... or I’ll leave right now.’

A chair crashed over, and the shaft of light broadened as the kitchen door was pushed wider. Rita dived back into her bedroom, making the door creak loudly. She leaped into bed, kicking a protesting Felix off the covers and pulling the sheet up over her head. She tried to calm her breathing so that it matched Rosie’s, the peaceful breathing of undisturbed sleep, but her heart was pounding, the blood hammering in her ears as she heard the heavy tread of feet on the stairs.
He
was coming up.

‘Rita! Was you out of bed?’ His voice was harsh. He had not put on the landing light, and as he reached the top stair, Felix materialized at his feet, almost tripping him over.

‘Bloody cat!’ snarled the man, aiming a kick at him, but Felix had already streaked downstairs.

Jimmy Randall paused on the landing, listening. All was quiet in the girls’ room. Softly he crossed to the half-open door and peered in, but it was too dark to see anything, and all he could hear was the steady breathing of two little girls asleep.

Must have been the damned cat, he thought. Don’t know why Mavis gives it houseroom, dirty stray. If it was my house...

It wasn’t. Not yet. But it would be, Jimmy was determined about that. A neat little house in Ship Street, a terrace of other neat little houses; well, not so neat most of them, unrepaired from the bombing, cracked windows, scarred paintwork, rubble in the tiny gardens, but basically sound enough. Jimmy wouldn’t mind doing a bit of repair work himself, provided the house was his at the end of it. His and Mavis’s, but not full of squalling kids. All he had to do was get his name on the rent book, then he’d be laughing.

Rita heard him close the door but lay quite still in case it was a trick, in case he was standing silently inside the room waiting to catch her out. It was a full two minutes before she allowed herself to open her eyes into the darkness of her room. She could see nothing. Straining her ears she heard his voice again, not so loud this time, and definitely downstairs.

For a while she lay in the dark, thinking about Uncle Jimmy. He had come into their lives about two months ago, visiting occasionally at first, smiling a lot, once bringing chocolate. It was for Mum really, but she’d let Rita and Rosie have one piece every day until it had gone. But Rita was afraid of him all the same. He had a loud voice and got cross easily.

Rita wasn’t used to having a man in her life. She hardly remembered her daddy. Mum said he had gone to the war and hadn’t come home. He had gone before Rosie was even born, fighting the Germans. Rita knew he had been in the air force, flying in a plane high over Germany, and that one night his plane hadn’t come back. There was a picture of her daddy in a silver-coloured frame on the kitchen shelf. He was wearing his uniform and smiling. Wherever you moved in the kitchen, his eyes followed you, so that wherever she sat, Rita knew he was smiling at her. She loved his face, his smile making crinkles round his eyes and his curly fair hair half-covered with his air force cap. Rosie had the same sort of hair, thick and fair, curling round her face. Rita’s own hair was like Mum’s, dark, thin and straight, and she always wished she had hair like Rosie’s... and Daddy’s.

Then, a while ago, the photo had disappeared.

‘Where’s Daddy?’ Rita demanded one morning when she sat down and noticed the photo had gone. ‘Where’s Daddy gone?’

Without looking up Mum said, ‘Oh, I took him down for now. I need to clean the frame.’

Daddy had not reappeared on the shelf, and Rita missed him. ‘I could clean the frame,’ she offered. ‘I’m good at cleaning.’

‘It’s being mended,’ explained her mother. ‘When I came to clean it I found it was broken, so I’ve took it to be mended.’

Rita didn’t ask again, but she somehow knew that the photo wasn’t coming back and that this had something to do with the arrival of Jimmy Randall.

Jimmy Randall had changed everything. He was often there when Rita and Rosie came home from school. Mum used to meet them at the school gate, but since Uncle Jimmy, as they were to call him, had become part of their lives, Mum was too busy, and it became Rita’s job to bring Rosie home safely.

‘You must hold her hand all the way,’ Mum said, ‘and come straight home.’

So every school day, except Thursdays, Rita took Rosie’s hand and crossing the street very carefully, walked them home; almost every day when they got home, Uncle Jimmy would already be in the kitchen with Mum.

On Thursdays Gran met them at the school gate and gave them tea. Sometimes she let them play in the park they passed on the way.

‘I don’t like Uncle Jimmy,’ Rita confided to her grandmother one Thursday when they were having tea. ‘He shouts. I dropped a cup yesterday, and he sent me upstairs with no tea. It didn’t even break, Gran. It’s not fair.’

Gran gave her a hug. ‘Never mind, love,’ she said. ‘Perhaps he won’t be around for long.’ But Lily didn’t like him either.