The Queen of New Beginnings (22 page)

But it was too late to do anything about them. He just had to hope that Bazza and Stacey wouldn’t be too freaked out, that they would see the funny side of what he’d done.

He left the note on the kitchen table, reset the burglar alarm, and using a key he’d found hanging in the cupboard under the stairs, he locked the back door, posted the key through the letterbox and slunk away into the night.

He had apologized, he told himself as he made his way across London to his own home in Fulham. He had made good his public attack on them. What could possibly go wrong?

• • •

He soon found out exactly just how badly his plan had gone wrong. A little after five o’clock the next morning his telephone by the side of the bed rang. “You psychopathic wanker!” Bazza yelled at him. “What kind of a sick joke did you think you were playing on us?”

“OK,” he apologized, “the heads were a mistake. I accept that. But the rest of it, surely you like the rest of the stuff? The toys? You like those, don’t you?” He could hear himself pleading with Bazza.

But Bazza wasn’t hearing him. “Stacey’s lost the baby because of you,” he shouted down the phone. “It was the shock.”

“Oh, my God! What, the shock of seeing those heads?”

“No, it was the electricity!”

It turned out that Stacey had gone outside to switch off the power and had received an electric shock that had thrown her off her feet. Two hours later she had started to miscarry and Bazza had driven her to the hospital.

Appalled at what had happened, Clayton had gone to Notting Hill two days later to apologize, but his visit had only made things worse. Bazza had taken a swing at him and the next thing they were brawling in the street with Bazza shouting that he would personally see to it that he would become the most hated man in the country. Somebody—probably the nosy neighbour—called the police and at the sound of a siren fast approaching, Clayton decided his best option was to leg it.

In the days that followed he kept expecting a heavily armed unit to crash through his front door in the middle of the night and arrest him. He’d been responsible for the death of a four-month-old foetus; could he go to prison for that?

But prison wasn’t what Bazza had in mind for him. His revenge wasn’t to press charges for breaking and entry or causing Stacey to miscarry, but to hound Clayton through the press. With seemingly every journalist on his side, he painstakingly set about his task. Reporters and photographers set up camp outside Clayton’s house, forcing him to draw the curtains and stay inside. It could have been worse. He could have had a mob of angry village folk wielding pitchforks and flaming torches on his doorstep.

The newspapers vilified him as a psychotic monster who had caused an innocent woman to lose her baby.
How Low Can a Man Get?…What New Low Now for Unfunniest Funny Man?…Funny No More…Funny Man Out of Control…
was the general theme when it came to the headlines. The sickest headlines were to be found on the Internet:
Clayton Miller the Child Terminator
was one of the least offensive things written about him online. Every minuscule aspect of his character was dredged up and dissected. Lists were compiled of all the questionable things he had publicly said or done. People he had apparently wronged in the past came out of the woodwork with a barrage of grievances to air. He discovered he had false friends aplenty; he was officially persona non grata. Even his cleaner abandoned him to tell her story to the
Sun
, sharing with the world earth-shattering stuff such as how he liked to eat his breakfast in the bath, how he sometimes left his toenail clippings on the bedroom floor, and shock horror, how some days he didn’t bother getting dressed, just lounged about in his pyjamas with his hair uncombed whilst sitting at his desk not writing a single word. Clearly all signs of a mind seriously on the tilt.

In the end, Glen, the only one to stand by him, put out a statement to the press, stating very clearly just how sorry his client was and that Clayton had had no intention of causing anyone any harm; it had all been a terrible mistake.

Then in the early hours of a particularly cold, wet night, when not even the hardiest photographer was keeping an eye on the house, Glen spirited Clayton away and dispatched him to a place no one would find him.

As she switched off the light and slid beneath the duvet, Alice couldn’t help but think it was just the sort of outlandish thing her father would have done. On the Richter scale of bad ideas it was certainly up there with the cherry liqueurs.

