Poor Alec
written by: Steven Elvy
@steveelvy2
The job was done, he’d fitted the new blinds in Mrs. Wilkins’ bathroom, he’d packed away his tools in the boot of the car and now the bloody thing wouldn’t start.
Alec puffed out his cheeks and turned the key in the ignition once more, at the same time pumping the accelerator pedal while the engine whirred and whined but refused to catch. He was conscious of Mrs. Wilkins still standing there, leaning on her walking stick on her doorstep, ready to wave him off, hugging her cardigan around her narrow frame against the cold autumn wind that fluttered the leaves on her small front lawn and caused her wispy white hair to rise and fall with them.
This was getting embarrassing. He waved a hand at the old lady and shook his head in a gesture to indicate equal measures of despair and resignation. He wished the old girl would just go inside.
Whine . . . whine . . . whine. Pause, give another quick brave grin. Whine . . . whine . . . whine. Pause. Whine . . . whine . . . BOOM! The engine roared to life, sounding like a demented lawn mower, and Alec released the handbrake and drove speedily off. He raised a hand to Mrs Wilkins as her image receded in his rear-view mirror and he saw her smiling and waving back.
He had one more job to do that day, for a Miss Stewart who lived in a bungalow on the outskirts of the town, a simple task of re-hanging a gate in her back garden. It shouldn’t take more than half an hour. He just hoped the car would last the journey. The problem of it not wanting to start was a recent one. Alec had grown used to the engine sounding like a droning washing machine over the past weeks. He didn’t know the cause. It could be the wheel bearings or the cam belt, perhaps. Pretty soon he’d have to bite the bullet and take it into a garage, he knew. But how much would that cost? His last job for Mrs Wilkins had just earned him the princely sum of twenty pounds . . . no, wait, not even that. When it was time to pay him she had rummaged around in her purse and found three five-pound notes, three one-pound coins, and a varied selection of loose change which she had then begun to laboriously count out onto Alec’s outstretched palm, until he’d eventually had to say to her, “Not to worry, that will do it,” and he had shoved the notes and coins into his pocket. So, not even twenty quid!
As he drove across town, his mind settled on more pressing matters.
Alec has a big decision to make. He can’t put it off much longer. If he chooses one path, it could change everything. He desperately wants to do the right thing, that’s all he’s ever wanted really, but now he’s agonising over what that right thing is.
Alec Lafferty is fifty-four and makes his meagre living working as a handyman in towns and villages across East Lancashire. He imagines every town in the country has somebody like him: the man you call in to put some shelves up in the spare bedroom, paint your garden shed, cut your lawn . . .
He gets the crumbs, the little jobs that a real tradesman wouldn’t bother with.
Alec has started doing this work, being an odd job man, only recently, only two years ago.
Oh, he doesn’t mind it – the work – and it’s hardly what could be deemed taxing, but then again he does know that, deep down, he’s way above it all, capable of so much more, deserving of so much more.
“It’s not what I’ve always done,” he will often confide to his customers, whether asked or not, if one of them should wander within earshot while he’s putting a new washer on a leaky tap or repositioning a paving slab in a back garden.
And it was true; it wasn’t so long ago that Alec had appeared to have had it all: a loving wife and family, big detached house, exotic holidays, business trips abroad, top of the range car, big job. Now, none of these trappings existed.
He lived now in a one-bedroom flat above a paper shop on the outskirts of Blackburn, drove a seven-year-old Clio, and barely managed to scrape by on tax credits and whatever he could earn odd-jobbing.
But, of course, he’d messed it all up, hadn’t he? He fully conceded that it was his own entire fault, nobody else to blame. He had simply wanted more and more, not satisfied with his lot . . . hadn’t appreciated what he had or – and more pointedly – what he had to lose.
Throughout his life he’d worked hard, grafted like a demon to acquire all the paraphernalia of success. Climbed his way up from the bottom rung of the ladder to the top – well, nearly the bottom . . . and nearly the top for that matter. But he’d been someone then; a man who commanded respect.
Alec Lafferty – General Manager – Lancashire Integrated Building Services.
That was what was printed on his business cards back in the day. Embossed, they were – gold trimmed, heavy.
Now, he’d had to have five hundred flimsy cards run up at the local printers with Alec Lafferty – No job too SMALL so give me a CALL!
It was pathetic.
Too often his mind drifted back to how things had been before his twenty-five-year career had gone up in a puff of smoke, was shunted down the swanee, and extinguished as if it had never been.
