False Friends Read online

  ‘Thank goodness Christmas and New Year are more interesting than you and your father, eh?’ Stella said when they were closing the shop on the Monday before New Year’s Day. ‘Giving you a bit of peace, eh?’

  ‘With luck 1951 will start with something else to talk about. Like the January sales,’ Lowri agreed.

  ‘Now there’s an idea. Why don’t we have a sale?’

  ‘But they’re usually to get rid of the last season’s leftovers and we can hardly sell stamps cheap, can we?’ Lowri laughed at the enthusiasm on Stella’s face.

  ‘There’s all these gifts, mind. Aprons, and handkerchiefs and scarves for a start. And a few calendars and cards. We’ll reduce the prices and get rid of them. If we stick the cards in the storeroom for next year they come out looking a bit shabby, and who will want this year’s calendar? Right then, when shall we start?’

  ‘What about next Monday? It’s usually a quiet day on the counter, and I’ll come in on Sunday and mark up the new prices if you like.’

  ‘Good on you, Lowri, you’re a gem.’ Then Stella frowned. ‘We won’t have to knock too much off the price, will we?’

  ‘Get below the nearest shilling and it’ll look like a bargain,’ Lowri promised.

  *

  When Dic called at Badgers Brook the following Sunday, the house appeared to be empty. The door was open and he stepped inside and called, ‘Lowri? Marion?’ Receiving no reply, he put down the New Year greetings card and the flowers he had brought and began to leave. Then he heard sounds coming from upstairs and his skin prickled in alarm. He knew Marion usually went to see her family on Sundays, and if she had changed her plans and stayed home, she would have answered his call.

  He quietly went up the stairs, his heart racing, looking around him, wondering what he would meet. The bathroom door moved, and he headed for it, convinced that someone had just stepped inside. He didn’t call again; whoever it was, hadn’t wanted to be seen. Hardly a burglar; what could a thief expect to find here? But whatever the reason, it was someone who ought not to be there.

  The landing floor boards creaked loudly – no chance of creeping up on someone, so he ran across fast and pushed open the bathroom door.

  Marion stood there, wearing a dressing gown, a toothbrush in her hand and an expression of alarm on her face.

  ‘Dic? What’s the matter?’

  Relaxed, deflated, he began to make his apologies.

  ‘I called, but no one answered and I heard someone, saw the bathroom door move and…’ He shrugged. ‘I’m sorry, but I thought you had an intruder.’

  ‘How very brave of you,’ Marion said with a laugh. ‘And there’s me armed with a dangerous weapon, too.’ She waggled her toothbrush. ‘I’m just having a lazy morning, so why don’t you put the kettle on and we’ll have tea and toast.’

  ‘Where’s Lowri?’ he called as he ran back down the stairs.

  ‘She’s gone to help Stella Jones at the post office, sorting out unwanted stock. They’re having a sale, would you believe!’

  They sat companionably and ate what was for Dic, a second breakfast.

  Upstairs, a man sat on a chair behind Marion’s bedroom door and waited.

  Being told of Lowri’s intention to come back in time for lunch, Dic went for a walk through the winter woodland, enjoying the quiet and peaceful place and wishing he had brought the children to enjoy it with him. Today he had wanted to talk privately to Lowri, which was the reason he’d left them with his mother. A private talk was not possible now, with Marion there.

  He sensed that Marion disliked him and knew it was partly because of her protective attitude towards Lowri, trying to prevent her from dreaming of her father’s release instead of getting on with her life – but there was something more. In his more fanciful moments he thought Marion was afraid of him in some way. She certainly mistrusted him, but he had no explanation of why, or about what. Maybe, he mused, Marion was enjoying being away from her home and living in Badgers Brook so much she was afraid of Lowri leaving? Getting married? That might give Marion feelings of jealousy toward every prospective male.

