Part Twenty Four
In contrast to the cool still darkness of the Old Bailey, an atmosphere to which Cassie and Roisin were becoming accustomed, a strong chill wind was whipping down the streets as dark storm clouds like some invading army, were starting to blot out the blue sunlight from earlier on. If it weren't for the trial, Cassie and Roisin would have packed suitcases and taken Michael and Niamh to the seaside, complete with buckets and spades, like they had done last Easter break.
"Get me, Miss Out Lesbian single woman doing the family holiday routine," Cassie had first thought laughing to herself as she had patiently permitted the laughing children to shovel fresh damp sand to cover up Cassie's legs and 'bury her' and build sandcastles on the 'burial mound.' In a previous lifetime, a year ago, Miss Narcissism would have shouted at any noisy kid getting in the way of her all over sun tan but Roisin coming into her life had changed all that. She still remembered the feel of her bare feet on the promenade, and the sun on her back as Niamh had reached out to hold Cassie's shapely hand in her tiny fingers. She could remember a feeling of carefree innocent tenderness as the wind whipped her tousled hair and looking sideways at Roisin brilliantly smiling back at her. At Niamh's age, she had been a spoilt sulky brat who complained when the slightest grain of sand got between her toes and loudly insisted her parents dust off her feet and put her shoes back on. Now she had revisited the childhood that she had never had and had felt free with not a care in the world.
"You're Mrs Connor's friend?" the polite elderly woman at the next breakfast table asked her and Cassie smiled equally politely and said 'yes.' They talked about the weather like traditional British holiday makers always did. Again, this restraint was new to Cassie who, from her early teens, had liked to shock and outrage that very conventional middle class respectability that she was now dabbling with.
At nighttime, when the children were in bed, it was a different story but the hotel was blissfully ignorant of the nights of blissful lovemaking when Cassie could savour the texture and feel of Roisin's body and eventually lie there exhausted in a tangle of sheets, her body wrapped round Roisin, feeling totally and blissfully satisfied with her lover.
This August was different as the hoped for second holiday had had to be cancelled when the news of the trial came up. Roisin had originally approached Aiden to look after the children but Aiden had acted like a spoilt brat and had turned Roisin down flat.
"If you think that I'm going to put myself out while you live in sin with 'that woman' (as Aiden continued to refer to Cassie) and if you want me to look after the children for you then you're mistaken. I don't care what reason it's for. Both me and my mother think that we would be aiding and abetting a sinful relationship and I stand fast to the principles that I was born into. Until the Pope himself blesses this, I won't even hear of it. You took the children away from me and now you're going to have to lie in your unclean sinful bed."
"But Aiden, you're their father." Roisin pleaded to Aiden's unhearing immovable pigheaded back.
Eventually Roisin had lost her temper and stalked out of the house for the very last time, driving off in a cloud of angry exhaust smoke. She realised that if Aiden was going to cut himself off from the sort of contact with his children that might have humanised him, she would have to try her mother instead. She had only tried Aiden first to give him one last chance and because he was younger and fitter than her mother. She had thought that paying child support wasn't enough until she realised that that was as far as he would ever commit himself to. Aiden had had his last chance, as the children were happier now with her and Cassie than they had been with Aiden.
"I'm getting older, Roisin love," her mother's lilting voice doubtfully replied and children's ways are not really mine any more but if it will help you and Cassie, I'll do it. But Michael and Niamh will have to be on their best behaviour." her mother Mary ended firmly.
"Oh God bless you, mother." Roisin's brilliant grateful smile and arms flung round her mother's neck and thanked her profusely. It struck her even though initially her mother had reservations about her relationship with Cassie, she had agreed to meet Cassie and had been won over. She was from a generation up from both her and Aiden and, on the face of it, most likely to be totally disapproving.
"What my neighbours think about you and Cassie is my problem, not yours, and it isn't one anyway," she had said to Roisin. Roisin was her daughter and family came first, her mother reasoned.
"You do understand, children," Cassie had explained to the two disappointed faces who had been pestering them both for where they were going on holiday. Cassie had discovered an ability that she never knew she had in delivering that sort of bad news and treating them like grown ups "Your mother and I were nearly burnt in the fire at Larkhall
if she hadn't got the guts to get us to push the Governor on a trolley out of the fire. That's how we got out early and we want to help our friends."
"But Gran's house is boring," Michael had complained. "She's always getting us up early and getting us to do 'jobs round the house' because it is 'good for us.' And saying grace at mealtimes."
