The Full Legacy Page 9

  My stomach clenched.

  ‘So?’

  ‘She was with Turner.’

  I literally saw red. It was like a cascade of blood sweeping down over my eyes. I struggled to keep my breathing steady.

  ‘Oh, for goodness sake Kay!’ I staggered to my feet, hardly able to see. ‘So what? They work together, remember.’

  ‘Not on a night, they don’t.’

  ‘Well, they’d probably been at some meeting or other.’

  ‘No, Gill. Not at 10.30.’

  Kay stood up too, balanced her drink on the edge of the bench, and reached for my arm. Her hay fever was getting worse. She was wheezing a little as I snatched myself away from her. I was so angry I wanted to hit her. I had never ever felt that angry in my life before. And I was so angry I wasn’t even shocked by it.

  ‘Everybody’s so bloody interested in Turner, aren’t they?’ I snapped.

  ‘It’s because we...’

  I didn’t let her finish.

  ‘Everybody thinks they know what’s best for me... and for Suzanne... and for Mary... Well, they don’t Kay, so don’t come running to me with your stories.’

  I picked up the watering can and stomped off towards the garden shed, emptying out the last dregs of water on the flower beds as I went. It was getting dark, and not only in my soul. It was time to put everything away.

  ‘Ten thirty,’ Kay’s voice followed me, still trying to get me to hear. ‘Taking their time over coffee and liqueurs at some flash restaurant down town.’

  I felt sick. I slammed the shed door after me as I got inside. The mellow smell of wood preserver greeted me. There was an old work bench down the wall under the cobwebby window – a rickety wooden seat under the bench. I hung up my watering can and sat down, rocking myself on the chair, my elbows on the workbench and my head in my hands. I remembered all the times this exact same thing had happened with Corinne.... well meaning friends trying to warn me and make me face up to what was going on. Kay of all people knew about that.

  ‘Oh, shit!’ I groaned, rubbing my hands through my hair in frustration.

  I could feel tears stinging my eyes, but I didn’t want to cry. I didn’t want to feel that much of a fool. Since Corinne, I’d always held back from caring enough about anyone to be hurt that badly by them. But with Turner I’d seen all the signs and I’d gone for it anyway. Maybe I’d inherited my mother’s unerring capacity to attract and fall for the wrong people. Kay was right when she said she’d got under my skin. I was falling in love and it hurt like hell.

  I took a deep breath.

  ‘I’m old enough to look after myself!’ I announced, swinging out of the shed on a wave of ‘fuck you all!’ bravado. I didn’t feel brave. I felt like I’d felt at Corinne’s funeral with Kay sitting there at the back of the crematorium and everybody’s eyes flitting between us, their whispers rustling like a breeze through leaves in autumn.

  But Kay wasn’t there anymore.

  The lager can was on its side, trickling Carlsberg into a steadily growing pool on the crazy paving. I stared at it, shocked.

  Then suddenly, I was very afraid.

  I broke into a run.

  I found Kay in her room, panicked, grey, and wheezing like someone who was having all the breath squeezed out of them. She was searching frantically for something in her dressing table, tugging out the drawers, tipping clothes all over the floor. She looked glazed, completely unfocused as she half registered me standing in the doorway.

  ‘H... I’m... H.... H.... InHaler...’ she gasped.

  I never was good at thinking under pressure. The thoughts always got jumbled up in my head. I struggled to grasp onto what she needed. Then, even when I realised what it was, I couldn’t remember where I’d last seen it.

  Suddenly, I knew.

  ‘It’s in the bathroom cabinet,’ I said, already on my way there, flinging open the mirrored door and plowing through ancient containers of Paracetamol – Friar’s Balsam – Arnica – before I got to the box with its tiny aerosol.

  Kay was slumped by the side of her bed by the time I got back. She looked like a fish, half dead on a river bank, washed up, past struggling, all her effort going into the unequal fight to keep alive.

  The relief on her face was pitiful when she saw the aerosol. She grabbed it from me, gasping out as well as she could and then sucking on the mouthpiece like a diver whose oxygen line has been blocked.

