Hi, so here is another chapter and there are only ten more chapters of this story left! I hope you enjoy this chapter and I will hopefully bring you the next one sooner rather than later.
Disclaimer-Nothing here is mine but the character of Isla.
Please Read and Review.
Also I'm not entirely sure about dates in this chapter but I am putting this story after the marriage of Charles and Diana and around the time where kids could go to the park alone and come back at dark.
Glory Days
Chapter 7-Lead, Follow Or Get Out Of The Way
Lilo-Lil and Nellie Boswell get into a fight and Isla's suspicions that she is being watched sees her run in with someone familiar and yet unfamiliar at the same time.
It had started out innocently enough. Isla had been walking home from school (the family out working, not that she minded because she enjoyed walking home and she lived in the kind of neighbourhood where everyone knew everyone, knew everything and anything) when she felt something.
She turned and looked behind her but there was nobody and it was a strange feeling that persisted despite the fact that she was sure that there was nobody following her. It was like she was being watched and yet she was sure that nobody was there. It was still light there was no cars on the road other than an old battered red one and she was not sure weather or not that she had seen that before but she couldn't see anyone she knew in it either.
It was odd…granted Isla might not watch the news in the all encompassing way the Boswell's did—when there was change made to the DHSS, the BBC was your friend after all but she did know that there were a lot of strange people around. She also knew that she had vocal cords that could scream quite loudly.
Isla had been repeatedly assured of that.
She carried on walking though. She was not one to be scared by anything or anyone and more to the point she did not want to raise suspicions. If her family thought that she was being followed she wouldn't hear the end of it. She was sure that her Dad would start walking her to and from school, any chance of going to the DHSS to see Martina would be gone and she'd get a whistle.
The thought of what Alexandra Yizzel would say if Isla turned up to school with a fucking whistle like Aunt Aveline was so horrendous even thinking of it was torture.
Isla was six, quite frankly in her mind she would rather be kidnapped.
So she carried on walking even though the little battered red car was still there and she could see nobody in it.
This she supposed as she turned onto her street—was what happened when you watched the news with four paranoid men and a paranoid old woman who was-
Who was fighting in the street.
If Isla had not seen it she was not sure she would have ever believed it.
For there was her grandmother, the most prim and proper woman in the street, the woman who had boxed Uncle Billy's ears until they were red over the fact that she was going to have a grandchild in 'Wedlock' (and Isla still didn't know what that meant) and the woman who insisted they say prayers every night—sometimes twice if Freddie was around—was fighting a woman in the street, in full view of the neighbours.
Isla wondered if she had fallen into a different world on the way home because this was just too strange.
There was a pause as she stood at Grandad's door (having had to shove Mrs Cullen out of the way with her elbow—the woman went easily though she muttered about rudeness—Isla ignored her, their family were generally enemies of theirs since time began on this street) and watched as her Nan threw a rather hard punch at the face of the other woman who now Isla could see had incredibly red (and probably cheap) hair, huge clomping shoes and…
Holy Cricket this was Lilo-Lil.
Her Nan was on the middle of the street in broad daylight brawling with Lilo Lil!
Was it Christmas? Was it some kind of holiday? Had the aliens come down and abducted them all as Uncle Billy said they would do one day and she was now in a spaceship somewhere? Because if not then this was the strangest thing Isla had ever seen and if she was being honest it was by far the funniest. In fact it was so funny she never wanted it to stop even though it was talking all of her considerable effort not to laugh out loud.
They finally managed to make it into the house (with many shouts and encouragement) from the neighbours who had crowded around this the way they had around the telly when the royal wedding had been on and half the street had been in tears when Diana had arrived in her dress—Isla had been too young to remember that but she did remember the mass hysteria mainly because it wasn't a Boswell that was causing it—and she peered round just wondering whether she was going to be able to get into the house without half the street peering in after her, or without getting a serious injury when the door to Grandad's house opened and the man appeared complete with his stick and a fearsome temper.
"Go away!" he shouted waving his stick in a way that made the neighbours scatter and Isla duck behind him. "Let them have it out in peace—what do you think this is the blood Punch and Judy show? Piss off the lot of you"
They scarpered. Grandad turned and Isla who had been behind him while he'd been waving the stick around like a dementated lunatic took a step backwards.
"And what are you doing? Oh never mind. Go and leave me alone will you, I'm not in the mood for company today"
She made towards the door.
"Oh not there girl. Go away and let them have it out in peace. Don't you know anything. Let your Nan get this done and dusted in peace God know she's been waiting for it for a long enough time"
Isla didn't wait to be told twice, she scarpered.
The scene that greeted him at home was nothing short of carnage. His Mam was hacking at a cucumber with such fury it was like the first time his Dad had left. It didn't take much to get the full story out of her and that sent him biting his lip hard, so hard he almost drew blood trying not to laugh at the thought of his mother and his father's tart fighting in the street as if this was something out of a comedy show.