  She needn’t worry about me, he thought. Lowri was young and quite lovely, and he was a man of thirty-two encumbered with two young daughters. The thought made him feel momentary sadness. Encumbered was the wrong word, he loved Katie and Sarah-Jane and couldn’t imagine life without them, but knowing he was destined to live alone, with no prospect of finding someone who could love them as well as himself, made him foresee a lonely future. He’d be living on the outside of other families, touching them, becoming a part of them from time to time, but always going home to that emptiness.

  Lowri had prepared a rabbit stew which was sending out appetizing smells and when she got home just before midday, Dic was easily persuaded to stay for lunch. Aware of Marion watching him suspiciously, he said nothing of what was on his mind. It was Lowri who brought the conversation around to her father.

  ‘Dad is not well,’ she told him. ‘Mam thinks he caught a cold sleeping out in the fields during his few days of freedom,’ she told him.

  ‘That was such a foolish thing to do. It won’t help and might prolong the time he spends inside,’ Marion said.

  ‘I wonder why he did it? He must have had a reason. D’you think he has an idea of where he can find some proof and tried to find it?’ Dic wondered.

  ‘Stop it,’ Marion said sharply. ‘Here you go again, building up hope instead of concentrating on his wife and daughter rebuilding their lives. It doesn’t help, Dic, in fact it’s cruel!’

  Dic turned to face Lowri, touching her hand lightly. ‘I’m sorry if it upsets you. I can’t stop hoping. Having confidence of a reprieve for your father isn’t instead of you making a good life for yourself, it’s a small part of it, and hoping for that miracle will certainly help your father through it.’

  ‘Dad wouldn’t have risked the business, so it must have been Ellis Owen.’ Lowri spoke quietly as though thinking aloud.

  ‘Ellis Owen loved the freedom of being out of doors. He was a keen sportsman, he loved sailing that boat of his, and canoeing, swimming and climbing. He liked taking those kind of risks, but he wouldn’t have risked imprisonment, even for a thousand pounds or more. You’re refusing to face the obvious!’ Marion exclaimed.

  ‘The “obvious” being that my father is a thief and stole from his own business?’ Lowri glared at Marion and at once Marion apologized.

  ‘No, Lowri! I’m sorry. I was trying too hard to stop Dic upsetting you. I didn’t think what I was saying. Of course he’s innocent. I just don’t think it helps to keep on going over and over without anything new to add. It just re-opens the wounds and stops them healing.’

  ‘I don’t want them to heal. I don’t want to give up waiting for a miracle. Can’t you see that?’

  ‘I keep going over it because I feel responsible for Jimmy’s arrest,’ Dic said. ‘When he’s proved innocent, I’ll have that burden to carry for always.’

  ‘There you go again!’ Marion shouted. ‘You don’t mind upsetting Lowri so long as you feel better!’

  Lowri protested, Marion apologized again and Dic looked at her wondering why she was so adamant about them accepting Jimmy Vaughan’s guilt. It seemed to be more than her concern for Lowri, there was real anger in her voice when she criticized him.

  It wasn’t until several days later, that Lowri wondered how Marion knew so much about Ellis Owen, a man she had never met. Nothing about his love of dangerous sports had been in the newspapers. Or his love of being outside. She would have learned that he was a fisherman, that had been in all the newspapers together with the irony of the sea claiming him, but fishing had been only one of his interests and even she hadn’t known he enjoyed climbing.

  Lowri had read all the accounts of the trial, discussed every small detail with her mother time and time over, searching for some chink in the devastating case against her father. She had no recollection of such things being mentioned, so how did Marion know
? From her own experience she was well aware that gossip knew no boundaries. A casually spoken word seemed to fly through the air it travelled so fast and so far. But she still considered Marion’s remarks odd.

  *

  Dic decided not to go to Badgers Brook for a while. He was making everything worse, believing that holding on to hope had been the best way of helping Lowri to cope. Hope could be a false friend. He also needed to concentrate on his business and he had been neglectful of the essential restocking since the arrest and the trial. He and his wife had started a small business when he had come out of the Air Force in 1945. Rosemary had been a talented silversmith and she had made beautiful jewellery and small works of art, specializing mainly in wildlife. Dolphins, otters, mice, frogs, unlikely choices as gifts but amazingly popular because of the fine detail she could impart, giving each a character and a name.