Unquestionably Clayton’s heart had been in the right place when he’d planned his surprise for Barry and Stacey, and if the outcome hadn’t been as it was, surely they would have seen the funny side of what he’d done. How Alice would have loved to have witnessed the shock on Clayton’s face when he’d seen the gigantic animal heads emerging from the back of the truck. Even funnier would have been his reaction when he’d seen them illuminated in all their eerie glory. If it had been a scene from a film or a TV programme the audience would have laughed out loud. Moreover, Clayton would have come across as a hapless yet wholly likeable and sympathetic character. Not for a single second would he have been viewed as the evil monster the press had since portrayed him as being.

Alice had briefly thought that the best way for Clayton to defend himself, as well as repair the damage made to his reputation, was to go to the media with his side of the story. But Clayton was convinced that he couldn’t trust a journalist to print what he actually told them. He maintained that anything he said would be deliberately misconstrued and twisted into something altogether different. He was probably right.

She recalled the day when she had first met Clayton, when he’d been Mr. Shannon. The man he’d been then—the dishevelled, ill-tempered curmudgeon—was hardly recognizable to her now. She would no more have kissed that man than she would have kissed a toad in the belief it would change into a handsome prince.

Mmm…interesting analogy, she reflected.

She rolled over and her thoughts turned to her father. His memory was now more powerfully real to her than it had ever been. The tears she had cried for him at Cuckoo House this evening had come from a place deep inside her. A place she hadn’t known existed.

She had been fine until Clayton had left her alone. Then, when she’d been on her own in the very room in which she had last seen her father, when he’d been making love to Isabel, the loss of him had hit her with a force so potent she had felt as if she had just heard of his death for the first time. She suspected, having never truly grieved for him, just as she hadn’t for her mother, that it was some kind of delayed shock she had experienced.

But how could she ever make up for what she had done? The calculated act of wilfully wiping her father out of her life had never seemed more cold-hearted or brutal than it did to her now. Only two days ago she could have justified her actions to herself and to anyone who dared to question her motives, but now she couldn’t.

The Queen of New Beginnings had got it wrong. There was no such thing as a new beginning when you were devising it for the worst reason of all: revenge.

Acknowledging the sad truth of this had plunged her into a state of remorseful torment. Was that why she had turned to Clayton? Had he merely been a convenient shoulder to cry on? A case of any port would do if the storm was bad enough?

She replayed inside her head the moment he had taken her unawares and kissed her. Despite how upset she had been she had experienced a jolt of pleasant surprise pass through her and had willingly kissed him back. She had liked the way he had held her, very close but unexpectedly gentle, almost as if he’d been afraid to hurt her.

Where had this new man come from? This kind, thoughtful, perceptive and curiously attractive man? She tried to think when exactly he had changed and what could have caused the transformation, but she would come up with nothing more definitive than that the change must have been gradual. Perhaps it was merely that he felt more relaxed around her. More trusting as well. Yes, that was probably it. He had decided to trust her, just as she had trusted him when she had decided to share her childhood with him.

When it had been time for her to leave Cuckoo House, he had walked her to her car and kissed her one last time; it had been no more than a light brush of his lips against her cheek. Driving home, she had wished he had kissed her as he’d done before. Had he chosen the safe option to be polite, or had he regretted the way he’d kissed her earlier? Was he, she wondered, as impulsive as she was? And if so, was that a good thing? The combined force of two impulsive people could get themselves into an awful lot of trouble.

Just as her father and Isabel had done.

• • •

At Cuckoo House, Clayton was flying. Man, oh man, was he ever flying! The words were coming so fast his fingers couldn’t keep up with his brain; they were thrashing the keyboard of his laptop with a frustrating lack of accuracy. But never mind. Throwing the story down was all he cared about. Errors could be dealt with later.