His Mam who knew what Joey was thinking before he even though it some days managed a small smile. "Well at least it's you" she said patting him on the arm. "Aveline would be a mess, Billy bless him is hopeless, Adrian would have waxed poetic about the vices of fighting and Jack…well…Jack would have been under his van trying to pretend that it wasn't happening"
Joey thought that was a fair estimation of what would have happened. But his Mam was not done yet and she carried on that small special smile she had reserved for each of them when their Dad had left and she had promised that it didn't matter and that they were still a family regardless, still etched upon her face.
"You kids" she said finally. "You were the only good thing that ever came out of this marriage. And all of your kids, baby Francesca and little Isla. Though she won't remain little for long I suppose"
Joey snorted. That he did know, at six his daughter was rapidly becoming sixteen and that was his greatest fear—God only knew what she would become when she was actually sixteen.
"Where is she then?"
"Hmm?"
"Isla. She should be back home by now"
"Oh I imagine your grandad's. She didn't follow us in. Good thing too all things considering—oh Joey you don't think she saw me fighting in the street like a common drunkard do you?"
"Err—I'm sure she didn't Mam"
The truth was that he was willing to bet a whole fifty pound note that Isla had seen and heard everything but if there was any luck left for him in the world he would be able to intercept his daughter before she got hold of a phone and rang the entire family to tell them what was happening. Nothing would send panic and glee throughout the Boswell clan as the image of their Mam and Lilo-Lil in a knockdown drag out fight. Billy would probably ask Isla to give them all a demonstration and Isla would rise the occasion only to be overshadowed by Billy who would give them a demonstration of every fight he had ever witnessed complete with half the ketchup on the ceiling and the mash on the floor.
Christ it was sad how predicable these things went.
He went and banged on his Grandad's door.
"Where's me Lunch? I know she's just had a fight and all but that's no excuse. Withering away I am! They got better treatment than this in the prisoner camps in both wars—which I served in!"
"Lunch is on it's way Grandad" Joey said feeling older than he actually was—his grandad tended to bring that kind of emotion out in him on more than one occasion.
"Can I have Isla please?"
"Oh she's not here"
"Huh?"
"I caught her snooping with the neighbours so I told her to do one. She scarpered about two hours ago"
Joey couldn't believe his ears.
"And you didn't think to—I don't know, TELL ME THAT WHEN I CAME HOME?"
"Why? She's a smart lass and she's probably only gone to the park or to her friends house"
"Oh probably"
"That girls got more salt in her than half of the Pacific Ocean. Give her a break she'll be fine"
"The world is not—"
"And don't give me all that the world is not safe anymore bollocks. This is 1984 not 1504. While we may not live in a palace we are safe—kids can still go out and play you know! Honestly you lot. AND CAN I PLEASE HAVE MY LUNCH BEFORE THE GOOD LORD CALLS ME HOME?"
And with that he slammed the door in Joey's face.
Honestly the man had no style.
No style.
Isla had probably gone to the one of her friends houses but that didn't mean Joey wasn't going to go looking.
He was a parent after all.
He got in his JAG.
Isla had in fact gone to the park.
She had thought about going to one of her mates but the truth was that she was desperate to run around and burn of some frustration that seemed to build in that house whenever people were in a bad mood.
Isla suspected that this might be one of those moments.
She had taken to running around her arms outstretched and her bag dumped on the floor and then spinning around and around until she felt like she was going to be sick from the dizziness did she stop collapsing on the grass as the breeze ran across. Honestly it was so nice here that a part of her wanted to fall asleep.
Only this was a park in Liverpool and Isla was six not stupid.
She sat up only when she felt a presence watching her. It was the same feeling that she had felt coming home only an hour ago and she had been too busy running to notice weather or not she was being following this time. But now she stood up and saw that there was a woman stood there holding her bag and watching her. For a second the two of them stared at each other and Isla felt a swoop of something unidentifiable in her stomach that she didn't know how to deal with.
She knew who this was.
She had known who this was two years ago when she had been in her Dad's bedroom and she had found the crumpled up picture buried under the Bible her Nan made sure all of her children had. It had been crumpled and ripped and nearly destroyed but Isla had known who it was. She hadn't even needed to ask anyone to know who it was.
(Though she had asked grandad—he had pulled a face but he had told her what she already knew)
She had put back the photograph and had never mentioned it again but she had known and more to the point she knew who was standing in front of her smiling with those wide eyes that were so unlike her own.
"Hello Isla"
"Hello Mum"
And there you go. I hope that you enjoyed this chapter. Hopefully will get the next one to you sooner rather than later.
Next Chapter-Isla and Roxy have a talk as Joey goes to look for his daughter.