  I sat down beside her and put my hand gently on her arm, breathless myself, and badly shaken.

  Slowly, her breathing steadied and her colour returned. Against my shoulder, I felt her starting to relax. And then she began to cry.

  I held her in my arms, sobbing too, with tears of relief. Whatever had happened between us in the past, I loved her. I rocked her as she clung to me.

  Eventually, her tears passed.

  We both leaned back against the unmade bed and stared at the wreckage.

  ‘If I’d known I was finally going to be able to lure you into my room I’d have tidied up,’ she quipped weakly.

  How typical of Kay to play it for laughs.

  ‘Come on,’ I joined in. ‘I saw you quite deliberately making a mess to put me off.’

  I held her hand, not willing to let her evade the main issue quite so easily. ‘I’ve never seen you this bad,’ I said.

  ‘No,’ she looked miserable, and still very shaken. ‘A frigging aerobics instructor who can’t breathe... great, isn’t it!’

  I rushed to be practical about it. ‘The pollen count must be very high,’ I said. ‘And it’s probably not good for you to be hanging around in the garden for long at this time of the year. You’ll just have to go back on your antihistamines again.’

  ‘Yeah,’ she pretended to be comforted by the rational explanation. But still she was scared. ‘I’ve never felt anything like it,’ she said. ‘I felt like somebody had their hands around my neck - Like somebody was squeezing the life out of me.’

  I thought guiltily about how, in my moment of anger, I would have liked to do just that. I tried to push the memory from my mind.

  ‘Well,’ I said, rubbing her arm reassuringly. ‘It’s over now. I’ll go and get your tablets. I bet you’re not even meant to drink with them either. Shame really. I wouldn’t have minded cracking that other can of lager to calm our nerves.’

  First Out

  By Wednesday, thankfully, there was a cooler breeze around. The sun shone from a perfect blue sky. I’d spent the afternoon out at Ascot, snapping racehorses in full flight for a friend of David’s who was designing a really nice quality brochure for the owner of one of the stables there.

  The day out had done me good. For once, I smelt of the countryside and fresh air rather than perming lotion and black coffee. I was sure that if Turner was just marking time with me, I’d be able to handle it. And I was feeling better – lighter than I had for ages.

  Turner had arrived early and was already chatting to Michelle in the salon. She was rather more respectably dressed than she had been the last two times we’d met, in a lightweight summer business suit in grey with a plain white blouse. Her hair shone like jet in the diffused light slanting through the heavily decaled windows of the salon. I could tell she was on a charm offensive with my best friend, even through the shop window. She smiled as she looked up and saw me in the doorway. And whatever her long term intentions, I could tell that she cared for me in that moment. It was written there in her eyes.

  Justin and Tracey were still hard at work, so I limited my greeting to a quick cheek-peck. It wasn’t easy. Michelle smiled at my self-restraint.

  ‘I’ve just been telling Mrs Shaw about your misspent youth,’ she said quietly, letting me know she’d sussed about last Friday. ‘I think it’s important not to have any guilty secrets, don’t you? ... Anyway, she assures me that I haven’t put her off you, despite my description of you waddling onto the stage of Green Lane Comp in a tree costume, so I guess she must like you a bit.’

  I squ
irmed. ‘Oh, Michelle... Please!’ I felt like a teenager being embarrassed by my mum. I glanced around the salon to make sure no-one had heard, painfully aware that I was blushing.

  Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw Turner watching me intently, her eyes narrowed as she took me in. In that moment, I didn’t care who else she was seeing or whether she would ever have any intention of loving me. Every inch of me yearned to hold her – not even, necessarily to make love – but to just lie with her in my arms. I felt like an addict needing a fix.

  ‘I’ll take my stuff into the studio,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, can I see?’

  In the changing room she kissed me, smelling salty, fresh. I opened my eyes to see our reflections merging in the mirror.

  ‘I’ve been counting the days,’ she said finally, working magic with her words, so gentle to my ears, stroking through my hair with her fingers, cupping my face.

  Suddenly just holding her wasn’t enough. I took a deep breath and stepped back.