With a shudder he recalled That Day, that awful Monday morning, when his world had collapsed . . .
It had started like any other September Monday morning. Alec had awoken at seven with the trilling of the alarm clock. The weather had been glorious over the weekend but as he got out of bed and pulled the bedroom curtains aside he saw that the rising sun was glinting behind ominous black clouds and imminent rain was in the air.
Looking down into the back garden, he made a tutting sound when he saw that the shiny new gas barbecue was open to the elements because Craig had neglected to put the cover on last night, even though he distinctly remembered telling the boy to do so. But then he smiled to himself, remembering the fun they’d had and what a great day it had been.
There had been a dozen or so of their friends from the neighbourhood spread out around the pool and throughout their herbaceous-bordered garden, the beer and wine had flowed freely and Alec had been in his element brandishing his cooking tongs while dishing out steaks and burgers and sausages, all the while cracking his awful jokes and delivering the double entendre which were part of his trademark.
Even Wendy had seemed to enjoy herself, although he had been aware of her giving some long, hard looks in his direction whenever she had considered he was getting a little too raucous, and a couple of times she had admonished him by calling out, “Alec! Keep it down, there’s a good lad,” as she sat in a circled quorum nattering away with her girlfriends at the far end of the long garden. And Alec had obliged by pulling one of his naughty schoolboy faces and then speaking in a deliberated hush for the next few minutes.
It was part of their act, their Stan and Ollie routine that people had come to expect of them. They were a popular couple, of that he was well aware. Almost local celebrities, he liked to think, among the well-healed community in this picturesque East Lancashire village they had made their home.
They both went out of their way to involve themselves in all the local events from organising the spring village fete to running the raffle prize at the annual gala cricket match to being part of the well-heeled gang that prepared and served the Christmas lunch at the old folk’s home. Alec was an eager and active member of the Lions Club and Wendy was fully immersed in good works with the Women’s Institute.
They were an easily recognisable pair. He, over six feet tall and with his ex-rugby player physique, his wide face, fleshy lips and shaggy eyebrows above pale blue eyes; her, barely five feet and two-inches, a little rounded in her middle years, still very pretty with dark hair and liquid-brown eyes that seemed to miss nothing.
They had been married for twenty-six years and in that time had moulded themselves around each other, were regarded as a solid and inseparable entity.
Not as chalk and cheese as they sometimes appeared to be, they nevertheless widely differed in some of their likes and dislikes. Wendy enjoyed nothing better than curling up with a good book or settling down to watch a Merchant-Ivory film on a Sunday afternoon, whereas Alec regarded reading a novel as a complete waste of time and thought the only worthwhile programmes on television were those dedicated to ruby, golf or football, in that order.
But they worked well together, complimented each other, and he believed there was a real loving bond between them.
They had met at work, at Lancashire Integrated, when twenty-four-year-old Wendy was in the sales administration department and twenty-five-year-old Alec had just started in the estimator’s office, a ‘settling down’ job after some aimless drifting after leaving university and finally putting his mechanical engineering degree to some use.
They had married a few months before the birth of their daughter, Sarah, and Wendy had then become a stay-at-home mum – a lifestyle choice that she had found easy to embrace and that then had suited her ever since. Wendy’s idea of women’s equality was for Alec to earn the money and for her to spend it wisely while fulfilling her duty as the homemaker of the partnership. It was Wendy who made the major family decisions around where and how they lived, easily persuading Alec over matters of home decor, family holiday destinations, and private educations for their children. If Wendy decided something was a good idea, then Alec’s obligation was to find a way to finance it.
Craig had come along unexpectedly – but happily – four years after Sarah and over the next two decades the Lafferty family had moved three times, on each occasion to a bigger, grander house as Alec’s career at Lancashire Integrated soared ever upwards and their finances flourished.
Of course, as with most families, there had been the rough and the smooth, the ups and the downs. Alec recalled that awful time seven or so years back when Wendy had found the lump.
They had tried to keep it to themselves initially, Alec taking time off work in the middle of the day to drive Wendy to the oncologist in Manchester, the agonising wait for the test results, saying nothing to Sarah or Craig, who nevertheless sensed that something wasn’t right. A pall had befallen the family and it was a joyless time for everyone.
Then the glorious, momentous, fantastical news that everything would be all right after all, that the tumour was benign. Alec’s eyes sting with the memory of it still, so many years later.
Oh, Wendy . . . where had it all gone wrong? But, of course, he knew where and why and how: Him.
