Oisin
gone but not forgotten
Here's a long, long one to get Sue into trouble for getting back from her break late:
GERALDINE
Two hours, that’s what it had taken. Two rotten hours, hanging around just to have a sprained wrist diagnosed by the X-ray department. Two hours wasted in the company of drunks, junkies, lunatics and self-mutilators. That A & E department resembled a cross between a scene from Clockwork Orange and Quatermas. Now he had almost made his escape through the sliding glass doors, someone was calling him back.
‘Tommy Walker?’ The voice came from behind his left shoulder. He swivelled around to be confronted by a slim, blonde, about the same age as himself. He paused to scan his memory banks. ‘Geraldine,’ she said to jog his confused thoughts, ‘Do you remember me from HNR?’
She immediately slotted into perspective. Geraldine had attended the girls’ section of the same school as him, Handsworth New Road. Now he looked closer, her features hadn’t changed that much over the intervening twenty years. He had never considered Geraldine to be any great beauty, but she wasn’t ugly, and she had the shapeliest legs he had ever seen on a woman.
Although they had lived in the same neighbourhood, he and Geraldine had never really had much to do with one another while they were at school. And the first time they met after leaving school, was quite by accident.
Such were the fashions at the time; he had dropped into Peacocks on Dudley Road to buy some white paper collars to wear with his striped shirts. To his surprise, it had been Geraldine Riley who severed him. As they still lived near to one another and she was close to knocking off, he had waited to walk her home.
It was when he had suggested they go out together, that she had told him about her involvement with Gary Browne, a mutual acquaintance from their school days. Because Tom had always regarded Gary as a psychopathic bully, he found it difficult to comprehend why any girl in her right mind would touch him with a barge pole.
‘Geraldine Riley!’ he exclaimed with a knowing grin.
‘Browne!’ she corrected him.
‘Oh no!’ he responded carelessly, ‘Not still with Gary?’
‘Yep,’ she nodded, pretending not to notice his undertones. ‘And we’re still together. Well just about. I’ve just come in with him. Passed out. You know, diabetic.’
‘Well fancy meeting you after all this time.’ It was his turn to ignore what she had said. Even after all this time, he considered it would have been hypocritical to express any concern for Gary Browne.
He recalled bumping into Geraldine a week after their first meeting at Peacocks. This time it had been stage-managed. He had made sure he just happened to be walking passed the store when she had finished her shift. He remembered quite vividly the terrible black and yellow swelling around her bloodshot eye. He could remember the intense homicidal feeling that the sight of her looking so pathetic brought out in him. He could remember his disbelief when she explained, ‘Gary doesn’t mean it. It’s just this problem expressing himself.’ Then, to cap it all, a few weeks later he could remember hearing that she and Gary were marrying because she had fallen pregnant by him. All these memories sprang to his mind with the hiss of those sliding doors in the background. But now after twenty years, entirely out of the blue, she had confronted him with an even more unbelievable revelation: She was still married to Gary Browne! He needed to know more. ‘Look,’ he suggested, ‘if you’re not in a rush, how about stopping for a drink? Give us a chance to catch up on old times.’
Over a small highly polished, round, wooden table in the corner of The Windmill’s lounge, they brought one another up to date with the past twenty years of their lives. She listened, wide-eyed while Tom told how his twelve-year marriage to Julie had ended when she took off with a work colleague.
‘It had been going on for ages and you had no idea?’ She betrayed more than a hint of scepticism. ‘Surely you must have a some suspicion?’
‘Geraldine!’ He expressed his to agitation. ‘Don’t you think I’ve run every move she made, during that period, through my head a thousand times? And no, I still can’t recall anything that was suspicious. As far as I was concerned it was the perfect deceit.’ He never felt comfortable talking about that part of his life. It always made him feel inadequate. ‘So,’ he tapped the ball back into her court, ‘at least you and Gary have seen it through. And what about your kids?’
