Redemption Song (27 page)

‘Cash in hand, if that’s OK?’ Eifion had said.

‘Only way I like it,’ Joe replied.

The grandest hotel in town, on the seafront, the one that seemed to emerge from the rock and sit on the shoulders of the pier entrance, needed tarting up for the season. The balcony balustrades were solid, but the paintwork was chipped and had faded from what might once have been sunshine yellow to a dingy magnolia.

After the balconies there were the windows to paint. Even with a large team the work would take weeks. Joe didn’t hesitate. He wasn’t bothered about the poor money – so long as he had enough to pay the rent, eat, and have some left over to spoil Saffron from time to time, he didn’t care. He was grateful to Eifion who’d merely shrugged and said, ‘One good turn.’ The thought of moving on from Coed Mawr had filled Joe with dread and this was a reprieve of sorts. The only way he would leave now was if Simon called and told him he must.

Joe felt lighter than he’d felt in years and on the best days he even considered asking Simon to stop trailing Allegra.
Forgive those who trespass against us
. The desire for revenge no longer consumed him, days went by when he didn’t think of it at all, but he hadn’t told Saffron his history, and he needed to remain hidden until he was ready to tell her. For he would tell Saffron. He couldn’t keep it from her; he didn’t want to. It was a risk but one he had to take.

Warm, he stripped off his T-shirt before turning back to the railings. As he dipped his paintbrush into the pot again, he caught sight of a woman on the pier below. Tall and slim with light red hair, he couldn’t quite make out her features from this height but she was waving at him. Confused, he considered peering over for a closer look, but Joe didn’t relish looking that far down; his vertigo would surely get the better of him.

He didn’t know anyone in the town other than Saffron, Rain, Ceri and Eifion. Tyson had moved on to another job for Derek and Joe couldn’t say he was sorry. Joe was working on the top floor at the insistence of the hotel manager, a weasel-like young man with a superiority complex. ‘Top to bottom. Only way to do it,’ he’d said.

The woman waved again, furiously. As he looked a second time, he saw she bore a strong resemblance to Saffron. The form of her. He put his paintbrush down and leaned forward.

Whoa. The height made him dizzy, the familiar nausea rose.

‘Joe! Joe! It’s me. Can you take a break?’

The automatic doors swooshed open; a blast of warm, stale air assaulted his cheeks. There, in front of him, on the pier, was Saffron. She looked very, very different. Same black jeans, black T-shirt, and heavy black boots. Same fair skin and blue, blue eyes, but there was no thick, black eyeliner and smudgy, charcoal eyeshadow. Her eyes were enormous pools framed only by long, brown lashes. With less make-up and in broad daylight, he noticed, for the first time, just how many freckles were scattered over her nose and cheeks. Maybe they’d come out in the sun.

But it was her hair that altered her so dramatically. Loose and tumbling over her shoulders in soft waves, it was the most glorious golden-orange. Contrasting sharply with her familiar black attire, it shone in the sunlight like a halo. If you ignored the clothes, the Doc Martens, and pierced ears, she could have been an angel, or Botticelli’s Venus, or a Pre-Raphaelite model. He was stunned. She remained still and flushed as he stared. As the colour bloomed on her cheeks, his insides churned. If he’d been blind-sided by her beauty when he first met her, it was nothing to his reaction now. She was achingly lovely, a creature from another world, incongruous on the grotty pier with the stink of chip fat and burnt sugar on the breeze.

He stepped towards her and picked up a lock of her hair with an index finger. ‘It’s not a wig then?’ he said.

‘Nope. Do you like it?’ she said, straight-faced. She sounded nervous.

He nodded. ‘Your natural colour?’

‘Kind of. It’s as close to my natural colour as synthetic dyes go. Close enough to allow my hair to grow out without looking like a two-tone monster.’ She screwed up her nose.

‘How close?’ He coiled another lock round his finger. It felt soft and silky.

‘Pretty close. Red is the hardest colour to mimic, especially what you’d call ginger as opposed to auburn. Impossible to get it bang on, according to the hairdresser.’

‘Unique and difficult. Figures.’ He smiled and she smiled back.

‘So what do you think?’

‘I love it.’ He leant forward and kissed her, forgetting where he was, not caring.

They pulled apart when some smart Alec yelled at them to get a room. Saffron repeated her initial question. Could he take a break?

‘Not really. The manager bloke, right slave driver. Bit of a control freak and he’s enjoying the power. If he catches me now I’ll be in trouble. Is it important?’

