The Shame (Glasgow Southside Crime Series Book 3) by Maureen Myant

Author:Maureen Myant [Myant, Maureen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hobeck Books Limited
Published: 2024-06-04T00:00:00+00:00

Enid was drunk. No surprise there. She rarely drank alcohol. Her parents allowed her a small sherry on special occasions, but Maggie had insisted on leaving the dreary reception and going to the bar, where she proceeded to order shots. Edith had never heard of them, and they proved to be tiny glasses of vodka, tequila and rum. They went down easily, and within an hour Maggie was her best friend, and as for the young man who joined them? He was handsome and she told him so, over and over again, to his and Maggie’s amusement.

The bar closed at twelve and Enid wasn’t ready to go home. Neither were Maggie and David. ‘Come back to my room, ladies, and I’ll show you a good time,’ he said in a mock seductive voice. Enid wasn’t sure whether he was joking or serious, but she followed Maggie’s example and laughed.

The three of them filled up the small room. It was typical student accommodation; a single bed, wardrobe and desk areas and a chair. No room to swing a cat, as her mother would say. Enid lay down on the bed. Her head was spinning. She sat up again, frightened she was going to be sick.

‘Are you OK?’ asked Maggie. She sounded worried.

Enid said nothing. She wasn’t used to people asking her this, to looking as though they cared.

‘Enid?’

‘I’m a virgin,’ she said. Dear God, where had that come from? She put her hand over her mouth, but it didn’t stop the words from spilling out. ‘I’m thirty-nine and never been kissed. Well, apart from my letch of a boss who slobbered over me once. I live at home with my parents, who control my every move. My pay goes straight to them, and they give me pocket money as if I’m a ten-year old child. An allowance, they call it.’ Maggie and David were looking at her, their eyes wide. ‘You said you liked my dress, Maggie. Well, I had to steal money from my mother’s purse to pay for it and the other clothes I bought so I’d fit in. You should see how I normally dress, as if I lived eighty years ago. I thought changing my clothes would help, but I’ll never fit in, I’m a weirdo. They said so at school and you think it too, I see it in your eyes. Oh God, I’m drunk.’

‘No, shit. No, we don’t think that, do we David?’

‘Of course not.’ There was a pause before he added, ‘It doesn’t sound like a good scene, with your parents, I mean.’

He had no idea. It wasn’t his fault. His sympathetic voice unleashed something in her and out it spilled. The humiliation of going to school dressed as though she came from the earlier part of the twentieth century, the taunts she received about her waist length hair, which her parents had never allowed her to get cut. The whispered jibes in class. The petty rules of her parents, keeping her apart from her peers, making sure friends were kept at a distance.

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