The Three Rs (33 page)

Hi Cain. Hope you’re fine. I’ll be back Monday. Train due in at 5.20pm

That works, though not quite as I’d hoped. No gushing welcome, no offer of picking me up at the station. Instead…

Your choice. Taxi rank outside station. Will ask Phyllis to insure heating in flat is turned on.

Right then, that seems clear enough, even to one with my limited reading prowess. I could go back and take up residence in the flat over the office. I daresay I’d run into Cain pretty frequently, couldn’t be avoided, but frankly, I’d rather stay in Bradford. Sally has to go back to school, but we still have the evenings to further my education. And in the daytime I can prowl the art galleries, this time lingering over the displays and other information telling me all about my favorite artists. I can’t keep this up long term, and in any case I need to earn a living, whether here or in Berwick. I consider asking Mr Cartwright for my old job back, but cleaning for a living is not what I want anymore. I can do better now, I
need
to do better. I owe it to myself.

* * * *

Three weeks later, I’m still passing my days soaking up the cultural delights of my home town by day, and spending every evening with Sally. Her patience and support has been nothing short of awesome, her professionalism impeccable as she’s put me through my paces and released me from my self-imposed isolation. The mysteries of the written word are now unlocked for my personal delight and delectation. I’m part of the club now, included—an insider. I like to think I’ve been a rewarding pupil, I really have made a supreme effort, in a way that I never did before. My determination and sheer will to crack this thing have driven me forward, created the energy I needed to get past my imagined roadblocks. And Sally has built on that, used my motivation, fanned the flames of it and pulled down the barriers I allowed to prevent me from learning for all this time. She has transformed my life, nothing short of that. I’ll never forget it.

I’ve continued to text Cain, but he rarely replies, and when he does it’s with just one or two words. He made no comment on my decision to remain in Yorkshire, though I did let him know. I keep in touch with Phyllis on the phone, though not recently as she’s been off work for a few days. Her Stan is ill again. When I talk to her she sounds worried. I know she wants to retire and devote her time to him properly, and her latest recruit, young Jenna, fresh from business college in Newcastle and desperate for a local job is apparently to be Phyllis’ ticket to freedom. She hopes to be able to train Jenna up over the coming months then hand over the reins.

How do I feel about that? I think it’s fair to say my feelings are mixed. I love that I can read now, but it’s all still so new to me. My confidence is growing, and I do genuinely enjoy reading stories, newspapers, even the side of my cereal box in the morning. But I couldn’t contemplate a job that consists mainly of paperwork. That’s just not me and never will be. I hope Phyllis’ plan works out and Jenna makes the grade. For myself, I want to draw and paint. Even if I can’t make my living as an artist, I definitely want to work with my hands. I keep coming back to plumbing—I really should get in touch with Beth, find out how she got started. I daresay it’ll involve some sort of college course, and for that I’ll need other exams. Literacy. Numeracy. The Three Rs. But with Sally’s help I really do see this as a possibility now.

Maybe I’ll re-start my formal education with something a bit lighter, for me at least. An art course, that’d be nice. Interesting. Something I could excel at. Perhaps I should get a brochure.

I’m in my tiny kitchen putting the finishing touches to a home-made pizza when my door buzzer sounds. Sally’s coming round here this evening, I’ve agreed to feed her and later we’ll do some of what she calls ‘guided reading’. I’m looking forward to it, I really enjoy these sessions of ours. The voyage of discovery gets better all the time. Not unlike the discoveries I started to make with Cain, although the rewards are more cerebral than physical. I think about Cain a lot. All the time, if I’m honest. Almost everything reminds me of him in some way. Still, the future stretches a long way ahead, it’s full of wonderful possibilities now, and my natural optimism hasn’t deserted me. I’ll find a way. If nothing else, the terms of James Parrish’s will mean we’re bound to each other for the next five years. He can’t avoid me forever.

I press the internal door release button then open my front door, leaving it ajar as I rush back to finish dressing my culinary masterpiece before I shove it in the oven to sizzle for twenty minutes.

