As the evening wore on, Yvonne was highly conscious of how quiet Lauren was, almost monosyllabic she was. Of course, it was understandable, being a Friday night when Lauren had worked all week that she wasn't at her most talkative but she was certain that there was at least one other reason that was closer to home. Lauren looked closed off, tired and Yvonne judged that it wasn't the best moment to ask Lauren what the matter was. It was unusually quiet that night and the silence hung heavy on them both. Yvonne judged that it was no good suggesting sticking the television on- there were fifty bleeding channels and they all said the same.
"Mum," Lauren said abruptly first thing on Saturday morning, "I'm sorry that I've been a right moody cow recently. Fact is, I had a lot on my mind"
"Want to talk about it?" came Yvonne's casual reply but Lauren felt her mother's eyes on her and that she had her complete attention.
The younger woman hunched her shoulders, reached out for the cigarette that was offered her and lit up.
"I really must give up or cut down on my smoking"
"That's what I said to myself last week only my cunning plan to give it up didn't quite work"
"That will be the day, mum." Lauren laughed. Already she felt more relaxed and able to talk. It was as if a vice had been laid on her mind, squeezing her thoughts inside her so tight that no matter how intensely she felt, she couldn't speak. She thought briefly and fondly of the past and, yes, this cross talk banter had existed between them both, like some secret code that no one else could crack.
"You could be doing worse, Lauren. I got really worried about you when you took Fenner out. You're coming on just fine right now. If you're smoking too much, I can live with that one."
Lauren grinned at Yvonne's deadpan humour, the way she said it with such a straight face.
"Anyway, it's about time I got ready to visit Denny. I can't be late"
"You mean it?" Yvonne enquired with raised eyebrows. She kept her voice toneless but she was as jumpy as she could ever remember in her life. Everything seemed to hang on how delicately she handled the situation.
It had been nearly a month ago that Lauren had so bravely agreed to come with her to visit Denny. If that had been arranged in short order, everything would have been well but Lauren had a busy patch at work so that she couldn't tear herself away even for a day. Despite the best of intentions, practical matters relentlessly intruded themselves and deflected them from following up the resolve. In the middle of all that came the one incident which had a destabilizing effect on all of them but on Lauren most of all.
"Remember, we're going to visit Denny next week," Yvonne had found herself saying for the second time one day.
"How could I bloody forget about it, mum? You keep banging on about her. You can't keep bossing me around. I'm not a kid any more. After all, I'm only running a business all hours of the day." She had shouted at Yvonne." You keep nagging me about it and you can go on your own. I know you love her more than you love your own flesh and blood"
"Lauren, that's not true," Protested Yvonne strongly.
"Isn't it just?" Lauren fired back with a sneer on her face. "Just turn the record off"
At that, Lauren shot out of the room and clumped off heavily upstairs to her bedroom leaving Yvonne much more on her own than she could remember. Those sarcastic jabs cut her like a knife. She could remember how positively Lauren had reacted those weeks ago when she had first broached the idea.
'Look, Lauren, what say I phone up Nikki and ask her to pass on a message to Denny? I wouldn't want to bother her but if it would help Denny, she'd do it.'
She had been so proud of Lauren then and she hated the very idea of only being proud of her if she did well. That's not what mothers were about, she vowed to herself fiercely. The trouble was, she could understand how Lauren felt. It was the little things round the house that explained why both of them were affected. Neither of them could get away from it. After that confrontation, she just buttoned it and never said another word, even when the time and the days crawled along up to the evening before the visit. It was a real strain and she felt as if she were walking on eggshells all the time.
"Of course we're going to visit Denny, Mum. We had better not be late with you redoing your makeup for the fifth time." Lauren answered her mother in a determined fashion.
It was Yvonne's turn to shrug her shoulders. Children eh, what would you do with them, she asked herself? Sometimes, she couldn't figure out which way Lauren would jump but this time, luck was on her side. She wasn't going to ask any questions that were for sure.
