Part One Hundred and Thirty
The blustery weather outside the warmth of Lauren's car and the bareness of the criss cross winter pattern of bare branches whipping backwards and forward could never transmit the bleakness of the weather into her soul, not the way she was feeling.
Slow moving, luxuriant images floated past Lauren's dreaming mind of her weekend with Cassie and Roisin, which were irrevocably woven, into her flowering senses. For the first time in her life, she felt at ease with herself and with her body. She marvelled at the one good choice and chance in her life where she had reached out deliberately and consciously to drink of the heady sapphic sexual cocktail which half jokingly, half nervously, she had merely sipped at in the past. It made all her past life seem like some manic, fast moving charade of Atkins hardness and control. She saw her normal everyday routine as one that was powered on cranked up feelings of aggression that pulsed through her to keep control of herself and others and be in command at all times. Such a life held no sway, had no meaning for her for the gentleness and softness of the two women with whom she had shared their bed. She thought tenderly and affectionately of her two friends who had been so patient of the past crazy actions, who had been there for her and had gently and lovingly eased her half willing entry into a new life. On the second night, she was bolder in expressing her desires, in words spoken or unspoken and the lovemaking was as soft and gentle as the texture of their skins, rising naturally to a climax which made her feel as good about feeling loved as she did about making love to the others.
It was as if she had an 'out of body, out of mind' experience which had taken her to a different planet somewhere that the street tough Lauren Atkins had never been before.
Yvonne's sharp ears picked up the faint creak of the front door opening and Lauren's distinctive footsteps clicking on the tiled floor. To her surprise, the sounds made straight for her direction rather than fade away as she headed upstairs to her bedroom. The slightly dishevelled woman who carelessly flung herself onto the settee, sprawling generously across it was not the very tense, constrained Lauren of a few days ago who sat bolt upright, keeping to her space in a tight, constrained manner.
This woman had the faraway look in her eyes of someone who had been on a long journey and indeed she had been.
"Been out on the town, Lauren?" Yvonne asked after having given her the invisible 'once over' from behind her guarded eyelids. It paid her, she thought to herself, not to rush Lauren but to wait for her to spill the beans.
"Only at Cassie's and Roisin's," Lauren volunteered lightly. She peered all round her in a totally unhurried fashion as she gradually absorbed the details of the main living room, which ought to have been familiar and everyday to her. Instead, everything looked as if it was viewed from looking the wrong way through a telescope, appearing infinitely far away from her. For the first time in ages, she smiled at Yvonne.
"A bit of normality round there will do you some good," Yvonne nodded approvingly. "There's something like the two of them and their kids that takes me back to when you and Ritchie were younger."
"Something like that, Mum," Lauren responded straight-faced. She hurried on to say the words she knew that she had to say.
"Don't ask me why but after that, I feel we should talk some more about Fenner's death. Let's face it, first time around, the way I was talking sounded like I should have been certified. The two of us have kept our mouths shut since I told you about it and it's not doing either of us any good."
Yvonne was pleasantly surprised by the very leisurely, level tones in which Lauren spoke to her which was a million miles away from the tense, staccato tones of before. The indefinable change in the expression on Yvonne's face gave Lauren the encouragement to continue.
"All I'm worried about is that you've done something which you'll feel like kicking yourself for later on," Said Yvonne in her softer more protective tone. A tiny part of her reproached herself that that was all she had thought of at the time and she felt more than a twinge of remorse that Karen had been left out of her area of concern. Still, there was no time for that now.
"Fenner ain't worth killing, not if you go down for it and you end up behind prison bars instead of me. I don't want you to go through the same shit that I went through in my time at Larkhall. You've been close to what was going on there but not close enough. Believe me."
"I'd better show you the last note I got from Ritchie which may explain a few things you didn't know and why I set out to kill Fenner."
The words came out of Lauren's mouth without her thinking about it as the thoughts formed themselves, ready made, in her mind. She had locked tight into her mind the knowledge of that note and now was the time for opening it up.
