Stolen (8 page)

Now it was like a shrine to Fleur. Her mother cleaned and dusted it each week and stayed in there for hours sobbing.

When what would have been Fleur’s eleventh birthday came round, all the dolls had their clothes washed and her mother lit candles on a cake and took it in there to sing Happy Birthday to her. She repeated that year after year, but Lotte never had a cake on her birthday, and the present she was given was always just a cardigan or pyjamas. Practical and impersonal.

There were of course no singing or dancing lessons as Fleur had, so Lotte never discovered if she had any talent. Her mother kept her hair cut very short, and bought her very plain, dark-coloured clothes. Young as she was, Lotte soon realized that this was so no one would ever make any favourable comparison between her and Fleur.

Her father wasn’t nasty to her, just distant. As he was a plumber he was often called out on emergencies in the evenings and at weekends. But after Fleur died he hardly ever seemed to be home. As Lotte grew older she sensed he went along with whatever her mother did or said for a quiet life.

But then, her mother was at her absolute worst only when they were alone together. Lotte was often afraid to go home after school because she didn’t know what might be awaiting her.

Sometimes it was just a brooding stare, or criticism that she was late or untidy; sometimes she was just ignored. Yet that hurt so much, she felt so dreadfully alone, and she really thought it was because there was something horrible and unlovable about her.

But at other times it was far worse.

Lotte remembered one very wet day when she was about thirteen. She had developed the ability to know when her mother’s moods were at their very darkest, just by the atmosphere when she opened the front door. She could feel the tension in the air, smell her anger like something rank and rotten. At these times it was always tempting to run away, and if there had been a friend or relative she felt would take her in and believe what she told them, she would have gone.

But there was no one. She once tried to tell Mrs Broome, their neighbour, but the woman’s face tightened up in disbelief and she went straight round and told her mother what Lotte had said. She got beaten with a slipper that day.

So when she sensed trouble that wet day when she was thirteen, she did what she always did and braced herself for the malevolence she knew was to come.

As she came gingerly through the door, she found her mother standing in the hall in the dark pink wool dress that she usually wore only on special occasions. But she clearly wasn’t going anywhere special as her hair was a mess and she was wearing her slippers. And even more worrying was the crazed expression on her face.

‘You stole some money from my purse,’ she spat out. ‘I had a ten pound note in there last night and it was gone this morning.’

‘I didn’t take it,’ Lotte said truthfully. She put her school bag down on the floor. ‘You can check in there if you like. I haven’t got any money.’

She never had any, she didn’t get pocket money, another thing which hurt but she never dared bring up.

‘You’ve put that wet bag on my clean floor,’ her mother screamed out. ‘You’re an imbecile – why didn’t you die instead of your sister? You’re no good for anything.’

Lotte burst into tears. There were a few drops of rain water on the tiles, but they would dry; she didn’t think she would get over her mother wishing her dead.

But crying was the worst thing she could do as her mother always took it as weakness.

‘That’s it – cry! Tears from you don’t mean a thing, just crocodile tears. It’s bad enough that I’ve been left with you when my beautiful, talented daughter was taken from me, but you lie to me and steal from me too. God, I despise you!’

Lotte had been called stupid, ugly, ignorant, bad, loathsome and so many other horrible adjectives she thought she ought to have stopped being hurt by them, but to be told that her mother resented being left with her was like a knife through the heart.

‘Then call a social worker and get me taken into care!’ she shouted back at her mother.

That was the bravest she’d ever been. Normally she didn’t dare answer back. But the words had scarcely left her lips when her mother snatched up a walking stick, left behind by a visitor many years ago, from the umbrella stand and brought it down with force on Lotte’s head and shoulders. Lotte tried to get away but her mother cornered her behind the front door and rained blows on her back, shoulders and arms, all the time screeching that she was a thief.

She suddenly ran out of steam, dropped the walking stick on the floor and shuffled off to the kitchen. Lotte dragged herself up to her bedroom and wished she could die. She thought if her own mother loathed her, there was no hope that anyone else could ever care for her.