“I opened a bottle of wine. You can have the glass this time. I’ll just be a moment…” I call out to Sally, knowing she can look after herself while I finish up in here. There’s the sound of the door closing softly as she comes into the flat, footsteps, the splash of wine swirling into my one and only wine glass. Then more footsteps as she comes over to the kitchen door.

“Expecting company, Abbie? Not me, I daresay…”

I spin around at the unexpected deep tone.
Cain!
He shoots out his free hand to save my pizza from an untimely end as I fumble with it in my confusion. I was thinking about him just a moment ago. In my astonishment I could almost convince myself I conjured him here. Now that
would
be a fine trick.

“Whoah, careful.” He chuckles as he rights the teetering concoction of tomato, cheese and green peppers. “Looks tasty, you’ve been learning some new skills while you’ve been away. Will there be enough for three?”

“Three?” I look at him stupidly.

“You, me and whoever’s joining us. Who is that, anyway? Sally?”

I’m totally floundering. What’s he doing here? How does he know about Sally? Did I mention her by name? Maybe.

I collect my wits sufficiently to crouch down and slide the pizza into the oven before my attempts at juggling with it result in disaster. And the brief respite offers me an opportunity to think, to try to sort out this new and miraculous turn of events in my head.

Cain, here! Wow!

“I—yes. Sally. She’s coming round after she finishes work. She should be here by now… We were going to eat and then…” I trail off, not sure if, or how I want to tell him what Sally and I have been getting up to. But it seems there’s no need for me to ponder this matter further.

“Why didn’t you tell me, Abbie?”

“Tell you?” No harm in playing for a bit of time, a bit more regrouping.

Cain turns, strolls back into my living room. He picks up my copy of
Harry Potter and The Philosopher’s Stone
from the arm of my sofa, turns back to me. “Good book? Been reading it long?”

I shake my head slowly.

“No. Thought not. You’ve not been reading anything very long, have you, Abbie?” His tone is low, gentle. Kind. Not a hint of mockery there. He tilts his head to one side, his expression just hinting at a smile. And he waits for my answer.

I shake my head again as I follow Cain into my living room, wondering how he knows. How he worked it out. And I know that only one person could have told him. Phyllis. I’m surprised, maybe even a little shocked. Phyllis promised me, and I trusted her. My sense of disappointment that she broke her word to me is perversely keen, given that I’m actually deliriously pleased to see Cain.

“Phyllis told you.” It’s a statement, not a question. “I asked her not to. She wasn’t happy, but she did promise.”

He shrugs, glancing down at the wine swirling in his glass before he catches and holds my gaze again. “She told me under duress. I was on the point of setting my lawyers onto you for sabotaging my business.”

“What?” I’m staring at him, incredulous
. Sabotage! What the fuck would that be about?

He chuckles again. “Yeah, I know. Ridiculous. I see that now. But then, I was short on explanations. And so fucking pissed off at you. Phyllis had no choice but to fill me in.”

“Why? I don’t understand. I told you it was a mistake. Why would you think…?” I’m babbling and I know it, so I stop, close my mouth firmly. He
did
think I’d hidden that letter deliberately, caused all that hassle with the Health and Safety Executive. He said as much on the phone. “But why did it take you so long to get that pissed off? It’s been a month since I, since…”

“Since you neglected to tell me that the HSE were on my back and I needed to go and grovel to them?”

Always helpful, that’s Cain.

“Yes. Since that.”

He perches himself casually on the arm of my sofa,
Harry Potter
now displaced to the table, next to the depleted wine bottle. He takes a sip from his glass of my finest plonk. “I was convinced you
had
dropped me in it with the HSE on purpose, though I’d no idea why. That made it all the more bitter, I suppose. I’d trusted you.” He hesitates, his smile wry as he observes me.

I’m sure my bafflement is perfectly obvious.

