A Perfect Christmas (9 page)

It was on a night out with her friends that Cait first noticed Neil. She had just entered the Wine Lodge in the marketplace, a dive of an establishment which still sprinkled sawdust on the floors and sported strategically placed spittoons, but the drinks were cheap and that was why the younger generation were willing to mix with the older clientele whose drinking hole it had been for decades. There was one young man present who stood out from the rest. He was tall, good-looking, had an intelligent air about him and was smartly dressed. Cait was immediately attracted to him.

Heading straight for the part of the bar where he was standing, she purchased drinks for herself and her two friends and she turned purposefully towards him so that she could break the ice by asking him to excuse her. Her ploy worked a treat and moments later she was deep in conversation with him, her two friends with two of his associates. Within twenty minutes Cait had gleaned Neil’s name, how old he was, what he did for a living, and was able to calculate his future prospects. She also learned that he lived with his parents in a good area and, the most important bit of information to her, that he had no girlfriend at present. To her relief, she knew she had at last found her man, someone suitable and also someone with whom she knew she could fall in love. She couldn’t believe her luck.

Before the two groups of friends went their separate ways Cait had charmed Neil into asking her out on a date the next evening. All she had to do now was pray he fell in love with her and wanted to make her his wife. She knew a proper woman pandered to her man, made him feel like the most important person in her life, was constantly at his beck and call, organised every aspect of his life for him. Well, that was the way her mother treated her father, and he lapped up the attention. Confident that Neil would too, that was how Cait always acted with him.

Five months into their relationship, one evening while they were at a Chinese restaurant, she’d misconstrued a comment Neil made and believed he had asked her to marry him. When Cait broke the news to her parents on arriving home that evening, she had hoped that for the first time ever they would find it possible to lend her some support, especially her mother. Perhaps Nerys would help her organise her big day, like other mothers were delighted to do? Instead, while her father sat coddled warmly in a blanket on the sofa, never taking his eyes off the television, her mother’s reaction was to offer lukewarm congratulations, tell Cait not to expect any help from her as all her time was commandeered by caring for her husband, and then return to reading her book. There was no mention of their contributing to the wedding or how much money she could spend on her special day. This troubled Cait. She wasn’t in any position to fund it on her wages and nor could she expect Neil or his family to pay for it. This customarily fell to the parents of the bride, as far as she was aware. She therefore assumed her parents would step in.

It wasn’t until the bills started to arrive a month or so later that a fuming Nerys informed her daughter that she had no right whatsoever to be spending money that wasn’t hers. Just because she had decided to get married did not mean her parents would automatically pay for everything. Thanks to her selfishness a trip to a special clinic in Switzerland, which would greatly have improved her father’s poor health, would now have to be put on hold. Nerys didn’t seem to consider the fact that Cait had known nothing of this planned trip. But at least she wasn’t ordered to cancel all her purchases. Thankfully the ceremony and reception were paid for, her dress and the bridesmaids’ dresses, the flowers and transport. Cait strongly suspected this was because her mother would not run the risk of diminishing herself in the eyes of several high-class business people in town by cancelling her daughter’s orders.

She became so wrapped up in the arduous task of perfecting her wedding preparations without any help from her mother or her two friends, who always seemed to be busy, and also trying her best to finance these little extra touches out of what little she had left from her own weekly wage once she had paid her dues at home, that she had failed to notice her intended husband was becoming increasingly preoccupied and distant from her as the date for their wedding drew closer.

Learning that the man she loved and had planned to spend the rest of her life with didn’t feel the same about her was devastating enough for Cait, without the terrifying prospect of being thrust out into the world to fend for herself on top of it. The only morsel of hope she’d had left was that, despite his denial, Neil was in fact suffering from pre-wedding nerves and might be regretting his actions. So after she’d left the church Cait had gone round to his house, in the hope of a reconciliation.

It was his mother who answered the door to her. Neil had asked her to pass on a message if Cait turned up as he didn’t want a direct confrontation with her. She was told that he had nothing more to say to her and that he’d meant what he’d said in the church. His mother sounded sincere and there was a sympathetic look in her eyes when she told Cait to make it easy on herself and accept her son’s decision, as he had asked her to.

