Part One Hundred and Ten
It was an ordinary Sunday for Nikki and Helen, the same dreamily pleasant day when they had all the time in the world with each other. Helen had watched "The Heaven and Earth Show" first thing, a borderline religious programme which she was interested in. Outside, the changeable autumn weather had piled high dark threatening clouds which half blotted out the sunshine and a stinging squall of blustery wind threw raindrops against the bedroom window. It sounded cold and blustery as winter was definitely setting in. Nikki had lain in bed till a bit later until she felt more comfortable to face the day after an early morning cigarette. After a busy night at the club, she hadn't had any natural inclination to greet the early morning sunshine like a member of the same ancient order of Druids. Let those who like it and let her enjoy her early morning laze in bed. They went on to have a lazy Sunday dinner of whatever was easiest to prepare and lay back, with that feeling of peace and contentment and the rest of the day to luxuriate in. It was the end of the year for gardening and the approaching winter cold made them both glad to stay inside.
"The film's on in a couple of minutes," Her carrying voice reached to the far end of the flat while Nikki was busying herself in finishing off the cleaning.
Helen had recently come out of the shower and had slipped her jeans and top back on. Her bare feet trod the soft carpet as she made her way to the armchair as she brushed her still damp hair and reached out for the TV remote control to watch the film that they wanted to immerse themselves in.
Helen had clicked on her hairdryer and its droning sound filled the flat. She had chosen the channel by feel while she concentrated on drying her hair but she had miscalculated as the image of a normal looking smart suited TV announcer appeared on the screen. She allowed him to mouth over the sound of her hair drier the news headlines until, to her huge surprise, the image of the front gates of Larkhall jumped at her from out of the TV screen.
"This isn't right. That dump doesn't belong there on the screen," Helen's thoughts flashed. Day after day for so long, she had parked her car outside those same gates, looking up briefly at those high grey walls, fixing her thoughts and her face so that she could be bright and smiling for Ken or whoever was on the gate and, there, her vision was directed through the impersonal eye of the TV camera in roughly the same perspective. The only difference was that she knew the programme would cut to the next item while her former self knew that no such editing was possible. Real life wasn't like that. So why did part of her still believe that the place was only real when the programme said so?
"Nikki, come here immediately," Helen's urgent tones rang out in total shock and horror, a split second later. "It's about Larkhall."
Nikki shot out of the bedroom to join Helen just in time for the main news item to be repeated and gone into as much depth as the bloody TV news ever did.
"Prison officer found dead!"
"Prison officer James Fenner was found dead earlier today. He was found shot in the abdomen and buried in the middle of Epping Forest. Forensic experts estimate that he has been dead for up to a week..."
A feeling of unreality blocked off the trailing comment and speculation and when the news had switched to some inane topic that wasn't worthy of consideration, both felt like banging on the TV screen to give them more answers instead of the glib one liners thrown out so authoritatively.
"Well, well, someone's finally got the bastard," Nikki said open mouthed, though her statement sounded cool and dismissive, in her mind, she felt anything but.
"I don't know what to think," Helen said slowly shaking her head. This sudden leap of events out of her past was too much to take in. "Who could have done it?"
"Well, if the police start looking for a motive for someone killing Fenner, they will have to question about half the prison population of Larkhall, past and present, and some of the decent screws, past or present, oh yes, his ex wife and people that we don't know anything about."
"You don't mean us?" Helen queried, fear in her eyes.
"Possibly, Helen. But you know from all the detective films ever made, the three questions are motive, opportunity and method. Sure, we've both got grudges against the bastard but we're both busy people and the chances are that we would be knocked off the very long list. Then again, your dream of vengeance was to run him out of the prison service with no pension and to make the prison service safe from the likes of him if I get you right. My dreams, well, while I was at Larkhall, I might at one time have cheerfully killed him, when the little matter of the appeal came up, only once was I ever tempted to wipe out old scores, him included, only you came in just in time. Since then, while you wanted to forget about that place and put it far behind you, then being your caring sharing lover, I felt the same. We passed up a chance to see the bastard get done over the legal way when Jo contacted us, remember?" Nikki concluded putting her forefinger under Helen's chin.
"You're right, Nikki," Helen smiled in relief as she put her arms round Nikki. "It's the 'policeman driving up my backside' guilt trip."
"And you're the psychologist?" Nikki asked jokingly. "I'm seriously wondering who did kill Fenner and why."