It is a well-known fact amongst writers that until that first word of a new piece of work is written, the writer believes utterly that what he is about to start writing is going to be THE BIG ONE. Invariably, once the first page is written, the belief begins to waver. OK, maybe not THE BIG ONE, but still something that will be considered a stupendous achievement and garner national, if not international acclaim. By the end of the chapter, or the first scene, the writer knows full well that what he or she is writing is not going to tilt the world on its axis. In fact, it’s not even going to tilt his own ego. It may prove to be as good a piece of writing as he has produced to date, but acceptance is there: this is just the same old dross kitted out in a new pair of Y-fronts.

But in this instance, Clayton believed wholeheartedly this was THE BIG ONE. He had written pages and pages of dialogue and knew, just absolutely
knew
, this was destined to be something he would be proud of. There wasn’t a flicker of doubt in his mind; this had Major Success written all over it. He had felt exactly the same when he and Bazza had started playing with ideas for the script that went on to become
Joking Aside
. They’d been sitting opposite one another in the kitchen of their grungy flat, bouncing ideas off each other. As the exchange grew and their ideas and scraps of scribbled-on paper gathered momentum, they both began to get excited. “This is better than our usual crap, isn’t it?” Bazza had said.

“You betcha,” Clayton replied. “If I’m not mistaken, we’ve reached the quality end of the colon.”

Clayton’s instinct then had been bang on the money. Which was why he didn’t doubt himself now. He hadn’t suffered the debilitating horror of writer’s block for as long as he had—all those times he’d started on an idea only to stall—to know when it just wasn’t happening. He reckoned writer’s block wasn’t unlike erectile dysfunction: all-consumingly shaming, the sort of thing a man just can’t bring himself to discuss openly. Not that he’d actually experienced the latter. But then when was the last time he’d had the chance to put the equipment to the test anyway? For all he knew he could have acquired any number of problems in that department since it had last been on an outing. A sex life; now there was an interesting concept.

He immediately thought of Alice.

As forays into the unknown went, he wouldn’t remind a repeat performance of this evening’s activities. He’d been tempted to try his luck again when she was leaving but Mr. Sensitive must have been cosying up with Captain Sensible, because he’d reigned himself in and settled for a gentlemanly kiss on her cheek.

He let his mind linger on the pleasurable memory of kissing Alice, then with great effort, he shifted gear and dragged his thoughts away from her as an attractive woman and back to when she’d been a young girl shortly before her mother had died. Not once during her chats with him had Alice referred to how she’d felt about her mother’s death. Was that deliberate? Or was she a natural storyteller, moving the narrative along to what she deemed the next important part of the story?

But Clayton wanted to write more about Barbara Barrett. Could he use some artistic licence and flesh out her character himself? Or would that be insensitive of him?

Bit late for that
, Captain Sensible butted in.

All right, all right, he snapped back at Captain Sensible. Just as soon as Alice seemed less upset about her father, he would broach the subject with her. He would also tackle the tricky matter of telling her what he was writing. His timing would have to be right. He couldn’t just wade in. He would have to use all his powers of gentle persuasion. He could do that, couldn’t he?

He scrolled through what he’d just written and as he tried to picture Alice and her mother together, it occurred to him that maybe he could talk to George about Barbara Barrett. He wouldn’t be at all surprised if the crafty old girl was a mine of information. He’d have to tread warily, though. He couldn’t let on to George what he was doing without having first OK-ed things with Alice. Speaking with her would be his next priority. Well, he’d leave it a few more days. Just to be on the safe side. No point in rushing in when she might still be troubled by her father.

See, he could be sensitive when it was required.

“You haven’t brought any more of your gut-dissolving, diabolical brew, have you?”

“That, if you don’t mind me saying, Mr. Shannon, is not the most gracious way to greet a well-intentioned neighbour.”

Clayton stood back and let George in with a blast of corrosive cold air. It was uncanny that she had come knocking on his door so soon after he had decided he wanted to talk to her. What was she, some kind of mind reader? More likely a witch. “Alice told me that you know who I am,” he said, “so I suggest we bury Mr. Shannon.”

“Shame, I was becoming rather attached to him. And fear not,” she mimed a zip being pulled across her mouth, “I shan’t be blabbing to anyone that you’re here.”

