Chapter 13
Vee stretched out in the bath and twiddled the tap with her toes to let in more hot water.
Her skin was already starting to turn prune-like, and pangs of hunger were making thoughts of toasted cheese sandwiches very tempting, but the water was blissfully hot, and Rick’s bubble bath was one of those muscle-relaxing ones that smelt of eucalyptus.
This experience was too good to cut short.
She half-closed her eyes and let her mind drift to a time in the past when she’d enjoyed this kind of luxury.
It had been a while ago because one awful day, Nigel, in the earlier years when cleanliness had still been important to him, had decided to surprise her with a brand-new wet room.
He’d waited until Vee had gone away for the weekend with some work friends, got someone in to rip out the lovely old claw-footed bath that she’d adored and replaced it with a state-of-the-art power shower with a rainfall feature and room for two people inside.
When Vee returned home, he’d unveiled his reconstruction with such pride that for a few minutes she was speechless.
‘But I loved having a bath,’ she’d said eventually. ‘Why didn’t you ask me first?’
Nigel’s face fell and his bottom lip stuck out. He soon became a giant toddler if anyone dared to disagree with one of his ideas, able to sulk for several days or sometimes weeks if he was crossed.
‘I thought you’d like it,’ he said. ‘And anyway, this is my flat, in case you’d forgotten. If I want to make improvements to increase its value, you should be pleased, not stand there looking like I’ve done something bad. What’s wrong with you?’
Vee had swallowed her first comment, which would have been, ‘Nothing’s wrong with me, you great baboon, I thought we were partners, and I pay my way, you know I do, have done for years.
’ Instead, she forced a smile and tried to admire the smooth grey tiles and matching towels.
The whole room was completely bland. He’d got rid of all her leafy plants and quirky vintage bathroom accessories.
Even the vintage basket chair with the squishy, embroidered cushions had gone.
This had been the best room in the flat, in Vee’s opinion, and now it was ruined.
Looking back, now Vee was able to view her last relationship more dispassionately, the bathroom debacle was the beginning of the end.
Long soaks in the bath had been Vee’s escape from the real world and without them, she felt lost and tetchy.
Nigel hadn’t understood, and ironically, it hadn’t been many weeks afterwards when his personal hygiene gradually hit an all-time low, so the high-tech shower had never been properly appreciated.
Vee pulled the plug when the water was once again growing chilly and dried herself, putting on her comfiest pyjamas and her fluffy dressing gown, then padded downstairs barefoot and made herself familiar with the idiosyncrasies of a strange kitchen, ending up with a mug of instant hot chocolate and a plate heaped with toasties oozing melted cheese.
She drew the curtains, settled herself on the sofa in the living room and switched on the television, scrolling through the programmes on offer as she ate her snack.
At last, after many forays into murder mysteries, thrillers and grim documentaries, Vee decided to play it safe and go for a series she’d watched before.
However, it wasn’t long before she realised her mistake.
The last time she’d seen this particular programme had been some years previously, when she and Nigel were still reasonably happy.
Now, seeing the relationship in question gradually disintegrate before her eyes, Vee experienced a sense of déjà vu.
The couple in the story were almost carbon copies of Nigel and herself.
Their relentless misunderstanding of each other’s feelings was painful.
Worse still, the issue that was driving them apart was something from the woman’s past that had reared its ugly head and refused to go away.
Vee put down her mug and paused the action, frowning as she at last faced up to thinking about possibly the most significant part of her own history.
These were the memories that she’d been avoiding ever since she left Willowbrook.
The ones that sometimes kept her awake long into the small hours of the night with their unspecific niggles.
They were cloudy memories, lost in the fog of anxiety that had surrounded her family’s sudden departure from the supposedly idyllic village life of her childhood.
The room was quiet now, and Vee glanced around, taking in the ambience that Rick had created for himself.
The furnishings were simple, consisting of a large and comfortable sofa, several bookcases, a beautiful oak coffee table and the enormous TV in the corner.
It was a good place to ponder, but try as she might, Vee couldn’t bring to mind any firm details of what had happened in those long-ago days.
A few names floated around in her brain and also one or two vague recollections of the fun she’d had growing up here, but something was getting in the way of total recall.
There must be some way of breaking through whatever barrier was holding her back.
Vee stood up and began to pace up and down the living room, finally ending up facing the largest bookshelf.
It was lined with all kinds of books in every shade of the rainbow.
Some were clearly from Rick’s early years, brightly coloured, battered and much loved.
Others were leather-bound copies of the classics, equally well-used.
There were glossy non-fiction books and a whole shelf of thrillers with covers in black or muted colours.
But on the very bottom shelf, Vee hit pay dirt.
Here she found a whole row of photograph albums propping each other up, their plastic bindings dusty from lack of use.
‘Wow,’ she breathed as she ran a finger along the edges of the albums. ‘You are one organised bloke, Rick.’
Each volume was labelled with its own dates.
Was it overstepping the mark as a lodger if she leafed through some of them?
Vee knew she’d hate anyone looking at her own rudimentary collection of old photos but the more she peered at the dates, the harder it became to resist them.
At last, she reached for the one labelled ‘1984’.
She couldn’t bring herself to take it back to her chair to look at in comfort.
That seemed even worse than having a quick, casual peek by the shelf, so she sank to the floor and opened the book, holding her breath as she turned the pages.
The two large photographs on the first page were a surprise, because they were pictures of the school Vee had attended.
Why would anyone want to remember that place?
It had been built in the late sixties and never been properly modernised, merely had bits added on when the volume of pupils grew too great to fit inside.
It consisted of a square, rather bleak-looking group of buildings surrounded by concrete play areas and car parks.
In the distance could be seen the playing field which had been the scene of some of least professional games of football and hockey known to mankind.
Vee soon saw that Rick was one of those people who liked to caption his pictures. Underneath these two photos were printed the words:
They say heaven is a place on earth… but in that case, so might hell be.
Vee shuddered and almost closed the book.
It had been a loveless experience, being at that school.
Some teachers had been better than others, but the general atmosphere was one of barely suppressed frustration.
Small fights often broke out at lunchtimes and the midday supervisors always seemed to be out of range at these moments, usually smoking behind the bike sheds.
There had been several teenage pregnancies while Vee was there, and the girls concerned had left under a cloud, never to return.
Rick must have been there at the same time as she was.
Why didn’t she remember him? A blond, good-looking boy like him would surely have stuck in her memory.
She braced herself and turned to the next part of the album, stomach in knots.
There in front of her on the following pages lay many snapshots, some clear, some blurry.
They were neatly laid out, and each one had its own tiny label.
Long-forgotten names floated before Vee’s eyes.
Rick must have an amazing memory to be able to recall all these schoolmates along with their nicknames.
Mackie Pearson, Dino Butler, Shazzie Smith and Rhonda Clements…
Rhonda Clements. Vee paused in her perusal, feeling cold fingers of dread running up her spine.
Rhonda had never allowed anyone to shorten her name or give her a new ridiculous one instead.
She had been a fearsome character, cooler than cool, deferred to wherever she went.
For a while, she and Venetia had been friends, or what passed for friends in the gang that hung around with Rhonda.
Vee had been so eager to fit in that she’d turned a blind eye to a lot of the things that went on around them at that time.
To fall out with Rhonda would have been the biggest mistake of her young life, so she made sure she was always on the right side of her.
It wasn’t easy. Rhonda had very little in the way of scruples and she wasn’t averse to treading on everyone who got in her way.