Vincent, it transpired, had two adult sons from whom he was estranged. They had parted company with him after their mother died, and Laura wondered if this was because Vincent had been unkind to her.
He did have a very hard streak. Back in September, when they were expecting Mark and Paul to be released from borstal, he had said point-blank that they couldn’t live at Grove House. He used the excuse that there was no room, but it was plain his real reason was that he knew sixteen-and seventeen-year-old boys were likely to be trouble. As it turned out he was right, because they were not released after all: they assaulted one of the staff and received another year. Yet if they had been released Vincent would gladly have seen them go to some kind of hostel.
Comparing life at Grove House to Thornfield Road, Laura often felt guilty that she wasn’t down on her knees thanking God for Vincent. It was wonderful to see the little ones so happy and confident, and Meggie and Ivy were doing really well at their new school. She loved seeing her mother looking pretty and not having to worry about money all the time.
Sometimes Laura thought her misgivings were just selfishness because she didn’t appear to have benefited as much from the move as everyone else. Even a brand-new uniform, no smell of damp and mould lingering about her, and a new stylish haircut hadn’t made the other girls at school like her any better. She wasn’t bullied as such any more, just ignored, and she hadn’t made any friends in Barnes because she went to a different school.
Yet her main worry, and it niggled away at her all the time, was Vincent. She always felt uneasy with him, though she found it difficult to explain why. He seemed to sit too close to her and she would catch him staring at her in a strange way. Perhaps if her father had been the sort who cuddled her and asked her to sit on his knee, she wouldn’t think anything of Vincent doing it, but it gave her the creeps.
He came into her room when she was doing her homework and leaned over her, he made comments about her developing figure, and several times he’d tried the bathroom door when she was in the bath.
She had attempted to talk about it to her mother, but June only got cross and said she should be grateful that Vincent showed her affection and wanted to be a father to her.
‘You’ve got to light the candles now,’ Meggie said, breaking into Laura’s reverie. ‘When you cut the cake, can I have one of the roses?’
‘Of course you can,’ Laura said. ‘We’ll all have one and leave one for Uncle Vincent for when he gets in from work.’
Meggie struck a match and lit the candles, and as they all burst into ‘Happy Birthday’, Laura looked round the table and smiled. Freddy was now three and a half, a chunky little boy with ruddy, plump cheeks, black hair and eyes full of mischief. Ivy was six, and her hair had turned mousey like Laura’s, but she had lovely big dark brown eyes. Meggie had changed the most since moving here; she’d lost her worried look, put on some weight, grown an inch or two, and her long hair was dark and silky, making her very pretty. As for her mother, she looked lovely in a rose-pink twinset and the pearls Vincent had given her for Christmas. She didn’t smoke so much now because Vincent didn’t approve of it, and her complexion was clearer and brighter.
Laura blew out the candles and removed them to cut the cake. In the past a Swiss roll was all they got for a birthday tea, and she was touched that Vincent had bought this pretty one for her. She knew it must have cost a lot, and as she’d had a transistor radio too, her thoughts of him, for now, were all good ones.
Laura was in her bedroom later that evening, when Vincent put his head round the door. ‘How was the cake, birthday girl?’ he asked.
‘It was gorgeous,’ she said. She had come up to do her homework after tea, and as Vincent was working late, she hadn’t seen him until now. ‘And thank you for the radio too. That was just what I wanted; now I can listen to Radio Luxembourg in the evenings.’
‘I like to give my ladies what they want,’ he said, coming right into the room. As always, he looked very smart in a charcoal-grey suit, white shirt and blue striped tie. He might be tubby and balding, but he had a distinguished appearance. ‘Now, how about a kiss for an old man?’ he asked, pulling a comic face.
She laughed and went over to him to kiss his cheek, but he put his arms around her and his mouth came down on hers, all wet and sloppy. Laura wriggled away, unsure if that was what he intended to do, or if it was an accident.
‘I always wanted a daughter,’ he said, sitting down on the bed. ‘Now I’ve got three. What a lucky man I am.’
At that she felt ashamed she was so suspicious of him. ‘We are lucky, too, that Mum found you,’ she said a little awkwardly. ‘You’ve been very good to us.’
