Faith - Lesley Pearse [32]
She had put her clothes in the locker and was just pinning the key to her new blue polka-dotted swimsuit, when a redheaded girl in an emerald-green costume came running through the footbath, tripped and fell, banging her head on the floor.
Laura ran over to her, concerned because she’d gone down with such a crash.
‘Bugger it,’ the girl said as Laura helped her up. ‘I suppose I’ll get a lump on my forehead now. And on my birthday too!’
She was a bit shaken up, so Laura got a wad of cotton wool from the attendant, soaked it in cold water and held it to the girl’s head.
‘I’m Jackie,’ the girl said, wincing at the cold water. ‘Do you think it will make it better or worse if I go back to sit in the sun? I only came here to sunbathe, but I couldn’t resist pushing this fat bloke in the pool and his mate came chasing after me to throw me in too. I didn’t want to get my hair wet because I’m having a party tonight.’
Laura couldn’t help but smile, for the injured girl was attractive in even way. Her hair was the colour of new pennies, she had a sprinkling of freckles on her nose, green eyes and a perfect figure. Her breathless explanation of what she’d been up to was so warm and friendly that it was as if she already considered Laura a new friend.
‘I’m Laura, and happy birthday,’ she said. ‘But I think you should sit down in the shade until you’re sure you’re okay.’
‘You sound like my mother,’ Jackie replied, grinning. ‘Are you with anyone?’
‘No, I’m on my own,’ Laura said. ‘It’s the first time I’ve been here.’
‘Great, that means you can stay with me and chat,’ Jackie said. ‘There are a few people I know out there, but no one I want to spend the afternoon with.’
Laura never told Jackie how much that friendly invitation meant to her. To have done so would have meant she’d have had to admit how desperately lonely she’d been for the past year.
She had left the house in Barnes for good in the Easter holidays the previous year, about six weeks after her trouble with Vincent. She’d planned her exit carefully, for she wanted to leave him with the nagging anxiety that she might retaliate at a later date. During those few weeks she’d systematically helped herself to money from his wallet, never enough to alert him to what she was doing, but she managed to get £35. She found her birth certificate too, and her medical card, and she also applied for a National Insurance number so that she was totally prepared to get a job.
It was torture staying in the house for those few weeks. She knew Vincent thought her silence about what he’d done meant he was safe, but that also meant he might pounce on her again if an opportunity arose. Whenever she got home and found her mother was out, she went straight back out too. She jammed a chair under the handle of her bedroom door in the evening so he couldn’t walk in. But that still didn’t stop him trying to waylay her as she came out of the bathroom, or sitting watching her as she washed up in the kitchen. Every hour she was in the house with him she felt menaced; she was nervy and found it hard to eat anything at all when he was around.
She had been looking in the Evening Standard for somewhere to live for some time, and had been to see several bedsitting rooms, but the ones she felt she could afford on low wages were all so dirty and poky that she’d begun to despair. However, on the day after Easter Monday she went to see one in Crouch Hill in Hornsey, and realized this was as good as she was ever going to get.
Nearby Crouch End was a nice place, though Finsbury Park in the other direction was not so good, and the room on the second floor was small. But it was very clean, the sink and cooker were hidden in a cupboard, and the windows overlooked gardens. The shared bathrooms were all decent enough, and as the landlord told her that all the other tenants were business people, she didn’t think it would be too rough. He was concerned that she was so young, even though she’d said she was seventeen, and that was the point when she invented her big lie.
‘My parents died when I was small,’ she said.