“Thank you. So what can I do for you?” He knew exactly what she could do for him, but he needed to bide his time before strapping her to a chair and flashing a bright light into those beady little eyes of hers in order to carry out his interrogation regarding Alice’s mother.

“No, it’s more a case of what I can do for you, Mr. Miller.”

“Please, call me Clayton.”

Her eyes twinkled mischievously. “Goodness, you’re not flirting with me, are you?” He slapped his forehead.

“You’ve seen right through me.”

“Come on, Clayton,” she said with a chuckle, “fetch your coat; you’re coming out with me.”

“Only if you promise not to drag me back to your cave and have your wicked way with me. I have to warn you, I never have sex on a first date.”

“I’ll do my best to control myself. Oh, and you’d better bring that ridiculously large-brimmed hat I saw you wearing when we first met; we don’t want anyone cottoning on to who you are, do we?”

• • •

They were in the car, destination downtown Stonebridge and its myriad heady delights when, above the noise of the engine and gears screaming in blood-curdling distress, George shouted at him, “You’re looking a lot better than the last time I saw you. What’s changed?”

“Perception as well as charm,” he yelled back.

“You seem different, and not just because you’ve shaved off the beard. Never been a fan of whiskers myself. You could almost pass for handsome now.”

“And the charm just gets better and better. Carry on like this and you’ll have me wrapped around your little finger in no time at all.”

“You’re already there, my friend. Are you going to answer my question? If not, I have a theory.”

“This I have to hear.”

“I think the sudden improvement in your wellbeing may have something to do with our sweet Alice. Am I right?”

“How in hell’s name did you reach that conclusion?”

“No need to shout,” she said as his yelled and startled reply coincided with an unexpected lull of quiet in the car. “But it stands to reason. You’re all alone in that great big house with only Alice to keep you occasional company. What red-blooded man’s thoughts wouldn’t turn towards her? She’s grown into a very attractive young woman.”

“I really think you ought to get your overly active imagination under control. Nothing has passed between Alice and me.” As he said this, he had a vision of George standing guard in a watchtower observing his every move through a pair of hi-tech, super-strength binoculars. His kissing Alice had probably been written up in a log book.

She shot him a sideways glance. “Very well, if that’s how you want to play it. I can respect that. But you’re not a bad catch. I doubt many women would run screaming from the room when you walked in. Alice could do a lot worse than hook up with you.”

“George,” he said, “whilst I’m inordinately grateful for you taking me shopping and showing such a sensitive and tender-hearted interest in my personal life, do you think there’s the remotest chance that you might just shut the hell up?”

“No chance at all. And anyway, I’m not just taking you shopping; you’re treating me to afternoon tea at the Penny-Farthing. I’ve decided you need a change of scene. We don’t want you going stale, do we?”

“I knew today would turn out to be my lucky day.”

• • •

The cafe had been designed to appeal to those with a discerning eye for an overload of kitsch. Moderation had not been
le mot juste
when its decor had been conceived. A heavy hand had been given free reign to all Victoriana. There were black and white photographs in abundance, mostly portraying ridiculously dressed men staring death in the face whilst sitting astride penny-farthings. There were copper kettles galore, racks of lace and doilies, a rocking horse, masses of crockery on display as well as a row of bed warmers. What Health and Safety would have to say about the porcelain potties that were liberally dotted about the place was anybody’s guess. Laden down with large wooden trays and gliding between the tables as if on castors, were waitresses dressed in mob caps and long black dresses with frilly white pinnies. Clayton felt like he was an extra in a bonnet drama; he kept expecting Dame Judi to drop a breathless curtsey at their table.

Instead of Dame Judi, a flame-haired, rosy-cheeked woman arrived to take their order. She held a small pad of paper and a pen, behind which was an expanse of wobbling cleavage. “Afternoon, George,” she said. “What’s it to be today?”

“My usual for me, Theresa.”

“And you, sir?”

