Page 4 of Boomerville at Ballymegille

Gritting her teeth, she typed on.

In moments, the booking form was complete. Melissa closed her laptop and stood up. Hotel Boomerville would be better than a remote house-sitting job and, with any luck, she’d bought herself some breathing space and time to sort out her life.

In a place that Malcolm would never find.

* * *

Bill lookedup from his morning paper. He’d almost completed the crossword but a noise outside disturbed him and as he cocked his head to one side to listen, he heard a group of boys shouting to each other. Their voices rose above the tarmac path that separated his Victorian villa from the park in the centre of the town. The boys kicked an empty can and it clattered on the hard surface, the sound as harsh as their expletives as they sent it soaring high into the air, to land with a crack on the window of Bill’s basement kitchen.

Bill cursed and, shoving the crossword to one side, raced to the door and thrust it open. ‘You’ll pay for this!’ he yelled and shook his fist as the boys, leaning over his railings, stared down the steep steps and laughed.

‘Sod off, you silly old git!’ a pimply-faced youth replied and pulled a face. He held two fingers up in defiance then leapt on a brand-new mountain bike and cycled away. Another youth picked up a stone and hurled it towards Bill.

Bill ducked as the stone spun through the open doorway, skimming across the black and white tiles that flagged the kitchen floor. It came to rest beside the ageing AGA. Bill sighed as he closed the door and reached down to pick it up. He winced when a pain shot across his back.

Too many years of lifting his mother from her bed into a wheelchair.

He stumbled to the table and gripped it tightly, waiting for the spasm to pass. ‘Bloody kids!’ Bill muttered, as the pain eased.

Thank goodness his mother wasn’t here to witness the mindless violence that had become a day to day occurrence in Amberley Place. She would turn in her grave if she knew that her only son was being subjected to bullying by immature teenagers. Bill stared at the window where a crack had appeared. At least it wasn’t broken but, at some point, he’d have to mend it.

Footsteps echoed on the staircase at the back of the kitchen and a woman bustled into the room. She was rake-thin and wore an overall knotted tightly around her waist. ‘Not those boys again?’ she asked as she placed a bucket in the sink, turned on the ancient tap, and began to fill the bucket with hot water.

Bill looked up.

Kathy shook her head. Her dull blonde hair was greasy and hung limp. Like cold soggy chips, Bill thought as she heaved the bucket out of the sink and added a dash of detergent.

‘You need to be firmer with them,’ Kathy said, ‘never mind waving your fist, ’tis a damn good hiding that’s needed with that lot.’

Bill knew that Kathy had witnessed the scene from an upstairs window and would now spend the remainder of her shift telling him how his mother would have dealt with such behaviour and what he should do next.

‘Your dear mother wouldn’t have put up with it,’ Kathy said. She placed the bucket on the floor and water slopped onto the tiles. ‘She’d phone the police and have them arrested.’

Bill thought it highly unlikely that the local police would dash to the scene of a recent window crack, nor respond to a few hurled insults from kids who should be in school. They had far more important crimes to worry about in the busy Merseyside town of Creston, which was close to the motorway network and, with the soaring crime rate, difficult to control. It was the perfect place for undesirables to circulate.

‘I’ll be needing a bottle of window cleaner, put it on your shopping list,’ Kathy said as she reached into a cupboard and bought out a mop. ‘You can hardly see through to the park in your mother’s room.’ She plunged the mop into the bucket, squeezed hard and began to attack the floor. Bill raised his feet as Kathy thrust out in his direction.

Given an audience, Kathy worked like a trooper and Bill knew that it was difficult to fault her as she bustled about the room, tidying and cleaning. But beyond his gaze, he was aware that the rest of the house had hardly been touched that day and Kathy had spent her time poking about in his mother’s jewellery box, or running her fingers over the coats and gowns that hung in the dressing room on the second floor.

If he had any sense, he would have let the cleaner go when his mother died. But Bill hadn’t felt capable of making any decisions and now, a few months later, Kathy was still in his employment. She was part of the fixtures and fittings in the rambling pile, which at times felt to Bill like a giant prison, full of dark and dreary furniture, useless bric-a-brac and forgotten memorabilia that he should have cleared out in the weeks following his mother’s death.

Bill knew that he was gutless. His mother had told him often enough. She could never understand that her only son’s job, as historian at Creston Museum, had fulfilled his limited ambition. Combined with a love of quizzes, Bill appeared to want little more out of life and, as her health deteriorated, she’d become reliant on his care and insisted that he give up work to tend to her needs. Middle-aged and with a modest pension, Bill had reluctantly agreed. The only help his mother had allowed in the house came from Kathy, on three mornings a week.

‘Add bleach to the list too,’ Kathy said as she straightened up and poured the contents of the bucket into the sink. ‘I’ll give the yard a going over on Friday.’

Bill reached for his paper and stared at the print. It was neatly folded around an advert in the classified holiday section. He thought of the website he’d discovered after reading the advert. A hotel called Boomerville, in a village in Cumbria, was offering holidays with courses tailored for those of a certain age. The retreat looked comfortable and inviting and as he’d flicked through the site, Bill had suddenly become inspired to break out of his boring routine. With his mother gone, there was nothing to stop him. To his astonishment, within minutes of filling in the online form, a reply had popped up his inbox. Due to an unforeseen cancellation, his booking at Boomerville had been accepted!

‘The yard can wait,’ Bill said.

‘Well, maybe ’til next week, but no longer.’ Kathy put the mop and bucket away.

‘I’m having a holiday,’ Bill said, ‘and you can too.’

‘What did you say?’

Bill could see that Kathy was shocked. In all the twenty odd years that she’d worked in the Bradbury household, Bill had never been away. Not unless you counted the annual trip to Eastbourne with his mother but that hadn’t happened for at least a decade.

‘I’ve left your pay on the side, with extra to cover my absence and I’ll let you know when I decide to come back.’ Bill stood. He gestured to a brown envelope which lay on the dresser. It was thick with cash. ‘You won’t be needing your key while I’m away,’ he said and reached out to pocket the key that Kathy had left on the table when she’d arrived and made her first cup of tea for the day.

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