Lavender Lane (Larch Tree Lane #4)

Chapter Nine

Ilsa didn’t know whether to be sorry or glad when Penelope Sharples turned up on the following Saturday afternoon, looking sulky and as if she’d been partying till late the previous night.

Mr Sharples had Ilsa’s wages and holiday money ready and, to give him his due, it was accurate to the penny. However, they did delay her departure by over an hour, unpaid, to allow their daughter to ask any questions.

Ilsa didn’t dare refuse in case a potential employer asked them for a reference for her at some point in the future.

It was evening when Ilsa at last got away and went back to the room she rented, and she was exhausted. She just wanted to grab a quick snack, maybe a cheese sandwich, then go to bed and read a few pages of her library book.

However, her landlady came out of the front room and stopped her just inside the hall.

‘I need a word.’

‘Is something wrong?’

‘I’m afraid so and I’m sorry to spring this on you, Ilsa, but I need your room back and I need you to move out tonight.’

‘ What? ’ The word seemed to echo down the narrow hall.

As they only had an informal agreement about her renting the room, Ilsa knew she had no legal recourse, and anyway she couldn’t have afforded to hire a lawyer to protest on her behalf.

‘But you can’t just throw me out, Mrs Boales! What am I going to do tonight? It’s probably too late to find another room. Can’t you even give me a week’s notice so that I can find somewhere else to go?’

‘No. I’m sorry but my nephew who’s been missing for three years turned up today in a terrible state. Brian’s been living on the streets for months, poor lad. His mother is dead and his father won’t have anything to do with him and has just remarried, so I’ve offered Brian a home. He’s moving in with me tonight and I’ve got him booked in for counselling for alcoholism from Monday onwards.’

She avoided Ilsa’s eyes as she added, ‘But I shall have to keep an eye on him from the start. I’ve had to buy him new clothes. New everything, right down to the skin, his were so ragged and filthy!’

‘Oh dear.’ She wasn’t worrying about the nephew when she said that, but about her own dilemma.

‘I’m sorry to turn you away so abruptly, Ilsa, but family comes first. This is a very small two-bedroom place and there’s simply nowhere else to fit you in. And anyway, the poor lad is ashamed of the state he’s in, and he doesn’t want to see anyone till he’s sorted a few things out.’

She hesitated, then added with obvious reluctance, ‘I’ll let you off this week’s rent as compensation so you’ll be able to hire a room for a few nights till you can settle permanently somewhere. I’m sorry but I need you out straight away, within the hour if possible, I’m afraid.’

‘But where can I go at this late hour?’

‘Surely you have some friend who’ll take you in for a day or two?’

‘No, I don’t have anyone. My two really good friends moved away a couple of months ago if you remember. They were going to work on a cruise ship and they’ll be in the Bahamas now, so I can’t even go and join them. And you know I don’t have any close family.’ Or any distant family, come to that, not as far as she knew, anyway.

‘What about that lass you work with, Megs, isn’t she called? Can’t she let you sleep on her sofa?’

‘She and her boyfriend share a tiny bedsitter because they’re saving to buy a flat of their own. And I didn’t tell you but I lost my job this week as well because Ms Hayton has sold the shop.’ She’d had a vague hope that the Sharpleses’ daughter might not turn up or might not even want to work there but it hadn’t happened. ‘I wasn’t sure in advance, but today turned out to be my last day of work.’

‘Oh dear. How inconvenient for you! I’m sorry for your problems, Ilsa, but I still have to put my nephew first because his parents are dead. Now, let me help you get started on the packing. I brought home some empty boxes from the supermarket to put your things in and I have a bag of rubbish bin liners for the left-over oddments. Not that you have a lot of stuff but you only have the one suitcase.’

Ilsa felt like a frozen woman and couldn’t seem to get moving.

‘I’ve put them in your bedroom so perhaps you’d start packing straight away? Brian is waiting in the living room to take over that room and he’s exhausted, poor lad, desperate to go to bed. Luckily you don’t keep any of your possessions down here, so he can stay quiet and watch TV while we pack.’

There was nothing Ilsa could do but make a start. It didn’t take many boxes and bags to hold all her possessions but she made sure to clear every morsel of food from the pantry and fridge.

This seemed to be the pattern of her life. She’d been an orphan from the age of ten. She’d been taken into care by social services, and moved here and there until she turned eighteen, not because she was badly behaved but because foster families weren’t always stable.

Over the years and because of the various moves she lost the few family possessions social services had kept for her. She hadn’t realised how important they were until it was too late and of course none of the foster parents had ever wanted her to bring more clutter to their houses with her.

In her last two years in school she’d lived in a hostel and taken any part-time weekend job she could find to earn money. She’d joined the army as soon as she was allowed to and it had been as near to a home as she’d had since she lost her mother. In it, she’d learnt early on not to load herself with meaningless objects. Well, you had to move around, and at the drop of a hat sometimes.