While Lauren dashed upstairs to fetch the note from her bedroom, Yvonne looked around in the depths of the bureau for the letter that Ritchie had written to her. Her fingers eased out the folded over note on 'prison issue' paper and found it right at the bottom of a small drawer she thought ruefully ought to be marked 'happy memories' as a spasm of pain ran through her as it hit her what she had lost in Karen. She could see before her very eyes the alluring sight of her mane of tousled, golden hair, those perfectly carved cheekbones and that challenging quizzical smile. The tough side of her crushed her eyelids tight to blind herself to what was too painful to deal with. This was no time to dream of what might have been.
"Dear Lauren,
……………I can't ask Mum for what I need you to do, because she won't do it. She never was a real Atkins, only in name. But you and me, Lauren, we've got Charlie Atkins' blood in us all the way. Lauren, I need you to get rid of Fenner for me. ………………. Lauren, Fenner did rape Karen, I know he did. You don't sleep with as many women as I have, without knowing when something just isn't right. Lauren, a bit of me loved her. I know that's not how it was supposed to be, but I did, probably still do. She didn't deserve what I did to her. But I can't put any of that right now. This is why I'm asking you to get Fenner out of the picture for good. I can't put right the things I've done, but if you'll do this one thing for me, I can take away one of the worst things that's ever happened to her. You know that Fenner deserves a dose of the Atkins justice as well as I do. Please do this for me, Lauren, please. Don't tell Mum I've asked you. She's stayed on the straight and narrow since she got out, and we both know she won't be in favour of doing what's right. But you're still my sister, and you weren't Charlie Atkins' protégé for nothing. The best shooter in the East End is my little sister.
I'm proud of you Sis,
Ritchie."
Ritchie's last words from beyond the grave caused a violent wash of cross cutting emotions to flood through Yvonne's whole heart and mind. She could picture him in his solitary cell writing these words only hours before his life had ticked away when he swallowed the lethal dose of pills. He had really done what he thought was right in trying to make amends for his life but had unleashed as much mayhem as when he helped his murdering tart Merriman so many months before. If only Lauren had just talked to her, if only she wasn't so preoccupied with loving Karen that she hadn't noticed Lauren working long hours as she had thought, if only……if only…if only.
"The stupid sod really meant to do something right for the first time in his bleeding life," Yvonne's hoarse voice reflected the battle between her surface hard dismissiveness and a deeper bittersweet texture of her love for Ritchie which had gone wrong.
"You'd better look at my letter, Lauren," Came the only words that Yvonne could utter right then.
"Dear Mum,
" I've written this letter, not only to try and put the record straight once and for all, but to ask you to do something for me……………….. Fenner did rape her, I'm certain of it. There's things you learn about women, like what's normal, and what isn't, and the way she was with me that first night really wasn't normal, in any sense of the word. A woman asking you to be rough with her, that's nothing new, but this was different. I asked her afterwards what it had all been about, and she said she was laying a few ghosts. Mum, she was trying to punish herself for what had happened with Fenner. I'm guessing she thought it was her fault, but he's the biggest shit going and deserves nothing but a dose of the Atkins justice. You're probably wondering why I'm telling you all this. I've got to say it now, because after tonight, I won't ever get another chance. She was sat in the public gallery with you all through the trial. Mum, please take care of her for me. She's still hurting after what that bastard Fenner did to her, and she needs looking after. I ain't asking you to finish Fenner off, because I know you won't. But I need you to keep an eye on Karen for me. I hate what I did to her and to you, and I can't ever put any of that right. But if somehow, you can see that she's all right, I'll feel like I've at least tried to put something right.
I love you Mum,
Ritchie."