At Cassie's and Roisin's house, Roisin, being the one to keep up with the news, had clicked the TV on just before Michael and Niamh were due to clump noisily downstairs and commandeer the television for the children's afternoon programmes of fantasy cartoon figures and the latest pop news and celebrity chit chat. Cassie's main interest in the news surfaced briefly round about budget time when she sensed that the Chancellor of the Exchequer, being a mean minded covetous bastard, aimed to also make a couple of her pleasures more expensive, yet again, by raising the tax on cigarettes and alcohol. Other than that, it was an endless prattle by nobbing men in suits who had the gift of the gab in not answering a straight question being put to them. In an interview with David Frost earlier in the morning when the kids were in bed, she had seen the right honourable Minister for Trade, Neil Houghton explain that it wasn't the Government's fault that businesses were suffering from the high price of the pound, it was that the Bank of England had been allowed by the government to have total freedom to determine the level to which the pound should be set. Surely, my Right Honourable Shadow Minister for Trade had no objection to seeing the market determine the price of the pound. He explained that a strong pound could only be good for Britain and that his party were as committed to enabling a proper entrepreneurial spirit so that Britain could sell its goods abroad but at the same time, being the Party of Compassion and investing a record amount of money in health and education. It was at this point when the nobbing useless man started unreeling a whole stream of statistics that Cassie started moaning to Roisin to change the channel before the kids took over.
Roisin was about to switch channels when the news came on and Cassie gave up with a sigh and a groan. Never mind, only five minutes more and her torture would end.
"Prison officer found dead!"
"Prison officer James Fenner was found dead earlier today. He was found shot in the abdomen and buried in the middle of Epping Forest. Forensic experts estimate that he has been dead for up to a week..."
"I don't like this, Cassie. If they've found the body, it means that the police will start a manhunt. You've seen this sort of thing before on Crimewatch. Only it will be Yvonne and Lauren that they'll end up after," Roisin said, fear for their friends in their eyes.
"Oh come now, Roash," Cassie answered, trying to comfort Roisin's fears and her own. "The nobbing police are going to have to work out who hadn't got a grudge against Fenner. Think of all the years he's worked at Larkhall, hardly a convent school exactly, and all the women he's mistreated over the years, and people like Karen and they've got a huge job on their hands."
"Are you really as convinced of what you are saying as you pretend you are, Cassie Tyler or are you trying to make me feel better?" Roisin looked sharply in her direction.
Cassie shook her head to clear her thoughts, her body language betraying her own lack of confidence in her bold words.
"Sort of three quarters convinced," Cassie said, smiling at Roisin and draping her arms round Roisin's shoulders. She closed her eyes for a few moments while she collected her thoughts without interruption.
"I'm absolutely convinced that there are a lot of women that we know of who have a bigtime grudge against Fenner, some of whom would express it violently. I'm convinced that there are a whole lot of other women we don't know who feel the same, as Fenner has been around Larkhall for a long time. I'm hoping against hope that Lauren hasn't left anything incriminating behind that would link her to the murder. I'm really not sure who the police would be after, as we know a lot about Fenner that they don't know. Fact is, Roash, I haven't a clue about how much they know and I'm hoping and praying."
"You pray to God, Cassie? That will be the day," Roisin laughed.
"When we were both at Larkhall, I lay in my bunk, night after night, I prayed to God that you would stay away from the drugs. More than I prayed for anything in my life," Cassie said in a soft voice, with a real soulful intensity which uncovered her light, flip exterior.
They kissed briefly and let the announcer carry on with the rest of the news stories but nobody was hearing him.
To the absolute second, the thunder sounded as Michael and Niamh came downstairs from where they had been doing their homework and assumed their best 'children's concentration' position while Cassie and Roisin looked on tolerantly.
Somehow, an innocent everyday quality had gone out of the day although nothing had changed. At the back of both their minds was the unspoken obligation that they had to do something for their friends though quite what, they weren't entirely sure of.
The news repeated itself inescapably like some sound loop as the evening wore on. Both Nikki and Helen were driven by some horrid fascination to see the matter played out according to the best news drama shock headlines that the well oiled machine could slot into the machinery.
"I don't know how I feel about this one, Helen," Nikki said contemplatively, fingering her wine glass by its long stem. "On the one hand, I'm glad the bastard's dead and on the other hand, the search will be out for somebody who was desperate to kill him in the first place and I'm afraid for that person knowing that the chase is on."
