It seemed like a lifetime since she had been called that.
'Terry Baker! As I live and breathe.' She looked round at her daughters to show them off. Now they were off her hands she enjoyed people seeing these good-looking girls of hers. She knew she had no right to take any of the credit at all really, but that didn't stop her.
'Here, girls, this was my first boyfriend. We was in the juniors and I went out with him to make your dad jealous.'
They were laughing together and Dianna wanted them to drop down dead, she wanted them to disappear. She could tell Jackie, her mother, had been on the okey doke, as Terry was himself. Like her mother, once he had snorted a few lines he got outrageous, he forgot what he was saying and, more to the point, who he was saying it to.
'Nice-looking girls, Jackie, but then you were a looker in your day, eh?'
Jackie ignored the inference that she was a bit battered around the edges, and ordered more drinks for them. She liked Terry and he had been away for a long time on an armed robbery, so she allowed for him talking out of turn. Fifteen years with no one but a load of other men and his right arm could do that to a body, she knew.
Dianna was blushing and she was convinced everyone in the pub knew her secret. All she wanted now was for the floor to open up and swallow her.
'So what brings you here, then?'
Terry shrugged. 'Same thing as you, I assume. A drink, Jackie.'
Jackie smiled. 'Oh, we've been in here for a while-'
He interrupted her and said unpleasantly, 'I guessed that one, love, you're fucking well gone.' He laughed at his own joke. But no one was laughing with him.
Jackie was still unaware of the undercurrent around her, but Paul and Liselle were making eye contact. This could be more aggravation and they knew it.
'Have you heard, Tel?'
'Heard what, mate?' He was all ears now, pretending to be interested in what Jackie was saying, holding out his hands in a theatrical flourish.
Pat and the girls had picked up on him immediately. He was wacked out of his head and he was after a row, was looking for a scapegoat. He was disrespecting Jackie Jackson, and that alone said he had to be on a death wish.
Jackie, though, was oblivious to the fact he was taking the piss. It had not even occurred to her.
'Poor Jimmy Jackson lost his son today.'
Terry frowned as if the weight of the world was on his shoulders, and then he said sarcastically, 'And where did he lose him exactly, Jackie, in the public bogs? In the Amazon jungle, up Jack's arse and round the corner? Where?'
He was staring into her face and he was half smiling a nasty, sarcastic smile that was daring her to answer him.
It finally penetrated Jackie's brain that he was having a rise out of her. She was hurt, and she was upset. He had made a fool of her and she had not noticed it happening, but she knew now that everyone else had.
Dicky was watching carefully and she knew he was waiting to step in. But Terry was an old mate, why would he want to mug her off like that in front of everyone? He knew who her old man was, and to take the rise out of the child's dying would never be forgiven by any of the people within earshot, let alone Freddie and Jimmy when they heard about it. And they would hear about it.
She felt a hand gently guide her away from Terry.
'Why don't you take your drink and fuck off, mate, learn a bit of respect?' Dicky was fuming, he wasn't going to have this, especially not off an ice cream like Terry Baker.
Terry turned towards him and said menacingly, 'Why, are you going to make me, then?'
Dianna was mortified. Why was he doing this? Why was he causing all this trouble? She was on the verge of fainting with fright.
'With pleasure, mate. You want a fucking row, you just got one.' Dicky was well up for anything that was going now.
Jackie turned back.
'Stop it, Terry. What's the matter with you? What is your fucking problem?'
He looked at Jackie then and she saw complete and utter disgust in his face as he said loudly, 'Who are you then, Jackie? Who the fuck are you to ask me what's wrong?'
He was poking his finger at her now, and Jackie being Jackie was not about to let him get away with taking the piss out of her, let alone slagging her off like she was no one.
As her arm came back to punch him, Patricia grabbed her and pulled her away, and then Dicky went in like a bulldog.
Paul had already cleared the glasses from the bar, and he jumped over it wielding a baseball bat, which he brought down on Terry's head with all the force he could muster. Dicky grabbed it off him and all hell was let loose.
A pole dancer and friend of Jackie's called Pat the Pole, or Pat Fletcher, had also been on the receiving end of Terry's vicious tongue and, being the type of woman she was, she was determined to join in the fray. She aimed a kick that unfortunately hit Dicky instead, knocking him flying. Her shapely legs were her prized asset, and more than one man was pleased to get an eyeful.
Pat's husband, Harry Fletcher, a market trader from Romford, was a man who knew how to look after himself. He prided himself on the fact that he was scared of no man; the only person he was even remotely scared of was Pat's mother, known to all and sundry as Nanny Donna. As Harry jumped in and tried to remove his wife from the middle of the fracas, a large young man called Richie Smith shouted out, 'Leave her to it, Harry, she'll do a fucking better job than you.'
Even Dicky was laughing as Richie helped Harry calm his wife down. Then he turned back to Terry Baker. Terry was about to get the hiding of his life, and no one watching the event, not even young Dianna, was willing to help him out.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Terry was lying on the filthy floor battered and bleeding, and against her better judgement Dianna went to him. As she tried to kneel on the floor beside him to give him some kind of comfort, Roxanna dragged her away roughly.
'Leave him, Di, for fuck's sake. He is a fucking muppet.' Her tone showed that she thought her sister had gone mad.
But look at him, Rox, he's in a right state.'
'Fucking right and all, so he should be.'
Rox's voice was hard and without any emotion whatsoever, and it occurred to Dianna that even though she professed to loathe their so-called father, Rox was actually more like him than she thought.
In fact, it was the loyalty factor that was kicking in, no more and no less.
Dianna could hear Terry groaning, knew he had to be in terrible pain and she didn't know what to do about any of it. She had caused all this. He had explained about her father hating him, and how Freddie had used him in the past. If she had only waited for him outside, if only she had not walked away from him like she had, this would never have happened. Now look at him. He would never forgive her, she knew that, and who could blame him?
His forearm was shattered, it was hanging loosely at the elbow. He had been trounced so badly that he would never be able to work again. He was covered in his own blood and even though they knew he would live, that would not guarantee him a pass once Freddie Jackson heard the full story.
Terry had to have been mad to even think he might get away with mugging off Freddie's kinfolk. Jackie Jackson was renowned as a piss head, a pill popper and a wanker, and that was just what her friends said about her in the comfort and safety of their own homes. But she was Freddie Jackson's wife, even if he only stuck around because of the boy. Jackie was off limits to anyone who valued their life, their family's lives, or their credibility.
Terry Baker must be off his trolley, but then, they had heard the stories about him. Gossip was, after all, their main conversational directive. It wasn't classed as gossip, of course, it was classed as tipping each other the wink, or giving out the nod. They dealt in facts, not women's chat.