‘ Kid,’ Geraldine corrected him, ‘Claire. We only had the one daughter. She’s doing okay - got a job as a holiday rep in Cyprus.’ She leaned forward and locked eyes with him. ‘To tell the truth, Tom, I think she couldn’t wait to get away from her father.’
‘Still the same old Gary then, eh? D’you know, I could never understand what you saw in him.’ He grimaced. ‘Now, if you’d taken me up on my offer, who knows, we might still been an item.’
‘Yeah,’ Geraldine gave a wistful sigh and asked, ‘Did you and Julie have any kids?’
He gave a slow, thoughtful shake of his head. ‘No. Julie couldn’t have children.’
‘D’you think it might have helped the situation if you had?’
‘No,’ he said, giving his head a more emphatic shake, ‘I suppose that was one blessing; less complications.’ He swung the initiative back to Geraldine. ‘So, tell me, how bad is ‘poor’ old Gary’s diabetes?’ he asked, the sarcasm obvious.
‘He’s on regular injections and makes it worse by ignoring medical advice – won’t stop drinking. Then, when he has these turns, it’s everybody else’s fault. I swear, Tom, one of these days he’s going to do himself in.’
Tom managed to resist commenting that what a blessing that would be to the world. Instead, he studied the lines on Geraldine’s face. He was amazed at how well she had weathered the years - far better than he. One would have to look very closely to see any evidence of stress. Of course there were the crow’s feet wrinkles around her eyes – everybody of their age had them. A closer scrutiny revealed the scar tissue around her eyebrows; no doubt the legacy of Gary’s inability to express himself. And her nose; it had always been less than perfect, but now there was a slight kink about half way along its length.
‘Well, how bad is this latest blackout of Gary’s?’ he asked as a way of diverting the conversation away from himself.
Geraldine directed a stream of exhaled breath up her face, which rippled the few stands of blonde hair that weren’t scraped back from her forehead. ‘Bad! He’s in a sort of coma. Like I say, one of these days he’s going to really overdo it.’
Tom wasn’t really interested whether Gary Browne would live or die so he changed tack again. ‘Well, seen as it closed down years ago, you can’t be working at Peacocks.’
‘No,’ she explained, ‘When I got made redundant I worked at Boots for a while. Then I suddenly realised I was going nowhere fast. So, after studying at night school, to get the necessary qualifications I enrolled to train as a nurse. That’s what I’ve been doing ever since. Been at The Woodlands, R.O.H. for ages now.’
‘Must be more rewarding than selling paper collars to yobs,’ Tom grinned.
The deep blue of her eyes reflected a strange expression of relief. ‘D’you know, Tommy Walker, all the time we’ve been chatting away, I’ve been trying to remember what the hell it was that you came in for that day?’
Tom’s thoughts immediately flashed back to that day. It was the shape and length of Geraldine’s legs in that short uniformed overall that had first attracted him to her. He wondered if they would still hold that attraction - as she was now wearing jeans, it was impossible to ascertain. But it wasn’t only the physical attraction. On the way to her house, he had appreciated her conversational skills and thoroughly enjoyed her company. That’s why, despite being turned down, he had made a second attempt.
It wasn’t just nostalgia. Now, twenty years later, again he sensed some deep-rooted affection for her. Since Julie had left his existence had been lonely and miserable. He’d had the odd fling, but even in the short time he’d been chatting to Geraldine, he felt there was something deeper there – something that had lain dormant for all that time. If only she wasn’t married? Oh sod it! He decided to throw caution to the wind.
‘Geraldine,’ he almost lost the bottle as soon as he’d uttered her name. He bit hard into his bottom lip before continuing. ‘If I was to put the same proposition to you; the one I did walking you home from Peacocks that night, what would you say?’
Geraldine’s mouth curved into a broad mocking smile. ‘Bloody hell, Tom, you’re as slow as you ever were. If you’re asking me if I’d like to share some time with you then yes; the answer’s yes.’