"If I hadn't caught you in the PO's room when you were threatening Fenner, do you really think that you would or could have murdered him?" Helen suddenly turned round with one of her direct looks.
Nikki searched the back of her mind for the woman she had been. It was all so very long ago when the control over her life and others had been wrenched from her and the thousand and one things of her present life were denied to her at that time. For instance, she would not have been allowed to laze away in bed without someone controlling her life. Her exercise in menacing Fenner with the bottle that she very nearly smashed and stuck in his neck was an exercise in straight revenge but a tiny bit of it was taking back into her hands the ability to have power over her life, if only in frightening Fenner. It was almost as if she was a different woman then. Almost, but not quite.
"I really don't know, Helen. I can't give you an honest answer," Nikki said slowly. "I would like to say that killing that bastard Fenner wasn't worth wrecking my chances of getting out on appeal for both of our sakes," and here, Nikki looked round at their cosy flat and every mundane detail told her how precious her freedom was, "but I know how I felt. I just don't know if I would have actually gone that far. I don't even know if I was using my reputation to scare the shit out of him or psyching myself up to kill him. I'd sooner not want to think what might have been, Helen. It doesn't bear thinking about."
Helen wrapped her arms round Nikki who was shivering from the memory of that moment. It was a memory that she wanted to bury forever.
"Do you think it was Yvonne, Nikki?" The thought that had been plaguing both of them finally burst through into words.
"I don't know. I really don't know," Nikki said. At a moment like this, only honesty could guide her however unpalatable she might feel at the thought turned into sound.
Cassie and Roisin had to pretend to the children that there was nothing on their minds but the normal inconsequentialities of a family Sunday night when the children had to get ready for school the next day, to have a bath and freshen themselves up for an early night. The equally inconsequential TV programmes that both children watched had to be endured while they had a compulsion to see if there was any latest developments on the news. Eventually, Michael and Niamh were tucked up in bed with their goodnight kiss on the cheek and Roisin and Cassie smiled to them as they tiptoed out and closed the door quietly.
"Let's try the Channel 4 news, Cassie. It might tell us more."
They settled themselves down with the news and, this time, they resolved to watch the news one more time to see if it made more sense this time. The only difference this time was the shot of Epping Forest which looked like a standard long shot of a woodland scene on a sunny day. There was something about the news that refused to translate itself into reality however much Lauren's last visit had done so, in reality.
"What do you think we should do, Roash?" Cassie's puzzled voice asked.
"Phone Lauren and tell her that we're there for her," Roisin replied with immediate decisiveness.
After Roisin and Cassie had put the phones down, they felt a sense of personal inadequacy. Yvonne who picked up the phone was dry and businesslike as she handed the phone over to Lauren but that was perhaps to be expected from a phone call out of the blue. They were not to know about the extremely tense phone conversation between Karen and Yvonne earlier on and that Yvonne wanted to temporarily disconnect herself from the world before the world took it into its mind to come crashing through the front door in the shape of the Old Bill like the time they came to arrest her for hiring a hit man on Charlie's arch rival.
"We told you that we'd stand by you, Lauren, when we saw you last time. The fact that it's been on the nobbing news doesn't make any difference," Cassie's firm voice came over the miles to Lauren's earpiece.
"Even after it's been splashed all over the news?" Lauren asked hesitantly.
"Does that really change anything between us and you, Lauren?" Came Roisin's motherly tones in reply with all the sweetness of melted honey.
"I guess it doesn't," Lauren's slightly shaky voice answered her. She hadn't thought of it that way.
"Why don't the two of you come over next Saturday," Roisin urged. "The children are stopping at my mother's."
"Do you really mean it?" Lauren asked incredulously. At the back of her mind was the touching way they were trying to carry on as if everything was normal. They aren't fools though, they know the situation. "Do you want to come to Cassie and Roisin's next Saturday, Mum?" She said talking to Yvonne who was sitting motionless in her chair.
"No thanks, if its all the same to you," Yvonne said in an unusually subdued tone of voice. "I'll only spoil the party. But thank them from me." None of Charlie's old friends who knew Lauren since she was little have given a toss or else they would have phoned.
There was a real suppressed sense of anger for some of those wankers who would be the first to pile on the excuses if she ever felt like confronting them which, at the moment, she hadn't got the strength of will or inclination to do.
"I'll come over on my own. I'll be looking forward to it," Came Lauren's reply directed back down the phone. There was something about the situation that gave the social call an extra urgency. It might end up being her last taste of freedom unless the Atkins luck held out.