When Ilsa had finished her second term of service, she’d wanted a chance to try out civilian life as an adult for the first time since she’d left school. She hadn’t enjoyed her so-called freedom as much as she’d expected and had been intending to re-enlist for a longer term. But first she’d gone on a skiing holiday, something she’d always wanted to try. The trouble was, she’d been badly injured when a clumsy idiot got out of control and mowed her down.

She’d slowly recovered her general health, and again been found a place in a hostel, but due to serious damage to the bones of one leg she could never now get fit enough to go back to active service again, even though she didn’t limp, so hadn’t been able to re-enlist.

Since she didn’t enjoy studying and wasn’t good at it either, she’d begun working in a shop because she preferred to move around as she worked. She’d have gone mad sitting still at a desk all day long. She’d got a bit low in spirits at times since then, couldn’t help it, especially after the main friends she’d made here had left the area.

This wasn’t really the sort of life she’d wanted to lead but she couldn’t figure out what else to do. And it was harder to meet people than it had been because she was getting a bit old to go clubbing or do anything like that, even if she’d enjoyed it, which she had never really done. She preferred being outdoors and most of the guys you met there were too young for her these days, and too juvenile in their attitude to the world. And she didn’t like getting drunk. Where was the pleasure in losing control of your body?

Tonight was the final straw. Her world had fallen to pieces big time and just under two hours after she’d left work, she found herself sitting in her car outside the house, watching the front door close and seeing the shadowy outline of a man behind the living room curtains, which were pulled tightly across the brightly lit room. Somehow the sight of them shutting her outside on her own made her feel even worse.

She felt so numb and shocked that it took her a while to pull herself together enough to drive away. She tried the only two B&Bs she knew of and they were full already. And she certainly wasn’t going to pay the much more expensive costs of a hotel.

Instead she went up to the car park at the very top of the main street, which was where hikers left their vehicles when they went out on the popular woodland walks. The parking area was usually empty at this time of the evening, except for the odd pair of lovers, so maybe she could find a quiet spot and spend the night in her car there.

To her dismay, tonight there was a group of rough-looking men sitting in a cluster of outdoor chairs near a couple of vehicles at the far end. They were smoking and drinking beer, with more cans standing in coolers full of ice nearby. They turned to stare at her hungrily when they realised it was a woman on her own at the wheel.

When she stopped the car for a moment, one of them blew her a kiss, the one next to him called out a lewd invitation and others whistled or made insulting signs. Then one started walking towards her so she swung the car round and drove straight out of the car park again.

She didn’t stop till further down Larch Tree Lane, in a quiet part of the long street, pulling over and sitting slumped behind the wheel wondering where to try next. It was near some elegant houses so she felt safer there and switched off the engine to save petrol while she had a think.

Where the hell could she go to spend the night safely? If she stayed here on the main street, she might manage to drop off to sleep for a while but she was sure that sooner or later some police officer would rap on her car window and tell her to move on.

You read about people not just sleeping but living in their cars, but she couldn’t think how to organise her tiny, old-fashioned vehicle to make it even remotely comfortable for a person with long legs. She’d slung everything into it hastily and couldn’t even try to improve how things were crammed in until it was daylight because you’d need to see clearly in order to rearrange the contents of a vehicle.

Here with her was everything she owned in the world. Every single thing.

And even if she could rearrange things well enough to have room to lie down, where was she going to park it each night so that she’d be safe? Could she really live in it all the time? She’d hate it, but might have no choice if she couldn’t find another job.

She certainly couldn’t do anything tonight and she didn’t want to pay for a hotel, needed to keep as much money back as possible for food, petrol and emergencies till she could find another job. She’d not got as much money in the savings bank as usual because she’d had to pay for some major repairs to her car not long ago.

Everything seemed to be going wrong lately.

She doubted she’d have any choice but to apply for social security, which she absolutely loathed the thought of. They had an office in town but it’d be shut now, so she couldn’t even make enquiries about it till Monday. She wasn’t at all sure what they did for you if you were homeless as well as out of work, but was certain there were no full-time jobs going in other shops in Essington at the moment, except for a few hours of casual work a week in a supermarket or bigger store. Well, she’d already been looking, hadn’t she?

She shivered and the darkness seemed to press down on her. She wished there were a full moon brightening up the world instead of just that miserable little crescent.

She couldn’t even afford to cruise the streets for long searching for a place to stop for the night because she would need to be ultra-careful with her petrol. And anyway, she knew the town already from her walks, knew it from top to bottom. No new and safe parking places would appear like magic however hard she searched.

Oh, hell! She might have to leave the valley if no other full-time work was available. She hated even to think of doing that. Essington St Mary was as near home as anywhere she’d lived since she was ten.

