The Doris Day Vintage Film Club. Fiona Harper

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ just grunted softly. ‘That all sounds very pretty, but don’t forget … the past has a habit of coming back to bite you in the derrière whether you want it to or not.’

      ‘Don’t you worry about my derrière,’ Claire said, as they emerged into the lounge bar of The Glass Bottom Boat. Kitty, Grace and Abby were sitting at a small table, the vintage girls talking animatedly, Abby looking slightly bemused. George was hovering near the door. He looked as if he was about to say something as Claire and Maggs approached, but Maggs just gave him a little wave and carried on out the door.

      ‘Claire said she’d give me a lift again this week,’ she said, as she swept past, too late to see George’s expression turn from hopeful to crestfallen. Claire didn’t miss it though.

      She almost said something to Maggs, but Maggs was wearing that inscrutable, don’t-try-to-mess-with-me expression that Claire knew only too well. She’d say something, all right, but with Maggs timing was everything. She’d just have to pick her moment carefully.

      They walked slowly down the street in silence. This week she hadn’t been able to find a space near the pub, so she’d had to park down the side of the playing fields opposite, but it was a nice night for a walk – warm, not as sticky as recently, and the proximity to midsummer meant that it wasn’t fully dark yet and a slash of turquoise edged the horizon, despite the fact it was past ten.

      Claire walked, trying to keep her mind on the sound of her shoes on the cracked paving stones, on the hum of a city summer night – dogs barking, neighbours arguing, someone somewhere playing a radio too loud so the music drifted between the houses and out into the almost-deserted park. But her mind refused to focus on these concrete, present day things. Now that Maggs had brought him up, it kept drifting back to her father, images of him, memories. She felt as if her mind was a runaway car, which kept veering slowly off in the wrong direction and then she’d notice and grab the steering wheel and coerce it into going back onto the route she’d planned for it.

      She didn’t want to think of him.

      If anything, she should want to think of her mother, who’d been wonderful and loving and resourceful. She’d been gone ten years now. If she’d known their time together was going to be cut short, she’d have asked more questions. Or maybe not. In her twenties, she wouldn’t have known the right things to ask. Maybe it was only now she was older with one bad marriage behind her herself, that she wished she could ask Mum if it had been the same for her.

      At least she’d separated from her toxic husband. Why hadn’t Mum left her father? Why had she waited for him to do it to her? Why hadn’t she ever stood up to him? After he’d left, she’d blossomed into being the bright and funny and strong woman Claire would always choose to remember her as.

      Suddenly, a question popped free, one she hadn’t realised she’d needed the answer to until it left her mouth. She glanced across at Maggs. ‘Did he ever hit her? My mother?’

      They kept walking, but something about the atmosphere between them changed. The air grew stiller, thicker.

      He hadn’t ever hit Claire, although she’d always been afraid he might. She could remember a specific look in his eye that had always made her stomach quiver. A tingle of cold ran up her spine now, just thinking about it.

      Maggs kept her focus straight ahead. When they reached Claire’s car, she stopped and turned to face her. ‘Honestly? I don’t know … Maybe.’

      Claire nodded.

      She was starting to fear she’d known the answer for a long time, but just hadn’t dared face it.

      She unlocked the car and opened the door for Maggs. When they were both settled inside, before she turned the key in the ignition, Maggs spoke again. ‘I know Laurie was always worried for your mother when he got into one of his moods. We didn’t talk about it. People didn’t in our day. It was the sort of shameful thing you just swept under the carpet, but I guessed she suspected what her son was capable of.’

      Claire shook her head. ‘I don’t understand it. How did such a lovely woman as my grandmother raise such a cruel, dysfunctional son?’

      Maggs let out a heavy breath. ‘You don’t remember much about your grandfather, do you?’

      ‘No,’ Claire replied slowly. Just a vague memory of a stern man with white hair.

      ‘I keep thinking about him recently,’ Maggs said quietly, all the usual sass and sarcasm gone from her voice. It made her sound younger, less invincible. ‘I never liked him, you know, not even right back at the start. Maybe I was jealous he stole my best friend, or maybe I just saw a little bit into Laurie’s future. I don’t know …’ She breathed in sharply. ‘Anyway, I think he had a lot to do with how your father turned out.’

      Claire shook her head. She’d never heard Maggs talk like this before. Maybe it was the gin she’d been nipping from her hip flask that evening. In the darkened room while they watched the film, she’d seen little flashes in the gloom as the street lamp outside had reflected off the shiny metal.

      She pondered that as she turned the key in the ignition and revved the engine, shattering the fog-like silence that had settled around them.

      ‘I’m surprised Gran didn’t ever marry again after he died,’ she said, her tone light, as she indicated and pulled away. ‘She was still a very attractive woman, even into her fifties.’

      ‘I thought the same about Cathy. Your mother wasn’t short on admirers once your father had cleared off, you know.’

      Claire nodded. She had memories of a couple of well-dressed men coming to the house with bunches of flowers, of them taking her mother out to dinner while Mrs Winfield from next door babysat, but there hadn’t been many and they’d usually disappeared after four or five dates.

      That had been sad too. Mum had been so pretty and funny. She’d had a way of making everyone feel included, as if she’d allowed them entrance to a special club where everything would always feel safe and warm and fun. When Claire had asked if she had a boyfriend, her mother had laughed the suggestion off. She’d said she was much more interested in taking care of Claire, and it wasn’t the right time to get serious about anyone.

      At the time, Claire had assumed this was just another selfless act of love on her mother’s part, but now she wondered if there had been another reason.

      ‘Runs in the family, doesn’t it?’ Maggs said, as they navigated the narrow back streets almost empty of traffic. ‘First Laurie, then Cathy … And you haven’t seen anyone else since Philip.’

      That was just what Claire needed to pop her out of this rather maudlin mood she and Maggs had created between them. She chuckled softly to herself. She should have known better than to broach this kind of subject with Maggs. ‘Don’t be daft,’ she replied. ‘It’s completely different. It’s not that I don’t want to, it’s just not the right time. I need to focus on the business at the moment …’

      She trailed off and her mother’s voice echoed in her ears: It’s just not the right time, Claire, love. I think my focus should be on you at the moment …

      She shook that thought away as she craned her head to see out of an awkward junction. ‘Anyway,’ she said, pulling out the trump card she’d almost forgotten about, ‘I’ve got a date tomorrow.’

      She could feel Maggs’s СКАЧАТЬ