Tara Read online

  'Would it be easy to get a lift all the way to London?' she asked the man. 'I think I've missed the train, too.'

  'Sure,' he said. 'I usually have a cuppa at a transport cafe. I'll get you a lift on from there.'

  It was after seven when she finally found her way to Godolphin Road in Shepherd's Bush, and her heart sank into her plimsolls.

  Her first real glimpse of London when she was dropped off at Hammersmith had excited her; the noise, traffic, shops and coffee bars had been so thrilling. But Shepherd's Bush was every bit as seedy as Whitechapel had been, and this particular road was awful. Tree-lined it might be, but the leaves were heavy with dust and overflowing dustbins stood outside almost every dilapidated house. A smell of drains and pungent curry filled her nostrils, a group of black children played in the gutter and further down an old wino was sitting on a wall drinking from a bottle.

  Adam Faith's 'What do you want if you don't want money?' blasted out from a house with broken windows. Next door a couple of blowsy women sat on the steps gossiping. They broke off to stare as she walked past. She had expected grandeur; modern blocks of flats, or at least elegant townhouses. Not to be plunged back into her childhood.

  Number twenty-seven was marginally better. The steps up to the blue front door were clear of litter and the net curtains were clean, even if the stonework was crumbling.

  There were three bells, but none for Wainwright. Tara stabbed at the bottom one, crossing her fingers. She heard the bell in the distance, but no-one answered it.

  She tried the next one, marked 'Nichols'. A wave of panic washed over her. It hadn't occurred to her that he might be out, or even away for a while. What would she do if there was no reply? She couldn't get home even if she wanted to, and where would she sleep?

  But she could hear footsteps now. Fierce hope ran through her, she patted her hair, ran a finger over her teeth and wished she'd thought to put on something prettier than jeans. The door was opened by a vaguely oriental-looking young man with slanting eyes and jet black hair. He was slimmer and shorter than her, and wore a pink shirt and white jeans.

  'I'm sorry to trouble you,' she said. 'I'm looking for Simon Wainwright. His name isn't on any of the bells.'

  'That's because he doesn't live here.' The man had an affected way of speaking, he flared his dainty nostrils and looked cross.

  'But he gave me this address.' Tara's heart began to thud.

  'Well, he stays here.' The man spoke very deliberately, as if he was thinking about each word. 'It just isn't his place. Anyway, he's out now.'

  'Of course, the show!' It hadn't occurred to her before, but he must work every night. 'Oh dear, I forgot about his job.'

  The man sighed deeply. He didn't speak for a moment or two, just looked at her as if he wished he could shut the door in her face.

  'Can I wait for him here?' Tara asked weakly. 'I haven't anywhere else to go.'

  He looked her up and down and his lip curled.

  'You can come up to my place for a while. I'll try to get hold of him, but if I can't you'll have to go. He doesn't always stay here, you see.'

  Despite feeling faintly relieved when the man led her to his flat, Tara felt there was something odd going on here. Could this be another girlfriend's place? What if Simon was married?

  The young man led her into a big room at the back of the house on the first floor. It was a bedsitter, the kitchen section was partially concealed by shelves housing a collection of old medicine bottles. The room had a gay, arty feel about it.

  'I'll just go and use the phone,' he said, picking up a bunch of keys. 'Sit down.'

  Tara watched him as he went out. He went up the stairs again and she could hear him unlocking a door. Moments later she heard a low murmur of conversation, then the sound of the phone being put down and the door relocked.

  'I've left a message for him to ring,' the man said on his return, crossing the room to switch on the TV without looking at her. Tara sensed he didn't want to talk, in fact resented her presence.

  'I'm sorry if I'm a nuisance,' she said softly. She wondered if she dared ask why he held the keys, why she couldn't go and wait in there and, indeed, who actually did own the flat.

  He looked round from the television and gave her a cold, long stare, but said nothing.

  It seemed that she waited hours, through Take your Pick then a documentary about seals. Tara sat stiffly on the only proper chair while the young man sat on his bed watching the screen intently. She was hungry and thirsty, but he didn't even offer a cup of tea.