He continues, “I more than trusted you probably, and that made the sense of betrayal sharper. But you’d gone, and I was too busy trying to dig my way out of the shit to worry overmuch about dealing with you. I was livid, certainly, but as long as you kept your distance, I’d manage to keep my hands off you. Not entirely sure how I’d have reacted if—when—you eventually came back. But then, Phyllis discovered the entire 2012-13 accounts had been deleted from the system. The whole lot. And that did it. I knew you’d been working with them, you made a start on identifying our debtors, if you recall. Not that you did anything remotely resembling a good job.”

His grin softens the words, his expression warm with sardonic humor. “So, Phyllis was going to go through it again. But she couldn’t, because the spreadsheet where the invoices are recorded was mysteriously missing. And when she dug a bit further, she found the whole lot was gone. I don’t know how you managed it, but you did.”

I’m staring at him, open-mouthed. “But, I couldn’t… I wouldn’t know how. I mean, I didn’t…”

“Oh, you did. I’m sure you did. Not on purpose, I’m sure of that too, now. But it
was
you. The spreadsheets were fine before you used them, and they were far from fine afterwards.”

My stomach drops to the floor as I remember, suddenly recalling that awful moment when the screen went blank. I did think I’d lost the invoices. But I found them again, I know I did. I went back to the desktop, and navigated my way back to the accounts. They were there, everything was still there, I’m sure. I try to explain that to Cain.

“I don’t doubt you thought it was all fine. My guess is you were looking at the previous year’s spreadsheets. Would you have known the difference?”

I shake my head. I wouldn’t. Not then, and probably not now either. It never occurred to me to look carefully at the dates. The spreadsheet I found looked like the one I’d been working on, and that was good enough for me.

Cain takes another sip of his wine.
I rest my case, m’Lud.

“So, as far as I could see when Phyllis told me what had happened, you’d done it again. Yet another example of you screwing up our business, deliberately destroying records. Inexplicable, but the facts seemed to speak for themselves. Taken on top of the business with Mrs Henderson, and the HSE, this was the last straw. I wanted it stopped. I wanted
you
stopped. As long as you had any involvement with Parrish Construction I could see this stuff continuing to happen. The only way Phyllis could prevent me from starting legal proceedings was to offer some other explanation. So she told me the truth. The truth
you
should have told me at the start. So, I repeat, why didn’t you, Abbie?”

I sink into one of my two little dining chairs and reach for the small porcelain cup alongside the wine bottle. Some day I’ll invest in more than one long stemmed wine glass, but for now I make do. Cain leans forward, hands me his glass as he takes the cup and pours himself a splash of wine. I offer a small, nervous smile before taking a sip.

I ignore his question. I have one of my own. Several, probably. “You were going to have me prosecuted? For what crime?” I still can’t quite believe all of this.

He shrugs. “I’m not sure, that would have been up to the lawyers to decide. And no, probably not prosecuted. But if I could show that you had been deliberately attacking my business interests, I reckon I could have had grounds to challenge the will and get control of the firm again. That’s what was in my mind, anyway, until Phyllis put an entirely new slant on everything.”

I stare at him, horrified. That does make sense. He probably could have got rid of me that way. But he hasn’t. And he doesn’t seem to intend that any more. Instead, he’s followed me here. He’s come looking for me, looking for explanations.

Sure enough, he asks me again, “Why didn’t you tell me all of this from the start? You’d have saved us both a lot of hassle.” He’s persistent, as ever, but his tone lacks that clipped edge to it which denotes Cain in Dom mode. This is my caring lover I’m talking to right now, the man I can confide in.

“Isn’t it obvious? I was embarrassed. I thought you’d think I was ridiculous. Twenty-two years old and couldn’t read. I
was
ridiculous. What’ll happen now? About the accounts I mean?”

“Oh, that’s sorted. Phyllis got one of those data retrieval teams out to have a look. They restored the files. I’m more interested in what’s happening to you? Phyllis tells me you had plans to do a crash course or something. How’s that going?”