Part Eighty Two
Immediately after putting the phone down after her conversation with Yvonne, Karen reached inside her handbag for a cigarette. She knew she really ought to cut down her smoking but she resolved that she would delay that good resolution till the next day as she always promised she would one day. This was an emergency and so she could justify it this time.
As the first trail of cigarette smoke wafted away into the room, she could hear the Scottish lilt of Helen's voice telling her that 'You're too close to the situation, Karen. You can't see it' echoing and re-echoing round in her mind as if Helen were here in the same room with her. As she heard the voice in her head, it expressed a real understanding and kindness and patience . It was her own stupidity and blindness that drove Helen to give up on her. She banished that train of thought as this was an invitation to replay the same stuck record endlessly and to never move forward in her life.
She inhaled deeply and then reached for the phone. She pressed the numbers on her phone to call up Helen. She knew by gut instinct that if she gave herself too much time for reflection, she wouldn't be able to pluck up the courage to phone the one person she was most nervous of contacting.
"Hi it's Helen." That well remembered voice made Karen jump a bit.
"I bet you didn't expect to hear from me after all these months, Helen." Her own mellow tones took Helen by surprise. There was an edgy nervous humour in it that made Helen count to five before thinking of instinctively blasting off at Karen.
"Hmm, you've certainly got that one right." Helen's voice shifted to a very wary neutral tone of voice. "You wouldn't be thinking by any chance of getting me to change my mind at the last minute about appearing in court for you. You ought to know me better than that."
"This is absolutely the last reason why I'm phoning you, Helen," Karen said with total bluntness and sincerity. "I've got a lot of apologising to do to you and if I had a choice, I would sooner do it to your face. As I know you would need a lot of persuading to agree to see me because of the lousy way I've treated you in the past, the next best way is over the phone. For a start, I wanted to apologise for my barrister Jo Mills trying to get you to agree to be a witness without my knowledge when if I had been asked, I would have said that there was not a cat's chance in hell of you doing it."
Helen hesitated a while before answering. Karen was certainly being utterly frank about the matter and she had to respect that.
"I have to say that I was pretty angry in her phoning me up out of the blue like that and I assumed that you put her up to it. I did think that you had a hell of a nerve," Came Helen's response, her quick temper already audibly subsiding. "However," and Helen's tone of voice became softer, more reflective. "Your barrister stated her case very persuasively and is a highly intelligent woman . I had every reason to refuse to help you at all but she persuaded me to tell her as much as I know about my time at Larkhall and it wasn't so frightening once I got into it. Strangely enough, she has done me a favour in at least getting me to look back on that time with fresh eyes. I had blocked everything out of my mind but it was all still there, festering below the surface. It's strange but I work as a psychologist now and here's me, dealing with other problems and I couldn't deal with my own. I kept on having nightmares and Nikki was getting worried about me ."
"I really hope you don't blame her for jumping the gun in talking to you like that. She meant well……" said Karen, eager to excuse not only herself but Jo Mills.
"That's not necessarily enough, Karen," interposed Helen gently. "When I first came to Larkhall, I was aflame with burning energy to transform Larkhall with a one woman crusade and look what happened, my anti drugs crusade was a total disaster for a start."
"Have you changed that much, Helen? I can imagine that your focus of your crusading has been changed to heal the mentally troubled," Karen joked nervously.
"Well, I do work ridiculously long hours," Helen admitted.
"You don't change, Helen.." Karen said with real warmth and affection in her voice.
"What I wanted to go on and say is that Jo Mills is one of the good ones. I've been in court before as Wing Governor and I could tell the sort of barrister a mile away who is only doing it for legal aid money. She's different. She cares."
"You sound like you're talking about someone else as well," Karen said softly.
At that point, Jo's words about Nikki and Helen drifted back into her mind as she still tried to get her head round what Jo had told her. There were a whole set of past images that she had had of Helen when reality had existed elsewhere. The conversation drifted away into a natural silence until Karen's thoughts found their voice.
"Jo told me about you and Nikki. Believe it or not, he told me exactly the same only he didn't put it as delicately. This has got to be the first time that he actually told me the truth and I didn't believe it."
"I bet he was angry. No one is more self righteous than the habitual liar on the only time that he is telling the truth. That's him all over. And see if you can guess who I was having nightmares about."
"Fenner," Karen said shortly.
" Hey, Karen, I have never heard you call him by that name before. It was always Jim Fenner," Helen asked in a note of friendly surprise.
"Times have changed, Helen. It all started from that night he raped me and I finally got myself a mind that I could call my own and not something that was taken over by that smooth lying poisonous voice and thinking his thoughts for me. Strangely enough, I heard the last words you ever said to warn me about Fenner going round and round in my head as I prepared to make a run for it. A lot has changed in my life since the last time you saw me, hopefully for the better."
"No going back to a man like him, eh Karen."
"Not till hell freezes over," Karen said emphatically. It was on the tip of her tongue to say 'no going back to men at all' but she was still struggling with the image of Helen as she knew her at the time she last saw her and trying to bring an image of both of them up to present. "I was at court as a witness to testify against a female prisoner called Snowball Merriman and Ritchie Atkins who, together, set a bomb off at Larkhall and Fenner was trying to blackmail me by threatening me into covering up for him about the way he'd let that cow wind him round her little finger."
