Chapter 6: Friday 30 December

April announced she was ready to return to her everyday life, all the furore in the press over her recent life had shifted to France over the last couple of days as her soon-to-be-Ex was bearing all the criticism about the break-up of the celebrity marriage.

During Thursday and Friday Pete was completing putting up curtain rails throughout the large residence called Porter House, April and Annie helped hang the ready-made curtains from the rails, pinning up the hem ready for Rebecca to sew up on her machine. Meanwhile, outside, the last of the skips were ready for collection and the area earmarked and covered with tarpaulins for the delivery of topsoil to complete the garden.

Annie decided to visit one of her friends near Tracie’s flat, so Tracie left Pete and April alone to help put together the beds and flat pack wardrobes for the bedrooms. April used the time to reminisce about the times Pete and she were together. April smiled mischievously at Pete.

“Remember the barn at Macready’s Farm, Pete?” she asked coyly.

“How could I forget the place where we first made love?” Pete grinned back.

“It was certainly a first time for me,” she looked at his response, “you seemed to know what you were doing though, so I never asked at the time.”

Pete put his Allen key down and replied to the implied pointed question, “It was the first time for me too, Apes, there was no-one before you, nor really anyone since. I was quaking in my boots and operating under the control of doing whatever came naturally, trying to make sure I didn’t hurt you or upset you.”

“You never hurt me, Pete, you were so careful, caring, gentle and sweet; it was me that hurt you, abandoning you so abruptly as I did. We never spoke, my studio and parents heard and believed the rumours and I cut you off without a word.”

There was a moment of charged silence between them, so full of memories.

Pete broke the silence with a change of subject. “That barn was converted into a house, the field behind it was turned by Macready into a small housing project, and the farmhouse was converted into a pub called The Prancing Horse.”

“Really? I’m amazed, that farmhouse was office and the farmyard just a builders’ yard when I knew it. Do you know how the barn turned out?”

“Yes, I do, I actually learned my joiners’ trade working on that barn for over two years.”

“You worked for Macready’s?”

“Yes, Jim Macready gave me a job once I was able to work again after I relearned how to walk. Jim was a keen football coach when both his sons played and I played for one of his teams when I was under 11 through to under 15. I worked for him as a general labourer for a few months building up my strength, doing whatever he asked me to do, I was that grateful. Then he offered me a carpentry apprenticeship for three years after I worked with an old-school joiner-carpenter George Smith and he said I showed aptitude and he was prepared to teach me, with a day off a week at the tech learning the carpentry trade. Under my own steam I attended an evening class a week to learn joinery.”

“So why did you end up as a nightclub bouncer?”

“Ah, well, I worked for Jim for eight years but then Jim had a stroke and his eldest son took over.”

“Carl Macready?”

“Yes, the eldest son, the one I played football with, only we never got on because I took over the captaincy from him after our first season and he hated me for it. As soon as he took over the company he put me on all the worst jobs and generally messed me about, so I handed in my notice and had to drive to Torquay to work for a firm over there. I did that for a couple of years, but my mum was beginning to suffer from early onset of dementia and I needed to be close to home because she ran a B&B and it was all getting too much for her. I didn’t realise Until I got power of attorney over her finances that she had been running the boarding house at a loss for years and, without my wage coming in, we were rapidly going under. So I did all the work around the house from breakfast to dinner and after putting her to bed I worked as bouncer at the Starlight. Then I started to hear from neighbours and guests that Mum was wandering the streets at night in her night clothes and not in her right mind. The doctor said she needed constant care and so I had to put her in a home. We had to sell her house in order to fund her time in the home, so I was homeless. I couldn’t get help from the council because technically I had made myself homeless.”

“Damn, Pete, I never knew any of this.”

“It’s all water under the bridge now, Apes. Anyway, Macready’s barn is now known as Ridgecrest Barn and was last on the market a year or so ago for £875,000, not bad for an old barn that used to store skirting boards, doors and sheets of plasterboard, and the odd pair of lovers with nowhere else to go.”

Mid-afternoon April’s limo arrived at Porter House with Tracie on board. April and Tracie embraced and April said she would keep in touch and let them know how she was getting on and wanted to be kept up to date with how work on the old Porter House was proceeding.

