Page 67 of Loving Netta Wilde

‘Why? Because of what you said to Ursula?’ She could hear the sound of traffic in the background. He must be somewhere busy.

‘I was just trying to tell her my side of the story.’

‘Uh huh. I suppose that’s the one where I deserved everything you dished out, is it? Did you tell her how you threatened to take the children away from me if I didn’t toe the line? Did you tell her how you constantly reminded me what a filthy, disgusting, whore and an unfit mother I was? Did you?’

‘I don’t remember it that way.’

‘No? Well then tell me how you remember it, because I am dying to know exactly how you can twist this one around.’

‘It’s not important now. I wanted to ask you something.’

Netta wiped her eyes. The anger was in full flow now. ‘What?’

‘Did you try to kill yourself?’

Her heart skipped a beat, then another. ‘Who told you that?’

‘It doesn’t matter. Please tell me. Did you?’

‘No. I thought about it, but a kind stranger talked me out of it.’

‘Was that, was that the morning we asked you to leave?’

‘Yes.’ She thought she heard something like a sharp intake of breath mingling with the traffic sounds, but she could have been mistaken. ‘Colin, you need to come home.’

‘Yes, I’ll be back later. There’s just a few things I need to do first.’

‘Like what? Colin?’ He’d hung up. Netta tried to call him back, but it went straight to answerphone.

38

A FOOL AND HIS CHOICES

Doogie parked the car some distance from his destination and walked the rest of the way. He was still smiling at Netta’s reaction to that air fryer. He knew it was a mistake to buy it but the kids had ganged up on him as soon as he mentioned he’d like to get her something. It was so funny to see her pretending to like it. When they were together, she’d have told him straight out it was a shit present. But she was different now. More considered. Staying in her house with her family had opened his eyes to a different side of her that he was still getting used to. She’d gone over to Frank’s for the night now that they were back on speaking terms. They’d wanted to spend some time on their own, but they were also waiting for Colin the Wanker to come back. Doogie hadn’t fancied staying in with the kids. There was only so much bollocks TV you could take. Besides, he had a need to be alone for a while. All that people interaction was doing his head in.

The bars and cafés in Moseley were loud and busy. You’d have thought a Wednesday night would have been quieter. And there were so many cars. Before he moved to Scotland, he loved loud, buzzy places like this. But there was no space here. It wasall so claustrophobic, and he was beginning to go stir crazy. Why else would he be doing mad things like running errands and gardening for a crabby old girl who reminded him of Monique, his dad’s nasty bitch of a wife? And why else would he be tramping the streets looking for Colin the Wanker?

He cut across the road while there was a lull in the traffic and followed the same route he’d taken that morning. Liza had given him the address. It was something they’d cooked up between them, seeing as Colin’s ex didn’t know him. He’d watched the house, just to see what she was up to, if she had any patterns, went out at certain times. That sort of thing. This morning, he’d seen a big guy, who was carrying too much weight to be a threat, leaving and coming back a couple of hours later. He'd made a note of the times. The woman hadn’t shown her face, but he saw her moving about inside. He’d do the same thing tomorrow before he went to see Priscilla Sweeting. She had more jobs for him.

He was here on a hunch tonight. Frank had said Colin the Wanker had been out late for the last few nights. To Doogie’s mind there weren’t many places he’d be likely to go to. He’d already tried the allotment, and Liza said he wasn’t all that into pubs. So now that it was dark, Doogie was guessing there was only one place he’d be.

He kept to the opposite side of the road to the house, his eyes searching leafy bushes and the kind of dark places a man could hide in. He’d done it himself once, after Netta had ended their affair. He hated that word, affair. It sounded seedy. Dirty. Netta had lived with Colin in a different house then, but Doogie had hidden away in one of those dark places watching her. He’d been fully intent on knocking the door and begging her to come away with him, but something had stopped him. So instead he’d stayed there watching and wanting. It had been seeing her kids, Liza and Will. He couldn’t take her away from them. He knewwhat it was like to have a distant parent, and Colin the Wanker had looked like he was a good dad. Better than he could ever be anyway. So he’d decided Netta was better off without him and walked away. If only he’d gone through with it. If only he’d had the courage to be a different man. Because even from across the road and through glass, he’d seen that Netta was hurting. And he’d known that Colin was just another version of Monique, so it was obvious he’d want to hurt her some more.