"The evil bastard!" Exclaimed Helen with passion.
"Steady, Helen, if you carry on this way, you'll talk yourself into standing up in court for me like Joan of Arc against the defending council," Laughed Karen.
"Have I really got that sort of a reputation?" Wondered Helen aloud.
"Do I really have to answer that question?"
"So, talking about questions, what's this I hear about you and Yvonne, eh? You're a dark horse.." Helen's friendly mocking voice teased her.
"It takes one to know another, Helen," Came Karen's blunt rejoinder. "The PO's room was an endless source of gossip as to who was going to be the new man in your life after Sean. At one point, Di Barker was banging on forever about you and Dominic."
Helen laughed heartily at that one.
"I know that he had ideas that way. He was a nice boy but not my type. He was a good friend to me and good friends are hard to come by and you need to stick to them like glue."
"I know that one, Helen," Karen replied evenly, thinking of Cassie and Roisin and, who knows in time, Lauren. "but there's nothing like having your dream lover though, the sort that you read about in the magazines or some such thing as I remember in some old pop song of my youth."
"Hey, get Karen Betts coming over all romantic." Helen laughed down the phone at her. Karen's voice was layered over with irony and Helen could visualise the raised eyebrow that went with it. Despite it, she sensed that her feelings for Yvonne were very real. "I never thought that there was a romantic bone in your body."
"Don't tell Yvonne that though or she'll kill me and I'll never forgive you," Karen's very decided tones mock-scolded her.
"You can't tell me what to do, Karen Betts. Remember I used to be your boss."
"Don't I just know that," came the snappy reply with an exaggerated sigh.
"It's funny, Karen. I've been operating on the thoughts of the Karen Betts that I thought I knew…"
"Yeah, with a lousy taste in men. If there was a crowd full of men, I used to pick out the one real bastard, at the very back of the room."
"Well times have changed for both you and me. If I've got it right, you've got a partner who'll be there for you and will tell you the blunt truth instead of a load of bullshit. I know, because I've got Nikki," Helen said on a more serious, affectionate note. "You do understand why I can't go with you to the barricades on this one. It's not just that times have changed but it's just too dangerous for me."
"I know Helen. I know that you'll be there in spirit with us all when we finally nail the bastard."
"I won't promise that we'll be thinking of you all the time as we have our own future but Nikki and I will be around somewhere out there."
"That's as much as I can ask of you both."
Immediately after putting the phone down after her conversation with Yvonne, Karen reached inside her handbag for a cigarette. She knew she really ought to cut down her smoking but she resolved that she would delay that good resolution till the next day as she always promised she would one day. This was an emergency and so she could justify it this time.
As the first trail of cigarette smoke wafted away into the room, she could hear the Scottish lilt of Helen's voice telling her that 'You're too close to the situation, Karen. You can't see it' echoing and re-echoing round in her mind as if Helen were here in the same room with her. As she heard the voice in her head, it expressed a real understanding and kindness and patience . It was her own stupidity and blindness that drove Helen to give up on her. She banished that train of thought as this was an invitation to replay the same stuck record endlessly and to never move forward in her life.
She inhaled deeply and then reached for the phone. She pressed the numbers on her phone to call up Helen. She knew by gut instinct that if she gave herself too much time for reflection, she wouldn't be able to pluck up the courage to phone the one person she was most nervous of contacting.
"Hi it's Helen." That well remembered voice made Karen jump a bit.
"I bet you didn't expect to hear from me after all these months, Helen." Her own mellow tones took Helen by surprise. There was an edgy nervous humour in it that made Helen count to five before thinking of instinctively blasting off at Karen.
"Hmm, you've certainly got that one right." Helen's voice shifted to a very wary neutral tone of voice. "You wouldn't be thinking by any chance of getting me to change my mind at the last minute about appearing in court for you. You ought to know me better than that."
"This is absolutely the last reason why I'm phoning you, Helen," Karen said with total bluntness and sincerity. "I've got a lot of apologising to do to you and if I had a choice, I would sooner do it to your face. As I know you would need a lot of persuading to agree to see me because of the lousy way I've treated you in the past, the next best way is over the phone. For a start, I wanted to apologise for my barrister Jo Mills trying to get you to agree to be a witness without my knowledge when if I had been asked, I would have said that there was not a cat's chance in hell of you doing it."
Helen hesitated a while before answering. Karen was certainly being utterly frank about the matter and she had to respect that.
"I have to say that I was pretty angry in her phoning me up out of the blue like that and I assumed that you put her up to it. I did think that you had a hell of a nerve," Came Helen's response, her quick temper already audibly subsiding. "However," and Helen's tone of voice became softer, more reflective. "Your barrister stated her case very persuasively and is a highly intelligent woman . I had every reason to refuse to help you at all but she persuaded me to tell her as much as I know about my time at Larkhall and it wasn't so frightening once I got into it. Strangely enough, she has done me a favour in at least getting me to look back on that time with fresh eyes. I had blocked everything out of my mind but it was all still there, festering below the surface. It's strange but I work as a psychologist now and here's me, dealing with other problems and I couldn't deal with my own. I kept on having nightmares and Nikki was getting worried about me ."