It was an ordinary Sunday for Nikki and Helen, the same dreamily pleasant day when they had all the time in the world with each other. Helen had watched "The Heaven and Earth Show" first thing, a borderline religious programme which she was interested in. Outside, the changeable autumn weather had piled high dark threatening clouds which half blotted out the sunshine and a stinging squall of blustery wind threw raindrops against the bedroom window. It sounded cold and blustery as winter was definitely setting in. Nikki had lain in bed till a bit later until she felt more comfortable to face the day after an early morning cigarette. After a busy night at the club, she hadn't had any natural inclination to greet the early morning sunshine like a member of the same ancient order of Druids. Let those who like it and let her enjoy her early morning laze in bed. They went on to have a lazy Sunday dinner of whatever was easiest to prepare and lay back, with that feeling of peace and contentment and the rest of the day to luxuriate in. It was the end of the year for gardening and the approaching winter cold made them both glad to stay inside.
"The film's on in a couple of minutes," Her carrying voice reached to the far end of the flat while Nikki was busying herself in finishing off the cleaning.
Helen had recently come out of the shower and had slipped her jeans and top back on. Her bare feet trod the soft carpet as she made her way to the armchair as she brushed her still damp hair and reached out for the TV remote control to watch the film that they wanted to immerse themselves in.
Helen had clicked on her hairdryer and its droning sound filled the flat. She had chosen the channel by feel while she concentrated on drying her hair but she had miscalculated as the image of a normal looking smart suited TV announcer appeared on the screen. She allowed him to mouth over the sound of her hair drier the news headlines until, to her huge surprise, the image of the front gates of Larkhall jumped at her from out of the TV screen.
"This isn't right. That dump doesn't belong there on the screen," Helen's thoughts flashed. Day after day for so long, she had parked her car outside those same gates, looking up briefly at those high grey walls, fixing her thoughts and her face so that she could be bright and smiling for Ken or whoever was on the gate and, there, her vision was directed through the impersonal eye of the TV camera in roughly the same perspective. The only difference was that she knew the programme would cut to the next item while her former self knew that no such editing was possible. Real life wasn't like that. So why did part of her still believe that the place was only real when the programme said so?
"Nikki, come here immediately," Helen's urgent tones rang out in total shock and horror, a split second later. "It's about Larkhall."
Nikki shot out of the bedroom to join Helen just in time for the main news item to be repeated and gone into as much depth as the bloody TV news ever did.
"Prison officer found dead!"
"Prison officer James Fenner was found dead earlier today. He was found shot in the abdomen and buried in the middle of Epping Forest. Forensic experts estimate that he has been dead for up to a week..."
A feeling of unreality blocked off the trailing comment and speculation and when the news had switched to some inane topic that wasn't worthy of consideration, both felt like banging on the TV screen to give them more answers instead of the glib one liners thrown out so authoritatively.
"Well, well, someone's finally got the bastard," Nikki said open mouthed, though her statement sounded cool and dismissive, in her mind, she felt anything but.
"I don't know what to think," Helen said slowly shaking her head. This sudden leap of events out of her past was too much to take in. "Who could have done it?"
"Well, if the police start looking for a motive for someone killing Fenner, they will have to question about half the prison population of Larkhall, past and present, and some of the decent screws, past or present, oh yes, his ex wife and people that we don't know anything about."
"You don't mean us?" Helen queried, fear in her eyes.
"Possibly, Helen. But you know from all the detective films ever made, the three questions are motive, opportunity and method. Sure, we've both got grudges against the bastard but we're both busy people and the chances are that we would be knocked off the very long list. Then again, your dream of vengeance was to run him out of the prison service with no pension and to make the prison service safe from the likes of him if I get you right. My dreams, well, while I was at Larkhall, I might at one time have cheerfully killed him, when the little matter of the appeal came up, only once was I ever tempted to wipe out old scores, him included, only you came in just in time. Since then, while you wanted to forget about that place and put it far behind you, then being your caring sharing lover, I felt the same. We passed up a chance to see the bastard get done over the legal way when Jo contacted us, remember?" Nikki concluded putting her forefinger under Helen's chin.
"You're right, Nikki," Helen smiled in relief as she put her arms round Nikki. "It's the 'policeman driving up my backside' guilt trip."
"And you're the psychologist?" Nikki asked jokingly. "I'm seriously wondering who did kill Fenner and why."