Later it transpired that it was her father who had taken the ten pound note. He’d borrowed it that morning but didn’t say anything as her mother was still asleep. But there was no apology for Lotte.

It took a fortnight for the bruises and weals on her body to fade. Her gym teacher stared at them while Lotte was changing, but didn’t ask how she got them. For Lotte that was proof no one cared. She gave up hoping for anyone’s intervention and made up her mind she would leave home the moment she left school.

She took six GCSEs, did badly in all of them and applied for a job as a chambermaid in the Grand Hotel in Brighton, just because they let their staff live in. She was called for an interview two days before the end of term and was offered a job. It was arranged that she would move in that Sunday and start work on the Monday.

Her mother sniffed when Lotte told her she was going to work at the hotel.

‘About right for someone as brainless as you,’ she said in her usual cold voice. ‘Domestic work is all you’re good for.’

Someone in her class arranged a party on the beach to celebrate the exams being over and to say goodbye to those leaving school. Lotte was expected to go, but she knew she couldn’t. She had nothing nice to wear and no money either to buy some drink. Besides, she wasn’t keen for anyone to find out where she was going to work, in case they reacted like her mother.

Working at the Grand was a bit like pressing her nose up to a toy-shop window. She got to see rich people eating and drinking, wearing expensive clothes and valuable jewellery and arriving in smart cars. There were many conference rooms in the hotel too, which were hired out to all kinds of companies, and she would see girls only a couple of years older than herself organizing seminars, marketing meetings and staff training sessions. They were smart, confident and articulate, which only confirmed in her the belief that she really was stupid, just like her mother had always told her. She didn’t bother to daydream about what it might be like to stay in the hotel as a guest, or to have a job where people looked up to her. She really believed she wasn’t capable of doing anything more than clean up after people.

But she didn’t mind. After all, she could look out of the windows at the sea while she was cleaning her rooms. The colour of the sea changed daily, going from brilliant turquoise when the sun was shining, through greens, greys, and then to black when there was a storm. She loved windy days when the waves were whipped up so high they washed over the promenade, but her favourites were the days with light wind, just enough to make small white horses canter up the beach.

It was good to watch the holidaymakers too. Old couples in their best clothes who would sit for hours in the shelters watching the sea, small children who twitched with excitement as they raced to get down the steps on to the beach. Girls of her own age looking for boys to flirt with, roller skaters, baby-buggy pushers, dog walkers, hugely fat ladies who waddled by eating ice cream, and gay men posing by the promenade railings. She’d been told Brighton was the gay capital of England now, and everyone else in the hotel seemed to know exactly who was gay just by looking at them. But Lotte couldn’t tell, not unless they made it very obvious.

She had to share a dark, poorly furnished room in the staff annexe with a Spanish girl who spoke only broken English. She also had to work very hard, but the other staff were friendly, even kindly, and she was far happier than she’d been at home.

One evening while watching her room-mate struggling to blowdry her hair, she offered to do it for her. To Lotte’s surprise it turned out really nice, and after that all the girls asked her to do theirs. Word must eventually have reached Gina, the owner of the hairdressing salon in the hotel, because she asked Lotte if she’d like to help her out when she wasn’t working.

From almost the first afternoon in Gina’s salon, Lotte felt hairdressing was her calling. She loved everything about it – the smell of shampoos and conditioners, the feel of wet hair in her fingers while she washed it, and seeing women who’d come in looking bedraggled and limp-haired go out bouncy and pretty.

Gina was in her late thirties, a buxom blonde who strutted around on very high heels and wore dresses so tight she could’ve been poured into them, but she had experienced hardships herself in the past. She saw how much Lotte liked the salon, and said she felt that with proper training she had the ability to be a first-class hairdresser.

Lotte didn’t have to explain that she couldn’t give up working as a chambermaid to train because she needed the room that came with the job, Gina worked that out for herself. So she talked the hotel manager round, suggesting they shared Lotte.

