Chapter 46
Cynthia marched in front of the window for Boyle’s Butcher’s and pushed past the customers to reach the glass counter. Hunks of raw meat hung from hooks behind where the butchers were packaging up produce. Pete Boyle was serving a customer at the end of the counter. The older woman argued that she wanted to pay in shillings, and Pete explained they had dealt with new pennies and pounds since decimalisation had arrived.
“Pete, I need to talk to you,” Cynthia said, joining all her words together.
Pete smiled at her. “I’ll be with you in a second. Just let me sort out Mrs Sutter.”
Cynthia folded her arms and tapped her foot, waiting for the elderly lady to take her pork chops. When the spot was vacated, Cynthia slipped into it, much to the annoyance of the customer behind her. She couldn’t care less. What she had to say couldn’t wait.
“Have you been speaking out of turn?” Cynthia asked.
“What do you mean?” he asked, unperturbed by her abruptness, wiping his hands on his apron.
“Can we go out back?” Cynthia asked, hearing the tutting coming from customers behind her.
“Yes, come through,” Pete said, lifting the side hatch.
Cynthia held her breath as she hurried through the preparation area with evidence of the products they sold. Pete held back the plastic curtain at the back door, and she stepped out into the fresh air.
The backyard of the butcher’s shop wasn’t huge. Upturned crates acted as seats. Somebody had half-filled a bucket with sand, and cigarette butts were sticking out.
“What’s got you fired up?” Pete asked, lighting up, taking advantage of the impromptu break.
“Did you tell my father about Jonathan and me?” Cynthia yelled.
Taking a step back from the volume of Cynthia, he then frowned, eventually answering her. “No, why?”
She pointed a finger at him, punctuating her words. She was close to tears, but she had to hold them back. “He knows, and he said you’d told him.”
“Was it a secret?” he asked, scratching his chin and looking at the sky. Cynthia was incensed with Pete’s calmness compared to her irate manner.
“Yes, Pete, it was. So how the hell did you find out?”
“Betty and me were having a cuppa and heard Imelda talking on the phone about you two. We had no idea it was a secret.”
Imelda. She knew it. Her brother Freddie was dating Imelda, Pete and Betty’s daughter.
“So Betty told my father?”
“I told no one, nothing, Cynthia Turner,” Betty bellowed from the upstairs window.
Pete and Cynthia turned to look up at the upper level of the butchers where Pete, Betty, and Imelda lived. It was also where Jonathan lodged in their spare room.
They had their daughter young when Betty was sixteen. Betty and Pete weren’t much older than Cynthia, but were never friends.
Cynthia wasn’t very good at making friends; when she did, she rarely kept them. Based on her track record, it astonished her that Jonathan was still in her life.
“My father is making me marry a man twenty years older than me because he found out about Jonathan and me.”
“He can’t make you do that,” Pete clipped back. “There are laws about that.”
“You have met my father, haven’t you?”
“Yeah. He’s in… here… all the… time.”
They both knew what had happened as soon as he slowed his sentence. Cynthia was ready to kick something or someone.
Instead, inhaling deeply, she glared at Pete. “When was the last time you saw my father?”
“He was in the shop a few days ago.”
“And you weren’t gossiping about me?”
Betty’s face went pale in the open window, and she retreated inside the house, pulling down the sash window. Cynthia and Pete waited for Betty to appear, but she never did. Finally, after five minutes, Cynthia looked at Pete.
“Someone told my father about my relationship with Jonathan Cranford. He said it was you.”
“It could well have been. Imelda was on the phone in the shop in the preparation area when we overheard. Then Betty and I discussed that you two make a lovely couple. When I came out into the shop area, your father was waiting to be served. I thought nothing of it. Jonathan is my friend, and he said nothing about you two courting. Betty and I were wondering why that might be.”
“Loose lips sink ships, Pete Boyle. Your gossiping family has ruined my life,” she screamed.
Cynthia pivoted on the spot and ran from the backyard, through the preparation area and out into the shop. She pushed through the customers, jostling them from side to side, earning her some choice words. Cynthia couldn’t care.
She had to get to Jonathan before her father did.