  ‘Where would you like to go?’ I asked, smoothing myself down instinctively.

  ‘I don’t care, so long as it’s someplace no-one will mind me gazing into your eyes.’

  Somewhere Gay then...

  On the tube I restrained myself from GBHing the loud-shirted young executive who dared to ogle Turner’s legs.

  After all, I told myself, she didn’t exactly dress to discourage. Even so, I kept a brooding eye on him as he rubbed his sweaty palms on his thighs and mopped his face with a handful of Mansize Kleenex. And I felt an uncharacteristically malicious pleasure when he realised too late that he was at his stop and leapt to his feet just in time to see the doors closing right in front of his nose.

  I saw the shadow of a smile pass over Turner’s face too. She moved very close so that I could hear her over the rattling of the tube. ‘Michelle told me you were out shooting horses this afternoon,’ she said.

  I grinned. ‘Yes... in the photographic sense, of course. A friend of Michelle’s husband has a print shop. He’s putting together a brochure for a race horse trainer who’s hoping to attract the Middle Eastern market.’

  ‘It was a nice day for it. Do you ride?’

  ‘Hell, no.’ I remembered the size of the horses and the speed of them, and shuddered. ‘How about you?’ I guessed she probably did.

  She shook her head. ‘Not much anymore. I don’t have the time. I used to when I was younger.’

  ‘Yeah... thought you would.’ This was out of my mouth before I wondered if it might sound rude... like I was putting her into a category or something.... Posh kid, private school, tennis lessons and a pony.... ‘How was your day?’ I asked hurriedly, just in case.

  She smiled.

  ‘Oh, fine, you know. Accountancy’s got a bit of a dull reputation, but I like it. You get to meet some interesting people.’

  We got out at Tottenham Court Rd, by the Dominion Theatre. It felt strange to surface into the air – hardly fresh, with all the traffic crawling past, engines throbbing, exhaust fumes I could taste. All those people too – hot, jostling, chattering... chaos really... though I loved central London – always had.

  I steered Turner past the newspaper stand, past Burtons, under the vast concrete outcrops from Centrepoint – to First Out.

  She ran her finger down my arm in the queue and I felt ridiculously proud. There were plenty of good looking women in there, but I figured there was no-one to match her. Whether or not she was dangerous, I was becoming more and more enthralled by her all the time.

  ‘I’ll get these,’ she said.

  ‘Only if I can pay next time.’

  ‘Okay.’

  So – it looked like there might be a next time. I smiled at the thought.

  And if she was paying, I thought maybe I ought to show willing and have something healthy, so I settled for soup and a roll. She, of course, had salad. I’d known she would.

  ‘It must be ages since I’ve been here,’ I said, looking around me as we settled with our trays at a table downstairs. It was fairly busy. Most of the tables were occupied. There were several people alone, reading copies of Capital Gay and The Pink Paper, then a table of four men, reminiscing about trips to ‘Heaven’ in the early eighties.

  The woman at the table beside us glanced briefly over her cappuccino at Turner, then settled the cup back into its saucer, looked at me and kept looking, her fingers tracing a line round the collar of her studded leather jacket. She had short dark hair, make-up, and motorcycle boots under the table. I wondered how she kept cool in all that leather. And I wished she would stop staring. I imagined that she fancied Turner and was checking me out – trying to decide if we were ‘together’, or just friends.

  I looked away, first pretending to, then really, taking an interest in the alterations to the place.... Surely there never used to be a bar. And had the wiring in the lights always wound its way around the ceiling in copper pipes?

  ‘They have a women’s night here on Fridays,’ said Turner.

  Instantly my insecurity grew to epic proportions.

  ‘I reckon you know more about Gay London than I do,’ I said.

  ‘I came here with Suzanne once, that’s all,’ she replied. ‘It was the night she introduced me to Ros.’

  ‘Oh, yeah?’ I felt unreasonably irritated. I’d felt my stomach lurch at the mention of Suzanne’s name, though she’d said it casually enough. ‘You two really are pretty close aren’t you?’ I wrapped my first and second fingers around each other to demonstrate quite how close they were in my fantasy.

