I laughed. “All of this. I wouldn’t have got to see the morning like this and in Blackpool. Taste the air.”
“Fish.” He sniffed. “And birds crapping everywhere. Same as anywhere you go.”
“Not to me.”
Don’t get all sentimental, Wendy. It’s only the place you started out.
And no one knew she was here. Not yet. No one could find her, unless they tracked her whereabouts all the way back to her childhood. That might take ages. It had certainly taken her ages. She smiled at the cabby. “Well, thanks, then.” Poor bloke. She’d dragged him out, through the night, all the way from South London.
He sighed and tutted and started to move off. “Are you sure you’re all right?”
Of course. She was.
She went off down the Prom.
I still know my way around here. I used to run around all these streets. I check the address on the old certificate again and I’m sure I even know the hairdressers’ shop it mentions there: the street not far from our one-time home.
FORTY-FOUR
She remembered reading a really bad novel about three women in New York. It must have been in the Fifties or something because it had seemed old fashioned to Wendy. The three women worked in jobs like advertising and showbusiness and modelling and they all fell in love with men who gave them—as Aunty Anne would say—the runaround.
Wendy never finished the book because it was too long and she got sick of all the characters and then her Mandy said it was crap anyway and that she was wasting her time. All the women in the book were so traumatised by their goings-on that they started taking pills. That was the upshot.
Then thing that Wendy remembered most, and especially the morning after her night of passion with the old comic Billy Franks, was the moment when the main character in the book eventually copped off with her boyfriend. She went to bed with him and Wendy waited for all the gory details but they never came. The women in the book had been worried that she ‘couldn’t give her all’ to a man and when she found that—shazam!—she could, then she’d come out with something that had stuck in Wendy’s head.
‘I function. I am a woman.’
Whatever that meant.
When she got up early for breakfast, ravenous and clutching her sheets for the washer, Wendy repeated the words to herself. I am a woman. I function.
She felt curiously clear-headed.
She was bundling messy sheets into the washing machine when she realised that she wasn’t alone in the kitchen. Aunty Anne was sitting at the table on the swivel chair. She was in her fleecy nightdress, clutching a pillow to her chest. The bottle of Glemorangie was open in front of her.
“You look like you haven’t slept a wink,” said Wendy.
“Pat had another bad night.”
“Oh.”
“You kept him out late enough.”
“He met up with his old pal…”
“Yes, I heard a whole lot of noise in the night. All sorts. That’s what woke me up. I got up and found Pat calling out for help, half fallen out of bed. You could hardly hear him for the racket.”
“Oh god,” Wendy said.
“Hm,” said Anne. She was quite drunk, Wendy realised. There was only a finger or two of whiskey left in the bottle. Her aunt was looking at her.
“What were you doing telling him to take you out of his will?”
“Not this again,” said Wendy.
“If the old man wants you to have his money, then you should take it.”
Wendy turned to leave. “I’m going to check on him.”
“No,” said Anne, standing woozily. “He’s sleeping.”
“Right.” Wendy turned to the washer and fiddled with the programme.
“I’ve got some whites that could have gone in with that load.”
“It’s started now.” Wendy sat down with her Aunt, who dropped back into her swivel chair.
“You just go charging in, doing what you want, getting your own way.”
“Me?” Wendy couldn’t believe this.
“Yes, you. And you get away with it because you’re young and attractive. You don’t even know that everyone is giving you your own way. You just expect it.”
“Uh-huh,” said Wendy.
“Ever since your poor mum died, you’ve turned ever so hard.”
“Maybe I have.”
“First you want to get your hands on your uncle’s money, then you don’t. You get me to get you in with him, get you set up for life. And then you decide you’ve got principles and you’re too good for that. And so you make him take you out of the will. A poor dying old man’s will and you make him faff on with it. You’ve got everyone doing the hokey bloody cokey.”
“All you care about,” said Wendy levelly, “is what you want, Aunty Anne. Let’s face it.”
“I want you to be happy.” Her aunt looked tearful.
Wendy tossed her head.
“What, you think I’m lying?”
“I don’t know anymore.”
“Of course I want you to be happy, you stupid little bitch.”
Wendy had a burst of inspiration. “I reckon what pisses you off and gets right up your nose is that Uncle Pat hasn’t asked you what you want. No one’s asked you want you want. They haven’t done for years. You’re completely terrified that you’re past it and out of the game for good.”
Aunty Anne picked up her tumbler and flung it at the wall behind Wendy’s head. The crash of the glass startled both of them.
They were silent for a moment.
“You’ll see how it feels,” Aunty Anne promised.
“What would happen if I took the money, Aunty Anne? It would still be the same me.”
“You wouldn’t have to deal with the ordinary shit. The shit that’s held back me and everyone else we know.”
“If I got that much money,” said Wendy, “I’d only blow it. I’d be surrounded by people telling me what to do. I’d listen to all of them and get properly fucked up. Look at