Tom immediately had second thoughts. ‘Are you sure? I mean what about Gary?’
‘I’m not in the habit of doing this,’ Geraldine insisted, ‘but what he doesn’t know isn’t going to hurt him. Anyway, you were right earlier, when you hinted that we both might have been better off if we’d got it together before now. So, where do we go from here?’
Realising he was on a roll he decided to exploit the situation. ‘What do you say to coming back to my place for a nightcap?’
‘Only if you promise not to throw me out onto the street after,’ Geraldine said without flickering so much as an eyelash.
Tom had been out of circulation for a while and he still couldn’t get used to this new permissiveness of the late twentieth century. He was shocked by Geraldine’s response but he was determined not to show it. ‘Great then!’ he grinned. Hardly able to believe his luck, he quickly drained his glass and indicated that Geraldine should do the same. Hesitating for a moment he asked, ‘You’re not in a car, are you?’
‘No,’ Geraldine shook her head; ‘Gary came in by ambulance as a 999.’
‘Good,’ Tom said in a tone that carried all kinds of innuendoes, ‘But I’m afraid we’ll have to walk over to the hospital car park to collect mine.’
‘No problem,’ she assured him.
* * * *
Geraldine had to leave early in the morning. She needed to pick up her car and the bits and pieces she would need for work from home, before reporting for her shift. Before leaving, she promised to call round to Tom’s house straight from work. This, they thought safer than Tom being seen calling for her while her husband was in hospital.
For the first time, since he couldn’t remember when, Tom Walker went to work with a spring in his step. Even Jim Lovell, his partner in the small transport business, noticed the difference in his demeanour. ‘What’s up with you?’ he enquired, ‘On a promise, or something?’
Tom responded by winking and rubbing his nose with his forefinger. He felt reborn – at last there was a touch of meaning to his life again.
Like an impatient teenager, looking forward to his first date, he couldn’t wait for the clock to tick away the hours to the evening. At lunchtime he even considered ringing Geraldine at The Woodlands, but had second thoughts believing it might embarrass her.
She was doing a long shift and so wasn’t likely to be home until after eight. So, he spent the rest of the day planning a nice candlelit meal for her.
By half past nine he was growing concerned. By ten o’clock he decided there must be something amiss. If she’d been kept late on the ward surely she would have rung. He prayed that nothing had happened. All sorts of thoughts went through his head. Even if she had been injured in a car accident, surely she would have been able to get a message to him. It was no good. He had to know. He rang the hospital on the pretence of being her brother (he knew she had one somewhere). No, she hadn’t reported for work. They had received a message saying she wasn’t coming in - some complications regarding her husband.
He had just replaced the receiver when the telephone began ringing. Thank God, it was she. She was in a state of shock. She blurted out what she had to say in staccato. Gary had died. There got a message on her home phone. The hospital and the police had been attempting to contact her since last night. She’d been tied up all day arranging things - the funeral, registering the death etc. The authorities wanted to carry out a post mortem as they were having difficulties establishing the cause of death.
It was a cruel thought but Tom couldn’t see it in any other light: Gary Browne was dead. It didn’t really matter what killed him. He was a complication that was now out of the way. Things were really looking rosy - perhaps the ending of one life was the beginning of another.
Despite the years of turmoil with Gary, Geraldine didn’t take his passing as lightly as Tom Walker. In fact she appeared extremely distraught when Tom picked her up from the house she had shared with her husband in Bearwood.
‘Well I can’t see the problem,’ Tom declared, aiming his Rover back in the direction of Edgbaston, ‘if he was in a diabetic coma when he was admitted, I should think the cause of death is fairly obvious.’
‘Yes,’ Geraldine nodded irritably, ‘but you know what bureaucracy is – all that red tape. I just hope they can get it all sorted quickly so I can get on with the funeral arrangements. I’ve been in touch with Claire and she needs to know so that she can book a flight home.’