In the end there was only one place where she thought she might be able to park safely for the night, a place she’d explored sneakily on foot one quiet Sunday evening when she first came to work in the valley. She’d kept an eye on it ever since out of sheer nosiness and had wandered round the area on foot a few times. She knew it was unoccupied now, had been since the last owner died.

So Lavender Lane it was. Just for a night or two.

Ilsa decided to park her car behind the big house in the gated group of dwellings called Lavender Lane. She drove there straight away, desperate to find somewhere to lie down safely.

The parking area behind the big house was empty but had space for about twelve cars. She went to the furthest corner and reversed her vehicle as far under a tree as it would fit.

The back of the car was loaded with her possessions so there was no chance of her fitting in as well as them. She tried sitting in the front passenger seat, but even with her pillow she was too tall to get comfortable enough to sleep. After a while she got cramp and had to get out of the car quickly and move her body around.

In the end she was so weary she took her sleeping bag and pillow with her, as well as her backpack and went to find somewhere to sleep. The ground was damp from a previous shower and the moon was hidden behind dark clouds that were threatening more rain, so she couldn’t sleep on the ground next to the car. She locked the car up, praying that no one would try to break into it and steal her belongings, then set off to find somewhere to sleep.

She didn’t usually let herself cry because it didn’t help solve any problem that she knew of but she was very close to tears as she trudged past the big house and down the narrow central lane between the six cottages to the middle cottage on her left, the one with the rosebush near the front door in the little garden area between the two rows of cottages.

She could cope with a hard floor but not with rain, and she needed to stretch out to sleep, always had done, she was too tall to fit into small sleeping spaces.

The cottages were all locked, of course, but they didn’t have full security systems on them, let alone CCTV cameras – well, she didn’t think they’d installed them since her last visit. There only seemed to be alarms covering the front and rear entrances, and there were substantial, old-fashioned locks on the very solid front and back doors to keep people out.

She walked round to the rear of the cottage she’d got into before and used her torch to study the kitchen window. She’d found that its lock was loose the first time she came here, when she was dying to get inside such an old building and have a good look round. She’d been right in her guess about the situation. There were no signs that the lock had been repaired.

Please let it still be open , she prayed as she jiggled it about in the same way she had done that other time. To her enormous relief, fiddling with the catch worked once again and opening the window didn’t set off any alarms – well, none that she could hear.

She managed to climb in through the rather small window but left her sleeping bag and pillow hanging over the windowsill in case she had to make a quick getaway. The kitchen and front living room were empty of everything except the same few dusty pieces of old furniture as there had been last time she’d looked round.

She peered out of the front window and since there were no lights to be seen in any of the other houses and no sounds of people talking or doing anything else, she went back for the rest of her things. She pulled them inside and closed the kitchen window, letting the catch fall loosely into place again.

And still everything stayed quiet with no one coming to investigate. Thank goodness! Oh, thank goodness! For once, luck was on her side.

She went to check upstairs but didn’t even attempt to lie down on either of the two narrow single beds because if she did that, the crumpled bed covers would show someone had been there, as would the lack of dust on them.

She didn’t want to be seen sleeping downstairs, though, if anyone looked through the windows, so she spread out her sleeping bag in the long narrow storage room-cum-pantry with bare shelves, then closed the door on the world. She’d found a wedge lying on the floor near the front door and now put that firmly under the inside of the pantry door. It made her feel a lot safer because at least she couldn’t be taken by surprise and there was only one tiny window high up on the outside wall so no one would be able to peep in at her, either.

She was so exhausted, she set the alarm on her watch and quickly let herself sink into sleep.

The next thing Ilsa knew, it was daylight. She couldn’t at first think where she was and sat up with a jerk then realised abruptly, gasping in shock when she looked at her watch. She’d set it to wake her at seven o’clock in the morning, but she mustn’t have done that properly because it was half past nine now.

Half past nine!

She’d been utterly exhausted by the time she got herself settled here but she doubted she could have slept through its irritating beeping.

Oh, heavens! She’d left her car outside in the parking area at the back of the big house. What if there were people out and about now?

She put the wedge back near the front door and climbed out of the kitchen window again, taking the time to jiggle the lock back into place in case she had to come back here tonight.

She was ravenously hungry, thirsty too, but breakfast would have to wait. She needed to get away from here as quickly as she could. She’d be safer somewhere with other people around like a shopping centre.

She’d go to one and indulge in a takeaway coffee to wash down the stale bread she couldn’t toast for breakfast as she’d planned to do yesterday.

And why she kept feeling like weeping, she didn’t know. She never allowed herself to cry. Never. Well, almost never anyway. Whenever her life became difficult, she prided herself on coping.

If she had to leave the valley to get another job she’d be deeply sad, but she’d survive sadness, had done before.