At Cassie's and Roisin's house, Roisin, being the one to keep up with the news, had clicked the TV on just before Michael and Niamh were due to clump noisily downstairs and commandeer the television for the children's afternoon programmes of fantasy cartoon figures and the latest pop news and celebrity chit chat. Cassie's main interest in the news surfaced briefly round about budget time when she sensed that the Chancellor of the Exchequer, being a mean minded covetous bastard, aimed to also make a couple of her pleasures more expensive, yet again, by raising the tax on cigarettes and alcohol. Other than that, it was an endless prattle by nobbing men in suits who had the gift of the gab in not answering a straight question being put to them. In an interview with David Frost earlier in the morning when the kids were in bed, she had seen the right honourable Minister for Trade, Neil Houghton explain that it wasn't the Government's fault that businesses were suffering from the high price of the pound, it was that the Bank of England had been allowed by the government to have total freedom to determine the level to which the pound should be set. Surely, my Right Honourable Shadow Minister for Trade had no objection to seeing the market determine the price of the pound. He explained that a strong pound could only be good for Britain and that his party were as committed to enabling a proper entrepreneurial spirit so that Britain could sell its goods abroad but at the same time, being the Party of Compassion and investing a record amount of money in health and education. It was at this point when the nobbing useless man started unreeling a whole stream of statistics that Cassie started moaning to Roisin to change the channel before the kids took over.
Roisin was about to switch channels when the news came on and Cassie gave up with a sigh and a groan. Never mind, only five minutes more and her torture would end.
"Prison officer found dead!"
"Prison officer James Fenner was found dead earlier today. He was found shot in the abdomen and buried in the middle of Epping Forest. Forensic experts estimate that he has been dead for up to a week..."
"I don't like this, Cassie. If they've found the body, it means that the police will start a manhunt. You've seen this sort of thing before on Crimewatch. Only it will be Yvonne and Lauren that they'll end up after," Roisin said, fear for their friends in their eyes.
"Oh come now, Roash," Cassie answered, trying to comfort Roisin's fears and her own. "The nobbing police are going to have to work out who hadn't got a grudge against Fenner. Think of all the years he's worked at Larkhall, hardly a convent school exactly, and all the women he's mistreated over the years, and people like Karen and they've got a huge job on their hands."
"Are you really as convinced of what you are saying as you pretend you are, Cassie Tyler or are you trying to make me feel better?" Roisin looked sharply in her direction.
Cassie shook her head to clear her thoughts, her body language betraying her own lack of confidence in her bold words.
"Sort of three quarters convinced," Cassie said, smiling at Roisin and draping her arms round Roisin's shoulders. She closed her eyes for a few moments while she collected her thoughts without interruption.
"I'm absolutely convinced that there are a lot of women that we know of who have a bigtime grudge against Fenner, some of whom would express it violently. I'm convinced that there are a whole lot of other women we don't know who feel the same, as Fenner has been around Larkhall for a long time. I'm hoping against hope that Lauren hasn't left anything incriminating behind that would link her to the murder. I'm really not sure who the police would be after, as we know a lot about Fenner that they don't know. Fact is, Roash, I haven't a clue about how much they know and I'm hoping and praying."
"You pray to God, Cassie? That will be the day," Roisin laughed.
"When we were both at Larkhall, I lay in my bunk, night after night, I prayed to God that you would stay away from the drugs. More than I prayed for anything in my life," Cassie said in a soft voice, with a real soulful intensity which uncovered her light, flip exterior.
They kissed briefly and let the announcer carry on with the rest of the news stories but nobody was hearing him.
To the absolute second, the thunder sounded as Michael and Niamh came downstairs from where they had been doing their homework and assumed their best 'children's concentration' position while Cassie and Roisin looked on tolerantly.
Somehow, an innocent everyday quality had gone out of the day although nothing had changed. At the back of both their minds was the unspoken obligation that they had to do something for their friends though quite what, they weren't entirely sure of.
The news repeated itself inescapably like some sound loop as the evening wore on. Both Nikki and Helen were driven by some horrid fascination to see the matter played out according to the best news drama shock headlines that the well oiled machine could slot into the machinery.
"I don't know how I feel about this one, Helen," Nikki said contemplatively, fingering her wine glass by its long stem. "On the one hand, I'm glad the bastard's dead and on the other hand, the search will be out for somebody who was desperate to kill him in the first place and I'm afraid for that person knowing that the chase is on."