  Just after nine, the front door opening downstairs in the hall made the man leap up.

  'I'll just see who that is!' He implied that she was to stay where she was.

  The moment Tara heard Simon's deep voice she ran out on to the landing and looked down.

  In the past few weeks she'd often wondered whether he really was as handsome as she remembered. But that first glimpse confirmed she hadn't exaggerated anything.

  He looked up as the young man hastily explained something and, instead of the expected gasp of delight at seeing her, his expression made Tara's blood freeze in her veins. His lips were straight and disapproving, brown eyes cold.

  'What on earth made you come?' he snapped at her. Worse still, he wasn't alone. By his side was a sleek black-haired woman in her forties, wearing a smart cream outfit.

  'I'm sorry.' Tara could feel tears pricking her eyes. 'I lost your letter ...' She tailed off, aware that both the young man and the woman were staring at her contemptuously. 'Can I speak to you on your own?'

  There was a kind of conspiratorial nodding between the three of them, then Simon came up, took her arm and led her up a further flight of stairs.

  'I'm sorry, Simon. I shouldn't have come,' she blurted out, following it with a garbled resume of all the events since she lost his letter. 'I don't mean to be a nuisance. I was going to come to London anyway. I'll find a job and a flat.'

  There was no attempt at a smile, no hasty reassurance.

  'I explained myself when I wrote.' He drew her into a huge room covering the top floor of the house. 'I said I'd be glad to see you if you came to London, but this flat isn't mine and therefore I couldn't put you up here.'

  The events of the long day, his lack of warmth and the presence of that woman were all too much, and the tears Tara had tried so hard to hold back finally flowed.

  'I'll go,' she sniffed. 'Just give me a moment or two to think about it.'

  She wanted to throw herself into his arms, tell him what agony the separation had been. But his eyes were showing irritation, not love.

  'Don't be silly,' he said briskly, walking away from her and opening a window. 'You can stay here tonight, but we'll have to make some other arrangement tomorrow.'

  He said something about going down to see the woman, who was a business associate, suggested she made herself some tea and he'd be back.

  Tara wanted to lie down and sob. All these weeks she'd thought of nothing but seeing Simon again and now it seemed she'd mis-read everything. He'd made no attempt to kiss her, and he hadn't even tried to comfort her when she cried. Who was that woman? And why was the other man so hostile?

  She looked around the room and her eyes were drawn to a photograph of a child lying loose on the desk, a seven-by-five black and white print on top of a file. It showed a naked boy of about ten caught squealing in the spray from a garden hose. He was blond, very pretty for a boy, and she wondered if he was Simon's son. Tara picked it up thoughtfully. Maybe that was why he was so odd – he was married with children and he didn't want anyone to find out he'd had an affair with a sixteen-year-old!

  Opening the file wasn't even a real act of curiosity, it was just there, but as she opened the stiff blue cover she got a shock. It was full of pictures of naked boys, some, like the loose one, taken in a garden, some in the bath and shower, others on beds or couches. Sounds of feet on the stairs made her shut the file quickly and move away.

  Simon disarmed her
by coming through the door smiling, his arms held out for her.

  'Come and give me a kiss! I'm sorry I wasn't more welcoming, but I had a lot on my mind.'

  He looked like her Simon again, his eyes warm. But she was still smarting from the embarrassing rebuff.

  'Where's that lady gone?' Tara asked cautiously.

  'Home. That's Alice Kennedy, who runs my agency. I had a chat with her, explained the circumstances and she's gone now.'

  'Agency?' She didn't remember him mentioning a business.

  'Child actors.' He frowned, waving his hand as if that wasn't important. 'Quentin downstairs works for me, too. I hope he wasn't rude to you, he can be a bit hostile when he feels threatened.'

  'Threatened?' She knew she sounded like a parrot, but she was so confused.

  'He's nervous of girls, especially ones as pretty as you. He thinks he might lose his job.'

