‘Walked or kicked out.’
‘It was either me going earlier or my father forcing me to do something I didn’t want to.’
‘Which was?’
‘I was pregnant, a silly girlish belief that the man cared for me and that it was eternal.’
‘The sugar and candy view of the world that your sister mentioned. Life’s not a Barbara Cartland novel, you do know this?’ Wendy said. There was still something about the woman, hidden depths that needed to be plumbed. Christine Mason, enamoured of childish notions of love, was not foolish, and her need to continually look for it indicated psychological issues. The sort of issues that could easily be transposed into extreme violence, the need to lash out, to kill and maim, the need to hit a man over the head and to push him into the cold water of a lake in Hyde Park.
‘My life’s been difficult,’ Christine said. Wendy had little sympathy. She had grown up in Yorkshire, the daughter of a farmer who had barely made enough money, a period of promiscuity in her early teens – a few of the local males had learnt of love and sex courtesy of her.
The records indicated that Gwen’s and Christine’s upbringing had been middle class, the father, an accountant, the mother, a teacher. Bridget had done some checking and had found out the mother was still alive. The father had died on his fifty-ninth birthday, a massive heart attack, the result of stress. Officers at the local police station close to where the mother still lived knew the family well, and could only offer praise for them.
‘Life’s what you make of it. The truth, why leave home?’ Wendy said.
Christine shifted uneasily on her seat, looked up at the ceiling and around the area. ‘It was Gwen’s boyfriend. He was the father.’
‘Does Gwen know?’
‘She knew later on that I had slept with him, not that there was a bed involved.’
‘Then where?’
‘It was the three of us one night after the pub. We were all underage, but we could make ourselves look older, and no one asked for proof of age, not where we lived. And besides, the publican didn’t care as long as we paid cash. Gwen was a drinker back then, teetotal now. Her boyfriend, athletic and full of himself, was a prefect at school, played football for the school as well. Anyway, there’s the three of us. We stopped on the way home. Gwen had been drinking beer and vodka, mixing her drinks. She was seriously out of it. I’d kept to the beer.
‘Gwen passed out in the local park, and it’s me with her boyfriend. He looks at me, I look at him, and there we are, going hell for leather.’
‘Sexual intercourse?’
‘Not the word he used, but yes. Four weeks later, I’m convinced something’s amiss. My period’s late and I’ve no one to talk to. I can’t tell Gwen because she’ll start asking questions, and I could never keep a straight face, never could lie. Don’t have me for a poker partner. I’m frantic, don’t know what to do. My parents, Roman Catholic and devout, would have had a fit, and no doubt shuffled me off out of sight.’
‘They would have been angry, but they wouldn’t have kicked you out.’
‘I know that, but it was my child, no one else’s.’
‘They would have arranged an abortion, had the child adopted.’
‘I didn’t want either. To me, the child belonged to no one else. No one was going to tell me what to do or how to care for my child. I packed a bag and walked out. I left a note for my sister telling her what I was doing and telling her why. I didn’t say that the child was her boyfriend’s. She married him two years later, not knowing the truth.’
‘Did she find out?’
‘Three years later, I met her, confessed to her. Even when I was away from home, I used to phone my parents once a week. They were upset at my leaving, and they constantly pleaded for me to come home, but I never did. My father started to send me money, not a lot, but enough to rent a room in a shared house.’
‘The child?’
‘I miscarried at four months. I wanted to go home, but I couldn’t. There would have been lectures, and then I’d be confined to my room, and endless questions. I couldn’t face it.’
‘And then after three years, you met your sister?’
‘Sort of. I hadn’t moved far away, and there was always the risk of bumping into one or other of my family. I had seen my mother once from a distance. I had wanted to run over to her and to give her a hug, beg her forgiveness.’
‘Why didn’t you?’
‘I wasn’t dressed properly.’
Wendy knew what was coming next. She had heard it before: the fallen female, the drugs, the degradation, the disgrace.
‘After I lost the baby, I was at a low. I had no support mechanism, and I had bills to pay, the same as everyone else. My father’s money paid for me to subsist. I tried to get a job, but it was only stacking shelves in a supermarket, cleaning offices. I was intelligent, even though I was young and had no qualifications. One of the girls I shared the house with, she had a friend who had a friend who could help me to make some easy money. Naively, I thought it was door-to-door, selling cutlery or some other nonsense. I went to the meeting that had been recommended and found it was for modelling.’
‘A euphemism for something else.’
The hotel manager kept watch on the two women. He approached their table. ‘Has the payroll been dealt with?’ he said to Christine.
Wendy looked up at the man,
