Faith - Lesley Pearse [116]
Late one night Jackie fell asleep on the sofa and Laura sat looking at her, remembering how her friend had always claimed that Laura was the one who would go far because she was shrewd and smart. It had seemed that way at the time, for Laura was the one with the ideas, determination and the ability to see the bigger picture, while Jackie had been indecisive and nervous about taking risks.
Jackie had always been pretty, but at thirty she was stunning. She’d had her long copper-coloured hair cut and permed into the latest ‘Afro’ style, and against the sofa cushions it looked like amber spun sugar. That night she was wearing skin-tight denim dungarees with a skimpy emerald-green top beneath, and her suntanned arms were laden with Indian bangles. She looked like a rock star, not a woman of property who spent most of her time chasing up builders.
Having a go-getting husband like Roger had undoubtedly helped Jackie get her business going, but Laura knew he wasn’t, as some people thought, the brains behind the business. He had encouraged her, and financed the purchase of the first house, but it was Jackie who had the ideas. She had done the homework about the areas she bought run-down property in, and it was her flair for design and eye for detail while converting them into flats which made her such large profits. Laura felt very proud of her doing so well. It also made her want to make something of herself too. And while she was with Jackie in the tiny cottage packed with her creative vibes, it seemed entirely possible.
Laura arrived back home in Edinburgh two weeks later, deeply tanned, glowing with health and brimming with optimism. But as she opened the street door in Caledonian Crescent and the musty smell and the darkness of the stairs hit her, she felt herself deflate.
Once in the flat, Barney ran eagerly into the living room to his toys but Laura stood in the doorway feeling only dismay. When they’d moved in nearly two years ago she’d been proud that she’d made it look so stylish and comfortable on a shoestring. But now she saw the white paint was turning yellow, the maroon second-hand sofa was threadbare, and the cheap carpet stained. The big print above the gas fire, a field of red poppies, which she’d once loved so much, looked horribly dated, and as for the Regency striped curtains, she could hardly believe she’d bothered to haggle with the woman who put them up for sale on a postcard. She ought to have taken one look at them and left.
Jackie’s cottage in Cellardyke had been all cream and pale blue, a pretty, spirit-lifting place. She hadn’t spent a fortune on it either; the curtains were cheap gingham, all the furniture was painted second-hand stuff.
All at once resentment that she had to live this way rose up like bile. Barney had nowhere safe to play outside in the sunshine, not even a bedroom of his own, and she doubted Stuart would ever earn enough for them to buy a house.
Barney was due to start school in September, which in theory should give her the opportunity to work all day. But she knew from mothers with school-age children that it wasn’t easy to find work between nine and three-thirty, and then there were the school holidays and having to take time off if the child was sick.
She was twenty-nine, yet she was still no further forward than she’d been at nineteen.
As she unpacked and put away their clothes, edging her way around the narrow space between her bed and Barney’s, the resentment grew stronger and stronger because she knew this wasn’t something she could talk over with Stuart. He was completely satisfied with this flat. If she pointed out how seedy everything was he’d say that most of their neighbours’ places were far worse. He’d probably relate, as he often had before, that until he was five, his whole family had lived in a one-bedroom flat which was smaller than this one.
Suddenly the differences between her mentality and Stuart’s seemed vast. He didn’t think beyond the end of the month: as long as he had work, a hot dinner and her in his arms at night, enough money to pay the