Dead to Me (12 page)

‘Happy
New Year, dear!’ Aunt Hazel raised a glass of sherry to Verity as church bells rang out. A hubbub of shouting and loud banging of tin trays broke out in the street. ‘It’s too cold for me to join that lot out there – and anyway, we’ve both got work in the morning. So I’ll say goodnight.’

‘Happy New Year to you too, and sleep tight,’ Verity replied and sipped her sherry. She didn’t like it much, but she thought it was a drink she must learn to master.

She listened despondently as Hazel went into the kitchen and struck a match to light her little lantern to take out to the lavatory. There was the predictable gust of cold air as she opened the back door, then the click of the lock when she closed it behind her.

Verity had listened to the same ritual and sounds every night since she got back from her first holiday in Torquay over two years ago. Sometimes she wanted to scream out to her aunt to bang the door, turn on a torch, smash a bowl, wash up a cup, or take a biscuit out of the biscuit tin. Anything to make it different. Tonight Aunt Hazel had drunk some sherry before going out there, but not enough for her to start singing or making cheese on toast.

Verity got up from her chair once her aunt had gone
upstairs, picked up the torch by the back door, which her aunt always ignored, and darted to the lavatory. It was pitch dark, very cold and the wind was getting up. She could hear next door’s tin bath banging on its nail by their door. She had politely mentioned to the neighbours that it made a terrible racket in high winds and wondered if they could put something around it to stop the clanging, but nothing had been done and she would hear it all night once again.

Aunt Hazel had put a hot-water bottle in her bed earlier, and as Verity got into bed she cuddled it gratefully. She burrowed into the pillow and closed her eyes, going into her favourite fantasy in which she and Ruby ran a cafe in Babbacombe. In this fantasy they were both older, beautifully dressed and terribly sophisticated. They lived together above the cafe in a lovely flat with a luxurious bathroom, and it was always warm and sun-filled.

Being in Babbacombe with Ruby were the truly happy times of the year for Verity. She lived for the two weeks in summer, and usually tried to get there at Easter and for a long weekend at Whitsun, but it was never enough. If it wasn’t for the weekly telephone call to Ruby, and the letters they exchanged, Verity couldn’t imagine how she’d cope with living with her aunt.

It was just so terribly dull. Conversations were only ever about what they’d have for tea, who said what at Chiesmans, and speculation about the neighbours. Hazel didn’t read books and had never been anywhere – she didn’t even like going to the pictures, something Verity adored.

Ruby kept telling her she should make a friend locally, find someone to wander around the shops with, or go to a dance with. But how did you make a friend? You could
hardly stop someone in the street and demand they became your friend. From what she knew about the girls at work, their closest friends were from schooldays. But the girls at Verity’s school had all been so mean after her mother’s suicide. As for Susan, she used to turn her head away if Verity went anywhere near her – it was like she had a nasty, infectious disease.

Even two and a half years on, Verity still felt bruised by her mother’s death. She didn’t miss her, didn’t wish she was still alive, but it was an unfinished tragedy. She knew that local people still referred to her as ‘the girl whose mother gassed herself’. She had said to Ruby once that it was a good job they hadn’t really caught on about her father, or they’d be calling her ‘the swindler/suicide girl’.

Yet Ruby seemed to have cast off her humble beginnings, like a snake sheds its skin. She spoke well, she was bright and articulate, and had become astoundingly pretty. With curly auburn hair, sparkling green eyes, a china doll complexion and the figure of a showgirl, she turned heads wherever she went. She loved working at the Palace Hotel, and it seemed she was very well thought of there. She sometimes stood in as a receptionist, when needed, and Verity knew the minute one of the current receptionists left, Ruby would be applying for that position.

Verity reminded herself to telephone Ruby in the morning, on the way to work, to wish her and Wilby a Happy New Year. Along with working at the Palace Hotel, Ruby was learning shorthand and typing at night school. She had said in a letter that once she got her diploma she was going to do a catering course next.

Verity left the house fifteen minutes early the next morning so she could telephone Ruby from Hither Green Station. The wind was really raw and she turned up the collar of her coat and tied her scarf tighter around her neck. The coat had been her mother’s and it was a very good camel-hair one, bought in Gorringes. It was lucky that Aunt Hazel had had the foresight to keep so many of her mother’s things, because Verity had long since grown out of all her own clothes and there just wasn’t any money left each week for what her aunt called ‘fripperies’. She was five foot five now, wore size 4 shoes, and to her delight had a presentable 34, 24, 34 figure. Her breasts had been a long time coming – in fact she’d thought she would be flat-chested for ever – but judging by the number of wolf whistles she got, she must be reasonably attractive.