‘The old bugger - awkward right to the end, eh?’
Geraldine rewarded the quip with a hostile glare. ‘For Christ’s sake, Tom! He was a human being. He was far from perfect but I was married to him for the best part of twenty years. I think he deserves some respect.’
‘Well, I think we’ll have to agree to disagree on that,’ Tom shrugged.
* * * *
With her boarding card gripped tightly in one hand, a pretty blonde gave her mother an affectionate hug. Then as they parted, she asked with a warm comforting smile, ‘Are you sure you’re going to be all right, Mom? If need be, I can always jack up this lot and find a job closer to home.’
Geraldine gave an emphatic shake of her head. ‘After all this time, I’m sure I’ll be able to look after myself. Take my advice and seize every opportunity that comes. You don’t want to wind up like me.’ She leaned forward and gave her daughter one last peck on the cheek. ‘Now, I think you’d better be moving, love, they’re calling your flight.’
Reluctantly, Claire left her mother and made her way towards the departure gates.
* * * *
‘So it was that easy?’ Tom asked, clinking his glass of champagne against Geraldine’s, as they lay side-by-side in a plush hotel room.
‘Yes,’ she giggled, ‘all it took was an overfilled syringe. I knew the chances of a pathologist finding anything were negligible, and an overdose of insulin is difficult to detect, especially when a presence is expected.’
‘And you didn’t let on to anyone, not even Claire?’
‘Especially not Claire! If she’d known she may have insisted on a share to keep quite. That was the hardest part – having no one to confide in.’
‘Didn’t you trust me to keep my mouth shut?’
Geraldine shook her head. ‘I couldn’t afford to trust anybody. The best way of succeeding was to keep my little secret to myself. That way, if all went pear-shaped, I would only have myself to blame.’
‘But you succeeded!’
‘Yep,’ she laughed, ‘got the house, car, bank accounts, everything.’
With one dexterous move, Tom rolled Geraldine swiftly over into a passionate clinch.
THE END
GERALDINE
Two hours, that’s what it had taken. Two rotten hours, hanging around just to have a sprained wrist diagnosed by the X-ray department. Two hours wasted in the company of drunks, junkies, lunatics and self-mutilators. That A & E department resembled a cross between a scene from Clockwork Orange and Quatermas. Now he had almost made his escape through the sliding glass doors, someone was calling him back.
‘Tommy Walker?’ The voice came from behind his left shoulder. He swivelled around to be confronted by a slim, blonde, about the same age as himself. He paused to scan his memory banks. ‘Geraldine,’ she said to jog his confused thoughts, ‘Do you remember me from HNR?’
She immediately slotted into perspective. Geraldine had attended the girls’ section of the same school as him, Handsworth New Road. Now he looked closer, her features hadn’t changed that much over the intervening twenty years. He had never considered Geraldine to be any great beauty, but she wasn’t ugly, and she had the shapeliest legs he had ever seen on a woman.
Although they had lived in the same neighbourhood, he and Geraldine had never really had much to do with one another while they were at school. And the first time they met after leaving school, was quite by accident.
Such were the fashions at the time; he had dropped into Peacocks on Dudley Road to buy some white paper collars to wear with his striped shirts. To his surprise, it had been Geraldine Riley who severed him. As they still lived near to one another and she was close to knocking off, he had waited to walk her home.
It was when he had suggested they go out together, that she had told him about her involvement with Gary Browne, a mutual acquaintance from their school days. Because Tom had always regarded Gary as a psychopathic bully, he found it difficult to comprehend why any girl in her right mind would touch him with a barge pole.
‘Geraldine Riley!’ he exclaimed with a knowing grin.
‘Browne!’ she corrected him.
‘Oh no!’ he responded carelessly, ‘Not still with Gary?’
‘Yep,’ she nodded, pretending not to notice his undertones. ‘And we’re still together. Well just about. I’ve just come in with him. Passed out. You know, diabetic.’