***
Well, she’d been a barrel of laughs!
Alec had finished the job for Miss Stewart and he was back behind the wheel. The Clio had mercifully started after only a couple of attempts and was now chugging through Blackburn town centre sounding like an imitation Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.
Hanging Miss Stewart’s back gate had turned into a full-fledged repair of most of her fence panels, which had then led to him having to re-cement most of the gate posts. The whole job had taken nearly three hours, and throughout the entire time Miss Stewart had stood at her kitchen window scrutinising his every move. He could have at least expected the offer of a cup of tea or coffee, but none was forthcoming.
When he had finally finished and Miss Stewart had silently and thoroughly inspected his efforts to her satisfaction, she had handed over the fifty pounds they had agreed on and then, after a brief hesitation, had added another ten pounds, mumbling, “Something more for your troubles”, ensuring she made no eye contact and then hurriedly going inside and closing her door.
Alec had stood there and silently shaken his head. You just couldn’t tell with some people.
As he drove, Alec’s mind again went back to the past . . .
After Wendy’s health scare – she had needed a small operation, a minor procedure but nevertheless still harrowing and unsettling – and after a fortnight’s recuperation, she had decided that they all needed something to bring back some cheer and a big family holiday was what was needed. With the kids growing up so fast, it was probably the last time they would all be together, she had reasoned, and so it was to be a no-holds-barred trip they would all remember.
They planned it to begin directly after the finish of the school year; by then, Craig had sat his GCSEs and Sarah was due to leave her temping job at the local estate agents. Alec booked three weeks’ leave at Lancashire Integrated and Wendy made all the arrangements.
America! California, to be precise.
It had been a tonic and a wonderful experience that all four of the Lafferty family members had benefited from in their own ways. Wandering down to Venice Beach, marvelling at the outrageous Universal Studios Tour, visiting the other-worldly Wine Country in San Francisco, hiking in the Hollywood Hills, and dining out in Chinatown; the Lafferty’s immersed themselves in all things USA.
The three weeks had gone by in a whirl. Alec had felt as if the weight of the world had lifted from his shoulders. He could visibly see the tension releasing from Wendy after the miserable time she had had to endure recently. She seemed to have shed ten years and seeing her and Sarah together they appeared more like sisters than mother and daughter, returning to the hotel after yet another shopping trip on Sunset Boulevard, their arms laden with expensive-looking bags of designer goods, giggling like schoolgirls.
And Alec had never felt closer to Craig. Back home, the sixteen-year-old had become morose and monosyllabic and he had worried that a distance had grown between them that he was powerless to narrow. But just a few days of Californian sunshine had transformed the boy and each day he shone and glowed more and more along with his deepening tan. The two of them snorkelled together, they played tennis and crazy golf, and laughed till their sides ached, they stuffed themselves with giant hamburgers and fries.
Then, suddenly, it was time to leave.
The jolt of returning home and resuming his work at Lancashire Integrated was soon forgotten as real life again took hold. The company was unprecedentedly busy with numerous building projects all across the northwest and up into the Scottish borders. Alec would be in client meetings in Chester on Monday morning and then visiting a site in Carlisle in the afternoon, or staying two nights in Edinburgh attending to business there, and then dining with potential clients in Liverpool. However, no matter how busy was his schedule, he always contrived to be back home by six at the very latest on a Friday. For him and Wendy, weekends were sacrosanct and were to be protected and enjoyed.
Wendy was fully active during the week with a fundraising project for a nearby hospice; Sarah was madly in love with a new man in her life and Craig was busy studying for his A-level exams, once more regressing back to his glum teenage angst persona. Life went on as usual.
And so things continued for the next year or so: the joys, the disappointments, the small victories, the laughter, and the tears . . . until, like a sudden and unexpected end to an enjoyable family movie, That Day arrived.
***
Alec had had a solitary breakfast. Wendy had never been much of a morning person and he was used to her still sleeping when he left for work each day. As he’d buttered his toast he’d remembered that Sarah had gone to stay the night with her new man, Lucian. He’d been there with the other guests at the barbecue the day before and Alec had made a renewed effort in trying to warm to him, but he always found him hard going. He was personable enough, perhaps, but there was just something Alec couldn’t quite put his finger on that always seemed to irritate him about the young man. He was tall and most probably handsome in a languid 19th-century poet sort of way, he was extremely well spoken and could be very funny and witty, but . . . Perhaps it was just that Lucian seemed to like himself too much.