While Pete returned upstairs in the bedrooms, installing fitted wardrobes, Tracie and Rebecca talked about Pete’s history and what happened to him, because Rebecca had heard so many conflicting stories, many from medical staff at the hospital who didn’t really know him and many stories seemed to be second or third hand.

“Look, I was only about 12 when this incident happened and woke up the whole of this quiet little town. I knew this girl Ann Jackson from school,” Tracie said, “She was my bestie in junior school and we were still close at the Comp. We lived close to each other near to the old wrecked pier here so we sat together on the bus to and from the big school. But it was about the time we changed schools that she changed her personality.”

“Changed?”

“Yeah, from the bubbly, confident junior, who was always up to and into everything, she turned into a strange, quiet girl, quiet we later found out because she was being abused at home.”

“Sexually abused, by the family you think?”

“Yeah, I mean, I don’t really know, but certainly outside of school anyway. I mean, both her parents were the local doctors, so you’d think they would’ve noticed the signs, if we kids could see something was wrong with her. She lived next door to this house actually, ‘Westward House’, when it used to be the ‘Westward Surgery’, where both her parents worked. I think Ann’s mother came from around here originally, so they moved here from London when Ann was about 7 or 8, along with a baby sister, who I never really knew.” Tracie smiled. “That’s how we girlfriends all knew Pete Porter, who lived next door to her. You should’ve seen Pete then, Rebecca, I mean, other than the scar on his head where his father tried to crush his skull, and his gammy leg, he was scrummy. I mean he was every girl’s dream when he was 17 and 18. He lived here in what was then a restaurant.”

“Pete told me that he lived here once.”

“I think he lived here from birth until 18, it had been a restaurant for a long time. He and Ann Jackson were great friends, despite the five-year difference in ages, and after she was 11 she only really sparked and was her old self again when Pete was around, she introduced him to us as her best friend and he called her his ‘biddy buddy’, but affectionately like, with that great slow smile of his that he still has.”

“I guess he’d known her from when she moved in here, age 8 was it?”

“Yeah, about that’s when she joined the local school. It was a small primary school then, all closed up now and converted into flats, so my Annie has to catch the bus to town even when she was rising 5.”

“Is your Annie named after your friend Ann?”

“Yeah, named after Ann and my mother for Anna’s middle name. I missed Ann when her family left town shortly after she was attacked. Huh, she always used to hate the name ‘Annie’, she insisted she was ‘Ann, just Ann, Ann without the E’, she used to say. But when I held Pete’s newborn baby in my arms, knowing how we both loved Ann as a dear friend, I wanted to call her Ann too, but it didn’t feel quite right, so although I had her birth registered as Ann, I’ve always called her Annie. I don’t think Pete even noticed, at least he didn’t say anything.”

“So how did you and Pete... ?”

“Oh. Well. We girls all had a crush on Pete from the age of 11. Well, we all said we did, except Ann. She always insisted that Pete was her best friend, that if they ever got together as boyfriend/girlfriend it would put a strain on their friendship, which she valued above all else. Besides, Pete always had a crush on April Dunlough from the Lighthouse Cottage. I still can’t get over how nice April was, letting me shop for clothes on her account, I’d never spoken to her before I knew Ann and then saw her rarely. Anyway, from about the age of Pete being 15 and April 13, they were inseparable as a couple, the two most beautiful guys in the town being together was just natural. So Ann and I, with me only there as a hanger-on, knew April as she sang, danced and acted in all the plays at school, then appeared in the West End in a couple of shows and also appeared twice weekly on television. She was popular with the public from the outset and was becoming a rising star at the time.”

“How did Ann take it when April and Pete became an item?”

“She loved it, she thought they were more and more suited to each other the more famous they both got to be locally. You see, Pete was a tremendous footballer, and signed on Exeter’s youth forms and was training with them as a full-time apprentice as soon as he left school. He had played a few games in the first team and several clubs were rumoured to want him, including both the Manchester clubs and Liverpool, which was his father Bob Porter’s home town. Liverpool FC was the side supported by both father and son I think. Transfer fees of several million were mentioned, with Pete’s share of the fee being in six figures. Pete’s girlfriend April was a fresh-faced starlet, a local girl already appearing on one of the popular soaps and tipped for stardom as the girl next door pin-up, so the local paper was therefore full of their relationship week in and week out. I suppose everyone in town knew them individually for their specialist activities and together as a couple of lovebirds. Ann kept a scrap book, not just of Pete, but of April too.”