‘Well fancy meeting you after all this time.’ It was his turn to ignore what she had said. Even after all this time, he considered it would have been hypocritical to express any concern for Gary Browne.
He recalled bumping into Geraldine a week after their first meeting at Peacocks. This time it had been stage-managed. He had made sure he just happened to be walking passed the store when she had finished her shift. He remembered quite vividly the terrible black and yellow swelling around her bloodshot eye. He could remember the intense homicidal feeling that the sight of her looking so pathetic brought out in him. He could remember his disbelief when she explained, ‘Gary doesn’t mean it. It’s just this problem expressing himself.’ Then, to cap it all, a few weeks later he could remember hearing that she and Gary were marrying because she had fallen pregnant by him. All these memories sprang to his mind with the hiss of those sliding doors in the background. But now after twenty years, entirely out of the blue, she had confronted him with an even more unbelievable revelation: She was still married to Gary Browne! He needed to know more. ‘Look,’ he suggested, ‘if you’re not in a rush, how about stopping for a drink? Give us a chance to catch up on old times.’
Over a small highly polished, round, wooden table in the corner of The Windmill’s lounge, they brought one another up to date with the past twenty years of their lives. She listened, wide-eyed while Tom told how his twelve-year marriage to Julie had ended when she took off with a work colleague.
‘It had been going on for ages and you had no idea?’ She betrayed more than a hint of scepticism. ‘Surely you must have a some suspicion?’
‘Geraldine!’ He expressed his to agitation. ‘Don’t you think I’ve run every move she made, during that period, through my head a thousand times? And no, I still can’t recall anything that was suspicious. As far as I was concerned it was the perfect deceit.’ He never felt comfortable talking about that part of his life. It always made him feel inadequate. ‘So,’ he tapped the ball back into her court, ‘at least you and Gary have seen it through. And what about your kids?’
‘ Kid,’ Geraldine corrected him, ‘Claire. We only had the one daughter. She’s doing okay - got a job as a holiday rep in Cyprus.’ She leaned forward and locked eyes with him. ‘To tell the truth, Tom, I think she couldn’t wait to get away from her father.’
‘Still the same old Gary then, eh? D’you know, I could never understand what you saw in him.’ He grimaced. ‘Now, if you’d taken me up on my offer, who knows, we might still been an item.’
‘Yeah,’ Geraldine gave a wistful sigh and asked, ‘Did you and Julie have any kids?’
He gave a slow, thoughtful shake of his head. ‘No. Julie couldn’t have children.’
‘D’you think it might have helped the situation if you had?’
‘No,’ he said, giving his head a more emphatic shake, ‘I suppose that was one blessing; less complications.’ He swung the initiative back to Geraldine. ‘So, tell me, how bad is ‘poor’ old Gary’s diabetes?’ he asked, the sarcasm obvious.
‘He’s on regular injections and makes it worse by ignoring medical advice – won’t stop drinking. Then, when he has these turns, it’s everybody else’s fault. I swear, Tom, one of these days he’s going to do himself in.’
Tom managed to resist commenting that what a blessing that would be to the world. Instead, he studied the lines on Geraldine’s face. He was amazed at how well she had weathered the years - far better than he. One would have to look very closely to see any evidence of stress. Of course there were the crow’s feet wrinkles around her eyes – everybody of their age had them. A closer scrutiny revealed the scar tissue around her eyebrows; no doubt the legacy of Gary’s inability to express himself. And her nose; it had always been less than perfect, but now there was a slight kink about half way along its length.
‘Well, how bad is this latest blackout of Gary’s?’ he asked as a way of diverting the conversation away from himself.
Geraldine directed a stream of exhaled breath up her face, which rippled the few stands of blonde hair that weren’t scraped back from her forehead. ‘Bad! He’s in a sort of coma. Like I say, one of these days he’s going to really overdo it.’