‘It is, but I’ve another option. You free straight after work tonight?’ she asked.

‘Let me see. Need to consult my diary, what with my hectic social life.’

‘Yeah, yeah, Billy no mates. You’re free, right?’

He didn’t even get a chance to nod before she continued, ‘The decision about the pier ballroom is being made this afternoon in some council meeting or other. Mum, Mair Shawcroft and others involved in the campaign are organising a celebration/commiseration do in the church hall and there’s a problem with the door again. I can ask Eifion but I guess he’ll be in the same position as you?’

‘He’s working in the hut this afternoon, so he might have some flexibility. Fits the hotel job around the shop. Not sure how he persuaded bollock chops to go for that … Natural charm, I suppose.’ He glanced over his shoulder, looking out for the manager. He’d been away from his post for way too long already. But she did that to him, forced him to take risks. She’d be his undoing.

‘He’s got plenty of that. Look, I’ll meet you here, yeah? Six o’clock. And I’m so glad you like it.’ She pointed at her head and smiled, radiant.

‘Why the change?’ he asked. He’d read somewhere that when women changed their hair, the colour, had it cut, it commonly signified another, more significant, shift. Hair went from long to short after break-ups, dark to light with a new career.

She shrugged. ‘The end of mourning. Or a different kind of mourning … This is the real me. Weird, huh?’

‘Weird’s OK by me. See you later.’ He waved and she turned and walked off the pier. He noticed a quiver in her voice when she said a different kind of mourning. Something was troubling her, despite the smiles and sunny hair.

It had been such a relief to hear that Joe liked her hair, to see how much he liked it. The hairdresser’s bill had been astronomical; Saffron could hardly believe it, never having had a professional dye before and rarely having stepped inside a salon full stop. It was eye-watering, and she would never have done it had Rain not offered to pay. It was kind of her mum, a way of making up for the cruel, ugly words. Saffron had bought flowers and prepared Rain’s favourite supper: Thai green curry with tofu and scented rice. It hadn’t been easy finding lemongrass or tofu in Upper Coed Mawr, but Saffron liked to shop local and retailers in the community loved her for it. In the end, the greengrocer had ordered it in specially, in return for the recipe. It was sweet of him. After all, they both knew he could have found a recipe online in seconds.

Though she hadn’t originally dyed her hair dark for her mum – far from it; it had been all about her and her feelings – Saffron had been worried that a return to red would be too much of a reminder of her dad. She owed her locks to her father’s genes and after her mum’s revelation, Saffron wondered if it might be better to stay dark.

For Saffron, the news that her father wasn’t the saint Rain had been making him out to be was hurtful, but not altogether shocking. After she’d put Rain to bed she’d admitted to herself that she’d known her father to be more than a flirt. She’d blocked all those memories. She wasn’t so different to her mother after all. As a child she’d not understood why the sight of Daddy holding other women’s waists as he led them into church made her feel peculiar, but it did. One Christmas, when she must have been ten or eleven, she’d noticed her father resting his large hand on a distant aunt’s thigh as they sat in the living room playing charades. The aunt, a tall, pretty woman whose long, painted fingernails fascinated Saffron, had slowly and carefully removed Stephen’s hand and placed it on his own thigh. A joke of some kind was shared – too grown up for Saffron to understand – and the adults continued with the game but, eyes watery, Rain had jumped up and hoofed it to the kitchen, claiming everyone’s glasses needed refilling. Home during the long medical school holidays, Saffron had noticed how their lives had grown apart. Her dad liked to party, her mum didn’t. But she also knew, or thought she knew, that he’d loved Rain.

Witnessing her mum’s pain was torment. More distressing than she could have imagined, and when her own anger surfaced, she caught a glimpse, momentarily, of what Rain was going through. She hated him for being so … weak. It took a while to work out which quality of her father’s caused him to choose the path he did, but it was his weakness, his malleability. He did love Rain, but his mistress exerted more pressure so he bowed to her will. Rain was too nice. Always had been, probably always would be. It was her nature. And in this, Saffron and her mother differed.

I’m not a good person. I’m the sort who lies to people, pretends to mourn someone for almost two years, does nothing as their father lies dying.

