The Years She Stole

Dear Vera

I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news but your husband is having an affair. Yep. You think he goes off to work every morning but I know FOR A FACT he goes off and rogers some flirty young bint on the other side of town. Also, while we’re dishing the dirt I can confirm it, it’s true that he shoved his hand up that Cheryl’s skirt at her eighteenth. Remember? In the lean-to? Yeah, thought you might.

Basically he’s a dirty bastard and you’d be better off without him. Read that sentence a few times. It needs to sink in.

It’s me, by the way. Gwen. Your next-door neighbour. I know every time you look at me you probably turn your nose up because you’re a full-on skinnymalinx and I’m almost breaking the scales, but I write you this letter as a concerned and caring friend.

PLEASE NEVER SPEAK TO ME ABOUT IT. We shall say no more on the matter. It’s too embarrassing and will only lead to us falling out, like we did when your late alkie mam dropped anchor in Poo Bay round our gaff. Yes, I think non-discussion is the way forward, to be a tad on the frank side.

She seems like a nice enough girl, this bit on the side. Think she’ll grow into a handsome enough young woman. I mean, she’s no patch on you, looks-wise, but you know your problem, Vera? You’re too vain. You really fancy yourself. Everyone in the cul-de-sac says it. This, as a for instance, is what I heard someone say recently in Scoop ’n’ Save: Vera? She calls her own name out when she’s coming. I bet when Carly Simon sang that song about Warren Beatty you blushed. I bet you went the colour of my curtains. I bet you shrieked like you was on them roller coasters up Blackpool and thought ‘You’re so Vain’ was about you. Ha. Oh, I do make myself laugh!

I can just picture you now, reading this and shaking your head. I can just picture you in your hallway with the shiny wallpaper going, ‘This is all ridiculous! What a carry-on!’ It’s such a carry-on, I’m surprised Sid James isn’t hiding in your rockery.

Well. D’you know what to do if you don’t believe me?

Follow him. Follow him one day when he leaves yours so early in the morning. You really think he goes to work at the crack of dawn? He doesn’t. He goes off to his love nest and you should follow and confront him. She’s a quirky little thing. On other terms you’d like her. But the time for action is now.

I do believe we shall be hearing the ringing of divorce bells in the cul-de-sac very shortly. I will not be laughing at you (well, not strictly true, we do ALL laugh at your ‘going up in the middle’ nets – SO common! TAKE THEM DOWN, THEY’RE EMBARRASSING, YOU ARE REALLY MAKING A SPECTACLE OF THEM HAVING THEM UP. I KNOW! I’M ‘WITH IT’!).

Not a very good year for you this, is it, Vera? First your mam drops the kids off at the pool in my walk-in wardrobe. Then she nearly kills your kids in a car crash, killing herself in the process. And now this!

Keep it under your hat.

And remember. You dare talk to me about it and you’ll see what a good little actress I am when I deny knowing what the frig you are on about.

All best wishes

Gwen from next door.

Hi Vera

It’s Cheryl here.

Hasn’t your Doug got big hands?

They look quite normal-sized when you just see them every day.

But when they’re up your chuff, Jesus. It were like sitting on a really wide lamp post or something.

DON’T MENTION THIS IF I SEE YOU.

Lots of love

Cheryl xx

I was really enjoying this whole DON’T MENTION THIS IF I SEE YOU thing. It was really tickling me. And the whole letters from concerned neighbours thing was really tickling me too.

Gosh, this new neighbour was a bit of a bitch. Snooty, full of herself, holier than Wow!

And now it was getting a bit like a saucy postcard from the seaside. Or a Carry On film. Better rein it back in.

I’d just popped to the corner shop when I met your one for the first time. And honest to God Vera, he mentally undressed me with his eyes. Soiled. That’s what I felt after I’d met him. Like he’d made me do dirty things. And I’d only nipped out for a Viennetta. It wasn’t a nice feeling, so soon after a divorce. And I have admit, it made my Catholicism flare up again.

I can’t actually bring myself to say what happened next time I popped to that shop. It was hot. I needed an ice pop to cool me down as me bay window’s jammed tight and nothing seems to loosen it. Plus I’d not got round to putting my summer drapes up yet.

I don’t want to say what your husband did to me with that ice pop. But let’s just say, it took a boil wash to get those vivid orange stains out of the gusset of my pants.

Your husband is a cad, Vera. And I’m going to have to move house.

Beware and best wishes

Laura-Lyn Lyons

I liked that name. Laura-Lyn Lyons. I kind of wanted to meet her. I kind of wanted to be her.

I know. I was being so childish. And that could have given the game away. When wondering who might have sent these poison-pen letters they might have got to thinking they were all a bit juvenile and so the finger could have been pointed at me, the youngest card in the pack. But the ace I had hidden up my sleeve was of course that nobody would imagine I knew any of Doug’s neighbours. Why would I? As far as he knew, I didn’t even know where he lived.

