‘Hello-o!’ Marion Philpott calls softly as she takes the key from the lock and closes the front door behind her. ‘Only me,’ she says, taking time to remove her outdoor shoes and putting her slippers on. ‘Sorry I’m late but your father was supposed to put petrol in the car after he used it yesterday but clearly didn’t and I was left with just the fumes this morning. I had to wait for the little garage to open before I could go anywhere!’ With a perfunctory knock on the door to Stephanie’s room, she walks in. ‘I suppose Nathan had to......go.’  Intending criticism for leaving Stephanie on her own, her words come to an abrupt stop.  ‘What on earth do you think you’re doing?’

‘What?’ Nathan comes suddenly awake and glances at Stephanie in sleepy confusion before lifting his head from the pillow just enough to be able to see where the voice is coming from.

‘I said, what on earth do you think you’re doing?’

‘I was sleeping,’ he says with heavy emphasis on the past tense and turns onto his side, pulling the duvet up over his shoulder.

‘Mum!’ Stephanie protests while feeling for the control hanging at the side of the bed and once found, jabs at it angrily with her thumb. ‘Do you mind?’ she snaps as the head of the bed lifts and gives her the start she needs to sit up easily.

‘I do mind! I mind very much.’ Marion is outraged. ‘I mind that he...’ she points an accusing finger. ‘Can’t leave you alone while you’re convalescing, despite his assurances to the contrary!’

‘What assurances to the contrary?’ Stephanie turns her head to look down at Nathan.

‘He told me....’

‘She thought I’d want my evil way the minute I got you through the door,’ Nathan mumbles, eyes closed and turning further into the pillow, still unwilling to give up on sleep. 

‘You thought WHAT? Who the hell are you to dictate what we can or can’t do anyway?’

With a sigh, Nathan rolls over and puts an arm out from under the bedclothes to brush Stephanie’s back with his hand ‘She was only looking out for you, sweet.’

‘But what notice did you take, eh?’ Marion continues to harangue him even though he is defending her. ‘Here you are doing exactly what you assured us you wouldn’t!’ For lack of something to do which will keep her in the room and able to continue her tirade, she snatches up the waste bin and stomps around looking for rubbish to put in it. ‘I knew letting her come here was a mistake, I knew it!’

‘It was the only option we’d got.’ Groggily awake, he reaches for the clock on the bedside table and brings it closer to peer at the time. ‘Shit,’ he mutters under his breath and puts it back again.

‘It was what I wanted!’

Marion ignores Stephanie’s outburst to glare at Nathan. ‘But there is only one reason you’d be in that bed and that is..is...Totally unacceptable under the circumstances!’

Nathan sits up and draws his knees to his chest, leaning over them with his hands held loosely together. ‘If you don’t mind,’ he says evenly, not rising to her bait. ‘I need to get out of bed. I can hear my alarm going upstairs even if you can’t.’

‘I’m not stopping you! When has something I’ve ever said stopped you from doing anything?’

‘A little privacy might be nice,’ he says then whispers an aside to a visibly enraged Stephanie and for a fleeting moment her eyes spark with amusement rather than anger and she reaches for her dressing gown which hangs over the corner of the bed head and passes it to him.

‘What might be nice is if you had some consideration for my daughter!’

‘I have every consideration for your daughter.’ Nathan decides he is better served by putting the dressing gown on backwards and thrusts his arms into the sleeves. ‘It was my consideration for your daughter that made me come down here in the first place. I didn’t go back, that’s all,’ he says mildly as he pulls the dressing gown as far as it will go round him and ties the belt behind his back.

‘No, no you didn’t, did you? No control! No control at all.’

‘MOTHER!’ Stephanie throws back the duvet and swings her legs out of bed. ‘Get out! Go on, get OUT! I asked him to stay, alright?’ She strides the distance between them and snatches the waste bin from her mother’s hands and throws it down. ‘And I had the best night’s sleep I’ve had in months!’

‘Steph?’ Nathan slowly gets out of bed, almost afraid to say anything more, and skirts the foot rail to stand close behind her with his hands out and ready to prevent a fall. ‘Take it easy, yeah?’

The catch in his voice and her mother’s sudden and joyous burst of laughter has Stephanie frowning in confusion.

‘You just did six steps on your own, sweet. You just did six bloody steps on your own!’

She looks down at her feet as though they belong to someone else and as her legs begin to shake; her toes try to grip the carpet in an attempt to stop them from giving way. ‘I did?’

Nathan steadies her as she wobbles precariously and scoops her up in his arms, swinging her full circle and whooping ‘You did!’ before carrying her back to the bed and sitting her down. 

‘I didn’t mean to make you cry,’ Stephanie says, laughing at her own tears and pushing back his hair with both hands to look at him as he kneels in front of her. Wrapping her arms around him, she clasps his head to her chest and rests her cheek against his hair. ‘Either of you!’ she includes her mother and holds out one hand to her.

Marion gives her an excited but very brief hug. ‘I’ve got to go and ring Daddy!’

‘Mum...Mum!’ she calls her back. ‘Please don’t make a fuss; it was only one or two steps and bound to happen eventually. Tell him when you get home.’