"You can't always get what you want, Michael." Niamh rebuked the younger boy. "Even if Gran is sometimes old fashioned."
And Cassie, temperamentally all for the voice of rebellion, found herself to her horror echoing the sort of grown up phrases that Niamh had said and remembered she had always despised in her own mother and swore that she would never say when she got older.
"Gran is very kind to look after you both. It's the only way we are sure you are looked after and loved." Roisin's gentle voice finished the matter. At least the children were won round and not just given their marching orders as Aiden used to do.
There were compensations however as Cassie had topped up her suntan just nicely at Yvonne's luxurious house. She could take very much to lying on poolside recliners as a living, sipping a pina colada from Yvonne's very extensive bar, chatting to Lauren and have a break from children. Even from her experience of the high life, Yvonne's place was one to wallow in shameless luxury and was a holiday in itself. It was a pity that, with neighbours like they had, that sunbathing topless in the back garden at home was a no no as one of the inevitable compromises she recognised she was forced to make. The only thing she was careful of for the future was never to go out on a pub crawl with Lauren as she knew that Lauren could drink her under the table. She remembered waking up in Lauren's bed with a very painful hangover that split her skull the next day the last time she did that. Lauren was very kind to keep everyone away from her room and give her a chance of sleeping it all off.
In the past, Cassie was the ultimate 'life is a non stop party' woman. That had changed as she had with responsibility. However, in the rare moments when that responsibility had been taken off her shoulders, that same zest for life was still there, all the more precious as the time to indulge that side of her was strictly limited these days.
"You know, Roisin, I can still remember lying in a drunken stupor in Lauren's bed, I was thinking we were still sharing a cell at Larkhall and Karen Betts was shouting for lights out." Cassie was explaining as Roisin expertly diced the carrots and onions for a spaghetti bolognese. "Couldn't we have a takeaway pizza?" Cassie whined pathetically ."I'm hungry."
"What, and have you go on and on the next day about getting fat, Cassie Tyler."Roisin laughed."I'd get more Catholic guilt from you than a whole churchful of confessions about 'if only I hadn't eaten that pizza and my clothes don't fit.' You with your skinny body as well. If you want to show off at Yvonne's swimming pool, you'll have to not give in to sin and human weakness" Roisin said playfully.
"That reminds me of Karen Betts," Cassie said, smirking. "Sin and human weakness."
"And just what do you mean by that remark, Cassie Tyler. I know that you couldn't take your eyes off her." Roisin said a little warily.
"That is me just admiring the female body as always" Cassie smiled smugly and disarmingly."It's just that I think that there is a little something going on between her and Yvonne, with all that hand holding in court."
"I can't believe that, Cassie."Roisin answered disbelievingly."Karen Betts was stopping Yvonne from saying something she would later regret.in any case, Karen Betts is just a….just a ……."
"Normal straight woman,"Cassie teasingly helped her to finish the sentence. "You used to be one yourself , Roisin. I must admit when we started working together you kept up a pretty good act for a long time…….right up till the first time we made love." Cassie finished with a wicked smile.
Roisin shook her head, trying to get her head round this one. She could still remember Yvonne's incredulous look when, long ago in Larkhall, she told Yvonne that Cassie fancied her.
"This affects me, how?" Yvonne had said with total incomprehension. Yvonne Atkins has a reputation of not only being straight but flaunting it as well. As for Karen Betts, her personal life was a closed book. All she knew of her was that she had a son, that she used to live with Fenner and, in court, it came out that she had a relationship with Ritchie Atkins. Surely the woman was straight, for God's sake. They were just being friendly.
"You mark my words, Roisin Connor, Karen Betts and Yvonne Atkins will be shagging before long….even if they don't know it. All the signs are there."
Fenner glugged a stiff shot of whisky straight from the bottle that he bought from the takeaway. He needed that to get over the day's events. It had been an up and a down day.
He wasn't sure who he hated most, Merriman for making such a total fool out of him, Atkins for being Atkins and threatening him, that barrister bitch for taking the piss out of him and, far worse, in throwing his well meaning offer in his face as if he intended to rape her, for God's sake. Still he'd seen that shitstabber Grayling squirm and look a total tit and that was worth something. He did feel a bit uncomfortable to see that Atkins daughter glare at him so much, can't think why as he'd done nothing to harm her. Still, his fun was over, it was back to work covering for Betts who's still swanning around at the Old Bailey while the rest of the lads are slaving away.