Not that she liked male attention. She associated all men with what her father had done to her, and apart from a couple of kisses under the mistletoe at the office Christmas party she hadn’t got close enough to anyone to discover if she was wrong to think this. Sheila had a boyfriend called Jack and went on and on about how he made her feel, which Verity found very tedious. Ruby tended to be much the same too, in her letters there was always someone who put her on cloud nine.

Luckily, last August, when Verity went to stay for a holiday, Ruby had just broken up with Charlie, and claimed to be broken-hearted. It didn’t stop her eyeing up other boys, but at least she wasn’t rushing off to meet someone all the time – or, even worse, trying to make Verity date one of his friends.

Back in November her letters had been full of a man
called Michael who was twenty-two, and had a car. She thought he was ‘the one’. But she hadn’t mentioned him in her Christmas letter, so maybe that had fizzled out too.

There was the usual river of bowler-hatted men flowing into Hither Green Station. They mostly worked in the City so caught a train to Cannon Street like Verity. The train was always standing room only by the time it got to Hither Green. She couldn’t count the number of times she’d been jabbed with a furled umbrella. But that was marginally better than being face to face with a smoker puffing away, regardless of his close proximity to others.

The telephone box was empty for once, and it was good to get out of the cold wind for a few minutes. She dialled the number, fed in some coins and pressed the button once she heard Ruby’s voice.

‘Happy New Year,’ she said. ‘I’m just on my way to work, but I had to catch you before I got on the train. Tell Wilby I rang, won’t you?’

‘Thank heavens you’ve phoned,’ Ruby said. ‘I’ve got a serious problem and I didn’t dare put it in a letter in case your aunt reads it.’

‘She wouldn’t read my letters,’ Verity said. ‘But whatever is it?’

There was a slight pause, and Verity imagined Ruby looking round to check Wilby wasn’t within earshot. ‘I’ll have to be quick, Wilby’s out in the garden doing something. If I change the subject, it’ll be cos she’s come back in. Anyway, can you ring back this evening after seven thirty, as she’ll be out at a meeting and we can talk properly?’

‘Okay,’ Verity agreed. ‘You make it sound so cloak and dagger.’

‘She’ll hate me if she finds out. I’m pregnant, Verity. I want you to go to my mother in Kentish Town and get her to arrange an abortion.’

Verity reeled in shock. ‘You can’t do that!’ she exclaimed. ‘I thought you loved Michael?’

‘Well, he doesn’t love me, and he’s scarpered,’ Ruby said bitterly. ‘And I
can
do it. I’m going to do it. I don’t want a baby –’

She broke off, and when she spoke again her voice was quite different, the hard edge had gone and she sounded like she was smiling. ‘And a Happy New Year to you too, Verity, let’s hope it’s the best one ever. Oh, Wilby has just come in, I’m sure she’d love to speak to you, but you’ve got the train to catch. Speak again soon.’

Verity stood there with the receiver in her hand for a few stunned seconds. But someone rapped on the glass, wanting to use the phone, so she put it down and left the warmth of the box.

She couldn’t really believe what she’d heard. It had never occurred to her that Ruby might be going that far with her boyfriends. But Ruby was far too worldly to think she was pregnant if she wasn’t.

Verity wished she could get on a train to Torquay right now and go and see her friend, but she couldn’t. She hadn’t got the fare – and she’d got to go to work anyway. Besides, Wilby would be alarmed if she turned up unexpectedly.

It was going to be a very long day at work, her mind constantly on Ruby. What had her friend meant by saying
she wanted Verity to go and see her mother to arrange an abortion? Surely having an abortion was dangerous? What kind of mother would arrange it for her daughter?

‘You seem very preoccupied,’ Aunt Hazel said as she fried some sausages for tea. ‘You’ve been staring at the wall as if you think something is going to come through it.’

They were in the kitchen and Hazel had lit the fire. Most evenings when it was cold they stayed in the kitchen and listened to the wireless by the fire until bedtime. They only used the parlour in summer and on Sundays.