‘The pleasure is all mine,’ he said, reaching out and taking her hand. ‘And you are growing into a very pretty girl. I expect before long boys will be calling round wanting to take you out.’
‘I never meet any boys,’ she said, giggling with embarrassment.
‘Well, maybe we have to think of a club you could join to meet some,’ he said, drawing her closer to the bed. ‘I think there’s a youth club just along the road; I’ve seen young people gathering outside the church hall on a Thursday night. I could go along there and inquire for you.’
‘I’d be too scared to go to a club where I didn’t know anyone,’ she said and sat down beside him.
‘Everyone feels that way at first,’ he said. ‘I keep telling your mum we need to find some way of introducing you to people so you can make friends. What about joining the Girl Guides?’
‘I’m too old for that now,’ Laura said with a sigh. ‘I really wanted to join them back in Shepherds Bush but we couldn’t afford the uniform.’
‘You aren’t too old,’ he said, releasing her hand and putting his arm around her shoulder. ‘I’ve seen girls of sixteen and seventeen at the parades on Sundays. They go camping in the summer and on all kinds of other trips. I’m sure the women who run it appreciate having slightly older girls to help with the younger ones.’
Laura liked the idea of that. ‘I suppose I could go once and see how it is. But won’t the girls all be very posh?’
‘No posher than you,’ he said with a little chuckle. ‘You go to a good school, you live in a nice house. You are on the same level, or even higher, than all of them.’
‘Am I?’ she asked in some surprise.
‘Of course you are,’ he said firmly. ‘You must stop thinking you are somehow inferior. You’re bright and pretty, as good as anyone else.’
He hugged her then and for once she didn’t move away because it felt good to be praised by him. ‘That’s better,’ he said. ‘Everyone needs a cuddle now and then.’
Suddenly his hand moved on to her breast. Like the kiss earlier it could have been a mistake, because he withdrew his hand immediately and said it was time he went as her mother would be wondering where he was.
After he’d gone Laura felt confused. Everything Vincent had said suggested he was just being kind and fatherly – her own dad wouldn’t have cared tuppence whether she had any friends or not, and he certainly had never praised her. Maybe it was because of that she was so suspicious of Vincent, and perhaps she just had a dirty mind.
In the weeks that followed her birthday her feelings about Vincent see-sawed between being sure he just wanted to be a real father and feeling he had other motives in being nice to her. He did take her along to the Girl Guides where she received a warm welcome, and the following day he took her off to buy her a complete uniform. He was really pleased that she made a new friend the very first night, a girl called Patsy who lived just further down the road, and he said she could have Patsy round any time she liked.
But he would keep touching and hugging her. She didn’t like the way he patted her bottom, or the way he came into her room to kiss her goodnight. She would argue with herself that he patted Ivy and Meggie’s bottoms too, and kissed them goodnight, and if he left her out she might have felt hurt. But they were only little girls, and why were his hugs and kisses so lingering, and usually when they were alone? And why did the presents he bought her seem like some kind of bribe?
He came home from work one evening with a beautiful red coat with a hood for her. She was thrilled with it, and threw her arms around him impulsively to thank him. But late that same evening he came into her room when she was reading in bed and said something about wanting to give her lovely things because she deserved them. He kissed her on the lips again, and this time it was definitely intentional.
She couldn’t tell her mother, she knew she wouldn’t be believed, and she’d almost certainly be accused of making trouble. But by her doing and saying nothing he became bolder. There were several occasions when he came up behind her and cupped her breasts in his hands, and though she did push him off and tell him not to touch her, he just laughed as if he believed she didn’t mean it.
One very cold afternoon in early March Laura came out of school to find Vincent waiting for her in his car. He said he’d had a business appointment close by and thought he’d pick her up afterwards and drive her home. His business was office equipment and along with supplying desks, chairs and typewriters to offices, he also had a printing firm where he made business cards and headed notepaper. Laura was rather impressed that he supplied big companies; she sometimes saw invoices he’d made out for hundreds of pounds.