Alec had put the cover on the gas barbecue and wheeled it back into the wooden garden house where it lived when not in use and, as he’d gone back into the house, Craig had come yawning down the stairs.
“Morning,” Craig mumbled, pushing his hair from his eyes.
“Oh, yes, good morning,” Alec replied absently, and then, remembering, continued more loudly, “I thought I told you to-” But then he stopped himself.
“Told me what?” yawned Craig as he descended to the hallway.
“Oh, nothing. Nothing, old lad,” Alec said softly as he went past him and ruffled the boys hair on his way to the front door.
The journey to his office at Lancashire Integrated took forty or so minutes, the heavens opening as predicted halfway through and heavy rain tattooing a drumbeat on the Mercedes’ roof. At ten o’clock he took the lift two floors up for his meeting with Ian Patterson, the companies Managing Director. He had a buff folder in his hand containing details of the many building projects being undertaken, although he knew from experience that Patterson would be content with a brief verbal synopsis of progress being achieved rather than any in-depth analysis of what was going on. Ian Patterson was a Big Picture man.
He knocked once and walked straight into the palatial office. They had these meetings once a month, usually on a Monday morning, and sometimes were joined by other members of the management team. But Alec was surprised that morning to be greeted by the sight of not only Ian Patterson in his high-backed chair behind his vast mahogany desk, but also of Jock Connery, the companies softly spoken HR Director, who sat in a smaller chair to the side.
***
Ian Patterson had let Jock Connery do most of the talking. Connery had repositioned his chair so that he could commandeer the front of Patterson’s desk and Alec was obliged to move his own chair forward while the HR Director proceeded to illustrate his case by laying down a selection of documents onto the polished mahogany surface for him to see. Patterson had sat sentinel, his elbows resting on the desk and his clasped hands in front of his mouth as if forbidding himself to speak.
The documents laid out showed various dates and financial transactions and Connery kept up a constant, droning narrative in his precise Edinburgh inflection as each was displayed. He used words and phrases such as “discrepancies” and “unclear intentions” and soon Alec felt both the words and his vision begin to muddle and blur. He suddenly felt very hot.
After a while, Connery’s clipped voice began to harden and he started using different words such as “fraud” and “bribery” and – eventually – “embezzlement”.
The whole discourse lasted only fifteen or twenty minutes, but in that time the HR Director had fully made his case. When he was done, he collected all of the documents into a neat pile which he then carefully placed across the desk in front of Ian Patterson.
After a moment of excruciating silence, Patterson threw his arms up in mute anger and stared with vitriolic fury across the desk, his eyes boring into Alec’s and demanding a response of some kind.
“I . . . , I . . . , Alec stammered. His expression was ashen and he feared he might actually faint or be physically sick. Eventually, somehow finding his voice, all he managed to say was, “I’m sorry, Ian, I really am.”
***
Alec’s living hell had begun and things were to get worse.
Losing his job was just the beginning. Jock Connery informed him that the matter would be handed over to the lawful authorities and that he should expect them to be in touch, which they were a few days later.
A man and a woman from the Serious Fraud Office questioned him over several days in a cramped gloomy office in Salford.
He was Mike O’Brien, a somewhat dishevelled Northern Irishman with a touch of the Ian Paisley evangelical about him. Aged around forty, O’Brien had a constant sheen of perspiration above his top lip and a habit of frequently tucking his shirt in around his well-upholstered stomach and then readjusting his tie. Every question he put to Alec was tinged with a touch of incredulity and the answers he received greeted with a sigh and a shake of his head which caused his heavy jowls to judder.
She was Fiona Francis from Whitley Bay, fiftyish and neat as a pin in a tailored dark blue suit and pale blue blouse. She sat demurely beside O’Brien facing Alec across the small Formica-topped table and the two of them took turns in the interrogation, the Northern Irishman’s questions volleyed over in machinegun staccato and with unreserved contempt, Fiona’s batted gently with sympathy, and compassion evident in her soft Tyneside tones. Together, they broke him down.
Alec had long realised that there was no point in lying anymore; the damage was done and he knew he was finished. But although he was prepared to come clean and answer their questions honestly, he was still cautious and reluctant to volunteer anything incriminating that wasn’t already known to them.
But by the third day, any remaining notions of continuing his duplicity had completely vanished. The combined duel strategies of O’Brien’s cudgel and Fiona’s coddle wore him down. Soon, he was singing like the proverbial canary.