‘There was no eventually about it! Oh, this is wonderful!’ Marion sobs, pulling her sweater over her hand to wipe her eyes. ‘Daddy and Auntie Pam...I need to tell them right away.’ She goes to blot her nose but thinks twice about wiping it on her sleeve and walks across the room to pluck a tissue from the box on the dressing table. ‘And...’ she says, glancing down as she passes by and turning away quickly. ‘Nathan needs to do something about his..... bottom!’

Dell Cottage, Washbrook Lane

Chapter Forty-nine

Samms Plant Hire, Oatfield

‘Jon’than’s girlfriend’s ever so nice.’ Charlene says out of the blue as she sorts out job cards into the rack with studied concentration.

‘Is she?’ Ingrid looks up from her computer. ‘You’ve met her, then?’ she says innocently.

‘Yeah,’ Charlene lingers with the last of the cards in her hand. ‘At the weekend. They was in town.’

‘Nice that he stopped and said hello.’ Ingrid keeps up the pretence and speaks with equally studied indifference while she flicks through the trade catalogue. ‘I don’t think this bloke realises how much this job’s going to cost him,’ she says, running her finger down a list of materials and turning back to add the price to the estimate on her screen.

‘E don’t think about no money when e’s takin’ all them girls t’the ‘otel!’

‘He does?’ The information leaves Ingrid open-mouthed. ‘Are you sure?’ She looks at the name and address on the paperwork and tries to reconcile what Charlene has told her with what she knows of the man.  ‘Girls?’

‘Tha’s what my Mum says. She says ‘e thinks e’s bein’ ever so clever but they all laugh at ‘im cos they know when ‘e says ‘e’s come for some peace ‘n quiet ‘n t’get on with some work, ‘e int in ‘is room five minutes before some girl goes up after ‘im.’

‘Well I never!’

‘If I was ‘is wife, I wouldn’t want t’go with ‘im no more. You don’t know what them girls’ve got, do you?’

‘I don’t suppose she knows.’

‘Yeah, well, somebody ought t’tell ‘er.’ Charlene stabs the last job card into the rack. ‘It int fair!’

‘Life isn’t, sometimes.’ Ingrid scrolls the document to the beginning and runs down it again, altering each entry.

‘What you doing?’ Charlene is intrigued by Ingrid’s smile and looks over her shoulder.

‘Getting back at him on Anne Pinkerton’s behalf.  She’s a lovely woman. I’ve met her a couple of times at the Ladies Circle. I can’t kick him in the goolies, so I’ll kick him in the wallet instead. She won’t know what I’ve done but it sure makes me feel better. What a shit! I hope it falls off.’

‘You don’t ‘alf know how t’sort people out, don’t you?’

‘If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s blokes treating women like they don’t matter! If I ever found out Alex was dipping his wick somewhere else, I’d cut his willy off and mince it!’

Charlene giggles uncertainly and eyes Ingrid with awe. ‘You wouldn’t, would you?’

‘Too right I bloody would! Same if he so much as thought about hitting me, I’d kill him! I love the silly bugger the same as I did when we were first married but that doesn’t mean I‘d let him get away with not treating me right. No way, Fernando!’ She scoots back on her chair. ‘Shall we have a cuppa? That’s really got me going, that has. I need a cuppa and a fag to calm down.’

‘What would you do if he did?’

‘You mean after I’ve buried the body?’

‘No....really.’ Charlene fetches her mug from her desk and follows Ingrid into the tiny kitchen area. ‘If he ‘it you cos you’d said summat wrong.’

‘I’m always saying something wrong!’ Ingrid laughs but does not look up, thinking that Charlene might be on the verge of divulging what her problems are.  ‘Alex puts up with a lot and I’d be the first to admit it, but nothing is EVER worth coming to blows about. We have rows like everyone else but if he raised a hand to me, I’d be out that bloody door and I wouldn’t come back.’

‘But you been married ages.’

‘Makes no difference. And I’ve brought the girls up the same; none of them’ll take any nonsense as far as that goes. Mind you....’ she says with a preoccupied smile and finally looking up at Charlene. ‘If someone biffed Roxanne, she’d probably biff ‘em back!’

‘But then they might ‘it ‘er worse!’

‘Then that’s when we’d get the police involved,’ Ingrid says emphatically, squeezing the teabag out so hard on the spoon that the resulting liquid is a dark ginger brown. She adds more water and tops up the milk. ‘No buggering about with who did what and why. There’s no excuse for violence against women, none at all! There you go...’ She gives Charlene her tea and walks past her and back into the office again, sipping from her mug. ‘I’m going for a fag.’

‘I wish I smoked.’ Charlene says with a sigh. ‘Then I could stand out there and ‘ave a break as well.’

‘Don’t start smoking, for gawd’s sake. I swear I’m going to give up every time they slap more tax on but I never do. It’s a filthy habit and costs the earth. Come on..’ she jerks her head towards the door. ‘Come and stand outside. We can talk about work if you’re worried about skiving.’

Charlene puts her mug down next to her keyboard and dithers between being alone for a few minutes and telling Ingrid what is on her mind. ‘Can we talk about summat else?’ she asks hesitantly. ‘Only....’ She opens the bottom drawer of her desk and takes out her handbag. ‘I need someone t’tell me what t’do an’ I don’t want t’ask me Mum.

Ingrid looks back to see Charlene sitting at her desk with her head bowed and silently crying into a tissue. She lets the door close and walks back to put her arm round her shoulder. ‘Come on, sweetheart. Let’s go in Nathan’s office and open the window instead.’