Faith - Lesley Pearse [107]
Later that day she found a studio flat to rent. Just one room and a bathroom but it was spacious, light and bright and close to the harbour. She stayed there right up till the end of June when the owner had a holiday booking, spending most days on the beach with Barney, or going for long walks. In the evenings when she’d put Barney to bed, she read and watched television. As each day passed her injuries hurt less, and as the bruises faded she realized she felt happier than she had for a very long time.
She sent cards to Jackie and her sisters, just saying that she’d left Greg and would be in touch when she was settled. She didn’t dare give Jackie the address as she was afraid Greg might winkle it out of her. She thought it best that Meggie and Ivy didn’t know it either; they might turn up to see her and she didn’t want to be questioned.
Barney became toilet-trained while she was there, and she taught him to eat with a spoon and fork and drink from a proper cup. Every day he learned more new words, and delighted in putting whole sentences together. They both became brown as berries, and Laura found herself revelling in the new closeness she had with him. Greg had never liked her playing noisy or messy games with Barney when he was home; in truth his own upbringing had been so formal and regimented that he expected Laura should be the same with Barney.
Laura set off for Cornwall when she had to give up the flat in Brixham. She would have liked to stay there, but she couldn’t find anywhere to live that was cheap. Although she had the money she’d taken from Greg – there had been £1,500 in the envelope – she had to be really careful with it until she could find somewhere permanent and get a job and a childminder.
It was in Looe that she met the bunch of Scottish hippies who told her about the commune in Castle Douglas. They were fun people, warm and feckless, camping out on the cliff top, drinking too much, smoking a great deal of dope, but they welcomed Barney and her and didn’t ask too many questions. She stayed with them in their tent, because like Brixham, flats or rooms in Looe cost too much in the summer season.
Fate stepped in and took a hand when her friends were arrested for allegedly driving away from a petrol station without paying. She went to the police station to see them when she heard, and they told her they hadn’t done it. It seemed the police were trumping up charges for any hippies coming down to Cornwall, their way of deterring them. Her friends told her she’d better move on before she was picked up too. Rob, the guy she liked best, suggested she went up to Castle Douglas.
So that was where she went. It didn’t make any sense, she knew no one in Scotland, but she couldn’t face going to live in a city again. All she had in her mind was the warmth and easygoing, unmaterialistic natures of those Scots, a kind of template of the kind of people she felt she might belong with.
And she found Stuart at the journey’s end.
9
Laura was running through a field of long grass. She could feel the sun biting into her arms and her hair bouncing on her shoulders. At first she was frightened, as if someone were chasing her, but then she suddenly realized she was running to a figure whose face she couldn’t see, and he had his arms outstretched as if to catch her.
She woke to find herself not in a sun-filled meadow, but in her cell, with the faint glow of the lights on the prison fence shining down on her. She closed her eyes and tried to get back into the dream, but it was gone.
Wide awake now and too hot, she threw off her blanket and turned her pillow over to the cool side. This was one of those moments that brought home to her exactly what losing her freedom meant. She couldn’t get up and make a cup of tea, or switch on the light and read a book. She couldn’t even walk out the door.
When she first got here she often had panic attacks at night when she felt she had a band around her heart, slowly squeezing till it would eventually stop pumping her blood. Sweat would