Refuge by Gillian White

Author:Gillian White [White, Gillian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4804-0226-3
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2013-02-13T22:23:00+00:00

SIXTEEN

IF YOU INCLUDED THE waiting time, Sunday was taken up almost entirely with visiting Joey.

Shelley was not too fazed by this. There was something about her stifling welcome which, although everyone had been kind, was unsettling.

Severe withdrawal symptoms kicked in after an evening spent sitting next to Eunice, with only one cup of cocoa to drink before she went to bed, so Shelley had hurried upstairs at ten thirty to find her hidden packet of Silk Cut which she urgently needed after tense hours of abstinence. She could open the small lattice window just wide enough to blow out the smoke. But however hard she searched through her newly arranged chest of drawers, of the wretched packet there was no sign. She had either forgotten where she had hidden it, which was highly unlikely owing to her twenty-a-day addiction, or someone had removed it. One of the kids. She’d find out in the morning and give them hell. The sods.

Last night she’d been surprised at the genuine interest Eunice had showed in her guest. With her homely, chatty manner, it was easy to forget that this was a woman Shelley hardly knew. While Eunice knitted a sock on four needles without the benefit of a pattern, she showed such fascination in Shelley’s past life, her family and her partners, that Shelley, thinking back, might have been over-enthusiastic, might well have bored her listeners stiff with tales about the children’s little exploits, the funny habits of Keith (Jason and Casey’s father), and Malc’s lazy ways. Oh dear. Stuff that could surely interest nobody but family, like having to flick through other people’s holiday snaps. But this was one more sign of how capable this homely, hairy woman was, that she could make her guests feel so relaxed and so intriguing so quickly.

Shelley had never seen herself as an interesting person before.

But last night Eunice had been fascinated to hear about Iris Tremayne’s Cornish background, her marriage to Shelley’s father, Liu Qi, and her subsequent banishment from the family. ‘Can you believe it?’ said Eunice. ‘Some of those funny old Cornish parties are still fanatical about their religions… There’s pockets of them to this day, I hear, mostly around Bodmin moor. Won’t work on a Sunday, won’t even milk their beasts or bring in hay before it’s spoiled. Hold these Bible meetings in barns where everyone shouts alleluia and confesses their sins to the rooftops, real Godfearers, forever on watch for the devil and his ways.’ The way she described these moorland time warps, with the firelight flickering on her hairy face and the glow of the low lamps in the lounge, she made these people sound sinister. ‘Can’t read, can’t write, most of them. Tie up their trousers with baling twine and sign their names with an X. Your mum did well to get out when she did. Showed some courage, too.’

Shelley had to confess that she’d never met her relatives and that Iris had rarely spoken about her childhood on the moor.

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