He thought about what Geraldine had said to him a couple of weeks ago, about how he felt he’d let Netta down. If she’d said he was ashamed of himself for being a coward and walking away without fighting for her, that would have been closer to the truth. He had no way of knowing if he’d have convinced Net to go with him, or if she had, that things would have worked out, but at least he’d have tried. If nothing else, he’d have saved her from Colin. And it was fine for Geraldine to say there was no need for him to protect her but try telling that to his conscience. Try telling it to his gut instinct. And try telling it to his heart.

A figure stumbled out from a gap between two houses. He remembered from this morning that it had been a gully of some sort. Sure enough it was Colin the Wanker, and he was doing his flies up. He was obviously pissed because he fell over a bin. If he carried on like that, he was going to either get himself arrested or beaten up again. Doogie considered rescuing him and taking him home. But then he remembered the way Netta had looked when she came back down from the bathroom earlier on. The wanker had called her, and she’d been crying. Fuck it. The guy was a bastard. Whatever happened, he had it coming to him. He went to find a park where he could lie down, look at the stars and imagine he was in Scotland where he belonged.

He was up and out before anyone else came down. Netta’s car was outside, so he assumed she was still next door. Doogie couldn’t decide how he felt about Frank. He seemed like an all-right kind of guy, but all that sulking shit was pretty childish. If you had a problem, you should either say it or let it go. That’s how it worked with him and Netta. Him and Claire as well. Actually, that was how it worked with him and Grace. Had worked. Until he’d fucked things up. Yeah, right. And there was him calling Frank childish.

But it wasn’t the sulking that was his main problem with Frank. It was the thing he’d said about Grace. In Doogie’s opinion it was low and below the belt. The kind of thing he’d expect from Colin the Wanker, not the man Netta chose to be with. Either her judgement was way off, or Frank’s decency had been skewed by recent events. Both of those scenarios were possible.

It niggled him though, because it was true that Grace bore a passing resemblance to Netta, which was exactly why he’d resisted getting involved with her at first. She’d been the one to make the first move. And the second, and the third. In fact, she’d made all the moves. Doogie had been like a nervous animal, scared of human attachment. Initially, it had just been about the sexual release for both of them. He didn’t ask but he guessed she’d exhausted all the other available options, there weren’t many in that small and remote community. In the warmer months when the tourists came, she’d sometimes hook up with a passer-through. But she kept coming back to him. He rarely slept with anyone other than her. Not because he had particularly strong feelings for her but because he didn’t want the contact.

As they got to know each other better he found that aside from the slight similarity in looks, Grace was nothing at all like Netta. She was straightforward, blunt to the point of rudenesssometimes. You only had to be with her for a while to get how connected she was to the land and her roots. It was impossible to pull them apart. Doogie liked that about her. But the thing he liked most about Grace was that she didn’t understand him at all, and she made no effort to change that. She didn’t care what made him tick. For her, it was all about his actions. The whys behind them weren’t important. It was a refreshing change, and he came to love the way it made him feel like a new and different person with nothing to hide.

Two summers ago she announced that she was his alone. He said it was the same for him. He didn’t one hundred percent mean it, but she wouldn’t have known that because she couldn’t see into his soul. Unlike Netta who could do it with one look.

It was raining this morning, so he parked the car near enough to the house to be able to see it from inside without being noticed. Colin the Wanker wasn’t there anymore, so he’d either gone back to Frank’s or he was sleeping it off in a cell or a hospital bed. Doogie didn’t care which.

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