‘Just a shame his dick never was.’
‘Victoria! Stop that talk. And yes, Albie popped in yesterday. He comes in most weeks, now. He needed fifty quid for his electric this time. I’d already given him twenty for his birthday. I really don’t know what that boy does with his money.’
‘All hail the prodigal son,’ Vic replied with an eyeroll. ‘And wake up, Mother, that money will be going straight into William Hill’s pocket. You’re not helping him – you know that.’
Kath Sharpe reached for the remote. ‘Hewalks the dog.’
‘Heplays you like a fiddle, Mum.’
‘Don’t be like that. He’s a good lad.’
Vic shook her head. ‘With a very bad habit.’ She clipped on Chandler’s lead. ‘I’m going. I’ll pick up fish and chips on the way back.’
‘Get us a bottle of wine too, will you, love?’
Vic didn’t reply as she picked up her bag and headed out. A woman was reversing her car onto next door’s drive as Vic closed the front door behind her and Chandler let out a little bark of approval at his unexpected freedom. The window of the blue Golf slid down.
‘Evening! You must be Kath’s daughter. Vicki, isn’t it?’
Victoria cringed inwardly at the woman’s use of the pet name she really disliked. She stopped, put on her best faux smile, and nodded.
‘Your mum said she was delighted that you were making the effort to come today.’ The neighbour smiled warmly.
‘Oh, really?’
‘And thank heavens for that brother of yours. It sounds like she would be very lonely without him.’ The woman got out of her car.
Victoria had already started walking on but, unable to hold her anger in any longer, turned around. ‘Jody, isn’t it?’ Vic noticed under the outside light that the woman had long shiny black hair. Her deep brown eyes were beautifully framed by soft, dark lashes. She was a similar height and age to her.
‘Joti with a t, Joti Johns… I mean Adams.’ The woman had one of those mixed accents that people who had travelled to various countries seemed to pick up, the kind you could spend hours trying to decipher to work out where they were from and still be none the wiser. She held out her hand, but Vic frowned and refused to take it.
Chandler started to circle for a poo on the tiny patch of grass in front of the neighbour’s bay window. Joti’s face held an expression of horror at the realisation of what was about to happen to her precious piece of lawn.
Completely ignoring Chandler’s intentions, Vic said, ‘I appreciate your observations on my family, Mrs – or is it Miss Ad…?’
‘Very much Miss… I er… I got divorced.’ The woman’s voice wobbled slightly.
‘Oh.’ Vic faltered. ‘I am sorry to hear that,MissAdams… but can I ask you politely to mind your own fucking business… because you know nothing about mine – or the rest of my family’s, for that matter.’
With a harrumph, Joti put her head down, went inside and slammed the door shut.
A barking Chandler gleefully scrabbled at the lawn with his back paws, causing grass and bits ofhisbusiness to fly everywhere.
With all its riverside beauty, plentiful history and stunning architecture, Windsor held a special place in Vic’s heart. She had been born Victoria Ann Sharpe in the bedroom of the house her parents had bought back in the sixties for just two thousand pounds, where her mother still lived on benefits, with a top-up from her cleaning jobs. She was named Victoria because Windsor housed one huge castle still inhabited by the royal family. And not Elizabeth, because that was her auntie’s name and, in Kath Sharpe’s words, ‘it would just have caused too much confusion’.
Victoria’s memories of living at number 28, Simpson Crescent, were neither good nor bad – up until she reached five, that was, when her brother Albie had come along, and her philandering father had upped and left, saying that he couldn’t cope with the lack of sleep from another newborn. A baby he had openly declared he had never wanted. A baby who, despite being his absolute ringer as he grew, he had even cruelly insinuated wasn’t his.
Her mother, who had relied on her husband’s plumbing wage for everything, fell apart. To give Barry Sharpe his due, he had long paid off the mortgage with both his father’s inheritance and guilt, but with no other income coming in, besides the family allowance, Kath had turned to cleaning when Albie was just two months old. That, and the various other stresses being a single parent entailed, had made her turn to the bottle.
A shivering Victoria pulled her scarf tightly to her neck as she and Chandler made their way towards the river and its long pathway.
The streets of Windsor were already beginning to fill with Friday night revellers, including squaddies from the local barracks. The town, with all its royal pageantry, was very much a tourist destination, where historic sites were visited by a plethora of nationalities. Sites including neighbouring Eton, famous for its college, whose hallowed halls had been graced by princes and prime ministers.
It was a particularly freezing October night when Victoria reached the river path.
Feeling her shoulders drop at being able to be silent with her thoughts at last, she let out a little sigh of relief. The patchy mist that had formed and floated spookily just above the water of the Thames, in combination with the sporadic cries and calls of water birds, plus creaking tree branches, made for an eerie atmosphere. Lights shining out from various yachts and narrowboats moored along the water’s edge illuminated her way. You could tell the ones that were genuinely loved, with their shiny new paintwork, plant pots and twinkly fairy lights. A couple of tatty older vessels sat in complete darkness, awaiting their fair-weather owners.
Growing up, she had always loved making up stories about who lived in each boat and why – whether it be a grand tale of escape by the young couple who lived onPastures New, or a city banker’s weekend show-off yacht, aptly namedFortune Afloat. Many boats had come and gone during the years that Vic had walked this path, but there was one that had been in the same spot for as long as she could remember.