"Strange, isn't it." Observed Lauren." You look round every time for the lead and glance back at the door to make sure that ……..he's with us"
Yvonne nodded as she opened the passenger door for Lauren. They needed each other's company for the drive.
Denny's armwaving was unmistakable as Lauren and Yvonne threaded their way through the crowds and approached her. She had moved forward to make sure of her claim on a nearby table. Lauren and Yvonne took turns to hug Denny briefly and squeezed themselves on chairs to face her.
"It's great to see you guys. I was getting dead scared that I'd been dreaming about the visit and I kept bugging the shit out of Babs to make me believe it was real. Course, I knew all along that you two would make it"
Lauren and Yvonne exchanged meaning glances. It was more than they had cared to believe a few short hours ago. Still, they both mentally concluded, they were both here and that was all that mattered right now.
"I nearly forgot, Babs she sends you her love and she knows she'll catch up with you. I gotta thank her for getting my arse out of gear since I haven't got you to shout at me, man"
Lauren's emotions churned around inside her at Denny's incredibly kind words and her lopsided grin. She was really as together as all that, she wondered. She could not help but
remember the totally broken apart woman who spent her time collapsed in her bunk in their cell and it was Denny who played big sister. Mum was right. It had been too long since she had seen Denny. She did her good to see her right now and that was ironical. She was supposed to be the visitor from the Land of Freedom, Money and Perfection to visit a prisoner who had none of these gifts. She tried to listen as Denny rattled away and stared abstractly at Denny. Her presence was once so familiar, from first thing in the morning to last thing at night.
"There's something wrong with you. I can tell it and here's me talking my head off. I'm dead sorry"
"Not really." Began Yvonne when Denny cut her short.
"Come on, spit it out." Denny commanded, borrowing one of Yvonne's phrases. "I know you both too well"
"I've got to say it, Denny. Trigger died just a week ago"
"Shit, that's terrible, man." Denny exclaimed. Denny knew Yvonne far to well to be deceived by Yvonne's curt, short tones." I remember Trigger so well that day I came to visit. He was dead friendly and cool"
"You can"
"Course I can. I can remember every moment of that visit. When I'm in my bunk at night and I'm feeling like shit, I can always feel better by picturing everything, as if I was on the front row at the cinema and watching everything. Just once or twice, they took us out from that children's home to the pictures and I could almost pretend I was with my mum and everything was normal….I can remember the songs Miss Betts played me on her CD when we were in her car, sitting down in your sitting room, out by the swimming pool. Miss Betts, Karen, was dead friendly then. She seemed really happy and I could forget that I'd been taken there from this dump. She could be a family friend……but Trigger, that ain't fair. He's part of the family"
The hearts of both women were melted and made whole again by Denny's sincere sympathy for them and for their dog whom she had met just one that one day. She talked like anyone did who was decent who was locked up there. One person's pain became another's, to be comforted in an automatic gesture of humanity. It just wasn't possible to watch human tragedy from afar, the other side of a city pavement and to hurry on, uncaring, to pursue your own needs and agenda. Thank god, they weren't like that but they saw it everywhere when they were out in town. The streets of London just didn't allow time or space for that sort of thing.
"I heard about what happened to Shell." Denny suddenly said as she rapidly shifted the conversation back and forth. "It ain't right that she topped herself that way. She wouldn't have done it if she hadn't had her kid took off her and was shunted out to some muppet hospital. She ain't mad, or at least not that way"
" I know, Denny." Yvonne said softly and tenderly. "I wouldn't ever say she was my best buddy, you know that but no mother deserves to have her baby taken away that way"
"I wasn't exactly all there when I killed Fenner, Denny. Maybe I was lucky, luckier than Shell was." Put in Lauren. She had only really heard of Shell through her mother but never seen her. Nevertheless, Shell was very real to her and could gauge just how totally screwed up she herself had been at one time. The differences weren't that great. Denny very kindly didn't get defensively angry with them but stared at them through the tears in her eyes. Her loss was still a raw open wound in her.
"If Fenner were still around she'd end up haunting this place to piss him off." Yvonne suddenly broke in on her thoughts.
