A Lesser Evil - Lesley Pearse [31]
Every house looked neglected. The one the woman and child had gone into didn’t even have proper curtains, just a blanket or some such thing hung over a piece of wire. There were no flowers in tubs, not even a tree; in fact the street had a sinister, almost malevolent air about it. Could she really bear to live here?
‘Forget what’s out there,’ Dan said from behind her, sliding his arms around her and nuzzling his chin on her shoulder. ‘Come and see the bedroom. We could christen it straight away!’
As Dan kissed the back of her neck, his hands cupping her breasts, Fifi began to tingle all over. Since Dan went to London they were like honeymooners every weekend, often staying in bed most of Saturday. He’d only arrived back in Bristol early this morning to collect her and all their stuff, and once they were on their way to London, he kept telling her all the naughty things he was going to do to her once they were alone in the flat. It had aroused her so much that it was all she could do not to suggest they pulled off into a quiet lane to make love.
‘There aren’t any bedclothes,’ she protested feebly as he shuffled her into the room next door. It was every bit as miserable as the living room, but at least the mattress on the old bed looked brand-new. ‘We should go down and get our stuff in first.’
But his fingers were already unzipping her jeans and she could feel his erection pressing against her bottom. Perhaps if she just let herself sink into the bliss of being made love to, she might start thinking of this horrible place as home.
‘You are so beautiful,’ Dan whispered as he slid into her. ‘I wish I could give you everything you deserve.’
Whatever other disappointments they’d encountered since they got married, lovemaking always made up for them. Dan could whisk her away on a magic carpet ride every time. She loved his slim but muscular body, the silkiness of his skin, the sensitivity of his touch.
Fifi pulled him close to her, covering his face with frantic kisses. ‘I’ve got everything I want, I’ve got you,’ she whispered back. She meant it too. Maybe this flat wasn’t what she’d expected, but she was in London at last and she and Dan could start afresh.
Right from when she was a child, visits to the cinema had given Fifi tantalizing images of America, with ultramodern houses, flashy cars and a standard of life so different to the post-war austerity she knew. By 1960, when she was twenty, she had got the idea from the news and magazines that London was becoming like this too. It infuriated her that new fashions, films or even music took such a long time to filter down to the West Country, and she’d resolved to move to London then so that she’d be at the hub of everything.
As it turned out, a secure job and various boyfriends sapped her desire to make the break. But now at last she’d made it here, and she just knew there were going to be untold opportunities for her and Dan. Wages were higher and there were far more prospects for advancement.
Yet it was the idea that they could start off all new and shiny, free from class snobbery, which appealed to her even more. No one knew her, or her parents, here. There was no one to whisper behind their hands that she, a professor’s daughter, had married a bricklayer. They could live how they wanted, go where they wanted, with no one watching for them to fail.
She did of course hope that one day her parents would come round about Dan. But a hundred miles away from them, she wouldn’t be holding her breath for it. London was going to be a huge adventure, and she would show her family just what she and Dan were made of.
Later that same afternoon Dan and Fifi were being watched from three separate windows in Dale Street as they unloaded the borrowed van.
Yvette Dupré in the ground-floor flat of