It's back to normal tomorrow as his contact with the trial is going to be second hand from what he hears from Di Barking and Sylvia who'll see all the fun. Atkins and Merriman will be banged up for life if good Old British Justice takes its course. He'll look forward to laughing at Merriman every day of her jail sentence, whimpering over lover boy in his wheelchair far away from her. Some male nick will have the Godmother and that vicious daughter of hers causing all sorts of trouble on visiting day and not Larkhall.
Anyway, looks like his lovelife is looking up what with that new Prison Officer Selina. He could do with a regular bird he can shag on the inside when it suits him. She's a good listener and seems to be taking in his chat up line and, as someone new to the job, she needs an old hand to guide her and enable her to feel her feet. He'll help her sort out with her problems in dealing with that dyke bitch Yates and help bring her to heel.
All in all, Fenner figured out that he'd been taking too many chances recently and that he'd been gambling with danger too much. All he wants is a quiet life, to finally get his suit and let things lick over nice and easy. Life in a women's nick can be a nice comfy routine like it used to be for years . Let the psycho bitches like Dockley and Atkins piss off elsewhere and allow him to enjoy the good life.
John Deed reeled back to his chambers and fumbled his way round the little bureau in the corner. He ripped two Paracetamol and Codeine tablets out of the packet and gulped them down with a double measure of sherry, popped a Schubert cassette on and slumped into a recliner. All this was done with a desperate need for the combined 'calm down' remedies that he knew of in one concentrated dose. That was enough to tell him that he was set to preside over an exhausting trial. Normally after a day in the court, he was content to employ just one of these measures, certainly not all of them in one go. It took fairly soon for the thumping headache to gradually fade away and his posture, lying far back and staring at the dim light helped him to struggle upwards towards the light like a diver, deep down in the dark waters. It was that impossible infuriating woman George and her continual interruptions that caused it all. Why in heaven had the Fates chosen to play a malicious practical joke on him and steer her into his professional life? Hadn't she got some lucrative commercial case to engage her lust for money than this case? In the end, the soothing strains of the Schubert piece calmed his nerves, the solo violin, dancing its way across the musical scales like a fly performing aerobatics over a sunlit river bank in the brilliant sunlight. John Deed's breathing became slow and even and serene. Just how he would be at the end of the week, he could not even begin to imagine.
In contrast to the cool still darkness of the Old Bailey, an atmosphere to which Cassie and Roisin were becoming accustomed, a strong chill wind was whipping down the streets as dark storm clouds like some invading army, were starting to blot out the blue sunlight from earlier on. If it weren't for the trial, Cassie and Roisin would have packed suitcases and taken Michael and Niamh to the seaside, complete with buckets and spades, like they had done last Easter break.
"Get me, Miss Out Lesbian single woman doing the family holiday routine," Cassie had first thought laughing to herself as she had patiently permitted the laughing children to shovel fresh damp sand to cover up Cassie's legs and 'bury her' and build sandcastles on the 'burial mound.' In a previous lifetime, a year ago, Miss Narcissism would have shouted at any noisy kid getting in the way of her all over sun tan but Roisin coming into her life had changed all that. She still remembered the feel of her bare feet on the promenade, and the sun on her back as Niamh had reached out to hold Cassie's shapely hand in her tiny fingers. She could remember a feeling of carefree innocent tenderness as the wind whipped her tousled hair and looking sideways at Roisin brilliantly smiling back at her. At Niamh's age, she had been a spoilt sulky brat who complained when the slightest grain of sand got between her toes and loudly insisted her parents dust off her feet and put her shoes back on. Now she had revisited the childhood that she had never had and had felt free with not a care in the world.
"You're Mrs Connor's friend?" the polite elderly woman at the next breakfast table asked her and Cassie smiled equally politely and said 'yes.' They talked about the weather like traditional British holiday makers always did. Again, this restraint was new to Cassie who, from her early teens, had liked to shock and outrage that very conventional middle class respectability that she was now dabbling with.
At nighttime, when the children were in bed, it was a different story but the hotel was blissfully ignorant of the nights of blissful lovemaking when Cassie could savour the texture and feel of Roisin's body and eventually lie there exhausted in a tangle of sheets, her body wrapped round Roisin, feeling totally and blissfully satisfied with her lover.
This August was different as the hoped for second holiday had had to be cancelled when the news of the trial came up. Roisin had originally approached Aiden to look after the children but Aiden had acted like a spoilt brat and had turned Roisin down flat.