From seven until ten in the morning she would make beds and clean rooms, then spent the rest of the day in hairdressing training. On her day off she had to attend a hairdressing college, and every evening she had to spend an hour turning down beds and changing towels.

Lotte never minded that she had to work a twelve-hour day, and that even on Sunday she would still have chambermaid duties in the morning: she’d come to see the Grand as her home. Anyway, Gina was kind to her, and to be trained properly would mean that one day she could make a good living.

In the two years that followed Lotte plodded on between training with Gina, one day a week at college and the rest of the time cleaning bedrooms and turning down beds. She never went to see her parents, and they never contacted her. At Christmas and on birthdays there wasn’t even a card. She had no real social life, just the other live-in staff to chat to over meals and the occasional outing to the pictures or a walk along the promenade after her evening duties were finished.

She often looked at girls of her own age and wondered what it would be like to go dancing, have a boyfriend or even go on holiday. But she earned so little she couldn’t afford to buy new clothes, and she spent most of her spare time studying hairdressing magazines. Several of the foreign waiters asked her if she’d be their girlfriend. But she was far too unsure of herself to get involved with anyone, and she usually giggled and ran away.

At almost nineteen she qualified in hairdressing with distinction and won an award for the best student of the year at her college. It was Easter time, and Gina handed her a chocolate egg, a basket of beauty products and an envelope.

Inside the envelope was a letter of introduction to Kutz, Brighton’s best hairdressers.

‘Don’t look so puzzled,’ Gina said with a smile. ‘You deserve something better than doing shampoo and sets for old ladies on their holiday. I worked with Gerald, the owner of Kutz, years ago, and we’re good friends. I’ve already spoken to him about you, and he’s agreed to take you on. This is going to change your life.’

Lotte opened her eyes and came back to the present. Outside her room two nurses were talking in low voices; she thought they were planning a night out.

‘Change my life!’ Lotte murmured, picturing Gina, the first person to show her some affection and believe she was worth something. She always wore a lot of makeup, her ‘warpaint’ she called it: thin, pencilled eyebrows, blue iridescent eye shadow and eyelashes thick with clumps of black mascara. She was perhaps a size sixteen, but she always looked kind of sexy, with her low-cut tops and very high heels.

Gina was right, it did change Lotte’s life, but not just working at Kutz. It was Simon who waved the magic wand and made things good for her. Perhaps that was why his voice this afternoon penetrated the barrier in her mind and made her remember.

But while she was more than happy to remember Gina, Simon and Adam, three people she owed so much to, she would rather have remained in ignorance about her childhood. The struggles she’d had to overcome that legacy of worthlessness her parents had bequeathed her were painful, embarrassing ones. And she knew by the strange, distant way her mother and father had been with her when they came here to visit her that there couldn’t have been any reconciliation between them over the last four years.

The door opened and Janice Easton, the Ward Sister, came in. ‘How are you feeling now?’ she asked.

‘Much better,’ Lotte said. Janice had a comforting presence; in her mid-thirties, she had a plump, pretty country girl sort of look, with strawberry-blonde hair and pink cheeks. ‘Though I am worried Simon and Adam will feel responsible for causing my panic attack.’

‘Well, you needn’t be. Anything could have caused it, but the most likely reason was that they stimulated you into remembering something. Was that so?’

Lotte nodded.

Janice perched on the edge of Lotte’s bed, her face alight with interest. ‘Do you feel like talking about it?’

Lotte sat up, pulling out a pillow and putting it behind her to lean her back against. She was still very stiff, her limbs ached, and though she’d been told this was most probably because she’d swum for a long time before reaching the beach where she was found, it could also be explained by some other recent, strenuous physical exercise. Her skin was horribly scaly and dry. As for her hair, it felt like steel wool. The nurses had rinsed the worst of the salt water out of it, but it needed a more thorough wash and masses of conditioner to bring it back to normal.

She thought it strange that before the memory of being a hairdresser came back, the feel of her hair hadn’t really concerned her. She told Janice this, and the nurse laughed, saying that in the morning she could get in the shower and do it herself.