Lauren stared with unbelieving eyes to see a side of Ritchie, which he had kept concealed from the world, from the Atkins family and even from himself. Her brother Ritchie was the most bigoted homophobic man who had ever walked this earth apart from Charlie. In his world, gay men were still poufs and gay women were unnameable and did not exist outside the tabloid expose in the Sun, which informed his view of the world. Nowhere in his limited imagination could he possibly imagine that his sexually 'straight up and down' mother could feel the remotest attraction to Karen Betts, the same woman whose sexual manners in bed were those of a panthress and, who by definition, was the sort of normal woman whom he slept with. Yet Ritchie's words, unknown to Lauren, gave Yvonne the licence to enter a new life with Karen which Lauren now realised, all too late. If only she had known that at the time, Lauren reflected, as her fingers loosely held the note which should have also been destined for her. Firmly, she put a stop to this very suspect, self-flagellating morose train of thought. Ritchie had engineered the situation and kept both of them in the dark from each other and she had killed Fenner. The fallout from that one act was quite enough to deal with, she concluded to herself.
"I'm really, really sorry that I've caused all this shit for you in killing Fenner," Lauren's thoughts suddenly found voice out of nowhere and her dark eyes also pleaded for forgiveness from Yvonne that she denied to herself.
"I know that you and Karen wouldn't have split up if it hadn't been for me but please don't tell me not to worry because everything will be alright in the end because I know it won't. I've just got a bad feeling about it, about everything. It did me good to get away to Cassie and Roisin's for a few days," Lauren ended on a happier note.
"What's done is done, Lauren. I know now what you did and why you did it and I ain't blaming you. How could I? I'll be here for you."
"But what about you and Karen?" Lauren asked with real concern for her mother in her voice.
"I don't know. It ain't up to me to decide what happens between Karen and me," Yvonne sighed, a twinge of pain hurting her to hear the names, once so entwined and now far apart. "I'll still be friends with her whatever happens. Somehow, we could never be enemies but don't bloody well ask me why that should be so except that….we've gone through too much together."
"If ever you want to talk to me Mum, about anything. Remember, I'm here for you."
As Lauren gave her a big hug of reassurance, Yvonne wiped a solitary tear out of her eye and wondered at a new tranquillity in Lauren's manner despite the sort of a confession which an Atkins did not make lightly and of the way she openly clung on to Yvonne, seeking the security which she had denied to others and herself. Not everything in her life had turned to shit.
The blustery weather outside the warmth of Lauren's car and the bareness of the criss cross winter pattern of bare branches whipping backwards and forward could never transmit the bleakness of the weather into her soul, not the way she was feeling.
Slow moving, luxuriant images floated past Lauren's dreaming mind of her weekend with Cassie and Roisin, which were irrevocably woven, into her flowering senses. For the first time in her life, she felt at ease with herself and with her body. She marvelled at the one good choice and chance in her life where she had reached out deliberately and consciously to drink of the heady sapphic sexual cocktail which half jokingly, half nervously, she had merely sipped at in the past. It made all her past life seem like some manic, fast moving charade of Atkins hardness and control. She saw her normal everyday routine as one that was powered on cranked up feelings of aggression that pulsed through her to keep control of herself and others and be in command at all times. Such a life held no sway, had no meaning for her for the gentleness and softness of the two women with whom she had shared their bed. She thought tenderly and affectionately of her two friends who had been so patient of the past crazy actions, who had been there for her and had gently and lovingly eased her half willing entry into a new life. On the second night, she was bolder in expressing her desires, in words spoken or unspoken and the lovemaking was as soft and gentle as the texture of their skins, rising naturally to a climax which made her feel as good about feeling loved as she did about making love to the others.
It was as if she had an 'out of body, out of mind' experience which had taken her to a different planet somewhere that the street tough Lauren Atkins had never been before.
Yvonne's sharp ears picked up the faint creak of the front door opening and Lauren's distinctive footsteps clicking on the tiled floor. To her surprise, the sounds made straight for her direction rather than fade away as she headed upstairs to her bedroom. The slightly dishevelled woman who carelessly flung herself onto the settee, sprawling generously across it was not the very tense, constrained Lauren of a few days ago who sat bolt upright, keeping to her space in a tight, constrained manner.
This woman had the faraway look in her eyes of someone who had been on a long journey and indeed she had been.