Verity mentally shook herself. She had been thinking about Ruby and what on earth she could say to her. She didn’t know anyone else who had become pregnant when they weren’t married, but she’d heard people being nasty about girls who had. She didn’t believe Wilby would be nasty; upset and disappointed perhaps, but not nasty. However, she doubted Ruby would believe that.

‘I was thinking about work,’ Verity lied. ‘Sorry. How was your day?’

‘Busy, we got a big order in for a lady up in Blackheath, new curtains all over her house. She’s picked the most expensive brocades, must be lovely to have enough money so you can buy whatever you want.’

Aunt Hazel didn’t go out until nearly seven thirty. As soon as she’d gone, Verity ran down the street to the telephone box. Luckily, no one was in it; the cold night was good for something. She balanced her pencil and paper on top of the directories, then rang the number.

Ruby answered after two rings.

‘I thought you were going to let me down,’ she said.

‘As if,’ Verity said. ‘Now take down this number and ring me back, because I haven’t got much change.’

A couple of minutes later they were talking again.

‘Now explain,’ Verity said. ‘I thought Michael was “the one” and he loved you.’

‘He said he did.’ Ruby began to cry. ‘He even said he’d marry me when I told him I was pregnant. But then he disappeared. He was such a liar, Verity. He told me he was a reporter on the local paper so I went there, but they said they’d never heard of him. I’d already been round to his digs, and his landlady said he left owing her a week’s money. I even went to the pub he used to take me to, where he seemed to know everyone. It appears he’d told them all a pack of lies too. How he was waiting to be taken on by
The Times
newspaper and he was going to buy an expensive car. I was really taken in by him.’

‘Oh dear, Ruby,’ Verity sighed. ‘Are you absolutely sure? Have you been to the doctor?’

‘I’ve missed two periods, that’s enough proof. I’m not going to a doc’s, as I’m going to get an abortion. Now have you got a pencil and paper? Cos I’m going to give you Ma’s address. You go round there and explain, and tell her she’s got to sort it for me. She’s got a pal who does them for the tarts around there.’

‘You can’t do that, it’s dangerous,’ Verity begged her.

‘It’s a bloody sight more dangerous to bring a child into the world that you don’t want,’ Ruby spat back at her. ‘I should know, that was me. I can’t bring a kid up on my own, it’s impossible.’

‘But Wilby will help you, and so will I,’ Verity said.

‘Forget that idea, it wouldn’t work. Just do what I ask
and go and see my ma. She’ll probably be funny with you, but give as good as you get. Insist she does it, or I’ll come back to London and land myself on her.’

Verity was alarmed at Ruby’s fierceness, she had seen glimmers of that toughness when they first met, but it had disappeared during her time with Wilby. Somehow, she knew there was no point in going on about the dangers, or the rights and wrongs of it. Ruby was determined, and if her mother didn’t arrange it for her, she’d find someone else. That person wouldn’t care a jot about Ruby, only about the money.

So Verity took down the address.

‘The best time to catch her in is around six, when she’s getting dolled up to go out. Her real name is Aggie Taylor, but she makes out it’s Angie Taylor. You aren’t going to like the way she lives, but you knew that anyway. Please don’t let me down, Verity, I haven’t got anyone to fight my corner but you.’

As Verity walked home she thought about that last statement of Ruby’s. It wasn’t strictly true, Wilby would fight her corner in a heartbeat. But not on this, though. She’d say adoption was the answer, if Ruby really didn’t want the baby. But if Ruby did want it, she’d help bring the baby up and love it like it was her own grandchild.

Apart from the moral issues, Verity really didn’t want to meet Angie Taylor. Any mother who sent her child out to steal was a bad person, and she doubted Ruby would be in this predicament if she’d been taken care of and loved as a child.

The following evening, Verity caught the underground to Kentish Town straight from work. She had looked up Rhyl
Street in the London A to Z and knew roughly how to get there. Once she had turned off the main road into the warren of narrow, terraced streets behind the wide thoroughfare, she felt quite sick with fear.

The houses were small here, mostly two storeys, built in Victorian times for working people. There was fog in the air, not so thick that she couldn’t read the street signs, but it made everything look even dirtier and more sinister than it really was in the yellow-tinged street lighting. She thought of Hither Green as poor and dreary, but compared to this part of Kentish Town it was a desirable area.