He wasn’t going anywhere in the Bentley tonight. He would phone Rob later, get him to sort it. He walked further along the road to the junction, expecting to be jumped at any moment, wondering would he be sorry or relieved if that should happen? But it didn’t.
Not this time.
He saw a black cab coming, its golden light aglow. He flagged it down, and got in.
28
Three weeks into learning how the store worked from the ground up, and Daisy was still stacking shelves and serving customers and smiling very sweetly while her co-workers abused her.
‘And how is her ladyship this mawning?’ asked Tessa as Daisy loaded up with stock in the stores, counting packs.
Shit.
Daisy didn’t answer. She just kept loading the products into her hand basket.
‘Ooh, she’s not talking to us,’ said Julie, mouth turning down in mock offence. ‘Thinks she’s above us, I suppose.’
She was so sick of these horrible cows.
‘Well, she is. The heir-apparent to this whole shebang, that’s what her ladyship is. Far too good to parse the time of day with the likes of us.’
Daisy stopped loading her basket and turned to them.
‘A dog in the street’s too good for that,’ she said.
Tessa’s mouth dropped open. ‘What did you say?’
‘You heard,’ said Daisy, and swept past her tormentors.
Or at least she started to. One of them – she thought later that it must have been Julie – stuck out a foot, and Daisy went sprawling to the concrete floor. The basket handles came off her arm, spraying the contents over the floor. One of the packs burst open, and purple bubble bath splashed out in a glutinous arc, spattering the nearby pallets.
Searing pain lanced through Daisy’s knee and her elbow. Wincing, she lay there, winded. Then she looked up. Tessa and Julie were smirking down at her. At that instant, something snapped in Daisy’s head. She lunged to her feet, hardly feeling the pain. She ran at them, grabbed them both by the hair, slammed their heads back against the partition wall. Saw two pairs of eyes open wide with shock in the instant before she took a firmer grip and banged their heads together in fury.
Both girls squawked then, and Tessa started yelling that she couldn’t do this.
‘No? Bloody well watch me,’ hissed Daisy.
‘What’s going on?’ asked someone nearby.
Daisy, panting, turned her head. Doris Blanchard was standing right beside her.
Suddenly Daisy became aware that her arm was sore, her knee was throbbing. Everything hurt. But the hot rage that had flooded through her had blanked it all out. Slowly, she came to. Saw the fright on the faces of her two tormentors. Julie was crying. Tessa was saying she’d get Daisy for this.
She let them go. Doris was staring at her.
‘We’d better clear up this mess…’ said Doris, looking around her and then back at Daisy, like she’d never seen her before.
‘These two can do that. Can’t you, girls?’ said Daisy.
‘Don’t want anyone slipping on this, do we?’ asked Doris nervously. ‘Come on, Daisy, you can give us a hand…’
‘Actually, I can’t,’ said Daisy. She pulled off the Darkes uniform and threw it on the floor. Then she went straight up to Ruby’s office to tell her that she was done with working here – but Ruby had already gone home.
Daisy piled gratefully into her Mini and headed back to Ruby’s place in Marlow. She saw Ruby’s Mercedes on the drive, saw the hose there and the moisture on the driveway. Rob was washing the car. She got out of the Mini, locked it, and went over to where Rob was, behind the Merc’s bonnet.
‘Hi…’ she started to say, then Reg straightened up, thirty years older than Rob, white-haired and pug-nosed and sporting a matching set of cauliflower ears from his days punching it out in the boxing ring.
‘Oh!’ she said in surprise.
‘Sorry, were you expecting Rob?’ he asked. ‘He’s helping Kit out, he had some jobs for him. I’ve taken over driving Ruby.’
‘Oh,’ said Daisy, her guts creased with disappointment. She’d had the day from hell, she was going to have to break it to Ruby that she was quitting the store, and now no Rob.
‘Will he be doing that for long?’ she asked.
Reg shrugged. ‘Who knows.’
‘Oh. OK,’ said Daisy, feeling her heart sink all the way to her aching feet.
Then her eyes fell on the other car parked up on the drive, a red BMW. Of course. Simon was bringing Jody the nanny and the twins back from their day with him. Daisy and Simon had argued about this – every conversation with Simon ended in an argument – but as usual he had won. Daisy thought the twins far too young to be removed from the familiarity of home. But of course, Simon disputed that.
‘They’re my kids,’ he’d raged. ‘And for God’s sake the nanny will be with them. One fucking day. Is that too much to ask, you bitch?’
‘Oh yeah,’ said Reg, his eyes following hers. ‘Your husband’s here.’
‘Ex-husband,’ said Daisy, and trudged on indoors.
29
At first Maria had asked Tito to intervene, but Tito had been indifferent to her pleas.
‘Come between a man and his wife?’ he had scoffed at her. ‘No. Absolutely not.’
A man and his wife. That phraseology told Maria everything she wanted to know about Tito’s attitude; that it wasn’t a mile away from Vittore’s own. Tito was dead now but it was clear what his opinion of women had been. The man was important: the wife was not. The wife was an appendage, to be treated as the man chose within the sanctity of marriage, within the privacy of his own four walls.
The beatings were the worst thing. The pain and indignity. And he seemed to need to hurt her; only then could be become aroused enough to mount her. She knew how much Vittore wanted a family, kids – to prove himself a man, presumably – but she had got the Pill from her doctor and she’d been careful to take them, and even more careful to keep them hidden away in the little place behind the bath panel. But he’d found them, destroyed them. And he’d said he would kill her if he found any more, that it was a sin against the Catholic faith, against nature. Then he beat her again – more carefully this time, avoiding her face – to make her understand the error of her ways.
The last thing she wanted was a child of his.
Impotent anger boiled inside her. She started to spend his money feverishly, on things that didn’t matter, things she bought, unwrapped and then discarded, because it was a way of hurting him, of having some small revenge.
And then she thought that there could be bigger, better vengeance against her hated husband. Not divorce, of course. They were Catholic: there could never be divorce. But there were other ways.
So Maria went to Fabio. She knew the family all discounted Fab, thought him the weak, vain baby, not bright enough to run the family, and they all thanked God for Vittore, who was dull but sensible.
Maria’s lip curled in instinctive dislike every time she so much as thought about her husband. She loathed everything about him: his square body, his dull, menacing brown eyes. The truth was, she’d never loved him. She married him because she needed a meal ticket, a way to escape her own miserable family background. Even back then, the very thought of him touching her made her want to puke. Not that he did that very often. He was hung like a worm and seemed to have little appetite for sex, except after he’d given her a beating – and she tried as best she could not to give him an excuse to do that.