Tom wasn’t really interested whether Gary Browne would live or die so he changed tack again. ‘Well, seen as it closed down years ago, you can’t be working at Peacocks.’
‘No,’ she explained, ‘When I got made redundant I worked at Boots for a while. Then I suddenly realised I was going nowhere fast. So, after studying at night school, to get the necessary qualifications I enrolled to train as a nurse. That’s what I’ve been doing ever since. Been at The Woodlands, R.O.H. for ages now.’
‘Must be more rewarding than selling paper collars to yobs,’ Tom grinned.
The deep blue of her eyes reflected a strange expression of relief. ‘D’you know, Tommy Walker, all the time we’ve been chatting away, I’ve been trying to remember what the hell it was that you came in for that day?’
Tom’s thoughts immediately flashed back to that day. It was the shape and length of Geraldine’s legs in that short uniformed overall that had first attracted him to her. He wondered if they would still hold that attraction - as she was now wearing jeans, it was impossible to ascertain. But it wasn’t only the physical attraction. On the way to her house, he had appreciated her conversational skills and thoroughly enjoyed her company. That’s why, despite being turned down, he had made a second attempt.
It wasn’t just nostalgia. Now, twenty years later, again he sensed some deep-rooted affection for her. Since Julie had left his existence had been lonely and miserable. He’d had the odd fling, but even in the short time he’d been chatting to Geraldine, he felt there was something deeper there – something that had lain dormant for all that time. If only she wasn’t married? Oh sod it! He decided to throw caution to the wind.
‘Geraldine,’ he almost lost the bottle as soon as he’d uttered her name. He bit hard into his bottom lip before continuing. ‘If I was to put the same proposition to you; the one I did walking you home from Peacocks that night, what would you say?’
Geraldine’s mouth curved into a broad mocking smile. ‘Bloody hell, Tom, you’re as slow as you ever were. If you’re asking me if I’d like to share some time with you then yes; the answer’s yes.’
Tom immediately had second thoughts. ‘Are you sure? I mean what about Gary?’
‘I’m not in the habit of doing this,’ Geraldine insisted, ‘but what he doesn’t know isn’t going to hurt him. Anyway, you were right earlier, when you hinted that we both might have been better off if we’d got it together before now. So, where do we go from here?’
Realising he was on a roll he decided to exploit the situation. ‘What do you say to coming back to my place for a nightcap?’
‘Only if you promise not to throw me out onto the street after,’ Geraldine said without flickering so much as an eyelash.
Tom had been out of circulation for a while and he still couldn’t get used to this new permissiveness of the late twentieth century. He was shocked by Geraldine’s response but he was determined not to show it. ‘Great then!’ he grinned. Hardly able to believe his luck, he quickly drained his glass and indicated that Geraldine should do the same. Hesitating for a moment he asked, ‘You’re not in a car, are you?’
‘No,’ Geraldine shook her head; ‘Gary came in by ambulance as a 999.’
‘Good,’ Tom said in a tone that carried all kinds of innuendoes, ‘But I’m afraid we’ll have to walk over to the hospital car park to collect mine.’
‘No problem,’ she assured him.
* * * *
Geraldine had to leave early in the morning. She needed to pick up her car and the bits and pieces she would need for work from home, before reporting for her shift. Before leaving, she promised to call round to Tom’s house straight from work. This, they thought safer than Tom being seen calling for her while her husband was in hospital.
For the first time, since he couldn’t remember when, Tom Walker went to work with a spring in his step. Even Jim Lovell, his partner in the small transport business, noticed the difference in his demeanour. ‘What’s up with you?’ he enquired, ‘On a promise, or something?’
Tom responded by winking and rubbing his nose with his forefinger. He felt reborn – at last there was a touch of meaning to his life again.
Like an impatient teenager, looking forward to his first date, he couldn’t wait for the clock to tick away the hours to the evening. At lunchtime he even considered ringing Geraldine at The Woodlands, but had second thoughts believing it might embarrass her.