"If I hadn't caught you in the PO's room when you were threatening Fenner, do you really think that you would or could have murdered him?" Helen suddenly turned round with one of her direct looks.
Nikki searched the back of her mind for the woman she had been. It was all so very long ago when the control over her life and others had been wrenched from her and the thousand and one things of her present life were denied to her at that time. For instance, she would not have been allowed to laze away in bed without someone controlling her life. Her exercise in menacing Fenner with the bottle that she very nearly smashed and stuck in his neck was an exercise in straight revenge but a tiny bit of it was taking back into her hands the ability to have power over her life, if only in frightening Fenner. It was almost as if she was a different woman then. Almost, but not quite.
"I really don't know, Helen. I can't give you an honest answer," Nikki said slowly. "I would like to say that killing that bastard Fenner wasn't worth wrecking my chances of getting out on appeal for both of our sakes," and here, Nikki looked round at their cosy flat and every mundane detail told her how precious her freedom was, "but I know how I felt. I just don't know if I would have actually gone that far. I don't even know if I was using my reputation to scare the shit out of him or psyching myself up to kill him. I'd sooner not want to think what might have been, Helen. It doesn't bear thinking about."
Helen wrapped her arms round Nikki who was shivering from the memory of that moment. It was a memory that she wanted to bury forever.
"Do you think it was Yvonne, Nikki?" The thought that had been plaguing both of them finally burst through into words.
"I don't know. I really don't know," Nikki said. At a moment like this, only honesty could guide her however unpalatable she might feel at the thought turned into sound.
Cassie and Roisin had to pretend to the children that there was nothing on their minds but the normal inconsequentialities of a family Sunday night when the children had to get ready for school the next day, to have a bath and freshen themselves up for an early night. The equally inconsequential TV programmes that both children watched had to be endured while they had a compulsion to see if there was any latest developments on the news. Eventually, Michael and Niamh were tucked up in bed with their goodnight kiss on the cheek and Roisin and Cassie smiled to them as they tiptoed out and closed the door quietly.
"Let's try the Channel 4 news, Cassie. It might tell us more."
They settled themselves down with the news and, this time, they resolved to watch the news one more time to see if it made more sense this time. The only difference this time was the shot of Epping Forest which looked like a standard long shot of a woodland scene on a sunny day. There was something about the news that refused to translate itself into reality however much Lauren's last visit had done so, in reality.
"What do you think we should do, Roash?" Cassie's puzzled voice asked.
"Phone Lauren and tell her that we're there for her," Roisin replied with immediate decisiveness.
After Roisin and Cassie had put the phones down, they felt a sense of personal inadequacy. Yvonne who picked up the phone was dry and businesslike as she handed the phone over to Lauren but that was perhaps to be expected from a phone call out of the blue. They were not to know about the extremely tense phone conversation between Karen and Yvonne earlier on and that Yvonne wanted to temporarily disconnect herself from the world before the world took it into its mind to come crashing through the front door in the shape of the Old Bill like the time they came to arrest her for hiring a hit man on Charlie's arch rival.
"We told you that we'd stand by you, Lauren, when we saw you last time. The fact that it's been on the nobbing news doesn't make any difference," Cassie's firm voice came over the miles to Lauren's earpiece.
"Even after it's been splashed all over the news?" Lauren asked hesitantly.
"Does that really change anything between us and you, Lauren?" Came Roisin's motherly tones in reply with all the sweetness of melted honey.
"I guess it doesn't," Lauren's slightly shaky voice answered her. She hadn't thought of it that way.
"Why don't the two of you come over next Saturday," Roisin urged. "The children are stopping at my mother's."
"Do you really mean it?" Lauren asked incredulously. At the back of her mind was the touching way they were trying to carry on as if everything was normal. They aren't fools though, they know the situation. "Do you want to come to Cassie and Roisin's next Saturday, Mum?" She said talking to Yvonne who was sitting motionless in her chair.
"No thanks, if its all the same to you," Yvonne said in an unusually subdued tone of voice. "I'll only spoil the party. But thank them from me." None of Charlie's old friends who knew Lauren since she was little have given a toss or else they would have phoned.
There was a real suppressed sense of anger for some of those wankers who would be the first to pile on the excuses if she ever felt like confronting them which, at the moment, she hadn't got the strength of will or inclination to do.
"I'll come over on my own. I'll be looking forward to it," Came Lauren's reply directed back down the phone. There was something about the situation that gave the social call an extra urgency. It might end up being her last taste of freedom unless the Atkins luck held out.