37. A complete lack of redemption
37
A COMPLETE LACK OF REDEMPTION
Frank had walked to the pub, so Netta gave him a lift home. ‘Are you coming over for dinner or are you having another quiet night in with Colin?’ she said.
‘I’m coming over. Colin hasn’t been the best of company lately. In fact he hasn’t been there at all.’
‘So I hear. Has he said where’s he’s been?’
‘No. He seems to be all in one piece though, so it doesn’t look like he’s been starting any fights.’
Colin starting a fight? Never in a million years. ‘Fighting isn’t really his style. His retaliation is a bit more underhand. I suppose I’d better go and look in on him. Dad said he left the allotment rather abruptly this morning.’
‘Yeah, I heard. You go in. I’ll see if he’s back yet. He wasn’t when I left earlier.’
She was surprised to find dinner preparation underway. She was even more surprised when she saw that the preparation was a family effort. Liza, Will and Belle were all in the kitchen doing bits of this and that. Doogie was there too, doing something with rice. He winked at her. ‘All right?’
‘Yeah. All good. Something smells tasty. Will there be enough for Frank?’
‘Plenty.’
She caught his eye. It was obvious he knew where she’d been. Frank must have told him when they had their talk.
Will waved her over. ‘Mum, you have to see this. It makes the best fried chicken. We’ve been testing it out.’
‘Testing what out? Oh.’ A beast of a machine was throbbing away on the worktop. ‘What is it?’
‘An air fryer.’ She hadn’t seen him this excited since the pups were born.
‘Where did you get it? It looks expensive.’
‘I bought it. It’s a present,’ said Doogie.
A present. Surely a box of chocolates or a bunch of flowers would have sufficed? Not so it seemed. Apparently a massive, fuck off nonsense gadget was exactly what she needed. He’d bought her a dress once, during their affair. How times and people change.
‘We chose it though,’ said Will.
Doogie nodded. ‘They did. Which is why it ended up being so big. Sorry. I can take it away if it’s too much.’
‘No!’ shouted the younger branch of the family all at once. It looked like she was stuck with it.
‘It’s absolutely fine,’ she said, at the same time wondering how you actually cleaned such a thing. Perhaps when all the fuss had quietened down, she could find it a permanent space in the pantry, next to the spiraliser that Liza had been so keen on, for about a month.
Frank came in as they were laying out the food. ‘Is that an air fryer?’ His eyes were like little bright buttons. It seemed he’d found something else he had in common with Doogie.
‘Do we need to take some of the food over to Colin?’ she said.
‘He’s not in,’ said Frank, without taking his eyes off the new gadget.
When they’d finally exhausted the subject of air fryers, which took some exhausting, Doogie told them they’d finished off the allotment project today so there was no need to go back.
‘Oh I nearly forgot, I spoke to Nan earlier. They’re coming over at seven to talk about Dad,’ said Liza. ‘Sorry, I was just so buzzing about the air fryer.’
Well, at least Netta had one reason to be grateful to that horrendous monstrosity. If Liza had been having a moment of crisis about Colin, it had been temporarily displaced by the promise of limitless supplies of fried chicken.
‘It’s seven now,’ said Belle, just as the door knocker went.
Liza giggled. ‘Good job I remembered just in time then.’
Netta’s mum and dad made a beeline for the new equipment. ‘That’s one of those air fryers, isn’t it?’ said her mum.
‘Yes, Doogie bought it for us. Shall we sit down?’ said Netta, already sick of air fryers, although quite surprised that her parents had heard of them.
‘I’ve been doing some research on them. We’re thinking of getting one,’ said her dad.
Of course they were. As usual, her mum and dad were way ahead of her on pretty much anything and everything. ‘Shall we leave this discussion until later? Liza said you wanted to talk about Colin.’
Her dad took a seat at the kitchen table. ‘Well, as I mentioned in my message, Colin took off without a word. I thought he was probably tired. He’d said something about not sleeping last night. Although that didn’t explain why he couldn’t have told me he was going, but then that’s Colin all over.’ He looked at Liza and Will. ‘Sorry, kids. Anyway, I left it for an hour and then called Liza to see if he was back.’
