Faith - Lesley Pearse [255]
James used his police contacts to try to trace Mark and Paul, without success, but Freddy came up the night before the funeral, and Laura was able to make her peace with him at last. It was so odd to be confronted with a man of forty when all her memories were of a chubby toddler. He was tall, fit and handsome, still retaining his thick dark hair, a good family man and a well-respected naval officer, and once she’d had an opportunity to talk to him alone and say how much she regretted not keeping him in her life, he hugged her and said it didn’t matter any more.
There were few mourners at the crematorium, just a few of June’s neighbours and family. Freddy had put together a few well-chosen words about her, focusing on humorous anecdotes from the long distant past that touched everyone. They went back to Meggie’s house afterwards and it became a real party after a few drinks had flowed. At one point Stuart had an arm-wrestling competition with Freddy in the kitchen.
‘Mum would’ve liked this,’ Ivy remarked, looking around at her boys playing Snakes and Ladders on the floor while all the adults milled around chatting nineteen to the dozen. ‘She loved nothing better than dressing up and going to a party. I think we should just remember her like that, drink in one hand, fag in the other, blonde hair, high heels and a dress with a bit of glitter on it. Let’s forget the rest.’
It was on the long drive back to Scotland after the funeral that Laura began reflecting on the way her, Meggie, Ivy and Freddy’s lives had turned out. All four of them could easily have ended up like some of the people she’d met in the Glasgow centre, for they had all been vulnerable, exposed to crime and poverty, and without parental guidance.
She started to trace back and find reasons why they hadn’t and she came to the conclusion that each of them had had a good influence during their adolescence.
Freddy had joined the Navy at a young age, Ivy had Meggie pushing her into college and lifting her horizons. Meggie had her older sister’s influence, and Laura had had Lena, Frank and Jackie.
It struck her then that this was what she should be doing with the rest of her life, and the knowledge she had. To concentrate on equally vulnerable children, to give them something in their lives that would lift them up and give them a glimpse of a better way of life than they’d been born to.
She continued her work at the centre right through to May, but each time she went over to Glasgow she was putting out feelers, talking to people, thinking deeply about what could be done. Yet it was the four days a week back by the loch that gave her the idea she was now burning to start on.
For her the first summer here, waking to birdsong each morning, tramping through dew-soaked grass, revelling in the majesty of the scenery, the total lack of luxury, shops or man-made entertainment, had been a healing process. She’d learned to saw wood, to lay a few bricks, to dig, and had acquired some knowledge of plumbing. If she could give inner-city, deprived children just a little taste of that, along with the healthy fun of swimming, boating, climbing trees and campfires, maybe they wouldn’t want to spend afternoons in back alleys sniffing glue and gravitate to other even more dangerous drugs, prostitution and crime.
She had the money from her inheritance from Jackie in the bank – she’d only spent a little of it on furniture and curtains – and Stuart was so proud of keeping his woman that he’d always want to be the main provider. She was also expecting to get compensation for being wrongfully imprisoned.
She could buy a piece of land somewhere beautiful