  It only took a few kisses, a cup of tea and a beef sandwich for Tara to get over her qualms. Simon explained that he ran a theatrical agency, specialising in children. Alice Kennedy worked from here, and this flat was owned by another partner. He said he'd recently moved out of one flat, which was why he'd taken a break in Somerset. Since then, because he hadn't managed to find a permanent home, he was sleeping here.

  'Does that explain why you can't stay with me?' he asked. 'You see, I'm responsible for many children. If the parents of one of them should see me with you, they just might think the worst. You do understand?'

  He still wasn't quite as he had been in Somerset. Perhaps it was because she'd caught him unexpectedly. Or was it because she looked untidy and grubby? Too young, too country-girlish?

  'But I'm not a child. I'm sixteen,' she said indignantly.

  'That's a child to people with dirty minds,' he insisted. 'I have to be above reproach, you see.'

  He suggested taking her tomorrow to a house he knew in Highgate, where there were lots of girls her age. He also suggested she slept in a spare room downstairs next to Quentin's.

  'I want you in my bed really,' he said, stroking her breasts. 'But getting carried away now could wreck everything.'

  As sad as she was, Tara saw the sense in everything he said. He talked about taking her away for a weekend somewhere, loving her where no-one knew them, and what fun it would be to keep it secret.

  'I bet I can get you some modelling work,' he added. 'In no time you'll be able to afford to rent somewhere really smart, but just for tonight it's the room downstairs.'

  It was a tiny room, nothing but a single bed, a chest of drawers and a wardrobe, but Tara was so exhausted by the day's events she dropped off to sleep immediately.

  For a second when she woke she didn't know where she was, but then the sounds of London reassured her. It was all so familiar, the sounds she had heard every day until she was twelve – the distant hum of traffic, the rattle of the milk-float, faint BBC voices reading the news in one direction, music coming from another.

  This was what she wanted! Not meadows, cows and old Betsy. She was sixteen, she wanted to have fun, be outrageous. She could stay in Somerset till she was ninety and never see half of what she'd see here in a week.

  Her excitement grew as she considered the day ahead. She'd read about all the boutiques springing up; she would find them, see if any of them wanted an assistant who could sew and design as well as serve people. Simon would be impressed if she found work immediately.

  She showered in a tiny bathroom she found opposite her bedroom and put on an apple green dress with a long droopy collar, the only thing in her bag suitable for job-hunting. She brushed her hair, put it up in a French pleat because it made her look older, then did her make-up.

  Her dress needed ironing! However much she tried to smooth out the wrinkles, it looked bad. Her plan had been to slip out unseen leaving a note for Simon explaining what she was doing and that she'd be back by five in the afternoon. That way she hoped he'd be so touched by her adult independence he'd think twice about taking her over to Highgate. But she couldn't go out with such a screwed-up dress.

  Hearing the radio coming from Simon's flat was a good sign, at least it meant he was awake. She knocked on the door. No voice came from within, no sound of feet, so she tried the door-handle and to her surprise it turned.

  'Simon!' she called timidly, peeping round the door.

  The bed under the window was empty, its crumpled covers thrown back, and she could hear the sound of the shower coming from her left along with the music. Tara giggled as she went in. Elvis Presley was belting out 'Teddy Bear' and she had a mental picture of Simon acting out the role in the shower.

  She hesitated at the bathroom door. It was open slightly and steam belched out through the crack. Back in the cottage in Stanton Drew they had had some wonderful moments under the shower and she wondered if she could join him. Anticipating him pulling her into the shower with him, she slipped out of her dress and underwear and tip-toed to the bathroom.

  The record changed to Cilia Black's 'Anyone who had a heart'. Tara bit her lips so she wouldn't giggle. She pushed open the door, slid her hand round to reach the shower curtain, then with one swift movement pulled back the curtain.

  But Simon wasn't alone under the jet of water. Quen-tin was with him.

  Tara gasped in horror. Even though the two men jumped apart when they heard her, their erections made it obvious what they had been doing.