He told them about how it had all started: small amounts added to his business expenses such as restaurant receipts claiming to be for client hospitality that were in reality from when he and Wendy had dined out with friends, no clients in sight; home improvements such as landscaping the garden and installing the pool, the costs surreptitiously charged to the company. He told them about the first time a supplier had offered him an inducement (“Bribe,” O’Brien had interjected loudly) and how this had then escalated and become a widespread practice which he had at first encouraged and then instigated with many others. He went into detail about how he had set up bogus companies that were supposedly supplying Lancashire Integrated with materials and manpower, all of the monies received being siphoned off into off-shore bank accounts.
At one point, Fiona had gently asked him why on Earth he had done it all and had he really expected that his actions would go unnoticed forever. And Alec had thought for a moment and then replied, “I don’t know. It’s hard to explain and I don’t intend to try and justify any of it. There was just so much money sloshing about that it didn’t seem to matter if a little of it came my way. Once I’d started and nobody ever questioned anything, well, it almost seemed as if it was all right . . . as if I wasn’t doing anything wrong.”
***
But all of that was years ago now.
Alec’s formal punishment was a spell in prison and a seizing of all his assets which, of course, meant the family home was taken. The by-product, of course, was that he had lost the trust of those who were closest to him.
Wendy was forced to move to North Yorkshire in the short term and live with her sister and brother-in-law. She filed for divorce when he was in prison and he later learned that she had married again, apparently to a solicitor in Skipton. In spite of being forced to leave his fee-paying school for the local comprehensive, Craig did surprisingly well with his A Levels. He went off to university in Durham, dropped out after a year, and then went travelling throughout South East Asia. Last heard, he was working behind a bar in Brisbane. Alec hasn’t spoken to either of them for years.
Now his family consisted of just two people: Sarah and Molly.
After the house was taken, Sarah had moved into Lucian’s flat and initially everything had seemed to have gone well for her.
Throughout Alec’s prison sentence, Sarah had visited him every week without fail. She was still doing temping jobs and she said she was happy. Alec got vicarious pleasure to hear about her life with Lucian. They appeared to lead a heady hedonistic lifestyle together with fun nights out in Manchester, cruising up the motorway in Lucian’s sports car for weekends in the Lakes, mini-breaks to Prague or Amsterdam. She painted a picture of a cool, devil-may-care existence. Lucian’s business was on the up and up and the money appeared to be rolling in. He was in a partnership with three others involved in something to do with marketing technology and they had prestigious offices in Salford Keys. Sarah was vague about what he actually did, not really seeming to care that much, and so Alec took it all at face value and didn’t press her.
All he cared about was that she was happy and secure.
In spite of all the misery he had caused everyone, Alec’s one consoling thought was that at least Sarah had emerged relatively unscathed and had survived it all. Having been so wrong about so many things, perhaps his earlier opinion of Lucian was just another example.
The tedious months of his incarceration went by. Alec tried to keep himself busy attending rehabilitation classes in carpentry, plumbing, and plastering – anything to keep his brain occupied and his mind sane.
But then, shortly before he was due to be released, Sarah had shown up on a visit with a swollen lip and a blossoming bruise on her cheek.
***
He had parked beneath the leafy canopy of an oak tree at the brow of the hill in Painter Wood. The afternoon was quickly giving way to evening and the temperature was falling rapidly. It was quiet there, the only sounds that of the occasional passing car and the ticking of the Clio’s cooling engine.
The vast sky was fading to blackness. Below him was the vista of the Ribble Valley, its patchwork of meadows and villages dissected by small roads with tiny cars going about their everyday business. He couldn’t exactly make out their old house but he could approximate its location by allowing his eyes to follow the familiar length of the aqueduct.
Now was the time. No more thinking back to the past. No more wistfulness. Now was the time to decide.
To the east, the road led towards the village of Padiham. Sarah would have collected Molly from nursery by now and was probably making her tea; perhaps her favourite of “flish flingers,” as the four-year-old pronounced it. A little later Sarah would bathe her then put her to bed in the little room in their little house that Sarah rented from the council.
She had been there for over three years now and was grateful to have a place to call their own; somewhere she and Molly could call home and feel safe.
Lucian was no longer on the scene. Sarah had said that he had changed later on, had stopped the drink and drugs, and that he was mellower. At first, after she had left the women’s refuge and the house in Padiham had come up, it was agreed that Lucian could see Molly for one afternoon each month and he would spoil her with new toys and chocolates and ice creams. Sarah was relieved when he began to come less and less and then stopped altogether. Now he didn’t even send his daughter a birthday card.