"You never know, she might still do it to piss off Bodybag." Came Denny's reply, laughing very shakily. It was a curious comfort to her that something of Shell's spirit might linger in the rambling structure that was Larkhall.
"Miss Betts don't look too good these days," Denny said at last as her thoughts drifted about, rudderless.
"I heard that Shell had broke into her house. I couldn't believe that one. I recognized that poxy cutting I sent her. I just thought she'd be interested, like she knew her when she was here. I didn't think I'd start all this shit, like write her frigging address on the back and say, come and visit me. It was different when we was on the run and she thought up that mad plan to gatecrash Bodybag's house"
"Tell me about it." Yvonne asked out of sudden interest. It was one part of Denny's past that she had never heard about it in any detail and instinct told her that it mattered to know that part of Denny who would still have ties to Shell, dead or alive.
"Don't ask," Denny answered, screwing up her face. "I was out of my brain on the coke that an old mate of mine left us. It seemed like a good idea at the time, to go somewhere the cops would never think of. I broke the window and we ambushed them and"
"Go on, Denny. It's all right"
"We got Bodybag dressed up as a French maid, serving us coke off a silver platter. Don't laugh…….."She broke off as Yvonne's mouth curved into an irrepressible grin. "Shell was dressed up as a screw, dead sexy she was…..:" Denny reminisced as she remembered having sex with Shell up there in Bodybag's bed, one time when she could get Shell's sexual interest directed entirely on her instead of some wanker of a man.
"There was a lot of bad shit later on. Her Bobby was made to lie in a coffin, for Bodybag to seal him up and then she torched it. We did a runner when we heard the cops outside, oh yes, Shell stuck a knife into the tyre of that cop car while we made off with their hearse"
"What?" Yvonne asked, her mind trying to cope with the surreal and very dangerous images that jumped out of her mind. Mind you, her Lauren kidnapping Fenner, making him dig his own coffin, shooting him and burying him alive wasn't much better except that he was a total and utter bastard.
"I don't want to talk any more about that stuff, it's in the past and I was different then." Continued Denny hastily, trying to distance herself from the memories to both Yvonne's and Lauren's intense relief.
"Tell me what happened to Karen. You must know. You usually do"
"Nikki filled me in on a few of the details. Shell got in, very delicate like when Karen was asleep with the judge, didn't even wake them up"
"Got to admit, she's got taste"
"…….anyway," nodded Yvonne, smiling reminiscently. "Karen saw her at the bedroom door, just standing there. The judge nearly screwed up by saying he was a high court judge"
"Jesus, he can't have known Shell. That was either very brave or very stupid or"
"Both. Anyway, Karen got her calmed down and chatting like old friends, about her kids, about what Fenner did to get her sent out to Ashmoor. She came to see Karen because she thought she could get her back with her baby. The judge got smart and stayed out of it. When she got Shell calmed down, she slipped the handcuffs on her"
"…The bitch." Denny exclaimed.
"You're wrong there, Denny"
"You would say that wouldn't you. After all she's your ex"
"That's only to say that we're still friends and I know her, probably better than you do. She must have been feeling like shit after losing Ross………if I know Karen, she felt she had to protect the judge. She knows that, deep down, Shell's dead funny about men and she ain't exactly on friendly terms with judges like she would choose them to have to tea with at bleeding Buckingham Palace. She would think she had to protect him and, afterwards, she'd hate herself for betraying Shell. You must know that, Denny"
Denny's face softened as Yvonne's patient persuasive tones gently insinuated her way through Denny's instantly raised defences. Jesus, first Lauren and now Denny, she reflected to herself. It never rains but it pours. Too many people have lost what's dearest to them.
"Tell you what, Denny. I've been doing the talking and I ain't let Lauren get a word in edgeways here. I'll pop in and see Karen while you two catch up with each other"
Both Lauren and Denny grinned with pleasure at this. It was something that their sometimes difficult personalities could get simple, uncomplicated pleasure out of. It would do both of them good.