‘So I checked at Frank’s and dad wasn’t there,’ said Liza.
‘He hasn’t been back all day,’ said Frank.
Netta’s dad leaned forward and rested his arms on the table. ‘I spoke to Ursula. I’ve mentioned her before. She’s a widow. Very nice woman. Had an allotment for years. But I digress. Colin and Ursula get on quite well. Not in that way but you know, they’re friendly. They sometimes have chats. I saw Ursula heading towards the patch where Colin was working and then the next time I looked, he was gone. So, when Liza told me she couldn’t find him, I asked Ursula if she knew where he was. Apparently, he’d said something to her that she didn’t think went the way he was expecting it to go.’
‘Oh my God. Did he come on to her? Eww,’ said Liza.
‘No, nothing like that. She wouldn’t go into all the details, but she said it was something about you and him, Nettie. Something to do with the way he’d treated you. She got the impression he’d expected her to be more sympathetic. Those were the words she used. But you see, he’d picked the wrong person if that was the case. I haven’t known Ursula for long, but I do know her husband was very controlling. Ringing any bells?’
‘Do you think Colin tried to make it sound like it wasn’t his fault?’ said Frank.
‘I think so, yes. Naturally, Ursula told him straight there could never be an excuse to behave like that. The thing is, she’d already told him about her husband. You’d think he’d have cottoned on, wouldn’t you? Anyway, she left him and shortly after, she saw him climbing the gate to get out. Didn’t even ask someone to unlock it for him.’
‘Ursula was a friend of Samuel’s. The old guy whose patch and shed we’ve been clearing,’ said Doogie.
Her dad nodded. ‘That’s right. According to Clyde, they were very close friends. Apparently, she was a timid, frightened thing when she first got an allotment. It was Samuel who brought her out of herself.’
There was a rawness in Netta’s throat. Like she’d just vomited, but she hadn’t. It was just the rawness. A few hours ago she’d been seriously considering befriending the man who’d almost irretrievably damaged her. And now what? He was using their story and twisting it as he always did to his own ends. What a fool she’d been to think he had any sort of redemption in him. And was he trying to get his claws into this Ursula now? It was no wonder Arianne lost it with him. If she actually did. There was every chance all that was put on too.
She suddenly felt hot and dizzy. She needed to get away without causing alarm. ‘I just need to pop to the loo. Why don’t you all explain the fried chicken process to Nan and Granddad? Let them have a go with it. Or something.’ And with that she shot upstairs before anyone could stop her and locked herself in the bathroom.
She lay down on the floor and curled up like a foetus, her heart thumping against the cold, hard tiles. It felt oddly comforting. Droplets of water settled in the corner of one eye and trickled out of the other. Not tears as such. It was just the anger pushing them out.
Her phone went off. She pulled it out of her back pocket and almost laughed when she saw who it was. His ears must have been burning. ‘Where are you?’
‘Not far away. I’m just not ready to come back yet.’
‘Why? Because of what you said to Ursula?’ She could hear the sound of traffic in the background. He must be somewhere busy.
‘I was just trying to tell her my side of the story.’
‘Uh huh. I suppose that’s the one where I deserved everything you dished out, is it? Did you tell her how you threatened to take the children away from me if I didn’t toe the line? Did you tell her how you constantly reminded me what a filthy, disgusting, whore and an unfit mother I was? Did you?’
‘I don’t remember it that way.’
‘No? Well then tell me how you remember it, because I am dying to know exactly how you can twist this one around.’
‘It’s not important now. I wanted to ask you something.’
Netta wiped her eyes. The anger was in full flow now. ‘What?’
‘Did you try to kill yourself?’
Her heart skipped a beat, then another. ‘Who told you that?’
‘It doesn’t matter. Please tell me. Did you?’
‘No. I thought about it, but a kind stranger talked me out of it.’
‘Was that, was that the morning we asked you to leave?’
‘Yes.’ She thought she heard something like a sharp intake of breath mingling with the traffic sounds, but she could have been mistaken. ‘Colin, you need to come home.’
‘Yes, I’ll be back later. There’s just a few things I need to do first.’
‘Like what? Colin?’ He’d hung up. Netta tried to call him back, but it went straight to answerphone.