"Been out on the town, Lauren?" Yvonne asked after having given her the invisible 'once over' from behind her guarded eyelids. It paid her, she thought to herself, not to rush Lauren but to wait for her to spill the beans.
"Only at Cassie's and Roisin's," Lauren volunteered lightly. She peered all round her in a totally unhurried fashion as she gradually absorbed the details of the main living room, which ought to have been familiar and everyday to her. Instead, everything looked as if it was viewed from looking the wrong way through a telescope, appearing infinitely far away from her. For the first time in ages, she smiled at Yvonne.
"A bit of normality round there will do you some good," Yvonne nodded approvingly. "There's something like the two of them and their kids that takes me back to when you and Ritchie were younger."
"Something like that, Mum," Lauren responded straight-faced. She hurried on to say the words she knew that she had to say.
"Don't ask me why but after that, I feel we should talk some more about Fenner's death. Let's face it, first time around, the way I was talking sounded like I should have been certified. The two of us have kept our mouths shut since I told you about it and it's not doing either of us any good."
Yvonne was pleasantly surprised by the very leisurely, level tones in which Lauren spoke to her which was a million miles away from the tense, staccato tones of before. The indefinable change in the expression on Yvonne's face gave Lauren the encouragement to continue.
"All I'm worried about is that you've done something which you'll feel like kicking yourself for later on," Said Yvonne in her softer more protective tone. A tiny part of her reproached herself that that was all she had thought of at the time and she felt more than a twinge of remorse that Karen had been left out of her area of concern. Still, there was no time for that now.
"Fenner ain't worth killing, not if you go down for it and you end up behind prison bars instead of me. I don't want you to go through the same shit that I went through in my time at Larkhall. You've been close to what was going on there but not close enough. Believe me."
"I'd better show you the last note I got from Ritchie which may explain a few things you didn't know and why I set out to kill Fenner."
The words came out of Lauren's mouth without her thinking about it as the thoughts formed themselves, ready made, in her mind. She had locked tight into her mind the knowledge of that note and now was the time for opening it up.
While Lauren dashed upstairs to fetch the note from her bedroom, Yvonne looked around in the depths of the bureau for the letter that Ritchie had written to her. Her fingers eased out the folded over note on 'prison issue' paper and found it right at the bottom of a small drawer she thought ruefully ought to be marked 'happy memories' as a spasm of pain ran through her as it hit her what she had lost in Karen. She could see before her very eyes the alluring sight of her mane of tousled, golden hair, those perfectly carved cheekbones and that challenging quizzical smile. The tough side of her crushed her eyelids tight to blind herself to what was too painful to deal with. This was no time to dream of what might have been.
"Dear Lauren,
……………I can't ask Mum for what I need you to do, because she won't do it. She never was a real Atkins, only in name. But you and me, Lauren, we've got Charlie Atkins' blood in us all the way. Lauren, I need you to get rid of Fenner for me. ………………. Lauren, Fenner did rape Karen, I know he did. You don't sleep with as many women as I have, without knowing when something just isn't right. Lauren, a bit of me loved her. I know that's not how it was supposed to be, but I did, probably still do. She didn't deserve what I did to her. But I can't put any of that right now. This is why I'm asking you to get Fenner out of the picture for good. I can't put right the things I've done, but if you'll do this one thing for me, I can take away one of the worst things that's ever happened to her. You know that Fenner deserves a dose of the Atkins justice as well as I do. Please do this for me, Lauren, please. Don't tell Mum I've asked you. She's stayed on the straight and narrow since she got out, and we both know she won't be in favour of doing what's right. But you're still my sister, and you weren't Charlie Atkins' protégé for nothing. The best shooter in the East End is my little sister.
I'm proud of you Sis,
Ritchie."
Ritchie's last words from beyond the grave caused a violent wash of cross cutting emotions to flood through Yvonne's whole heart and mind. She could picture him in his solitary cell writing these words only hours before his life had ticked away when he swallowed the lethal dose of pills. He had really done what he thought was right in trying to make amends for his life but had unleashed as much mayhem as when he helped his murdering tart Merriman so many months before. If only Lauren had just talked to her, if only she wasn't so preoccupied with loving Karen that she hadn't noticed Lauren working long hours as she had thought, if only……if only…if only.
