The Grafton Girls - Annie Groves [102]
Myra knew the minute she came out of the ladies’ and saw Nick’s face that something was wrong. He was on his own, the two spivs who had been waiting for him when they arrived obviously having left. He was pacing the worn carpet in front of the empty bar and she paused in mid-step. Something about his pent-up rage reminded her of her own father. He too had clenched his fists like that when he was annoyed. But when someone crossed her dad, it had usually been her mother who had been the one to suffer. Myra swallowed against the sour bile of the memories.
Herself sitting alone in her narrow bed in the darkness, listening to her mother begging her father not to hurt her, followed by the sound of blows and then her mother’s low moans of pain – or, even worse, those times when there had been no sound at all after the slam of the front door closing behind her father as he stormed out. Then she would tiptoe to the top of the stairs in the darkness and wait there, holding her breath, just in case he came back…listening desperately, wanting to hear the sound that would tell her that her mother was still alive. Only when she was sure her father wouldn’t come back had she gone slowly downstairs, avoiding the stair that creaked, feeling her way in the darkness until she was standing outside the kitchen door. When she pushed it open she knew what she would find. It was always the same: her mother, still curled up in the ball she had rolled herself into to protect herself, the smell of blood and fear filling the kitchen. Once there had been the smell of something else, something sickening and shocking, and that time she remembered she had nearly slipped in the darkness on the blood that had flowed from her mother. Her mother had sent her round for their neighbour that time and then told her to go to her room, but even buried beneath the thin bedclothes, Myra had still heard her mother’s low moans of anguish as she gave birth to the dead child that would have been Myra’s brother.
Angrily Myra pushed the memories away. Why was she thinking about that now? It had no place in her life, the life she was going to live with Nick, a life that meant fancy diamond rings and staying at the Savoy Hotel, and she was a fool for thinking that just for a moment there had been an expression in Nick’s eyes that made him look like her father. So he had a bit of a temper on him. So what? He had passion, and it was that passion that made him want her so much. And she needed him to want her, if she was to make her dreams come true. Nick was hers. She could control him; she had already proved that, she reassured herself. And after this weekend, after she had let him have a taste of what he wanted – and only a taste, mind – he would be even more mad for her than he was now.
‘Come on,’ Nick demanded, jerking his head towards the exit.
‘What’s wrong?’ Myra asked. ‘Half an hour ago you were on top of the world.’
Nick removed a pack of Camel cigarettes from his pocket and lit one up for himself without offering her one. Myra’s mouth thinned but she didn’t say anything.
‘Half an hour ago I hadn’t been messed about by some wise guys who think they know how to play the game better than me. Well, if they think they’re going to double-cross me and get away with it, they’re gonna learn they’re making a big mistake. Come on, let’s get out of here.’
Throwing down the barely smoked cigarette, Nick ground it into the floor with his heel, an expression on his face that made Myra suspect he wished it was the face of whoever had double-crossed him.
All she cared about, though, right now was them getting on that train. London! It wasn’t New York but it would be a darn sight more exciting and glamorous than Liverpool, surely. She felt on top of the world. Everything was going her way and working out just as she had planned. Nick was hers, and she had the ring to prove it. She looked down at it, happily oblivious to the fact that somewhere in the desert she had a husband who thought that the ring he had given