“I’ll have the same,” Clayton said, from beneath the brim of his hat and avoiding eye contact at all costs, which unfortunately meant he was eyeballing the woman’s ample bosom.

When they were alone, George said, “You have no idea what my usual is; how do you know you’ll like it?”

“It’s crossed my mind that maybe this place offers the answer to your immortality. No way could you have cheated death for so long without consuming some kind of secret elixir of life. I thought I’d try it for myself.”

She let rip with a deep-throated cackle, drawing attention from a nearby table. “You’re a ballsy mutt, I’ll give you that.”

“Steady; that sounds worryingly like a compliment.”

“Make the most of it; you won’t be on the receiving end of many more.”

“I’m glad to hear it. I don’t think I could take the strain.”

“Tell me,” she said, her voice lowered and her elbows firmly planted on the table, “why Shannon? Why choose that as an alias?”

“Does there have to be a reason? Sometimes life is nothing more meaningful than a series of random choices plucked out of the ether.”

She tutted. “Random choices be damned! An intelligent man like you coming up with a wishy-washy hypothesis like that, I’m disappointed in you.”

“As with many people before, you’ve made the mistake of overestimating me.”

“Poppycock! I have the perfect measure of you. Besides, I’ve done my homework on you; Ralph was your father’s middle name and Shannon was your mother’s maiden name.”

He stared at her. “Then why ask the question?”

“I only ever ask questions to which I already know the answer.”

“I suppose there’s some curious logic to that approach.”

With surprising speed and efficiency, their waitress reappeared with a large tray of what turned out to be a selection of dainty, crustless sandwiches. There were oversized scones, too, with jam and cream, along with a china teapot, a milk jug and two sets of cups and saucers.

“A sweet tooth, George?” Clayton queried when once again they were alone. “I’d never have guessed. I had you down as more of a hemlock-with-a-side-order-of-cyanide kind of person.”

“Goodness, how Alice must love your pillow talk!”

He offered her the plate of sandwiches. “You first. I want to make sure they’re not poisoned. Just out of interest, why do you keep going on about Alice and me? Has she said something to you?”

“It’s what she hasn’t said that interests me more. I’ve given the matter a lot of thought and I think you would be good for each other.”

“What on earth has given you reason to think that?”

“It’s knowing Alice as well as I do.”

“But you haven’t seen her in years. She can’t be the same person you knew from way back when.”

“In my experience people rarely change. Yes, there’ll be some superficial changes I’ll grant you, but the fundamentals, the essence of a person’s character, that’s carved in stone. Are you going to let that tea stew for the rest of the day or are you going to pour it?”

“That’s an intriguing theory,” he said, dutifully lifting the teapot over one of the cups, “and I’m inclined to—”

“Here in the civilized world we like the milk first,” she interrupted him.

He reached for the milk jug. “—agree with you.”

“Not too much.”

Seizing the opportunity George had given him, he said, with his voice at a discreet level, “Alice has told me the whole story about Rufus, and about Isabel running off with her father and then Julia committing suicide, but I’m curious about her mother, Barbara Barrett. Alice doesn’t talk about her in the same way she does about her father. Were they not very close?”

“Oh, I think they were close enough, but girls and their fathers often have a different bond, don’t they? Alice may not care to admit to it, but she idolized her father. He was a real larger-than-life character. Not an easy man to live with, it has to be said, but who wants a boring straightforward man in their life? That’s why I think Alice could well be attracted to you. You’re complex, with many tantalizing layers to you. You’re also a fair bit older than she is, and better still, you don’t conform to the usual niceties. In short, you remind her of her father.”

Clayton choked on his tea. Spluttering painfully, his eyes watering, he rammed his paper napkin against his mouth. “I’m not sure I like the sound of that,” he croaked.

“Oh, don’t look so shocked. There’s nothing new in a girl replacing her father with a younger version. Lots of girls do it.”

“I think you’re wrong. Reading between the lines, my guess is that Alice is more likely to go for men who resemble Rufus.”