I knew that Vera would come looking for me; it was only a matter of time. The way I saw it she had two options. Maybe three. Actually no, four.

One. Read the letters and think they were the work of a mad woman and ignore them, put them in the bin and forget about them – not even mentioning them to Doug.

Two. Read them to Doug and he would put her mind at rest and advise no further action to be taken.

Four. Read them. Hide them. Don’t tell Doug and then follow him next time he comes to see me.

I felt like the last two options were the most likely. So I had to be prepared. There’d be some forewarning with option three as Doug would phone me and say, She knows. And she’s on her way over.

But my woman’s instinct told me she’d choose the silent but deadly treatment and want to strike when neither of us was expecting it.

It was a Tuesday morning. It was bright. I knew we were in for a decent kind of day because by the time Doug left me, his wetness drying between my legs, the sun was blinding, even through my thin curtains. I lay for a little while listening to Terry Wogan. Some’d say he was a bit old for my tastes, but then I’d an older boyfriend. My tastes were a bit on the antiquey side. And there weren’t nothing wrong with that. Classic taste, that’s what I had.

Half an hour later I was showered and ready to face the day. I locked the flat door and took the stairs to the ground floor and, as I turned into the car park, I saw her. She was standing by a car, staring at me, chewing her bottom lip. I pretended I had no idea who she was and carried on my way, trying to act as normally as I could. Needless to say she followed me into the entry round the side of the flats.

I’d never been in a fight in my life. I was very lucky to have coasted along through the various stages of the education system without anyone so much as punching me in the face. Oh, I’d been called all the names under the sun, but nobody had actually punched me. So when Vera grabbed my hair and smashed my head against the brick wall behind the flats out of the blue that morning as I was walking to the bus stop to go to work, I had to admit. It didn’t half hurt.

It sounded like she was breaking my bloody skull. It sounded like a bone was being crushed. I felt the graze of brick against my cheek and a sticky wetness that told me I was bleeding.

The plan might have inadvertently given us both black eyes, but at least the plan had worked.

I’d nearly shat myself as I took in what was happening and realized who was attacking me. Clearly those letters had had the desired effect.

And at that she actually pissed herself. Really patronizing ‘throwing her head back’ stuff, and snorting like the horse in Black Beauty. And even though it was clear she was a bit of a beauty, this made her look ugly. Eventually she settled down. She peered at me like I was an exhibit in the museum when, let’s be honest, she was old enough to be the sort of thing dug up by an archaeologist. Thirty-five if she were a day.

‘Who are you?!’ she mimicked, before slapping me round the face. ‘You know full well who I am, you snivelling little tart!’

I spat in her face. I had no idea why I’d done it but maybe ‘snivelling little tart’ was a provocation too far. And I knew I’d have a reasonably good aim, no doubt better than any slap I could have offered. But, surprise surprise, she really didn’t like that.

And then she grabbed me by my hair again and dragged me back into the square where my low-rise block sat. And here she felt it appropriate to shout to the empty square: ‘Lock up your husbands, ladies!’

‘This woman –’ she looked at me, all side-eyed, and corrected herself – ‘this girl is a SLUT!!!’

‘Oh, I’m sure she works very hard for the money.’ Her eyes were narrowing. She still had tight hold of my hair.

She leaned in to me. ‘You’re the not the first, dearie. And you certainly won’t be the last.’

Dearie? Blimey, who was she? My NAN? I squared up to her. She didn’t like that. And she didn’t like it when I said, ‘Kind of begs the question what you’re doing wrong, then. Dearie.’

She flinched. Ah. Her Achilles heel. If I knew her name, then it meant we’d talked about her. And this she didn’t seem to like. So I used it again.

‘Well. You know. The way your arse gives off that hideous aroma when you’re in bed. Not many men’d put up with that, now would they?’

She looked genuinely wrong-footed, as well she might. But then she let out this hysterical hyena-like laugh. God, she was annoying. No wonder Doug had strayed, bless him. She was a full-on freak.

‘Only what I’ve been told. Oh, and he says my pits smell fresher. We have a right laugh about your personal hygiene issues.’

I could see the cogs whirring in her brain. Then she carried on thinking I was bullshitting.

‘Maybe what you need to make up, Vera love, is some antiperspirant deodorant. Know what I mean, kid?

‘If you say so, Vera. I’m sure you always smell just . . . fresh as a daisy.’

She yanked my hair down and shoved me against a nearby car. I yelped in pain as the wing mirror jabbed me in the ribs.

The square was eerily silent. Every noise echoed around, ricocheting off the walls.

She let go of my hair. I stood up to my full height. I looked her square in the face and said one word.

