Page 3 of Loving Netta Wilde

Colin assumed she was referring to Arianne and nodded.

‘Right.’ Liza made for the house like she was about to storm it. She tried the lock with her key and failed. Obviously. In the last year, Arianne had installed more bolts and double locks than Fort Knox. If Colin had been a cynical man, he’d have said she’d been planning this for a while. Actually, he was a cynical man, but he was also fully aware that Arianne wasn’t that smart. The woman could barely plan out a shopping list. Considering theirs consisted mostly of green mush, brown mush and yellow mush, it was hardly rocket science but such was the extent of her mental capability.

Ignoring the bell, Liza pounded her fist on the door. ‘Open up, Arianne.’

The door remained shut, as he knew it would. She banged even harder. ‘I said open up.’

The letter box flap lifted. Perhaps there was a chance. Colin stepped closer, just as a piece of paper slipped out and landed on the step. Liza picked it up, read it and tutted loudly.

He peered over her shoulder. ‘What does it say?’

‘Go away or I’ll call the police.’ She bent down and shouted through the letterbox: ‘You’ve like, stolen my dad’s house, so I don’t think so somehow.’

‘I’ll have him for domestic abuse,’ Arianne shouted back from the other side.

Liza stood up and looked at Colin, her eyes wide with disbelief. Unfortunately for him, it was the wrong kind of disbelief.

‘Darling, that’s rubbish. If anything it’s the other way round.’ He tried to laugh it off but he knew he was only making things worse.

‘Shall we go?’ Netta was at his side. He’d been too busy with Liza to notice her sneaking up on him.

He turned to her. ‘It’s not true.’

There was a flash in her eyes, a flash that said,maybe not this time. He immediately resented it. The way things had turned out with them, it had never been abuse. Never. Not on his part anyway.

‘She’s not going to let you in. We might as well put your things in the car.’ She pulled Liza away. ‘Come on. We’ll work out what to do when we’re home.’

They filled the boot and one half of the back seat with his possessions. Liza opened the front passenger door. ‘You okay in the back, Dad?’ She narrowed her eyes, daring him to say no.

Colin decided to take the hint, mumbled an agreement and slid onto the back seat. It wasn’t as if he wanted to sit next to the ex anyway. As they drove away, he took a last look at his home. Someone was in the front bay window. Someone who was not Arianne.

They took the corner a lot faster than he would have taken it. Too fast for the baggage on the other half of the seat. A rolled-up pair of socks fell out of a loosely tied plastic bag and landed in his lap. He noted with displeasure they were an old pair thathad at least one hole. He tossed the socks back into the bag and looked inside to see what else was in there. A short but frantic sort through confirmed his fears. Arianne hadn’t even bothered to pack the decent stuff. In fact, he wasn’t entirely sure that this wasn’t a bag he’d recently sorted for a charity collection. Colin let out a long drawn-out sigh that nobody else acknowledged. In terms of awfulness, this day was the gift that kept on giving.

No one spoke on the way to Netta’s house. Not that there was anything to say really, except thank you, but he hadn’t built himself up enough to do that yet. Instead, he tried to remember the last time he’d been in a car with Netta and Liza. It would have been before Netta left. Will would probably have been there too. No. He couldn’t remember when it was. So he cast his mind back to the early days when the kids were small. When they’d been happy. Trips to the wildlife park because Will had been obsessed with lions. Coming back home, the children dozing in the back, him and Netta laughing about Liza’s reaction to the monkeys, always a mixture of horror and awe. But he was getting his dates mixed up. The wildlife park trips would have been after things began to fall apart. There wouldn’t have been laughter then.

‘We’re here,’ said Liza, stating the obvious.

‘I’ll take you up to your room,’ said Netta. ‘Lize, can you go and tell Frank we’re back?’

She took him up to a decent size bedroom at the back of the house. Judging by its contents, he guessed it was Will’s. ‘Nice room.’

‘It’s Will’s.’

‘I thought I recognised the trademark tat.’ The joke had been an attempt to pretend he knew more about his son than he actually did. Netta said nothing. He shoved his hands in his pockets. ‘By the way, thank you. This must be difficult. If it’s anyconsolation, it’s bloody awful for me. The whole thing I mean, not just being here with you.’

She nodded. ‘He’ll be back from uni soon, Will. You’ll have to go then.’

‘I’m sure it won’t be long. Arianne will come round.’

‘And if she doesn’t?’

‘She will.’ He thought of the person in the window of his house. It wasn’t someone he recognised but one thing he could see, it was a man. A big man, by the look of it. Colin wondered what the big man’s shoe size was and whether he was about to become the recipient of a drawer full of decent socks.

They heard voices downstairs. ‘That’ll be Liza and Frank,’ said Netta.

‘Come to keep an eye on me, has he?’ Yet another joke that flatlined.

‘Something like that, yes. I’ll leave you to unpack.’

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