Sarah had a part-time job at the local supermarket. Money was always tight but she made the best of it; there was always enough for new clothes as Molly grew out of her old ones, always good food for the child, always deep love and caring. She had made some female friends among the other mothers from the nursery, but she didn’t really have a social life; all of her time was taken up with Molly and that was the way Sarah wanted it.
Alec did what he could. He would do the nursery run if Sarah’s shifts at the supermarket interfered; he would take Molly to the park when Sarah had to work at weekends; he would treat them all to visits to the cinema to see Frozen and The Spongebob Movie; he would take Molly to the zoo. He wished he could do more.
He closes his eyes and the image of Molly is there, her little face lit up as she giggles away, her little pink tongue poking through her little white teeth as Sarah tickles her as they wrestle on the carpet in the little lounge in the little house in Padiham.
How can he turn his back on them? he asks himself with disgust!
Alec rubs his eyelids with the tips of his fingers. He must think.
Think about the future. Yes, forget all that has been; imagine the possibilities that are now.
A new future: a new life; a life with Samantha . . .
Samantha Wood. Sam, as she is known. Tall, athletic, mid-forties, tanned, fun-loving, blond.
She was staying in the northwest for just another week and they had met only three weeks ago. She had seen his card in a newsagents shop window and she’d called him and arranged for him to clean out the gutters in her late aunt’s house in Rishton, near Blackburn.
When he was halfway through the job, Sam had called up to him as he perched at the top of the ladder. She held a tray with mugs of tea and a plate of biscuits. The day was cool but bright and they had sat in the garden. She told him that she had grown up in Blackburn but now lived in Dawlish in Devon. She was open and candid and Alec found her easy to talk to. She told him that her husband of twenty years had been killed in a freak skiing accident in France five years ago and she had run their business on her own since then. The business was a string of gyms and health clubs stretching through Exeter, Topsham, Sidmouth and Dawlish.
She said that coming back to Lancashire had been “interesting”, but she’d not be sorry to be getting back home. Her auntie Victoria – her father’s sister – had died at the age of ninety-seven and there was no other family to attend to matters. She expected to have all the legal stuff sorted and the house on the market soon.
“What about you?” she asked gently as she sipped her tea, her sky blue eyes appraising him. “What’s your story, Alec?”
“Well,” he began hesitantly. “This isn’t what I’ve always done,” he said.
***
Darkness had completely fallen and the valley below was a series of irregular and barely discernible shapes and shadows. Intermittent lights shone here and there with varied degrees of brilliance. It resembled a naive imitation of the twinkling stars above in the clear night sky. The arched pillars of the aqueduct were lit the brightest.
Alec knows he must now decide.
Following their first meeting, Alec had seen Sam many times. They had quickly grown close. He had told her a version of himself that he was now half convinced was true. Instead of being sacked and put in jail, redundancy was the reason for his downfall. Internal politics and former trusted colleagues jockeying for power had been his undoing. He had struggled since then; he wasn’t twenty-one any more, he had laughed; things had been tough and he now just did what he could to get by.
“What about your family?” she had asked, her hand touching his arm.
“The family?” he’d replied absently. Well, he couldn’t blame Wendy or the kids, he’d explained; he’d let them down, lost them their home, their way of life . . .
“Still see them?”
“No, not anymore, I haven’t seen them for years. It’s probably for the best. They have their own lives to lead,” he replied softly and gave a brave grin.
Sam had broached the notion of the job two days ago. It would be managing the building maintenance and upkeep of the gyms. She said the Dawlish site had accommodation which he could use until he’d got himself settled. There was a good salary and she’d arrange for a lease on a new car for him. Don’t decide right away, she’d said, but she hoped he would say yes. “It would be doing me a favour, really it would,” had been her last words on the subject.
So, the decision: to the west lay Sam and Dawlish and all he needed to get some semblance of his former life back, to once more get what he deserved.
But he was also torn because to the east there was Sarah and Molly; Sarah, who relied on his support, Molly who loved her time with her “gramps.”
What to do? What to do?!
Alec sat for a few moments and then thumped the steering wheel and violently turned the ignition key. The Clio’s engine roared immediately to life. He backed the car up and then swung the wheel and drove swiftly away leaving a spray of road dust in his wake. He smiled to himself because he knew he was taking the right path.
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