She had quite a lot of make-up on. But I still saw the silly moo pale. It was as if someone had cut one of her feet off, and all the blood she had in her body just whooshed out and spilled on the floor.

She sniffed. The veins on her neck stuck out like wires off a telly. And then she spun round and clobbered me one again. Then, flicking some imaginary fluff off her bosom, and trying to look like a lady, she walked away.

She didn’t really know which way she was going; she was clearly in a daze, as she was heading to the corner of the square and there was no way out there. But a few paces later it was like she came to, and she stopped, spun round again and made a beeline for a nearby white car. I didn’t know what sort of car it was but it was a smug kind of car. The sort that said, ‘Look at me. I’ve got a second family car. My fella’s got the big one, and I’ve got the cutesy little run-around. Aren’t I ace?’ She got in and took a few attempts to start the engine up. I had to stop myself from calling out, WOMEN DRIVERS, EH? as I realized I couldn’t even drive, and maybe it was sexist and that. And then she reversed really quickly and juddered to a halt in the middle of the square. She looked at me and wound her window down.

‘Well, at least we know one thing!’ she spat out. ‘Blokes think with their dicks and not their eyes. Look at the state of you! Marty Feldman on steroids!’

And of course I was genuinely intrigued. And excited. Like I knew what he was going to say.

‘She’s kicked me out,’ he said in a monotone voice. My heart skipped a beat. Then another. Then another. Finally, my plan had worked. My illustrious work had paid off.

But I couldn’t let him see that. I reached out and stroked his arm, as I might have done through the bars of a pen at the zoo, coyly touching a disinterested goat, unsure whether it was going to buck against you, nibble you, or nip you.

And he shifted his bum and let a cracker of a fart rip out. He wafted it his way to have a quick smell, pulled a face, then batted it towards me.

I dropped my work bag, nabbed some air freshener from the side and squirted it in his direction. Was this what we’d become?

‘What happened to your face?’ he said, suddenly noticing the cuts and grazes I’d tried, unsuccessfully, to cover with foundation and a makeshift fringe that kept riding up.

‘Don’t tell me,’ he said before I could answer. ‘Vera happened to your face.’

‘She’s got a temper on her, Shirl,’ he said, pointing to his own shining black eye. ‘You didn’t say she smelt, did you?’

‘Well, the last thing she said as she was chucking some of my clothes out the window was . . . “I DON’T STINK.”’

And he really shouted it, which I thought was a bit unnecessary. Still, took all sorts to make a world. And I guess in a way this was his flat more than mine in as much as he’d bought it. So why shouldn’t he raise his voice if he fancied? Hmm?

‘So. You’ve moved in with me.’ I sat beside him on the settee and put a scatter cushion over my knee and hugged it to me.

He nodded again. Though I have to say, he didn’t look that chuffed about the whole thing.

‘She’s turned them against me. Keeps screaming things like – “His name’s not Dad, it’s BASTARD!”’

‘She sounds a bit unstable. And I mean. Let’s be frank. You certainly didn’t get that –’ I pointed at his black eye – ‘by walking into a kitchen cupboard.’

‘Suppose. Eeeh, that’s so weird. That’s the sort of thing that happens in Coronation Street.’

‘Mm.’ I nodded. I’d forgotten. He were a bit middle class, so never watched Corrie.

‘One was from a neighbour who completely denied any knowledge of it when she showed her it.’

‘They were all typed. At one point . . . and I’m sorry about this, petal. At one point I thought you might have been behind them.’

‘Well, this is it. And besides. Whoever did write them knew a lot of what was going on in the street I live in.’

‘Except when you want me to. You know. When you like me to be a bit . . . firm . . . in the bedroom department.’

‘Only coz I fought her off. And she shouted that I was a dirty little trollop to all the neighbours. And said I was going to steal their husbands off them.’

‘They were all out having a good old look. I didn’t know where to put myself.’

When I came in twenty minutes later he was still sat in the same position. Only this time with the phone in his hands, like he’d just hung up. He glanced at me.

‘She had the eyes of a natural-born liar, Doug. I’ve never seen eyes quite like them.’

‘The devil’s eyes. That’s what I saw. She scared me, Doug. And I don’t know what to do.’

‘Look at the evidence. She hit me, she hit you. She’s completely livid with us. I . . . I’m not sure we shouldn’t split up. Now. D’you want extra vinegar on these chips? I’ve got some in t’pantry.’

I was playing a dangerous game. Getting him to commit by pretending to dither. It would have been so easy for him to agree with me. But fortunately he jumped at the chance to put me right. He followed me into the kitchen.

‘I have to make this work, Shirley. Then none of this will have been in vain.’

‘I can’t chuck away all those years of marriage unless it’s with good reason.’

‘Right, then. We’ll say no more about it. Shall I do us some bread and marge to go with these?’