"The stupid sod really meant to do something right for the first time in his bleeding life," Yvonne's hoarse voice reflected the battle between her surface hard dismissiveness and a deeper bittersweet texture of her love for Ritchie which had gone wrong.
"You'd better look at my letter, Lauren," Came the only words that Yvonne could utter right then.
"Dear Mum,
" I've written this letter, not only to try and put the record straight once and for all, but to ask you to do something for me……………….. Fenner did rape her, I'm certain of it. There's things you learn about women, like what's normal, and what isn't, and the way she was with me that first night really wasn't normal, in any sense of the word. A woman asking you to be rough with her, that's nothing new, but this was different. I asked her afterwards what it had all been about, and she said she was laying a few ghosts. Mum, she was trying to punish herself for what had happened with Fenner. I'm guessing she thought it was her fault, but he's the biggest shit going and deserves nothing but a dose of the Atkins justice. You're probably wondering why I'm telling you all this. I've got to say it now, because after tonight, I won't ever get another chance. She was sat in the public gallery with you all through the trial. Mum, please take care of her for me. She's still hurting after what that bastard Fenner did to her, and she needs looking after. I ain't asking you to finish Fenner off, because I know you won't. But I need you to keep an eye on Karen for me. I hate what I did to her and to you, and I can't ever put any of that right. But if somehow, you can see that she's all right, I'll feel like I've at least tried to put something right.
I love you Mum,
Ritchie."
Lauren stared with unbelieving eyes to see a side of Ritchie, which he had kept concealed from the world, from the Atkins family and even from himself. Her brother Ritchie was the most bigoted homophobic man who had ever walked this earth apart from Charlie. In his world, gay men were still poufs and gay women were unnameable and did not exist outside the tabloid expose in the Sun, which informed his view of the world. Nowhere in his limited imagination could he possibly imagine that his sexually 'straight up and down' mother could feel the remotest attraction to Karen Betts, the same woman whose sexual manners in bed were those of a panthress and, who by definition, was the sort of normal woman whom he slept with. Yet Ritchie's words, unknown to Lauren, gave Yvonne the licence to enter a new life with Karen which Lauren now realised, all too late. If only she had known that at the time, Lauren reflected, as her fingers loosely held the note which should have also been destined for her. Firmly, she put a stop to this very suspect, self-flagellating morose train of thought. Ritchie had engineered the situation and kept both of them in the dark from each other and she had killed Fenner. The fallout from that one act was quite enough to deal with, she concluded to herself.
"I'm really, really sorry that I've caused all this shit for you in killing Fenner," Lauren's thoughts suddenly found voice out of nowhere and her dark eyes also pleaded for forgiveness from Yvonne that she denied to herself.
"I know that you and Karen wouldn't have split up if it hadn't been for me but please don't tell me not to worry because everything will be alright in the end because I know it won't. I've just got a bad feeling about it, about everything. It did me good to get away to Cassie and Roisin's for a few days," Lauren ended on a happier note.
"What's done is done, Lauren. I know now what you did and why you did it and I ain't blaming you. How could I? I'll be here for you."
"But what about you and Karen?" Lauren asked with real concern for her mother in her voice.
"I don't know. It ain't up to me to decide what happens between Karen and me," Yvonne sighed, a twinge of pain hurting her to hear the names, once so entwined and now far apart. "I'll still be friends with her whatever happens. Somehow, we could never be enemies but don't bloody well ask me why that should be so except that….we've gone through too much together."
"If ever you want to talk to me Mum, about anything. Remember, I'm here for you."
As Lauren gave her a big hug of reassurance, Yvonne wiped a solitary tear out of her eye and wondered at a new tranquillity in Lauren's manner despite the sort of a confession which an Atkins did not make lightly and of the way she openly clung on to Yvonne, seeking the security which she had denied to others and herself. Not everything in her life had turned to shit.