“That may well have been the case in the past. But have they made her happy? No, take it from me, the man she really falls in love with will be nothing like that dreadful so and so, Rufus. You’ll do very nicely for her.”

“Why is it, George, that after any time I spend with you, I always end up feeling mentally eviscerated?”

• • •

At the sound of tapping at the kitchen window, Alice looked up from the manuscript she was reading. “The door isn’t locked,” she said, not needing to check who it was. Ronnetta’s nails tapping against glass had a unique sound all of their own.

Ronnetta let herself in. “It’s freezing out there,” she said with an exaggerated shiver.

“Yes,” said Alice, “anyone would think it was winter the way the weather’s carrying on.”

“What happened to global warming, that’s what I want to know? They told us to plant nothing but grasses and cacti in our gardens a few years back and what happened to them? They got swept away in the floods, that’s what!” She pulled out a chair and sat down. “You look glum. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. I’m fine. I’ll put the kettle on, shall I?”

“And there’s a diversionary tactic if ever I heard one. So what are you up to?”

“Work, believe it or not.” Alice inclined her head towards the half-read manuscript on the table. She had hoped that absorbing herself in it would help lift her mood. She had woken that morning after dreaming of her father; he’d been calling for her from his darkroom at Cuckoo House but whenever she had tried to answer him, to tell him where she was, she couldn’t make herself heard.

“Any good, what you’re reading?”

“Very good. I’m looking forward to going into the studio next week to record it. It should be fun this one.”

“Oh, well that answers my next question. I was hoping you could help me out again.”

“Sorry, next week is pretty busy for me. I’ve got that book to do and then I’m down in London on Friday for a voice-over.”

“Something for the telly?”

In common with so many people, Ronnetta viewed television as the Holy Grail in Alice’s line of work. In a way it was, but the bread and butter work, the work that came in on a regular basis and could be replied upon to pay the bills, was rarely television work. “It’s for a budget airline,” she explained. “The usual kind of thing: safety drills, flagging up the duty free, thanking people for flying with them and giving advice about car hire.”

“All the way down to London for a few lines of blah, blah? I could do that.”

Alice laughed and the kettle clicked off. “I’m sure you could. Tea or coffee?”

“Coffee please.”

“It’ll have to be instant; it’s all I have at the moment.”

“That’s fine. So how come you bailed out of your date with Bob the other night?”

“It wasn’t a date.”

“Wasn’t it?

“Their drinks made, Alice carried the mugs over to the table. “Bob’s very nice, Ronnetta,” she said, choosing her words with care, “but—”

“He’s mad about you; you do know that, don’t you?” Ronnetta said.

Alice’s heart sank. “I’m extremely fond of Bob,” she tried, “but he’s…he’s simply not—” She faltered. How could she tell her friend and neighbour that her son just wasn’t her type, and never in a million years would he be? “Look, the thing is, I’ve met someone else,” she said with a flash of inspiration.

Ronnetta’s face dropped. She really was so very proud of her only son. She was probably thinking how on earth could Alice have chosen someone else—
anyone
else—over her precious boy. “So why did you agree to go out with him the other night?” Ronnetta asked. There was a trace of the tigress protecting her cub in her voice.

“It was just a drink I agreed to have with him,” Alice replied. “Nothing more. Bob may have thought there was more to it than that, but I didn’t. I’m not the sort of girl who leads men on, Ronnetta. I would never do that. Least of all to your son.”

The other woman picked up her mug of coffee and sighed. “Oh, well, that’s that then. Pity, I’d like to have you as a daughter-in-law.”

Alice smiled. “Better still, you have me as a friend.”

Diplomatic relations once again reinstated, Ronnetta said, “So who’s this man you’ve met? Some clever schmuck you’ve met through your work down in London?”

Alice had two choices. She could tell an all-out lie. Or she could tell a partial lie—one that encompassed elements of truth that she was willing to impart. She chose the latter option. “It’s the man staying at Cuckoo House,” she said.