  For a second Tara froze. She was aware of Quentin's long, thin, purple-tipped penis, a red handprint across his buttocks as he tried to shield himself from her stare. Simon's mouth hung open and clearly the shock was enough for him to lose his excitement as his cock shrivelled before her eyes.

  The pictures of the naked boys, the meaning of what she had stumbled on and her own nakedness made her back away in horror, covering her body.

  'How could you?' she said weakly, her voice cracking.

  'It was all right when he was screwing you, then?' Quentin's shrill voice was loaded with spite.

  There was a roaring sound in her ears, her eyes were blinded by tears, yet somehow she managed to grab her clothes and rucksack. She ran down the stairs, pulling them on as she went.

  As she reached the hall, a young woman opened the front door with a key and it was clear she lived on the ground floor.

  'Do you know what goes on up there?' Tara sobbed out, nodding back up the stairs as she struggled to zip up her dress. 'Do you know what perverts they are?'

  The girl shrugged her shoulders, looking nervous, as if Tara was an escaped lunatic.

  'They're queer! You should call the police, they need locking up!'

  'Queer'! The word kept going round in her head like some kind of crazy password as she ran full-tilt down Goldhawk Road towards the Tube.

  People were nulling down the road yet she barely noticed their curious glances.

  How could Simon be that way? How could a man who seemed to worship the female body, who had loved to look at her nakedness, possibly make love to another man?

  As she ran blindly up the steep steps to the Metropolitan line, Tara knew she needed help. She had felt this way before, when Paul was killed; the same terrible trembling, the need to be held and comforted by someone. Yet who was there?

  When a child dies the whole world sympathises, but how could she expect anyone to understand what it felt like to discover not only that your lover was unfaithful, but that it was with a man.

  Once on the platform, she realised she didn't even know where this line went, she hadn't even bought a ticket. She sank down on to a bench and sobbed, barely seeing the dozens of people around her.

  A dirty feeling crept over her skin, nausea gripped her stomach. If she closed her eyes she saw the two men in the shower. But as disgusting as that image was, there was another far worse. Those boys in that album! Who were they? Why did Simon keep pictures like that? Every mother has pictures of her own naked children, but a businessman keeping them in a file?

  She had to tell someone. But who?r />
  She couldn't tell Gran or Mum. Not anyone back in Somerset. That left only Uncle George and Harry. Not George. Fresh tears broke out as she imagined the distress on his big florid face.

  Harry!

  It was the people going to work who brought her to her senses. Office girls in high heels and summer dresses looked at her curiously. Older women studied her as if any moment they might address her. She got up and walked further along the platform, wiping her eyes, and struggled to control herself.

  The years fell away as she walked out of Whitechapel station into the sunshine. The noise was the same, the ceaseless hubbub of people shouting, buses and lorries whizzing past, children clamouring for attention as their mothers dragged them along to the market.

  A group of boys stood on the corner, just as they always did. They had been Teddy boys then, with greasy quiffs, bumper-soled shoes and drape jackets. Today's boys were mods, sporting short college-boy haircuts and mohair suits. A couple of Lambrettas were parked close by.

  George was on his stall. He was hidden by the crowd yet she could hear his voice. Queenie was with him; Tara caught a glimpse of platinum-blonde curls and that infectious laugh.

  She crossed to the other side of the wide road, melting into the crowd. It wouldn't do for George to spot her now. Harry wasn't with them, so he was probably in Tod's Gym, just a few doors down from the flat where she used to live.

  Things had changed. There were far more black people, and Indians, too. What had once been the eel and pie shop was now selling fabric for saris and the dilapidated Pavilion Theatre on the corner of Valance Road had finally been pulled down.

  Sid's fish and chip shop was now called The Swinging Plaice. Inside it was tiled floor to ceiling, with new fryers right at the back and tables and chairs installed to seat perhaps forty customers.

  The door which had once led to her home had been replaced. It was painted bright red, with half glass and even one of those posh entryphone grilles. Tara hesitated outside. Did it still stink? Had the new people installed a bathroom and put carpet on the stairs?