Faith - Lesley Pearse [154]
There was Gary too, a real find, for he was hung like the proverbial horse and could keep it up. While mounting a voluptuous redhead called Irene on a kitchen table he had a bad accident. One of the legs of the table collapsed, and the pair of them slithered to the floor, knocking over a camera tripod, which in turn hit a jagged-edged tin bucket and flipped it up, and it landed on Gary’s back, ripping a six-inch gash.
These were funny incidents that even the hapless victims laughed about afterwards, but there were also sordid ones, disgusting ones, and worrying ones too. It was a helter-skelter of panic, ruthlessness, fright, irritation and hysteria, with only brief moments of elation when everything went to plan. As for the actors and actresses, they were as diverse as the problems and blunders. Men like Dave who got on with it with good humour and consideration for everyone else involved were rare. Some were plain stupid, unable to follow the simplest instructions, others acted like prima donnas, constantly questioning and complaining. Some had about as much personality as a slug, others too much, wanting to be both director and star. There were the vain, the cruel, the greedy and the crude, some who had no idea about personal hygiene and others who kept everyone waiting while they primped and preened.
Yet all the diverse emotions Laura felt, along with the memories, problems and triumphs, were numbed by the coke she relied on to get her through each day, and the brandy she drank at night in order to sleep. She didn’t want to think too hard about what she was doing, to herself or to others, and certainly not to what was happening to Barney.
In the early days she had mostly been back home by five-thirty or six, so Barney wasn’t alone for long after school, but as it became harder to stick to office hours, she hired people to be there for him. Some were good, but others were indifferent or bad. Yet at the time she scarcely recognized the difference. The good ones were mainly students, happy to feed him, help him with his homework and tuck him into bed. But the bad ones were people she barely knew, just acquaintances only interested in the money she paid, not Barney. They ignored him, chatted on her phone while he sat waiting patiently for a meal which never came. Sometimes they never even turned up and he waited alone in the flat for hours.
Laura wished she could comfort herself with the knowledge she made it up to Barney in other ways, but she couldn’t. She didn’t see what was going on because she was too stoned and too busy thinking about making money.
He was such a good kid he rarely complained. He grew used to having to help himself to whatever food was in the fridge, to having to go to school in a dirty shirt because there were no clean ones. He even learned to cover up her negligence.
But though he managed to fool his teacher, neighbours and his friends’ mothers that he was fine and happy and that his mother was always around, he didn’t manage to hoodwink Jackie. She had finely tuned antennae where he was concerned, and even over the phone she could sense when something wasn’t right. She would often make a surprise visit on her way through Edinburgh to Fife, and luckily Laura was usually there, or at least someone reasonably competent was looking after Barney. But these visits, however brief, worried Laura, for Jackie asked so many questions, made pointed remarks about the state of the flat and about Barney, and she sensed Jackie knew she was hiding something.
It was almost inevitable that Jackie would eventually find out what Laura was doing. She was too bright and intuitive to be fobbed off for long. Unfortunately she found out in the worst possible way, arriving early one evening in November ’79 to find nine-year-old Barney