As she had often boasted of this at school, it was good to see the surprised expressions on the other girls’ faces as she drove off in Vincent’s gleaming Jaguar. She hoped it would stop them calling her a liar. It got better still when they stopped off in Chelsea for coffee and a cream cake as she felt very sophisticated.
When they got home the house was in darkness, and there was a note from her mother on the kitchen table to say she’d taken the little ones to Oxford Street to buy them new shoes and she wouldn’t be back until about seven.
‘That’s nice, we’ll have a little more time on our own,’ Vincent said cheerfully. ‘I’ll go and stir up the fire and we can curl up in front of it.’
Laura made a cup of tea and when she took it into the sitting room Vincent had got the fire blazing, put the table lamps on, taken his shoes and jacket off and was sitting on the settee.
‘I like cold, dark afternoons,’ he said. ‘At least I do once I’m in by the fire. Come and sit by me.’
Laura sat beside him, holding her cold feet up to the fire as she drank her tea. She had homework to do, and she knew she ought to go and make a start on the tea, but it was so cosy there that she was reluctant to move. They chatted for a while, mostly about the Girl Guides, for she was due to be enrolled the following week. Her mother never seemed to be interested in such things, in fact she had said she couldn’t see the point in being a Guide, so it was nice to be able to talk about it to Vincent.
‘Patsy said camping is really great, she’s been on several trips, and this summer they are going to Cudham in Kent. Mum will let me go, won’t she?’
‘She will if I tell her she must,’ Vincent said, and slung his arm around her. ‘I know she thinks Guiding is a little pointless, but that’s because she never had the chance to do such things when she was young.’
After a long day at school, feeling comfortable with Vincent and in the warmth of the fire, Laura must have dozed off. But she woke with a start to find him trying to put his hand up her knickers.
It was a terrible shock. Her school skirt was right up above her waist, and to her horror he had his penis in his other hand. For a moment she froze. She had never seen a fully grown man’s penis before and it was huge, with a purple glistening tip.
‘What are you doing?’ she exclaimed, suddenly aware her blouse was unbuttoned too.
‘Just loving you,’ he said. ‘Don’t move, let me just touch you there.’
She leapt to her feet, brushing his hands away from her, shuddering with revulsion. ‘You dirty bastard,’ she screamed at him. ‘How could you!’
Running from the room, she took the stairs two at a time and locked herself in the bathroom. She felt sick and very afraid, and a few minutes later when she heard him coming up the stairs she yeiled out for him to go away.
‘I couldn’t help it,’ he said outside the door, his voice soft and caressing. ‘You looked so beautiful and I just got carried away. I’m sorry if I frightened you, but I thought you felt that way about me too.’
‘Of course I didn’t, you’re an old man,’ she shouted back. ‘Mum will go mad with you when I tell her.’
He asked her to come out of the bathroom, but she refused. He was silent for a little while, but she knew he was still there.
‘Okay, so I made a mistake,’ he said eventually. ‘But you did bring it on yourself, snuggling up to me. How was I to know you didn’t want it?’
Laura was crying now, and she couldn’t put into words how defiled she felt. All she kept saying was that she was going to tell her mother.
‘You must think hard before you do that,’ he said. ‘For one thing, I’ll just tell her that you started it and that you’ve been flaunting yourself at me since you moved in here.’
‘She’ll know that’s not true,’ Laura sobbed. ‘You’ve been creepy with me from the start.’
‘Is giving you and the others a good home creepy?’ he asked, a chilly note in his voice. ‘Is giving you good food, warm clothes and anything else you need creepy? I think not, and if your mother does believe your version of what happened, then it will all end. You’ll all have to go. Back to another slum, until your mother takes up with another sucker willing to keep her.’
He went on and on insistently and Laura realized then that he was cruel enough to put her family out on the street. ‘I thought you loved Mum,’ she sobbed. ‘But YOU don’t, you’ve just used her.’
‘Used her! That’s rich,’ he exclaimed. ‘She made a play for me the moment she knew I was a widower. Listen to me, Laura, and listen good. Your mother is just a whore. She’d have dropped her knickers for any man with money, I knew that from the start, but she was good company and she gave me what I wanted. It’s up to you now, tell her if you must, but you’ll be the one to blame if she takes your part and I have to throw her out.’