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Thatright therewas the straw on her donkey’s back. Courtney was now warbling on about her car and the insurance and her rubbish wage but it was just static noise in the background, secondary to Shay’s own heartbeat booming in her ears.
‘ENOUGH,’ she said loudly, silencing her daughter. ‘Courtney, are you actually listening to the words coming out of your mouth?’
‘Yeah, I know Mum, but let me tell you this bit—’
‘No. I thought when you moved out that you just might start to grow up. I didn’t want to see you leave, it actually broke my heart, not that you even considered it might because you didn’t even look behind you to see,’ said Shay, marvelling at how calm she sounded considering how fast her pulse must be racing. ‘That’s fine, I try not to be needy. It was just part of the mother job like having to go into school and speak to teachers when you kicked off, go looking for you when you played truant, even sit up with youall night after you’d taken something in a club that made you believe – for some strange reason – that I was Mary Queen of Scots. I’ve watched money fall through your hands as if they had stigmata holes in them, I’ve watched you put deadbeats on pedestals while you use and alienate good friends and now you think it’s fine to put them in real danger.’
She took in a breath and Courtney seized the beat to interject but Shay steamrollered her attempt at protest.
‘Because of your self-centredness, because of your utter disregard for anyone outside your circle of “me”, Mort could have died; do you understand that? He wasstabbedby that… that specimen of dysfunctional crap that your tiny intellect refuses to give up. Well, I have no words. Actually, I do. To expect people who love you and care for you to keep pulling you out of messes of your own doing and patch you up only to watch you walk straight back into yet another disaster is now beyond tiresome and selfish, selfish, SELFISH. Did you know that even Mort has got fed up of trailing after you like a loyal rescued greyhound? Did you know that he’d started seeing a girl and it was probably the last thing he wanted to do to come running when you snapped your bloody entitled fingers?’
She heard the breath catch in her daughter’s voice; clearly she didn’t know that.
‘You might think it’s wonderful having two men fighting over you, but it’s not. Especially not when you have to hit one over the head with a toaster to stop him killing the other. Everyone has to rescue you at their own inconvenience and, Courtney, we are all sick of it.’
There was silence at the end of the line. Then Courtney lit the touch paper to another stick of dynamite.
‘So, is this what you really think of me?’ she said icily. ‘Does Dad share your opinion?’
Dad. Bruce. Twat.
‘If you rang him and asked him maybe you’d find out, but you only ever askmefor support, money and advice – advice, I may add, that you totally and utterly ignore. Maybe you should ring people to ask howtheyare instead of telling them howyouare or what you want. That way you might find out that actually I’m in hellish pain, not only because I will never see my mum again but because your father has left me. And you’d find out that Mort has not only been stabbed by Dingo sodding Shaw but that he’s suffering too because his mother is shacked up with your dad in a mansion in Hathersage because Les won twelve million quid on the lottery.’
And breathe.
Well, that was an information dump to end all information dumps. Shay wondered how the boot felt on the other foot for her daughter.
‘And I’m going away for a few days or a couple of weeks, or months or years, I haven’t decided yet, and will be totally incommunicado, so please let me do that in peace. If you need anything do not ring Mort either, leave him alone. Ring your father for a change. But preferably take some responsibility for yourself, get your act together, stop being a pain and an emotional drain, Courtney, and finally grow up. I love you.’
Then Shay pressed the disconnect button on her phone, then the off switch. The full glass of brandy beckoned; she picked it up and tipped it down the sink. She needed a clear head to think. She’d told Courtney she was going away, which wasn’t the worst idea actually. This house was full ofthe detritus of her marriage that upset her to be around, and she was too accessible to Morton, who just might make a pest of himself now that they had so much common ground. She couldn’t decamp to her mum’s house because there would be too many well-meaning neighbours bringing Tupperware boxes of macaroons and home-grown tomatoes, plus she was likely to murder Drew and Ann Balls. So where could she go?
It was high season so a nice twee little cottage in the Cotswolds was out of the question. There was always a soulless cheap hotel room, but that would be hard to live in for any length of time, she supposed. But there was Candlemas, the rental cottage in Millspring that her mother had willed to her; presently vacant, waiting. The thought of it filled her with fear though. She couldn’t go back there. Or maybe now was the time when she should.
Chapter 26
Shay didn’t sleep well that night, her brain would not power down, instead it tortured her with pictures of Bruce and Les, laughing at her. So that’s why Bruce hadn’t suggested she ring Morton when she wanted information about all the building work Drew Balls was having done – because he was screwing Morton’s wife and didn’t want to encourage him into their lives any more than he had to be. In the early hours of the day, Shay lay there, wide awake, picking over their anniversary weekend. How could Bruce have lied to her about his ‘problem’ – the one that Les said men never lied about, which was a genius bluff? The guilt must have pushed through on occasion, hence the gushing ‘I love you’ and ‘You’re beautiful’ moments. Either that or he’d been listening to too much James Blunt. It was the manipulation of her by both of them that stung most of all; they’d played her like a spinning top. Her friend of twenty-eight years and her husband of twenty-four years, the father of her two children whom she’d cooked and cleaned for, slept and dreamed with, loved. It wasn’t tears that kept her awake, it was cold, hard anger and she had nowhere to put it.
She got up at six, tired of tossing and turning and chasing sleep. It was an effort to take a shower, get dressed, open the curtains but she made herself put some make-up on, have a coffee, empty the dishwasher because moping around feeling sorry for herself wouldn’t help one iota. Going away for a few days was an idea that hadn’t left her so she decided to trot along to Merriment Close and double-check that it was fully secured. That would be one worry off her plate if she did skedaddle, leaving just the remaining three hundred thousand.
There was a lot of movement at the neck of the Close as she approached it but not of the type she had come to expect. There was only one builder’s vehicle parked up but also a police car and a small van with‘Daily Trumpet’signwritten on it. All the neighbours were gathered on the pavement and as Shay drove past the Balls’s house, she could see where the interest lay. Lodged firmly in the troublesome extension was the large digger which had been in the middle of the grass circle the last time Shay saw it. Not only that but it had rammed further into the main house and was sitting at an admirable tilt on top of some kitchen units. Through the gaping aperture, currently being photographed by aDaily Trumpetreporter, what remained of the Balls’s new party room and their lounge and most of their kitchen was a merry mess of rubble, roof, brick, smashed furniture, plaster and glass.
‘Terrible, isn’t it?’ said Dagmara, moseying over to Shay when she had parked and got out of the car. ‘Who would do such a thing when Mr and Mrs Balls have gone to Spain for week’s holiday?’
Derrick from number five sauntered over.
‘I’ve just told the police that none of us have any CCTV. No one heard a dicky bird either, because we’re all deaf and old.’
‘Very deaf,’ echoed Dagmara, shaking her head sadly.
‘It’s a complete mystery,’ said Derrick with a sigh. ‘I mean, it would take someone with a knowledge of plant machinery to drive something like that, I would have thought.’
‘Like Nagraj, you mean?’ asked Shay, eyebrows raised.
‘Oh he might have been able to many years ago, but he couldn’t manage it now of course. Plus he’d have had to be able to start it up without a key, all of which would be highly illegal.’ There was a smile playing on Derrick’s mouth that Shay found she liked very much.
An infuriated builder was insisting to the police that he had not left any keys in the ignition. He was also saying that he had been expecting to wrap up this frigging job by the end of next week. He’d got a lovely extension cued for a couple who weren’t a pair of bellends whom people hated for good reason.
‘Poor builders, it’s not their fault,’ said Dagmara.