Cait was in total shock as she made her way home afterwards, dragging one foot after the other, unable to understand why he didn’t want to spend the rest of his life with her. Hadn’t she done enough to prove to him that she would look after him, run his house for him, take on all the stresses and strains of everyday life by dealing with them herself, just like her mother did for her father? She couldn’t leave the situation, walk away from Neil and get on with her life alone. She needed advice on how to put matters right between them. The two girls who were supposed to be her friends had turned their backs on her at this moment of crisis, showing that their friendship was merely superficial and they were only in it for what it brought them. This meant that there was only one other person she could turn to for advice on how to resolve her dire situation.

Waiting patiently for her mother to finish her chapter finally proved too much for Cait. ‘I really need to speak to you, Mother,’ she blurted out. Before Nerys had chance to refuse, Cait told her that Neil had called off their wedding and asked, ‘I treated him like you do Father, and you are both happy together, so where have I gone wrong, Mother?’

If she had been expecting Nerys to impart her worldly wisdom and inform her what she could do to make amends with Neil, then she was to be cruelly disappointed. Nerys’s matter-of-fact response was, ‘Samuel and I were destined to be together, you and Neil obviously were not. You’ve got plenty to do before next weekend, to keep you occupied and help you over it. You’ve still got all your packing to do and things to arrange in the new house, to make it ready to move into.’

Cait stared at her in astonishment. ‘Live in the house that Neil and I were going to share! Oh, I couldn’t. It would be too much of a reminder for me . . .’

Nerys cut in, ‘It’s a house, isn’t it? And you need somewhere to live. If you don’t want to live there on your own, find someone to share with you. Be a pity to waste the month’s rent that’s paid on it, as I doubt it would be refunded.’ She then picked up her book and began to read again, her way of informing her daughter that as far as she was concerned there was nothing more to discuss.

Cait lay in bed, staring up at the shadows cast on the ceiling, fighting to concentrate her thoughts on the shifting shapes instead of dwelling on what had transpired tonight and its very serious repercussions for her. She was failing miserably. All the shadows seemed to have Neil’s face in them. She heaved a sorrowful sigh, doing nothing to wipe away the flood of tears spilling down the sides of her face. It was ironic that last night she couldn’t sleep through excitement and nerves about her forthcoming wedding, and tonight she couldn’t because she was feeling utterly desolate that there wasn’t going to be one. Neil had made it very clear that there would be no reconciliation.

She wasn’t just having to deal with the heartbreak of a failed romance either. In seven days’ time she would be thrust into the world to fend for herself. Believing she had saved herself from that fate by finding Neil, she had no idea how she would cope with living alone and doing all the things she’d never had to before. This house was the only home she had known. She might most of the time feel like an intruder here, due to the way her parents were, but at least she’d had a certain amount of security, knowing a meal would be on the table for her, her washing done, her bedroom cleaned, albeit by Agnes Dalby, the daily her mother employed, who saw to these household chores.

She felt that she was being forced headlong towards a closed door, her unknown future concealed behind it, with no one to offer her comfort or support, let alone love.

CHAPTER SIX

‘H
ave you got a watch?’

Glen sat bolt upright, still half-asleep but instantly on his guard. He didn’t like waking up to find a stranger close to him. No, not a stranger, he realised belatedly. It was the woman he’d saved in the arches the night before – and now she would not leave him alone.

‘A watch?’ he queried.

His tone of voice left her in no doubt what he thought of her for asking such a stupid question. ‘Well . . . er . . . what I meant was, how do I find out what time it is?’

He glanced out of the shop doorway at the street beyond and answered, ‘It’s about five-thirty.’

Jan stared at him in surprise. ‘How can you possibly know that if you haven’t a watch?’

He gave an irritated sigh. ‘I can just tell, by the morning air and the colour of the sky, which you’ll come to do yourself in time. Now, if you don’t mind, I want to try and snatch . . .’

