Small World Ch. 02

Leanne took a step back. "I think I can understand that, but who... who was the other?" she asked.

"Your friend, Gina, or whatever her name is. Look, Leanne, if you want to allay your conscience, you've got a room booked here tonight, haven't you?" Leanne nodded. "Right then, I'll meet you in the lounge at ten tomorrow morning and I'll give you an hour or as long as I can control my anger."

"Thank you, Peter."

"Oh and I will have Asha with me, by the way. I don't go meeting wanton women without bringing my wife along."

"Touché!" Leanne replied. "I deserve that, Peter. In the lounge tomorrow morning at ten, I'll be there."

Then Leanne turned and started to walk back inside the ballroom. Just before she went through to door, she stopped and turned to look back at me.

"Thank you, Peter. Good night," she said.

I didn't reply. When I'd finished my cigar and went back inside, there was no sign of Leanne anywhere.

++++++++++++++++

"Good, it's about time you cleared the air with Leanne over all this. You really do need to know what it was all about," Asha said when I told her I was meeting Leanne on the Sunday morning.

"You sound like you know what Leanne's going to say," I replied.

"I do. The children told me years ago."

"Huh? Why did they do that?"

"Because they wanted me to tell you about what happened. They hoped that you might not hate her so much; but I told them that it was between you and Leanne, and I wasn't going to get involved. Especially with the way you went off at anyone who mentioned her name."

"Yeah, I've been a bit paranoid over it, haven't I?"

"No, I don't really think so, Peter. You loved Leanne; I know you did and most probably you still do. That's the only worry I've got about you talking to her."

I took Asha into my arms and kissed her.

"My love, how come you know me so well. And you're right on both counts! I think in my heart I do still hold some love for Leanne, but I also hate her for what she did, and all of the lies she's told. Don't worry, love, there's no way that she could ever come between us. I only agreed to see her again this morning because I have a burning desire to know what I did wrong."

Asha pushed me away so that she could look into my eyes.

"What you did wrong?" she asked with a quizzical look on her face. "Peter, you did nothing wrong. It was Leanne who did something remarkably stupid and cruel."

"But there must have been something that I did or said to make her look elsewhere."

"No, Peter, believe me. From what the children have told me, it was nothing that you did; it was all down to Leanne letting her friends talk her into doing something incredibly stupid. Then Leanne found that things had gotten completely out of her control. I think it best that I don't say anymore. You just go and hear what she has to say to you."

"I'm not going. Asha, we are going. I have no intention of meeting Leanne alone."

A smile came on Asha's face and she stretched up and kissed me.

+++++++++++++++

As I hoped the hotel lounge was almost empty. There were only two other people in there besides Leanne, James and Ashley.

As Asha and I walked in, James hugged his mother then walked over and hugged Asha, then rather formally shook my hand.

I noted that Ashley did not show any open form of affection towards her mother. I'd gathered through the grapevine that it had taken a long time for Ashley to forgive Leanne, if she really had and although she did talk to her she rarely visited.

Ashley after waiting her turn kissed me on the cheek and then did the same to Asha. I noted a look of sadness come into Leanne's eyes most likely caused by Ashley's display of affection towards Asha.

I suddenly realised that James was speaking to me. ".... the bar, the manager said you can have some privacy in there, but we will be able to see you from the foyer."

Leanne had stood up whilst James was talking; she led the way into the bar that had one of those silk ropes across the entrance. An easel stood in front of the rope that bore the sign "private conference".

I followed Leanne to a table that was already adorned with a coffee tray on it. She sat down and began pouring us both coffees without asking me whether I actually wanted one. I sat opposite her without making comment.

"Thanks for coming, Peter," she said as she passed the coffee to me.

I still didn't speak; this was her show. There were all kinds of questions that I wanted answered, but I had convinced myself not to ask them. I was intending to let her hang herself.

"First I'm going to repeat that I'm really sorry for all the lies I told you. I'm not sure if I'm more annoyed with myself about those lies than I am about what I did with Clinton. I didn't realise what I was doing with Clinton until it was too late, but I told all of those lies to you in cold blood. And then I kept on lying to you, trying to convince you that nothing had ever happened."

Leanne was waffling; I almost broke my silence and said, "get on with it, woman," but managed to hold my tongue.

"But you don't want to know how sorry I am, do you, Pete? You want to know what happened and why?"

I still refused to speak. Leanne looked down at her hands in her lap somewhere out of my sight. I figured that she was wringing them together; I'd seen her do that in the pub that day when Clinton and Gina were there.