"If you think that I'm going to put myself out while you live in sin with 'that woman' (as Aiden continued to refer to Cassie) and if you want me to look after the children for you then you're mistaken. I don't care what reason it's for. Both me and my mother think that we would be aiding and abetting a sinful relationship and I stand fast to the principles that I was born into. Until the Pope himself blesses this, I won't even hear of it. You took the children away from me and now you're going to have to lie in your unclean sinful bed."
"But Aiden, you're their father." Roisin pleaded to Aiden's unhearing immovable pigheaded back.
Eventually Roisin had lost her temper and stalked out of the house for the very last time, driving off in a cloud of angry exhaust smoke. She realised that if Aiden was going to cut himself off from the sort of contact with his children that might have humanised him, she would have to try her mother instead. She had only tried Aiden first to give him one last chance and because he was younger and fitter than her mother. She had thought that paying child support wasn't enough until she realised that that was as far as he would ever commit himself to. Aiden had had his last chance, as the children were happier now with her and Cassie than they had been with Aiden.
"I'm getting older, Roisin love," her mother's lilting voice doubtfully replied and children's ways are not really mine any more but if it will help you and Cassie, I'll do it. But Michael and Niamh will have to be on their best behaviour." her mother Mary ended firmly.
"Oh God bless you, mother." Roisin's brilliant grateful smile and arms flung round her mother's neck and thanked her profusely. It struck her even though initially her mother had reservations about her relationship with Cassie, she had agreed to meet Cassie and had been won over. She was from a generation up from both her and Aiden and, on the face of it, most likely to be totally disapproving.
"What my neighbours think about you and Cassie is my problem, not yours, and it isn't one anyway," she had said to Roisin. Roisin was her daughter and family came first, her mother reasoned.
"You do understand, children," Cassie had explained to the two disappointed faces who had been pestering them both for where they were going on holiday. Cassie had discovered an ability that she never knew she had in delivering that sort of bad news and treating them like grown ups "Your mother and I were nearly burnt in the fire at Larkhall
if she hadn't got the guts to get us to push the Governor on a trolley out of the fire. That's how we got out early and we want to help our friends."
"But Gran's house is boring," Michael had complained. "She's always getting us up early and getting us to do 'jobs round the house' because it is 'good for us.' And saying grace at mealtimes."
"You can't always get what you want, Michael." Niamh rebuked the younger boy. "Even if Gran is sometimes old fashioned."
And Cassie, temperamentally all for the voice of rebellion, found herself to her horror echoing the sort of grown up phrases that Niamh had said and remembered she had always despised in her own mother and swore that she would never say when she got older.
"Gran is very kind to look after you both. It's the only way we are sure you are looked after and loved." Roisin's gentle voice finished the matter. At least the children were won round and not just given their marching orders as Aiden used to do.
There were compensations however as Cassie had topped up her suntan just nicely at Yvonne's luxurious house. She could take very much to lying on poolside recliners as a living, sipping a pina colada from Yvonne's very extensive bar, chatting to Lauren and have a break from children. Even from her experience of the high life, Yvonne's place was one to wallow in shameless luxury and was a holiday in itself. It was a pity that, with neighbours like they had, that sunbathing topless in the back garden at home was a no no as one of the inevitable compromises she recognised she was forced to make. The only thing she was careful of for the future was never to go out on a pub crawl with Lauren as she knew that Lauren could drink her under the table. She remembered waking up in Lauren's bed with a very painful hangover that split her skull the next day the last time she did that. Lauren was very kind to keep everyone away from her room and give her a chance of sleeping it all off.
In the past, Cassie was the ultimate 'life is a non stop party' woman. That had changed as she had with responsibility. However, in the rare moments when that responsibility had been taken off her shoulders, that same zest for life was still there, all the more precious as the time to indulge that side of her was strictly limited these days.
"You know, Roisin, I can still remember lying in a drunken stupor in Lauren's bed, I was thinking we were still sharing a cell at Larkhall and Karen Betts was shouting for lights out." Cassie was explaining as Roisin expertly diced the carrots and onions for a spaghetti bolognese. "Couldn't we have a takeaway pizza?" Cassie whined pathetically ."I'm hungry."
"What, and have you go on and on the next day about getting fat, Cassie Tyler."Roisin laughed."I'd get more Catholic guilt from you than a whole churchful of confessions about 'if only I hadn't eaten that pizza and my clothes don't fit.' You with your skinny body as well. If you want to show off at Yvonne's swimming pool, you'll have to not give in to sin and human weakness" Roisin said playfully.