She interjected, ‘We have to go.’

He looked at her incredulously. ‘Go where? There is nowhere to go at this time in the morning.’

Jan was desperately trying to stretch the stiffness out of her body so she could get up. She was surprised to find that she had slept for as long as she had, considering the circumstances. ‘I told you last night, I know where we can get you cleaned up . . . me too. Look, I haven’t time to explain – we have to get there before six. Come on.’ When she saw he was just looking back at her, befuddled, she urged, ‘Come on . . . What is your name, by the way?’

‘Eh? Oh, Glen. Glen Trainer.’

‘I’m Janet Clayton. Jan. Now come on, Mr Trainer . . . Glen . . . we have to arrive where we’re going before it gets light, and I’ve no idea where we are at the moment so I don’t know how far we have to go.’

Glen was confused as to where on earth she could be taking him.

Jan was standing up by now, peeling the rotting blanket Glen had loaned her from around herself, conscious that its smell had seeped into her clothes and of her own desperate need to freshen herself up. And there was the fact that she was still so cold she needed to move in order to get the blood flowing in her veins again. Handing the blanket to him, she urged, ‘Come on, we really need to be off.’

The conversation they’d had hours before flooded back to him. The woman he now knew to be Janet Clayton had proclaimed that she knew somewhere they could go to smarten themselves up. He was highly intrigued to find out just where the likes of him would be allowed to do that. And besides, he had no clean clothes to change into. But he was wide awake now so he might as well go with her. It didn’t look like she was going to take no for an answer.

Out in the street, once Glen had informed Jan exactly where they were, she hurriedly set off. She took him to the town centre then up the high street, crossing the Grand Union Canal over the Richard III bridge, then on up the Narborough Road. It seemed to them that they were the only ones up and about on this bitterly cold early morning. On and on they seemed to go before Jan finally turned down a palisade terraced street. She stopped for a moment by the entry between two houses, taking a good look round to confirm that they weren’t being observed from behind any closed curtains before she urged Glen to follow her down the entry.

Halfway down in the near pitch dark, Glen reached out to grab her shoulder. ‘If it’s your idea to break into a house, then I won’t be party to that, no matter how desperate for a wash I am. In all the time I’ve been living rough, I’ve never resorted to stealing in any shape or form and I won’t start now.’

Jan was insulted. ‘I’m not about to break in anywhere. I know where there’s a key. In the shock of what happened to me, I’d forgotten about it until we were talking last night about the lack of somewhere to spruce ourselves up. She tapped the wall to the right of her. ‘This is my house. Well, it was until my husband accused me of having a torrid affair and consequently threw me out. The law would probably be on his side and say he’d every right to throw me out in the circumstances, but he’s no right to keep my private possessions from me and I can’t be accused of breaking and entering if I have a key to let myself in, can I? And if I happen to invite in a friend and they choose to bathe while they’re there . . . well, I’d like to see my husband get me slung in jail for
that
.’

A worried expression crossed her face then. ‘Just pray Harry’s not remembered about the spare key and moved it or that’s us snookered good and proper. Anyway, I wanted to get here before it’s light so that none of the neighbours spots us and tells him. We’ll need to hide in the back yard and be ready to go in as soon as Harry’s gone to work. That gives us a good four hours before he’s due home for his dinner at one. Oh, come on, time’s getting short and we need to hide ourselves before he and the neighbours are up and about.’

The prospect of having soap and water for the first time in an age was hard to resist. Glen followed Jan down the entry as far as the gate. Deftly lifting the latch, she opened the gate just wide enough to slip through, Glen following close behind. Jan hurried across a small slabbed area and on down a short path, one side of which was lawned, the other a vegetable patch, towards a small brick-built shed which stood against the garden wall. The old door was stiff, its wood having swollen in the wet wintry weather, and Jan had to push hard against it, praying that the noise it made didn’t alert anyone. She didn’t wait around to find out but gave Glen a shove on his back to urge him inside then quickly followed behind, shutting the door after them.