MORNING SERIAL
NOTHING cheap for Bran. She unscrewed it, found a scrap of paper and scribbled quickly. She stood directly above me and crumpled it into a ball. She dropped it in my lap. An address, of a kind, for Haf. She said: “I was hoping you wouldn’t go on. I don’t like what happened to you, Billy. I wanted to make it up to you. No-go, it seems. Contacting her will do you no good either. But if you insist, go ahead. Maybe you can talk some sense into her after all. Remember she’ll lose out, too. Think of that, eh?”
She turned, and then she turned back. I knew it was never going to be that easy.
“You said you wanted to know, didn’t you? So, I’ll tell you. She thought you were – that you ought to be – her daddy, so when I told her you weren’t, she went with Mal. Her stepfather. And ruined our marriage, for what it was worth. Ended it anyway. Since then she’s just gone on making trouble and the latest is to have revenge – on him and on me – by spreading these lies. Which will only re-bound on her, the idiot. Or half-lies, if you like. Where the f*** does she think the money for her comes from? It’ll do no good. Mal is having her legally removed from Valleyscorp – incompetence, drugs, whatever it takes. Unless you can persuade her not to hold things up, to get in the way of things she doesn’t understand. Oh, and one more thing … you’re really not the daddy. Honest. Cross my heart. Hope to die.”
And she let herself out. I felt, as I always did with Bran, that none of this should have been this way. And that I was not a fool to want it different, only one to think it had ever been possible.
*****
I SKIPPED the shower because of the bandages, and settled for a shave and a shampoo. I cleaned my teeth with my fingers and a pink-striped toothpaste. I found a T-shirt with the least naff print transfer in the quietest colour – army drab – some jeans and deck shoes and a pair of matching white socks and a red and yellow pullover that looked like a dog had revisited his dinner. Apart from my jacket, thoughtfully brushed but still stained with blood and dirt, my own clothes were nowhere to be seen, either torn and useless or washed. I guessed the former.
> The Crossing by Dai Smith is published by Parthian in the Modern Wales series www.parthianbooks.com
CONTINUES TOMORROW