"I really hope you don't blame her for jumping the gun in talking to you like that. She meant well……" said Karen, eager to excuse not only herself but Jo Mills.
"That's not necessarily enough, Karen," interposed Helen gently. "When I first came to Larkhall, I was aflame with burning energy to transform Larkhall with a one woman crusade and look what happened, my anti drugs crusade was a total disaster for a start."
"Have you changed that much, Helen? I can imagine that your focus of your crusading has been changed to heal the mentally troubled," Karen joked nervously.
"Well, I do work ridiculously long hours," Helen admitted.
"You don't change, Helen.." Karen said with real warmth and affection in her voice.
"What I wanted to go on and say is that Jo Mills is one of the good ones. I've been in court before as Wing Governor and I could tell the sort of barrister a mile away who is only doing it for legal aid money. She's different. She cares."
"You sound like you're talking about someone else as well," Karen said softly.
At that point, Jo's words about Nikki and Helen drifted back into her mind as she still tried to get her head round what Jo had told her. There were a whole set of past images that she had had of Helen when reality had existed elsewhere. The conversation drifted away into a natural silence until Karen's thoughts found their voice.
"Jo told me about you and Nikki. Believe it or not, he told me exactly the same only he didn't put it as delicately. This has got to be the first time that he actually told me the truth and I didn't believe it."
"I bet he was angry. No one is more self righteous than the habitual liar on the only time that he is telling the truth. That's him all over. And see if you can guess who I was having nightmares about."
"Fenner," Karen said shortly.
" Hey, Karen, I have never heard you call him by that name before. It was always Jim Fenner," Helen asked in a note of friendly surprise.
"Times have changed, Helen. It all started from that night he raped me and I finally got myself a mind that I could call my own and not something that was taken over by that smooth lying poisonous voice and thinking his thoughts for me. Strangely enough, I heard the last words you ever said to warn me about Fenner going round and round in my head as I prepared to make a run for it. A lot has changed in my life since the last time you saw me, hopefully for the better."
"No going back to a man like him, eh Karen."
"Not till hell freezes over," Karen said emphatically. It was on the tip of her tongue to say 'no going back to men at all' but she was still struggling with the image of Helen as she knew her at the time she last saw her and trying to bring an image of both of them up to present. "I was at court as a witness to testify against a female prisoner called Snowball Merriman and Ritchie Atkins who, together, set a bomb off at Larkhall and Fenner was trying to blackmail me by threatening me into covering up for him about the way he'd let that cow wind him round her little finger."
"The evil bastard!" Exclaimed Helen with passion.
"Steady, Helen, if you carry on this way, you'll talk yourself into standing up in court for me like Joan of Arc against the defending council," Laughed Karen.
"Have I really got that sort of a reputation?" Wondered Helen aloud.
"Do I really have to answer that question?"
"So, talking about questions, what's this I hear about you and Yvonne, eh? You're a dark horse.." Helen's friendly mocking voice teased her.
"It takes one to know another, Helen," Came Karen's blunt rejoinder. "The PO's room was an endless source of gossip as to who was going to be the new man in your life after Sean. At one point, Di Barker was banging on forever about you and Dominic."
Helen laughed heartily at that one.
"I know that he had ideas that way. He was a nice boy but not my type. He was a good friend to me and good friends are hard to come by and you need to stick to them like glue."
"I know that one, Helen," Karen replied evenly, thinking of Cassie and Roisin and, who knows in time, Lauren. "but there's nothing like having your dream lover though, the sort that you read about in the magazines or some such thing as I remember in some old pop song of my youth."
"Hey, get Karen Betts coming over all romantic." Helen laughed down the phone at her. Karen's voice was layered over with irony and Helen could visualise the raised eyebrow that went with it. Despite it, she sensed that her feelings for Yvonne were very real. "I never thought that there was a romantic bone in your body."
"Don't tell Yvonne that though or she'll kill me and I'll never forgive you," Karen's very decided tones mock-scolded her.
"You can't tell me what to do, Karen Betts. Remember I used to be your boss."
"Don't I just know that," came the snappy reply with an exaggerated sigh.
"It's funny, Karen. I've been operating on the thoughts of the Karen Betts that I thought I knew…"
"Yeah, with a lousy taste in men. If there was a crowd full of men, I used to pick out the one real bastard, at the very back of the room."
"Well times have changed for both you and me. If I've got it right, you've got a partner who'll be there for you and will tell you the blunt truth instead of a load of bullshit. I know, because I've got Nikki," Helen said on a more serious, affectionate note. "You do understand why I can't go with you to the barricades on this one. It's not just that times have changed but it's just too dangerous for me."
"I know Helen. I know that you'll be there in spirit with us all when we finally nail the bastard."
"I won't promise that we'll be thinking of you all the time as we have our own future but Nikki and I will be around somewhere out there."
"That's as much as I can ask of you both."