Saffron loved her father deeply and in the end such love superseded all other emotion. She couldn’t hate him for long. He wasn’t perfect. So what? Who was? There were so many worse crimes and he wasn’t here to defend himself. Rain’s goodness drove her crazy too, at times; it must have been the same for him. And such goodness threw an unforgiving light on other’s foibles. Everyone appeared tarnished next to such a gleam. Perhaps it was a relief to be with an individual as flawed and warty as himself. Who was she to judge?

Outside the entrance to the hotel, ten minutes early, Saffron shifted from foot to foot. She picked up a strand of hair and held it to the evening sun, enjoying the way the light bounced off it. She pulled it to her nose. It smelt of chemicals and perfume. She’d fretted Joe would no longer fancy her. There were people who loathed ginger hair and she had no way of knowing if Joe was one of them. Or how much her looks mattered to him. A lot, judging by the look in his eyes earlier. She smiled. A dandelion seed drifted by, catching on her top. She picked it off, feeling as light as the weeds littering the grass verge. Clocks, they’re called dandelion clocks. At the thought of clocks her chest tightened. Time was running out. A decision regarding her future would have to be made, and soon.

Her mood shifted the instant she saw him emerging from the hotel. Tall and strong, even in silhouette he turned her insides liquid. Though he wore a T-shirt, the memory of his bare back lingered, the ripple of muscle as he’d bent to put his T-shirt on the floor, the wings of his scapulae, muscles like the shifting, solid plates of the earth. And the tattoo. Large, shaped like a crescent moon, it stretched from mid-back to the base of his neck. Rather than a singular image, it was a series of small ones: A colony of bats, volant. She hadn’t been able to make out the detail.

He came towards her. Blood raced through her veins, setting her senses alight. After days in the sun, his tanned complexion highlighted those extraordinary eyes, the contrast between golden skin and his green eye marked; that with his hazel eye less so, though this in itself emphasised the difference between the two. He took her breath away. In one clean movement he swept off his cap and bent to kiss her. Before their lips met his phone rang.

‘Shouldn’t you get that?’ she asked.

He shrugged, pulled his phone from his back pocket, read the screen and nodded. ‘Give me a second, yeah?’ he said into the phone. He looked back at her and mouthed, ‘I’ll be as quick as I can.’ To her surprise he turned his back on her and whispered into the phone, moving away as he did so. Her interest wouldn’t have been piqued if he’d spoken at normal volume, if he’d not turned around and walked off. She took a pace forward and strained to listen, fighting with the traffic chugging past. It was difficult to hear anything. She caught a name, Simon, she thought. She couldn’t think of many boys names beginning with ‘S’ other than Stephen or Steve, and there was definitely no ‘st’ sound. She watched Joe, attempting to read his body language. He gave nothing away. He stuffed the mobile back into his pocket before turning back and throwing her a devastating grin.

She waited for him to explain but he didn’t.

It’s normal, isn’t it, to explain what you’ve just spoken about, or to whom? People do it without thinking. ‘Work,’ a roll of the eyes, ‘sorry about that.’ ‘It’s my brother. Girl trouble.’ Or is it only women who feel the need to constantly explain, justify their actions?

‘Everything OK?’ she said, after a pause, unable to quash her curiosity.

‘Just great,’ he said, smiling.

So that’s that then. He’s so secretive. Perhaps Mum’s right: He’s not to be trusted. She’s only trying to protect me. She likes him, but she doesn’t trust him. And if she doesn’t …

‘You? You seemed troubled earlier.’

‘Just worried about the outcome of the meeting. You know, to decide the fate of the ballroom.’ She had no idea why she was lying, or where the anger that simmered within her had come from.

‘I’m interested too. I’ve a fairly good idea which company would move the bats with care, for one thing. Any news?’

‘Not that I’m aware of. Been at the shop all afternoon. We’ll find out soon enough. C’mon.’ She marched up the incline, trying to stamp out her disquiet, leaving him behind.

He caught up within seconds and grabbed hold of her arm, forcing her to stop. She spun to face him, fury rendering her silent for a moment. ‘What’s up? You arrange to meet me here, to talk, and then you go all silent on me,’ he said.

‘You never tell me anything,’ she blurted. ‘I know virtually nothing about you and you give nothing away. Your home reveals nothing other than a penchant for fantasy video games, history, and a total absence of interest in food preparation. You’ve never even shown me any of your art. You prefer beer to wine, you like dark chocolate and instant coffee, and you’re more educated than your average carpenter, a boarding school boy no less. I’d also guess that you’re from down south. And oh, you like bats. Bats!’ She threw her arms in the air.