"Pete, when you went out to Bombay for all that time, I got lonely..." Leanne suddenly raised her eyes to look into mine. "No, not for male company or anything like that, I was just missing you!"

"Well, you know that Jean and I used to have coffee every morning together. Well, it was in the second week that you were away I think, that Jean's friend Madeline started joining us sometimes."

I think that I took in a deep breath at the sound of Madeline's name. We'd been at a party at Jean and Sam Clements place one night, when Sam had thrown Madeline and the guy she'd been with out of the house; Sam had caught them smoking weed in the back garden. As far as I knew, Sam had forbidden his wife to have any contact with the woman afterwards.

"I know it was a bloody stupid thing to do, but one day the three of us went shopping together; on the way back, we stopped over at Madeline's house for some reason. Madeline lit up one of her funny cigarettes and... well, I'm not sure what happened after that. Look, Pete, I can only think that I must have been affected by the fumes coming off that damned thing."

Leanne looked down again and stopped speaking. I dreaded what she was going to say next.

"I was feeling very down and Madeline suggested I take a drag of her reefer thing. God, I don't know why I did, but I did, although I choked a bit. I hadn't smoked cigarettes since I first got pregnant with Jeannette. I don't know; somehow it did make me feel a little better and well... Peter, the three of us smoked another one, before I picked the children up that day."

"I'm sorry, Pete, but over the following couple of weeks Jean and I went around to Madeline's house quite a few times and smoked pot. I really couldn't see that it was doing any harm; I just thought it was making me feel better and miss you a little less. I was having some wonderful dreams about you at night; I can remember that.

"But then my folks came down and took the children away on the trip with them, so I had no reason to rush home to the house, until it was time for you to call. So I'd stay at Madeline's after Jean left. That's when it all got out of hand."

Leanne was not looking at me anymore; she was staring into space.

Clinton turned up at Madeline's house one afternoon; he's a distant cousin of hers or something. Anyway Madeline decided to have a kind of party to welcome him to the country. I didn't know that he'd just been released from prison in America for drug smuggling. I found out later he'd come to England to get away from the authorities' prying eyes over there.

I told them I couldn't stay for the party that evening because I had to be home for when you called, but... look, Pete, those reefers of Madeline's had more effect on me than I'd ever realised. I thought I knew what I was doing. Clinton said he'd come around and fix the telephone then I could go back to the party and call you from there. I could just tell you the home phone was out of order.

"Like the silly bitch I am, I let him do just that. Everyone went very quiet when I called you later in the evening. I'd drunk a lot of vodka by then as well as being high on those damned weeds of Madeline's; thinking back I'm surprised you didn't notice that I was drunk when I called you that night."

"I remember the call distinctly, Leanne. You were extremely emotional that night and very weepy. But I had no idea that you had turned into a drunk drug addict," I informed her.

"I wasn't an addict; I never got that far into it, Peter. Although I'll admit that I got a damned sight further in later that night."

Leanne started crying and didn't say anymore for a little while. I was feeling uncomfortable. My instincts were telling me to put my arm around Leanne and comfort her. You know, if it had been any other woman in the world, I probably would have done just that; but as it was Leanne, I tried to ignore her and looked around the room.

"It was later that night that it all turned to shit. There were only about five or six people left when I noticed Clinton and Madeline doing something with a mirror. Then I saw Clinton take a straw and sniff something up his nose. Then Madeline did the same thing; well, nearly everyone did.

"They invited me and this other girl to try some. I wasn't daft; I knew it was cocaine so I refused, but then some other guy said something like 'try this; its out of this world' and gave me and the other girl a cube of sugar each. The guy was off his head and kept on at me to eat that damned sugar cube, I thought he was nuts and I think I only ate the thing to shut him up.

"Then I really don't know what the hell happened. All I can remember is being in some kind of cloud cuckoo land, where nothing made any sense. One minute I thought I was in bed with you, the next I was dancing with Clinton on someone. I really lost control of my mind, Peter, honestly.

"It was me at that hotel in Bournemouth, but most of the time I was there is like a weird dream that I couldn't really remember at the time. I've had all kinds of flashbacks about what went on that weekend, ever since."

"Everything is mixed up, until I woke up on the Monday morning and found Clinton.... well you can guess what he was doing. I pushed him off of me and demanded that he took me home; I really had no idea that I was in Bournemouth or how I got there. Although since, I've had flashes of memory about the car journey down there and exactly what did happen."

"It won't wash, Leanne," I finally said, "Sugar cubes brings acid to mind, and from my memory of the stuff, the affect you claim to have suffered doesn't appear to match. From my limited knowledge of LSD trips, you're 'out of it' for a few hours and then have one bloody great downer. Leanne, you called me in Mumbai several times over that weekend."