  ‘Not really,’ she laughed – refusing to take me seriously.

  And I had to be content with that, because I knew she wasn’t going to discuss it any further.

  I ate my soup. It was good. Vegan. Tasty.

  Turner eyed the woman at the next table.

  ‘She fancies you,’ she said, quietly, after a while.

  ‘Don’t be daft.’ This seemed highly unlikely to me.

  Turner grinned. ‘She does,’ she said. ‘Lots of women do. I saw that at the party, but you just don’t notice, do you? I think that’s part of your attraction.’

  I stared at her confused. I didn’t believe her, though part of me would have loved to.

  ‘Like who?’ I demanded, sure that she was just soft-soaping me. All those years of living in my mother’s shadow, of being a chubby kid, a gawky confused and tongue-tied teenager, and a clearly not attractive-enough partner to keep Corinne at home had taken their toll. I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that now I’d called her bluff she wouldn’t be able to name anyone with even an iota of interest in me.

  ‘Like that Georgie woman you were talking to when I fell on you.’

  I remembered Georgie’s telephone message and instantly felt guilty about not replying to it. I imagined that by now her initial impression of my abysmal manners was well and truly set in stone.

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Well, that makes a grand total of one. It’s hardly a fan club, is it?’

  ‘Like Kay,’ said Turner, ticking off number two on her fingers. ‘I thought you two were together at first. Not that it would have stopped me making a play for you.’

  I guess the last part of that sentence should have raised alarm bells for me, but I was too busy being shocked at the first. ‘Kay doesn’t fancy me,’ I said. The idea was so ludicrous I almost laughed.

  Turner raised an eyebrow. ‘Of course she does,’ she scoffed. ‘That’s why she’s been giving me such a hard time. And why she’d been warding Ros’s attentions off for so long. She’s nuts about you. Neither of you can see it, that’s all.’

  I was amazed. I’d thought Turner was pretty astute, but I figured she was way off beam with this particular theory.

  ‘Nah,’ I said. ‘I’m definitely not Kay’s type.’

  Turner shrugged. ‘Which is?’ She sipped juice from a tumbler. I could see she didn’t believe me. She looked amused.

  ‘Well,’ I blushed. ‘Maybe someone like you.’
<
br />   ‘Like me?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I rushed on. ‘Or Corinne, my partner... It was Kay she’d been with the night she died.’

  Suddenly I had the sense that Turner had known that all along too. She didn’t look surprised, just sympathetic. She didn’t let on though. For some reason I think she didn’t want to pre-empt what I had to say about it all.

  ‘You must both have been devastated,’ she said, and her eyes sought mine, candid and very gentle. ‘I think I can understand how it would bring you together.’

  I nodded, finding that I did actually want to tell her how it had been back then.

  ‘She came to the funeral,’ I said. ‘She sat at the back of the crematorium on her own. She didn’t really talk to anyone, but everybody knew who she must be... I remember all the raised eyebrows and ‘Oh my God what’s going to happen now?’ looks being exchanged. Poor Kay didn’t have the faintest idea what she’d just walked into. The atmosphere was already awful anyway because the family didn’t approve of Corinne’s sexuality and had already totally blanked me and my mum and all our friends. They’re really strict evangelical Christians. The only reason we weren’t having the service in church was because Corinne had specifically made a will saying she didn’t want it. Anyway, after the service I felt sorry for Kay standing there on her own and I introduced myself to her. I’m sure I must have been much more of a surprise for her than she ever was for me. Corinne had told her that we weren’t actually an item anymore... that we were just living together as flatmates. When I look back on it that was maybe even how she saw it. We hadn’t had a physical relationship for ages... slept in separate rooms... It may seem a bit weird, but I invited Kay home after the funeral. It wasn’t like we were ever going to be welcome for ham sandwiches and Madeira cake in the family’s church hall, and I certainly wasn’t up to going to the pub with my mum and the rest of the gang. We talked for hours. I didn’t really have it in me to be resentful towards her. She wasn’t the first by any means, and she had lots of answers to things I hadn’t understood before.’