  He had added carvings to their stock making many lovely pieces from wood rescued from the wrecks embedded in mud on the beaches around the local coastline, or from bomb-damaged buildings, from which he made religious crosses and statues. Some were small but several had been very large, commissioned pieces that had ended up displayed in local businesses in entrance halls and offices.

  Thinking of Lowri made work difficult, but he sat and stared at one of the pieces he had gathered on the day he had met Lowri, seeing its possibilities, making a decision on what he would extract from its uncompromising appearance.

  As he studied it, he saw a boat, an odd shaped boat, a cartoon of a boat, with high sides opening out almost into wings, with a superstructure lopsided and with a small figure leaning against it. He reached out for a note pad and began to draw.

  *

  The sale at the post office started slowly but as people shared the surprising news, the shop began to fill and it stayed full until five thirty, when an exhausted Stella closed the door. Her hair was falling out of its customary neat pins and her face was flushed, her bright eyes shining in delight.

  ‘God ’elp, girl, that was a day to remember! Who’d have believed people would go through all that just to save a few pence, eh?’

  ‘Better than going to the pictures it was, watching some of them fight over a bargain. Did you see Mrs Richard and old Harold Francis arguing over the possession of a pair of oven gloves?’

  ‘Had them for years I have. Nobody wanted them, content with a folded tea towel, mingy lot. But with threepence off they went faster than postal orders on football pools day.’

  There was a knock at the door and Stella shouted, ‘Can’t you see we’re closed?’

  ‘Lowri, it’s me,’ Kitty called back. ‘I think you’ve had a break-in. Bob’s gone for the police.’

  ‘Go you, I’ll finish up here,’ Stella said. ‘Colin and I will come down later to see if you want any help with locks and things.’

  With Kitty puffing beside her, Lowri ran to the bus stop.

  As they went up the path towards the kitchen door, everything seemed normal. It wasn’t until they went inside that the evidence showed. In the kitchen and the living rooms, cupboards and drawers had been opened, their contents thrown around the floor. Upstairs there was a repeat, with wardrobes and chests of drawers treated in the same way. Clothes had been dropped to the floor and coat pockets were pulled inside out, and even the hems of coats had been cut open. Every piece of furniture and every item of clothing had been thoroughly searched. But for what? She had nothing of value, except the joy of living in this house and now that had been spoilt. How would she ever feel the same peace after this?

  Like a child she wanted her mother and father to be there, help her through it, and she also imagined how relieved she would be to see Dic walking in and taking charge. She felt vulnerable and very afraid. ‘This has to be something to do with my father,’ she told Kitty. ‘There must be something we’ve overlooked and someone is determined to get to it first.’

  ‘What could they have been looking for?’

  ‘I don’t know, but it makes me feel hopeful if someone is going to all this trouble to find whatever it is.’ Kitty looked puzzled and Lowri explained. ‘My father escaped to find something that would help him. I remember talk of some diaries in the weeks after his arrest, Dad believed they’d show he was innocent. Perhaps someone else wants to find them. That’s definitely hopeful, isn’t it?’ she added tearfully.

  Marion went home to her family and Lowri stayed with Kitty and Bob for the night. The following day, after checking and finding nothing missing, the police suggested that with nothing stolen, it must have been an opportunist thief, seeing the house empty and secluded, he had gone in looking only for money. Apart from the rent in the book ready for Geoff and Connie, and the money put on the window sill for the milkman, and the baker, the thief had been unlucky. For herself there was the mess and the creepy sensation of knowing strangers had handled her personal possessions. She set to and began washing everything washable and sponging down things that were not.

  When Dic heard about the attempted robbery he took the girls and went to see Lowri on Wednesday afternoon, when the shops were closed for the half-day. He drove down, intending to invite Lowri out for a drive and a meal, something Sarah-Jane and Katie considered a treat.

