‘Whatever possessed you to call yourself Bea Pollen?' he asked suddenly.
‘It's Beatrice Pollen, actually. It was my granny's name. Crystal didn't like me to use the name Stevie, said it sounded too much like a man. Men don't sell well, you see, and my granny always wanted to see her name on a book. So … '
‘Oh, I see. Is Honeywell your married name then?'
‘No,' said Stevie. ‘I went back to my maiden name after Mick was killed.'
‘What happened? Only if you want to talk aboot it,' said Adam, twisting his position so he was sideways on to her, his arm dangerously close to her head.
‘He was in a car crash. On the way to the airport.'
‘Och no. Business trip?'
‘No, it was most definitely pleasure,' she said with a mirthless little laugh.
Adam looked at her in a quizzical way that prodded her to go on.
‘If you must know, he was running off with another woman. She was killed outright too. Apparently they didn't suffer, which I'm glad for, if you know what I mean. Whatever they did, they didn't deserve to suffer.'
‘Oh God no! I'm sorry. Did you know about her?'
‘I found out about a month before. I'd had my suspicions but he denied it. Then one day, he just stopped hiding her away. He would ring her in front of me, come in stinking of her. It was a nightmare time. Sometimes he was away all night, sometimes he got into bed beside me but he wouldn't let me touch him. I didn't know where I was. I was out of my skull with pain.'
‘I'm no' surprised,' said Adam, who had long since stopped being shocked by the cruelty of people to each other.
‘I followed him to her house once, confronted her, asked her … begged her to stop seeing him.' Stevie fell headfirst into the memory of that day, how she had waited outside in the car for over an hour tormenting herself with images of what they were doing together until she saw Mick leave and drive away. She had breathed deep, crossed the road and knocked hard upon the shabby peeling council-house door, determined to chase her rival away once and for all. Linda had looked through the side window to see who was at the door before brazenly appearing in a cheap and tacky negligée, the smell of sex and cigarettes and Mick hanging around her like a heavy fusty cloud.
‘I pleaded, I cried, I threatened all sorts. Totally lost every bit of dignity I had,' Stevie went on. ‘She just laughed and shut the door in my face, made me feel this big. I think I went a bit mad really.' Stevie cringed, but the wine had loosened her tongue and it felt easy to talk about it, even if she would probably recall this in the morning and want to die. ‘I did everything to get him to come back, except leaving him alone to get it out of his system. I thought if I dogged him he'd give in, you see, but it got me absolutely nowhere. The only thing I had left to try was letting him get on with it and see if he came back, but I ran out of time for that one. On the day I got my pregnancy confirmed, I came back home to find him packing. He said he was leaving me to go and live in Tenerife with Linda. The car crashed on the way to the airport.'
‘Oh my!' Adam's hand reached forwards and brushed her fringe back from her eyes in an instinctive and sympathetic gesture. She let him do it without slapping his hand away, which amazed him.
‘Mick had remortgaged the house to raise the money to go – got Linda to fake my signature, I presume. I was in big financial trouble when it all came to light and Linda's family were going crazy. They made a huge scene at the funeral … it was an awful time.' Stevie gulped. ‘His mum had a headstone done, but that was destroyed and his flowers kept getting kicked over.' She recalled Mick's mother ringing up in tears, expecting Stevie to go and clear up the mess with her, shouting at her to forgive him in death, not understanding why that could be so difficult for her, considering this was all Stevie's fault.
‘If you had been more of a wife, he wouldn't have left you and he'd still be alive.'
‘I was really sick, carrying Danny at the time, and found it hard to go out to work. But I had to, there were so many debts. Mick had cancelled all the insurances, you see, and I didn't know.' Stevie managed a little smile. ‘Then Midnight Moon came up trumps for me and gave me a chance to find my feet.'
‘Do you think it would have made a difference if Mick had known about Danny?' Adam asked gently.
‘He did know,' said Stevie, poking an escapee tear back inside. ‘I told him, showed him the test I'd done in case he thought I was trying to trick him. He told me to get shut and send him the bill. Six hours later, he was dead.'
Adam winced. ‘Do Mick's family ever see Danny then?'
‘I rang when I gave birth and left a message on their answering machine telling them how ill Danny was, and that if they wanted to see him, they ought to come straight away, just in case he didn't make it. I sent them some Polaroids, but they just sent everything back with a note to say they'd pray for him.'
‘Some godly faith, turning your back on a wee baby!' said Adam. Stevie shrugged. It was just one more rejection in her book.
‘They blamed me for not being a strong enough wife to keep Mick. If he hadn't been running away from me, you see, he wouldn't have had the accident, that was their reckoning.'
‘What nonsense,' said Adam, shaking his head in outrage. ‘How on earth could you have been to blame?'
‘People need to have someone to focus their anger on, Adam. It's easier blaming outsiders than the ones you love.' Stevie's voice faded, realizing exactly what she was saying. She saw Adam shift a little uncomfortably too. Yes, it was all too easy.
‘It must have been hard for you alone, with a wee baby,' he said, moving swiftly on.
‘We got through,' she smiled. Looking back, she didn't know quite how, but they had.
‘Ye're no' close to your own family?'
‘Not really. Catherine and Eddie are my family. I'd have been lost if it hadn't been for them. That's why I feel such a failure for Danny. I wanted him to have the family life I never had. I thought we'd found it with Matthew.'
‘So why Matthew? Why did you fall for Matthew?' he asked quietly.
‘My ex-husband Mick was wild, live-for-the-moment, intoxicating, a one-man charm offensive. Matthew was considerate, affectionate, faithful … ' She gave a little laugh at that last quality. ‘I think I fell for what Matthew wasn't, rather than what he was, if that makes any sense. Mick exhausted me, burnt me out, stamped all over my heart, then along came steady, nice Matthew. Chalk and cheese, or so I thought.'
‘They weren't really all that different though, were they?' said Adam with his objective eye. ‘From where I'm standing, they were both takers in life.'
‘Probably,' said Stevie, nodding. ‘Anyway, I wasn't special enough for either of them in the end. I thought more of them than they did of me, if that doesn't sound like romantic claptrap.'
‘Naw, it doesn't at all,' said Adam, thinking of Diane, of Jo, of his mother. He knew what it was like only too well to be on the begging end of love and the insanity it produced.
‘So come on, why Jo? Stevie asked him. ‘Why would you want someone as gorgeous and flawless as her?'
He laughed and flicked her hair, and she turned to him with her sweet, funny, smiling face and deep blue eyes. It was as if he was looking at it for the first time. It wasn't the perfect, magazine-cover face of someone like Jo; there were fine lines around her eyes to show how much she had cried and laughed and loved and lived, but Stevie Honeywell's was making his heart do flick-flacks in a way that no one else had ever made it do.
‘Jo, eh? Because, if this doesn't sound like romantic claptrap, Jo promised me the sort of love I've been looking for all my life. Some people just have to ability to mould themselves to what you want. Jo was one of them.
‘I was just recovering from a nasty divorce. My wife, Diane, had run off with her boss. You know the type: thirty years older than her, Satsuma tan, married of course, owned the company. If that wasn't enough, she then tried to get half of everything I had, too. I went a bit mad masel'. Actually, I shouldnae really be telling you this after what you thought of me.'
‘Oh, go on,' she said, poking his arm with her finger.
‘I got a solicitor's letter saying she was entitled to half of everything. So rather than sell the stuff, I started to halve it with a chainsaw.'