“Don’t worry about him. Derek is on the case now and the house will be ready in less than two weeks. People like your uncle get the comeuppance one day.”
“Two weeks!” Chantelle gasped, then kissed him swiftly on the lips and drew her head back to smile at him. “I don’t know how to thank you!”
“I’ll show you how in a minute,” he promised. “I need to go to Jamaica to sort out a couple of issues with my bank account there. Your brother and sisters can all come with us and return at the end of the summer holidays. We’ll stay for a week to see your mother and grandparents settled.”
“I haven’t been to Jamaica since I was ten!” Chantelle’s eyes lit up at the prospect before reality stepped in. “But I can’t go at the moment!”
“Why not?”
“Dominic, I’ve just started this job. I can’t ask for time off already!”
“Of course you can. I’ll approve it.”
“I already get funny looks from some members of the team. I don’t want to confirm their suspicions by being off the same time as you are.”
Dominic gave a tsk of frustration, before he said, “I have to make a trip there to take care of some unfinished business personally. I’ll take them down with me and get everything sorted.”
“You would do that for me?”
“It’s nothing,” he dismissed. “Derek is a government official—”
“He works for the government?” Chantelle had imagined a muscled thug who always got things done, like the ones she’d seemed in gangster movies. “You made him sound like an enforcer!”
“He has his ways.”
Chantelle pulled Dominic’s full bottom lip between hers, deciding that she preferred not to know more about those ways, or the means the man employed to get things done.
***
The next two weeks flew by in a whirlwind of activity. The news that she could finally go home to Jamaica seemed to have snapped Carol Payne out of her drunken daze. She spent several day sorting through the dozens of outfits she had owned from the time she and her husband had been regular partygoers. She binned a few, donated other to the local charity and kept several that had surprisingly come back into the style in the cyclic world that was fashion. Chantelle and Cerise even managed to snag five tops between them.
Her mother didn’t give up drinking altogether, but instead of finding an empty bottle every day in the rubbish bin, Chantelle found one every three to four days.
The night before she left, her mother sat her down and spoke to her like the mother she should have always been. “I know that Dominic made all this possible. I won’t ask for details. I’m thankful, but I will beg you, don’t hang your hat where your hand can’t reach. I did that with your father. From the time I was thirteen I coveted the pretty brown skin bowy who lived down the road. He didn’t even know my proper name when I asked him to marry me. But, I got what I deserved, though. I had another man, the neighbor’s son. He was a farmer with no education. He wasn’t good enough for me when I got the chance to come to England. You know I didn’t tell a single soul that I married your father before we left? We took different cars to the airport and only spoke to each other when we got on the plane. I thought he was keeping my secret. I didn’t know he had a bigger one.”
“Mum, all that’s behind you now. This is a chance for you to start over.” Chantelle smiled at her mother and teased, “Even find yourself a nice man.”
Her mother laughed and then made a wry face as she got to her feet. “Once he’s not a pretty bowy!”
“’Night, Mum.”
“Goodnight, Chantelle.”
She watched her mother leave the room and felt like sobbing like she was a three-year-old. Her mother may not have been the most reliable in the last years, but there was a time when she had been a sexy, vibrant woman—part of a gorgeous couple who had outshone their friends. Their spotless house, beautiful children and seemingly loving marriage had been the envy of other couples. The topple off her throne would have been deeply wounding for her mother if her father had left her for another woman; that he’d left her for a man had been more devastating a blow than her mother could have dealt with at the time.#p#分页标题#e#
Though there had been times her mother hadn’t emerged from her bedroom for days, it had been comforting to know that she was there in the house.
Chantelle was going to miss her.
And there would be no Dominic to offer comfort for the next week, but at least the timing coincided perfectly with her time of month.