A Lesser Evil - Lesley Pearse [34]
‘Mind yer own fuckin’ business,’ Alfie retorted.
Molly flounced away from him without saying anything more. She wasn’t concerned about what he got up to, but she liked him to know he didn’t fool her.
Fifi and Dan were blissfully unaware of the scrutiny they were under as they carried their belongings indoors.
‘We should go along to the corner shop and buy some groceries before we unpack,’ Fifi said as she staggered up the stairs to the top floor with her Dansette record-player. ‘I’m dying for a cup of tea, and they might close soon.’
‘I’ll go once we’ve got all our stuff up,’ Dan said. ‘Are you all right about this place now? Maybe I should have looked a bit more before taking it, but I wanted you to join me here so badly.’
Fifi couldn’t bear to see him look so worried. ‘It’s fine,’ she lied. ‘Well, it will be once we’ve arranged all our things in it.’
Half an hour later, Fifi stood at the window looking out on to Dale Street, watching Dan going up to the shop on the corner. She could see how happy he was by the way he bounded rather than walked.
In the eight months they’d been married she’d come to see he needed only one thing to make him happy. He could get by without money, he’d eat anything, work harder and longer than any man she’d ever known, without complaint, just as long as he felt loved.
That was humbling for someone like her who had always taken love for granted. And here she was, looking at her new surroundings with distaste, wondering how she could survive a few weeks before they found somewhere she liked. She couldn’t live with the awful orange curtains, and having no carpet on the floor appalled her, yet Dan would settle in here as if it were a palace, just because she loved him and would be sharing it with him.
How, with his bleak childhood, he’d ended up this way, she didn’t know. She thought most people brought up as he was would become hard and cold, always on the take. If all he wanted in the whole world was to be with her, then the least she could do was show some real appreciation for the effort he’d made in finding them a home.
She would start by suggesting they went to the Rifleman, the pub on the opposite corner of the street to the shop, after they’d returned the van. That way it would show him she didn’t think she was too grand to live here.
Yet as she continued to gaze out on to the miserable grey street, she didn’t believe she would ever get to like it. As much as she told herself she no longer gave a damn what her parents thought about anything, she knew she’d sooner die than let them see her living here.
The moment she knew Dan had found a flat for them, she had written to her parents to tell them she was leaving her job and going to join him in London. Last night she had hoped they might come to say goodbye, and she wouldn’t have felt ashamed for them to see the flat in Kingsdown.
But this place would shock them, and it would be just another thing to hold against Dan.
Yet if they couldn’t unbend enough to go a couple of miles from their home to see her, they weren’t likely ever to come here, so that was something she really didn’t need to worry about.
Just as Fifi was about to return to the unpacking, the same little girl she’d seen crying earlier came out of her house. Although she wasn’t crying now, her lethargic movements and the way her head hung down suggested she was still very unhappy. Fifi hadn’t taken in much about the child’s appearance earlier, but she could see now that she was as neglected as the house she lived in. Her dress looked like a hand-me-down