She was doing a long shift and so wasn’t likely to be home until after eight. So, he spent the rest of the day planning a nice candlelit meal for her.
By half past nine he was growing concerned. By ten o’clock he decided there must be something amiss. If she’d been kept late on the ward surely she would have rung. He prayed that nothing had happened. All sorts of thoughts went through his head. Even if she had been injured in a car accident, surely she would have been able to get a message to him. It was no good. He had to know. He rang the hospital on the pretence of being her brother (he knew she had one somewhere). No, she hadn’t reported for work. They had received a message saying she wasn’t coming in - some complications regarding her husband.
He had just replaced the receiver when the telephone began ringing. Thank God, it was she. She was in a state of shock. She blurted out what she had to say in staccato. Gary had died. There got a message on her home phone. The hospital and the police had been attempting to contact her since last night. She’d been tied up all day arranging things - the funeral, registering the death etc. The authorities wanted to carry out a post mortem as they were having difficulties establishing the cause of death.
It was a cruel thought but Tom couldn’t see it in any other light: Gary Browne was dead. It didn’t really matter what killed him. He was a complication that was now out of the way. Things were really looking rosy - perhaps the ending of one life was the beginning of another.
Despite the years of turmoil with Gary, Geraldine didn’t take his passing as lightly as Tom Walker. In fact she appeared extremely distraught when Tom picked her up from the house she had shared with her husband in Bearwood.
‘Well I can’t see the problem,’ Tom declared, aiming his Rover back in the direction of Edgbaston, ‘if he was in a diabetic coma when he was admitted, I should think the cause of death is fairly obvious.’
‘Yes,’ Geraldine nodded irritably, ‘but you know what bureaucracy is – all that red tape. I just hope they can get it all sorted quickly so I can get on with the funeral arrangements. I’ve been in touch with Claire and she needs to know so that she can book a flight home.’
‘The old bugger - awkward right to the end, eh?’
Geraldine rewarded the quip with a hostile glare. ‘For Christ’s sake, Tom! He was a human being. He was far from perfect but I was married to him for the best part of twenty years. I think he deserves some respect.’
‘Well, I think we’ll have to agree to disagree on that,’ Tom shrugged.
* * * *
With her boarding card gripped tightly in one hand, a pretty blonde gave her mother an affectionate hug. Then as they parted, she asked with a warm comforting smile, ‘Are you sure you’re going to be all right, Mom? If need be, I can always jack up this lot and find a job closer to home.’
Geraldine gave an emphatic shake of her head. ‘After all this time, I’m sure I’ll be able to look after myself. Take my advice and seize every opportunity that comes. You don’t want to wind up like me.’ She leaned forward and gave her daughter one last peck on the cheek. ‘Now, I think you’d better be moving, love, they’re calling your flight.’
Reluctantly, Claire left her mother and made her way towards the departure gates.
* * * *
‘So it was that easy?’ Tom asked, clinking his glass of champagne against Geraldine’s, as they lay side-by-side in a plush hotel room.
‘Yes,’ she giggled, ‘all it took was an overfilled syringe. I knew the chances of a pathologist finding anything were negligible, and an overdose of insulin is difficult to detect, especially when a presence is expected.’
‘And you didn’t let on to anyone, not even Claire?’
‘Especially not Claire! If she’d known she may have insisted on a share to keep quite. That was the hardest part – having no one to confide in.’
‘Didn’t you trust me to keep my mouth shut?’
Geraldine shook her head. ‘I couldn’t afford to trust anybody. The best way of succeeding was to keep my little secret to myself. That way, if all went pear-shaped, I would only have myself to blame.’
‘But you succeeded!’
‘Yep,’ she laughed, ‘got the house, car, bank accounts, everything.’
With one dexterous move, Tom rolled Geraldine swiftly over into a passionate clinch.
THE END
