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‘Not you, them. They’re always lonely, grateful women who think if they cough up it’ll somehow make all those “I love you”s genuine. Love brings gifts, Cilla; gifts don’t bring love. That’s a basic fact. Sweetheart scamming, that’s what it’s called.’
Cilla had seen those programmes and she always thought those women – and men sometimes – needed a good shake.She wasn’t anything like them. Hugo didn’t want her for a passport and he wasn’t thirty years younger than her either. And he didn’t fake anything in bed, he made sure she was very well taken care of. He was a giver, not a taker.
‘You’re very wrong,’ Cilla said. She didn’t want to listen to any more in case Marielle’s venom burnt through her skull and put doubts in her head. A relationship was nothing without trust, Hugo had said so many times.
‘Cilla, please, do me one favour…’ Marielle implored, because even though Cilla drove her barmy, she didn’t want her to get hurt and she didn’t want Flick to have to pick up the pieces. ‘Please don’t give him any more money. If he is genuine, and I really hope he is for your sake, then he will not press you for it. Yes, I think he’s taking you for a ride but I would be delighted if you proved me wrong.’ She let out a long breath by way of a full stop. Looking at Cilla’s face, she realised she’d probably been too brutal, more than she ever had before, and it didn’t sit well with her that she might have truly upset her cousin. ‘Come on, sit down for five,’ she smiled. ‘I’ll put the kettle on.’
She walked across to it, picked it up from the work surface and went over to the tap to fill it.
Cilla stood stock still, heart racing, furious. She hadn’t come here to be taken down and then have to sit here and drink tea as if nothing had happened. How dare she? Marielle was the one being duped, not her, and she was trying to spoil things for her because she was jealous.
Except deep down, Cilla knew she wasn’t, because Marielle had a much better hand than she had in life, even without a man, and the river of jealousy flowed only one way. Cilla resented the easy, loving relationship Marielle had with her son and how Flick seemed to be more fond of her than she was of her own mother. She resented that Mariellehad friends who had never invited her into their inner sanctum. She resented that Marielle was respected and liked in the community for being a good nurse, a kind and generous woman. Cilla had been born with a seed of envy in her soul and over the years it had flowered into bitterness.
While Marielle was hunting in the cupboard and twittering on about biscuits or something, Cilla noticed the handbag on the floor, between the dresser and the bookshelf, the zipper open. She saw the corner of a purse poking out of the top and she took the chance to shut her oh-so-self-righteous cousin up once and for all. While Marielle was pouring the water into the teapot, she made a quick snatch for it and shoved it in her own bag, then she stepped away from it to create distance. She wasn’t anywhere near it when Marielle turned to bring the teapot over to the table.
‘I came here because I am genuinely worried about you, whatever you might think,’ said Cilla now, her voice subdued and a sniff added for effect. ‘I did not come here for you to turn on me and attack me for my choice of partner. If you think about it, only one of us has a history of making the same mistakes over and over again where personal safety is concerned.’
Marielle had to concede she was right. She had never told anyone that when one guest left Little Moon, she’d found a nasty-looking knife under the mattress which wouldn’t have been used for taking the peel off apples.
‘I’m sorry if I shouted,’ she said. ‘Please sit down. Look, I’ve got the best mugs out.’ She tried a smile, but it didn’t work.
‘No, I think we’ve both said enough so I’m going,’ replied Cilla. ‘But please think on when you’re lecturing people about being a good judge of character that you’ve been lied to and conned more than anyone I know. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.’
And with that she turned to go.
LOCAL MAN ADMITS THROWING STONES AT BIRDS
TheDaily Trumpetwas in court to hear Orville Bell, 83, of no fixed abode, deny that he was throwing stones at birds on Slattercove beach. He said he was in training to enter the Commonwealth Games as a put shotter. In his defence Bell said that he loved birds and always had turkey for Christmas. Bell was bound over for six months.
Chapter 27
‘Well, well, well, you’re a hard man to find,’ said Billy the Donk as Orrible’s head slammed into his desk with such force that Billy’s Lotus Biscoff biscuit jumped off his saucer. Billy slid theDaily Trumpettowards him so the eye not currently having a close-up view of the inlaid leather could read the entry in the paper.
‘I must say, Orrible, you’re looking pretty good for eighty-three. I’d have put you at least ten years younger. Let him go, Square. I want to ask him what face cream he uses.’
Square hoisted Billy to a standing position where he withered, making himself look as small as possible – a primal defensive move – and reverently averted his eyes from gaining contact with Billy’s. Instead they roved around his office walls taking in the photos of his daughters, his mother and his surgically enhanced wife with her rubber-tyre lips, and all the donkeys he sponsored in a sanctuary, and then to the huge oil painting of the Kray twins taking up half the wall behind him.
Billy’s mother was rumoured to have had an affair with Reggie and Billy himself was the product of their manyliaisons. The dates tied up and it was a story Billy chose to believe. Then again, when this information was eventually relayed to him by his mother, she’d been going a bit doolally and also told him she was Cat Woman in the originalBatmanseries with Adam West and had invented the Crispy Pancake. Given his mother could burn water in a kettle, Billy was selective about her culinary claims but the Kray connection suited him and enough people believed it, which greatly enhanced his hard-man reputation. Despite moving up to Whitby many years ago, Billy’s accent had never lost its east London inflexion and the tenor of his voice was soft, like theirs, and it was no less menacing for that.
‘Now, Orrible, what part of “keep a low profile” are you not getting, you muppet?’
‘I’m sorry, Billy,’ said Orrible, shrinking even further. ‘I was only throwing stones. Not at anything, just chucking them. For a laugh. I didn’t know that there was birds nesting. Ocelots or sumfink.’
Behind him Square snorted and Big Charlie made the comment that David Attenborough better watch it or he’d be out of a job soon.
‘Orrible,’ said Billy with his smile, the one that made Orrible’s bowel clench. ‘Do you know what the love of my life is? Apart from my girls? And my donkeys?’
Orrible ruminated, desperate to get the answer right.
‘Cigars?’
‘Nope.’
‘Fine… Scotch? Oh no, I know… Cog-nac?’
‘Cog-nac,’ Big Charlie snorted, trying to hold it together.
‘I’ll give you a clue: think wings,’ prompted Billy.