"That reminds me of Karen Betts," Cassie said, smirking. "Sin and human weakness."
"And just what do you mean by that remark, Cassie Tyler. I know that you couldn't take your eyes off her." Roisin said a little warily.
"That is me just admiring the female body as always" Cassie smiled smugly and disarmingly."It's just that I think that there is a little something going on between her and Yvonne, with all that hand holding in court."
"I can't believe that, Cassie."Roisin answered disbelievingly."Karen Betts was stopping Yvonne from saying something she would later regret.in any case, Karen Betts is just a….just a ……."
"Normal straight woman,"Cassie teasingly helped her to finish the sentence. "You used to be one yourself , Roisin. I must admit when we started working together you kept up a pretty good act for a long time…….right up till the first time we made love." Cassie finished with a wicked smile.
Roisin shook her head, trying to get her head round this one. She could still remember Yvonne's incredulous look when, long ago in Larkhall, she told Yvonne that Cassie fancied her.
"This affects me, how?" Yvonne had said with total incomprehension. Yvonne Atkins has a reputation of not only being straight but flaunting it as well. As for Karen Betts, her personal life was a closed book. All she knew of her was that she had a son, that she used to live with Fenner and, in court, it came out that she had a relationship with Ritchie Atkins. Surely the woman was straight, for God's sake. They were just being friendly.
"You mark my words, Roisin Connor, Karen Betts and Yvonne Atkins will be shagging before long….even if they don't know it. All the signs are there."
Fenner glugged a stiff shot of whisky straight from the bottle that he bought from the takeaway. He needed that to get over the day's events. It had been an up and a down day.
He wasn't sure who he hated most, Merriman for making such a total fool out of him, Atkins for being Atkins and threatening him, that barrister bitch for taking the piss out of him and, far worse, in throwing his well meaning offer in his face as if he intended to rape her, for God's sake. Still he'd seen that shitstabber Grayling squirm and look a total tit and that was worth something. He did feel a bit uncomfortable to see that Atkins daughter glare at him so much, can't think why as he'd done nothing to harm her. Still, his fun was over, it was back to work covering for Betts who's still swanning around at the Old Bailey while the rest of the lads are slaving away.
It's back to normal tomorrow as his contact with the trial is going to be second hand from what he hears from Di Barking and Sylvia who'll see all the fun. Atkins and Merriman will be banged up for life if good Old British Justice takes its course. He'll look forward to laughing at Merriman every day of her jail sentence, whimpering over lover boy in his wheelchair far away from her. Some male nick will have the Godmother and that vicious daughter of hers causing all sorts of trouble on visiting day and not Larkhall.
Anyway, looks like his lovelife is looking up what with that new Prison Officer Selina. He could do with a regular bird he can shag on the inside when it suits him. She's a good listener and seems to be taking in his chat up line and, as someone new to the job, she needs an old hand to guide her and enable her to feel her feet. He'll help her sort out with her problems in dealing with that dyke bitch Yates and help bring her to heel.
All in all, Fenner figured out that he'd been taking too many chances recently and that he'd been gambling with danger too much. All he wants is a quiet life, to finally get his suit and let things lick over nice and easy. Life in a women's nick can be a nice comfy routine like it used to be for years . Let the psycho bitches like Dockley and Atkins piss off elsewhere and allow him to enjoy the good life.
John Deed reeled back to his chambers and fumbled his way round the little bureau in the corner. He ripped two Paracetamol and Codeine tablets out of the packet and gulped them down with a double measure of sherry, popped a Schubert cassette on and slumped into a recliner. All this was done with a desperate need for the combined 'calm down' remedies that he knew of in one concentrated dose. That was enough to tell him that he was set to preside over an exhausting trial. Normally after a day in the court, he was content to employ just one of these measures, certainly not all of them in one go. It took fairly soon for the thumping headache to gradually fade away and his posture, lying far back and staring at the dim light helped him to struggle upwards towards the light like a diver, deep down in the dark waters. It was that impossible infuriating woman George and her continual interruptions that caused it all. Why in heaven had the Fates chosen to play a malicious practical joke on him and steer her into his professional life? Hadn't she got some lucrative commercial case to engage her lust for money than this case? In the end, the soothing strains of the Schubert piece calmed his nerves, the solo violin, dancing its way across the musical scales like a fly performing aerobatics over a sunlit river bank in the brilliant sunlight. John Deed's breathing became slow and even and serene. Just how he would be at the end of the week, he could not even begin to imagine.