Unspoken: A story of secrets, love and revenge by T. Belshaw (best reads of all time .TXT) 📗

her jacket, put down her bag and gave Alice a big hug. She turned away, then turned back and hugged her again. Alice looked surprised.

‘Now I’m worried. Why am I treated to two hugs?’

‘Because you’re worth two hugs,’ Jess replied. ‘You always have been.’

Alice cleared her throat.

‘Can I smell the kettle?’ she asked rather croakily.

Gwen came back just as Jess was pouring boiling water into the tea pot.

‘Hello, Jessica,’ she said. ‘Here, I’ll do that.’ She whipped off her coat, laid it across the back of a kitchen chair, put the bag of shopping on the table and picked up a tray from the work surface. ‘You get yourself sat down. I’ll be through in a moment.’

‘Did you find some gravy salts?’ Alice called from the lounge.

Gwen looked worried.

‘No, Lovely, they only had granules. The same sort you had in your cupboard, do you want me to take them back and see if I can find some… salts, was it?’

Jess put her hand on Gwen’s arm. ‘Ignore her,’ she whispered. ‘She’s just teasing you again.’

Gwen shook her head slowly. ‘She gets me every time.’

When Jess was seated and the tea had been poured and distributed, she told Alice and Gwen her good news.

‘I’ll be staying over tomorrow and Thursday night, plus I’ll still be here all day Wednesday and Friday. I’ll come on Sunday as usual.’

Alice was delighted. Gwen gave a little clap and disappeared back into the kitchen.

‘But, have you discussed this with Calvin?’ Alice asked, a puzzled look on her face. ‘I wouldn’t have thought he’d be too enamoured with the idea.’

‘It was his suggestion actually,’ replied Jess. ‘We’ve probably been spending too much time together with us both working from home. I think that’s what’s behind our recent trials and tribulations.’

‘That and the fact that he’s a one hundred percent, top-drawer, unredeemable, narcissist,’ said Alice.

Jess pulled a face at her.

‘I’m not convinced. He has a soft side, and it’s a beautiful thing to experience. Even you would fall under his spell, Nana.’

‘I’ve been under many a spell woven by men like him, Jessica,’ Alice replied. ‘Not one of them was worth the effort I put in. You can’t change them; you can’t understand them. They’re never happy until they’ve sucked every last drop of emotion out of you. Then, when the job is complete and your last vestige of self-respect has been trodden underfoot, they move on.’

Jess shuddered. An icy shiver ran down her spine as Alice laid out her own fears for her relationship with Calvin in such stark terms. She pulled a small, rechargeable, digital voice recorder from her bag.

‘I’m going to record your story today, Nana, if that’s all right? There’s been so much detail that I’m scared of forgetting parts of it. I’m going to make some notes of the story so far when I stay over tomorrow.’

‘Record it any way you like, Jessica,’ said Alice, still staring at the tiny gadget. ‘I thought you were going to take my temperature with it for a moment. I was a bit concerned where you were going to stick it.’

Jessica almost choked on her tea.

‘Nana, you get worse,’ she said.

Jess pushed a button on the machine and spoke into it.

‘Monday, ninth of September twenty-nineteen. Nine forty-seven AM. Subject. Alice Mollison. Review date. January, nineteen thirty-eight.’

‘That all sounds very formal, Jessica,’ said Alice.

Jessica flapped her free hand, put her finger to her lips and pointed at the machine. ‘It’s recording’ she mouthed.

‘Oops,’ said Alice. ‘I’d better get on with it then.’

Chapter 23

January 1938

It was a further two weeks until we could put Amy’s plan into operation. Frank had done a runner. There had been no sight of him since my birthday party at The Old Bull. Amy made a few discreet enquiries through some acquaintances who lived near him, but it was like he had vanished from the face of the earth.

Amy embarked on the first part of her Plan B by seeking out a few trusted old school friends, implying that Frank owed her father a fair amount of money and she wanted to know the moment he returned to town. Despite the best endeavours of Edwin, Bernard, Josie and Kath, who knew everything there was to know about everyone in the town, there was no news of him.

Then, at the end of the month, he appeared in the railway station’s foyer, looking out into a near blizzard.

What follows is what I was told, first hand, by the protagonists, Edwin, Kath and Amy.

Edwin, who sold newspapers in the station lobby, spotted him as he strolled across the stone floor and stood in the station’s entrance, obviously deciding whether to risk the snow or wait it out to see if it eased.

Edwin crossed immediately to the ticket office and beckoned the teller towards him.

‘Could you do me a favour, Colin? Can you call Mrs Parsons on two-eight-six and ask to speak to Kath? She’s her daughter. Just tell her, the homing pigeon has returned to the loft, please.’

Colin glared at him. ‘Are you taking the piss? You aren’t a spy, you’re a bloody newspaper seller.’

‘Please, Col,’ said Edwin urgently. ‘It is important. I can’t tell you why, but it really is.’

‘Ring her yourself,’ said Colin, who wasn’t a bad sort despite his permanent grumpiness. He opened the door to the ticket office and beckoned Edwin inside.

‘The telephone is on the desk over there. It’s brand spanking new so don’t bloody break it.’

Edwin crossed to the desk and picked up the handset from the base. The telephone was one of the new Bell system models with a dial on the front.

‘Where do I put the tuppence in?’ he asked.

‘You don’t need bloody tuppence. It’s not a public call box. Just dial the sodding number,’ replied an increasingly irritated Colin, who still thought Edwin was messing him about. ‘And hurry up, I’ll be bloody well sacked if the station master catches you in here.’

Edwin picked out the numbers with his index finger and spun the dial