  Aware of Marion’s mistrustful presence when she came in from her morning cleaning job, he said nothing about the burglary until Lowri mentioned it. Then he was reassuring. ‘It won’t happen again, the police were right it was an opportunist thief who by now is far away. There are quite a number of tramps wandering around the countryside and not all of them are honest.’

  Lowri talked about it: the shock, the feeling of unease, the way her confidence had been knocked. ‘It’s as though I’ve deserved it in some way, by carelessness in not checking every window when we’re both out, or perhaps giving the impression that I have a lot of money here.’ She stared at him in horror. ‘You don’t think someone believes I am hiding the money my father’s accused of stealing, do you?’

  ‘Come on, you need to get out. Sarah-Jane and Katie want to take you for a drive, and stop somewhere for high tea in a smart tea shop, which must include cream cakes.’ He unwillingly invited Marion to join them and was relieved when she refused, explaining that she had to go to her Thursday job a day early.

  He didn’t intend to mention the robbery again, but as the girls were tucking into their cakes, something occurred to him and he asked, ‘Lowri, have you checked the coat you were wearing when the robbery took place? And the handbag you carried?’

  ‘Why would I do that? He couldn’t have stolen from those things – I was at the post office when he broke into Badgers Brook!’

  ‘I don’t mean check for something missing, but to see if there’s anything he might have been searching for and didn’t find.’

  ‘You mean he could be back?’

  ‘No. From what I understand, the search was extensive, there’s no need for him to come back. But if you look in your handbag and pockets, you might find something you’d forgotten or ignored.’

  She frowned. ‘My handbag is full of junk and if something disappeared I wouldn’t miss it, but as for there being anything there of value… well, nail files, a few keys, money, make-up, nothing a thief would want.’

  ‘Sorry. I just wondered if there was something important in a pocket or your handbag that you haven’t given a thought to.’

  ‘So you do think it was something to do with my father?’

  ‘I don’t know what I was thinking of, the police are probably right about a stranger passing through. But look anyway, will you? See if there’s anything belonging to your father that you’d forgotten about. Just in case.’

  She nodded and tried to remember if there was anything in her possession that could be of any use to someone else, and failed.

  ‘There’s one more thing,’ Dic said as they pulled up outside her home. ‘I don’t know why I’m asking this, but will you promise to say nothing of what I’ve asked you to do to Marion? I can’t explain, b
ut indulge me, please.’

  As they stood up to leave the car, she nodded, but curiosity showed on her face. ‘Marion is a good friend,’ she said. ‘She stayed with me when no one else did, when all the people I’d considered reliable turned out to be false friends.’

  ‘I know, but I want us to share any thoughts we have that might help your father without including anyone else, not a soul, not even your friend, Marion.’

  *

  The next day, Thursday, the empty shelves in the post office declared the sale over. The dark day emphasized the spaces left by the sale and Stella didn’t like it at all. ‘I’ll have to start filling up again or the customers will think we’re closing,’ she said ruefully. ‘Lovely to get shot of all that old stuff though.’

  ‘Will you extend your stock now? There are plenty of things that people need. Children’s clothes maybe? Or perhaps kitchenware?’ Lowri suggested. ‘There’s room for a few more shelves and even a display cabinet now we’ve cleared out all those half-empty boxes.’ There was no reply and she turned to see Stella staring out into the heavy rain, a glazed smile on her face.

  ‘Children’s clothes,’ Stella breathed. ‘I’ve always dreamed of stocking children’s clothes. Pretty winter dresses and warm jumpers, and shorts and dippers for the summer when they go on holiday to the beach. Lovely that would be.’

  ‘You already sell buckets and spades,’ Lowri encouraged.

  ‘And socks with turned down tops for the boys to wear to school, and black stockings for the girls. Oh, I can see how welcome that would be, save a trip into Maes Hir or Barry.’

  Lowri shared the excitement but was reminded that as her employment was temporary and about to end, she wouldn’t be there to enjoy it. ‘Stella, can you tell me how much longer you’ll need me here? I have to start looking for something else as soon as I know.’