"I didn't call you at all! Clinton did, when he thought I was straight enough in my head. Peter, I was pretty well wasted on vodka and weed most of the weekend and then he talked me into snorting Coke to make me feel better about lying to you. When I woke up on that Monday morning my mind was finally straight and I realised just what I'd done. I told Clinton that he'd better take me home right away or I'd call the police and tell them what had happened."

I could see the tears streaming down Leanne's face, but I still couldn't bring myself even to offer her a handkerchief.

"Clinton took me home and reconnected the telephone. Then he left and I never saw him again until we set up that thing in Birmingham with Gina."

"That I find hard to believe, Leanne. The bit about not seeing Clinton again, I mean."

"It's true, Peter, honestly. Look, I know that I've lost you. You're married to Asha and have little ones to think about. I know that whatever I tell you I'm never going to get you back. I have no reason to lie to you anymore.

"Peter, I can't get on with my life until I've told you the truth. After you came home from India I thought you would know what I'd done. But as the weeks went by, you were your normal loving self. More so, really, because you'd been away.

"I was having kittens as well, until my next period came. Clinton didn't use any protection and I was in no condition to remember to take my birth control pills.

"It had all faded into a half forgotten nightmare; until you came back with that damned piece of film that your friend gave you. I can tell you it was that bit of film that really shook me. When you first showed it to me I honestly couldn't remember most of it. But I was soon having nightmares again and I found I could remember much more than I originally did. So many times after you'd left for work in the mornings, I ran into the bathroom to be sick.

"Anyway, Pete, that's about it. That's what happened and I'll curse myself for the rest of my life for being so stupid. I've told the children everything so as they know how smoking just one little reefer can get out of hand. All I can say to you is that I'm sorry."

"It's not quite all, Leanne, if you say that you never saw Clinton again. How come he turned up in Birmingham? Are you trying to tell me that it wasn't him you were going out with after we separated?" I asked in as sarcastic a sounding voice as I could muster.

"I never went out with any men after we separated, Pete. I've never been out on what you might call a date with a man from the day you left. I was going to a shrink and a support group for abandoned wives."

"Pull the other one, Leanne!"

"It's true, Pete. I have nothing to gain by lying to you now," she said in a pleading tone of voice.

From the look in Leanne's eyes, I do believe she was telling the truth.

"I'll admit I was trying to make you jealous. I did myself up as much as I could and led young James on to believe that I was going out with a man. He told me that you were dating and... oh, damn it, I thought you'd get jealous and come running home. But you didn't! Then you took that job up here and, well, it all fell apart, didn't it?"

"No, Leanne, if you ask me, it all fell apart the day you smoked that first reefer."

"Your so right, Pete. I was a bloody fool and don't I know it now. Anyway then Theresa came over from Australia to visit the family. And I got that stupid idea about conning you yet again. Madeline wasn't hard to find and she soon led me to Clinton. He didn't want to play at first, but Madeline told me that he was wanted in the States under his real name. So I put some pressure on him that way. Theresa thought the whole thing was a hoot. How did you know that Gina wasn't her real name, by the way?"

"The shipping label on her case said 'Theresa Noble, Sidney, Australia.' Leanne, I lived in that hotel for months and most of the staff became my friends."

"Shit, yeah, I never thought about that. Anyway it didn't turn out to be that much of a hoot for Theresa. She picked up something nasty from Clinton. That'll teach her. I told her not to let the bastard bed her."

"Anyway we didn't fool you for a minute, did we?" Leanne finally asked.

"Not really, Leanne. To be honest with you, that little scam you attempted was the biggest mistake you ever made. And, boy, am I glad that you made it. Good-bye, Leanne, and good luck. In the future I'll treat you as someone that I used to know, all right?"

"Do you accept my apology, Peter?"

"Do you mean do I forgive you? No, I don't! I don't think I ever will."

I got up and walked out of the bar. Asha came over and put her arms around me.

"Don't ask," I said to her, then after saying our good byes to James and Ashley we left.

Leanne got married again about three years later. It only lasted a couple of years and wasn't too good a marriage as far as I understand. James went down there and physically threw the guy out in the end, when he found out the guy knocked Leanne about for some reason.

Five years after that Leanne was rundown by a bus in the High Street. Apparently she stepped off the curb right in front of the thing; her blood alcohol level was over the limit to drive a car. But the accident was put down to misadventure.

Mattie had a stroke a while back, but she still lives with Asha and me. Asha stopped work to look after her and the children. We don't need her money anyway, now that I'm the manager at the Telford office.

Life goes on.