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

I told Frank I’d come down for a couple, but I doubted I’d last the night out, what with the baby and the sea air. I was already yawning as we walked down the stairs to the bar.

I found a seat away from the door, and the icy blast it sent through the pub as another Saturday night drinker came in. Frank bought himself a pint and a double gin for me.

‘No tonic water, they’ve run out,’ he said.

‘Run out?’ I looked around the bar and its all-male clientele. ‘Who the hell would drink tonic water in here?’

‘There’s a lounge area if you’d rather sit in there,’ Frank said, as the door opened and the cigarette smoke swirled around the bar like a clearing morning fog.

We took our drinks and walked through the door marked ‘Snug’. The air was cleaner in there and there was no outside door to let in the cold air. There was a young couple sitting at a table near the window and an older pair on the table next to the door. I nodded to everyone and took a seat opposite the older couple. When I took off my coat, both women had a good look at my swollen belly. The older woman smiled at me. The younger one, a couple of years older than me, looked scared. The men, having seen my chestnut curls and my pretty face as I walked in, looked disappointed.

Frank and I made small talk for half an hour, then he went to refill his glass. I refused his offer of a second drink, mostly because the gin was making me feel a little tipsy already, and it had rekindled the sickly feeling that had been absent all day.

Around eight-thirty my stomach had had enough of gin and was threatening to expel it.

I apologised to Frank, who really didn’t seem to mind at all, and the two of us left the snug. The older woman smiled sympathetically at me.

‘It’ll be over soon,’ she said.

Back in the bar, Frank made a show of kissing me on the cheek and wishing me a good night.

‘I’ll be up later, Sugarplum,’ he said lovingly.

The men in the bar winked at each other and some of them, at me. I left the bar as quickly as I could and rushed up the stairs. I needed to pee and be sick and I didn’t know which one was going to come first.

The toilet on the landing was old but clean and had a chain hanging from a wooden box above. On a hook on the wall were squares of cut up newspaper. I cringed. The toilet squares we used at the farm came in a box and although they weren’t exactly silky, at least they were covered in aloe oil to make them softer. I refused to use the Izal paper that had been in use in my schooldays. It never mopped up moisture, it just seemed to move it around. You could cut yourself in half with the edge of it too.

Having said that. I’d have happily wiped myself with a few sheets of the much abused Izal rather than use the torn-up strips of yesterday’s newspaper.

Thankfully, the nausea had abated and I returned to our room to retrieve the flannel and towel that I’d packed, before walking back to the, laughingly named, bathroom. I ran water from the hot tap until the Ascot kicked in, then I put the plug in the basin and half-filled the sink. There was a bar of soap in a dirty dish on the shelf next to the sink, so I lathered up the flannel and gave myself a strip wash, making sure I had totally removed yesterday’s headlines from my lady parts.

Back in the room, I stripped to my undies, pulled on a flannelette nightie (not the ideal garment for a bride on her ‘wedding’ night), switched out the light and, by the glow of the streetlamp outside the window, made my way to the bed and slipped under the covers. Ten minutes later I was fast asleep.

I was woken a couple of hours later by the sound of men’s laughing voices. I thought it was a dream at first but then I heard our room door close and the laughing became louder. I poked my head out from under the covers as the light came on. I blinked, shook my head and blinked again as four male faces blinked back at me.

‘Here’s the blushing bride,’ slurred Frank.

‘She’s bloody gorgeous, mate, you ought to be in bed with her, not standing over her with us,’ said a scrawny-looking man with thin, fair hair and bad teeth. He showed them off to me as he grinned.

‘Evenin, Missis,’ he said. He didn’t appear to be quite as drunk as Frank, but he swayed as he spoke.

The other two were equally drunk, one touched the peak of his flat cap and the other just nodded. Suddenly their attention was elsewhere.

‘Where’s the beer gone? I’m parched,’ said the fair man with the bad teeth.

‘It’s by the table there,’ said Frank. He looked at me drunkenly. ‘Go back to sleep,’ he said.

The men wobbled off to the round table, dragged out the chairs and settled themselves down. Frank took bottles from the crate, whipped off the tops with an opener he carried on his keyring and passed them around.

‘Right, where were we when that bitch turned off the taps?’

The man with the cap reached into his pocket and pulled out a handful of notes and coins. He deposited them in the centre of the table. The others leaned over and counted it. Satisfied that flat cap hadn’t come up short with the stake, they pulled playing cards from their pockets and studied them intently.

‘Your call, Charlie,’ said Frank.

‘Excuse, me?’ I called from the bed. ‘I’m trying to sleep.’

The men waved at me, one said ‘sorry’, then they went back to their game. When one of them