Rumours and Red Roses Read Free

the dress, a short sleeveless pale blue number that would be spattered with blood before the night was over.
    It was a cold clear January night, the sky a velvety midnight blue with a full moon and a scattering of glittering stars in the sky. Dancing about on the pavement in an attempt to warm herself, Becky found her eyes drawn upwards to the dark depths, more and more twinkling stars becoming visible like flashing diamonds. Finding herself entranced by it, she announced to anyone who cared to listen that the Plough was clearly visible this evening.
    Janet’s weary look her way just as clearly said ‘So what?’ as she giggled and turned back into her boyfriend’s arms.
    Becky, rebuffed and chastened with no boyfriend to put his arms round her , allowed her gaze to drop and fell silent. Suddenly, she felt quite alone. It was a sobering thought but, at that moment, she was not sure any more if she even liked Janet.
    There was already a twinkling of frost on the road as they piled quickly and noisily into the car when it finally appeared, Gerry proudly and delightedly at the wheel. ‘Don’t get it into a mess,’ he warned, ‘or she’ll kill me.’
    There were too many of them to fit in easily and Becky found herself squashed beside a boy she fancied and on whom she had tried to make an impression this evening. The perfume she had sprayed on her wrists and neck and the eye fluttering she was trying to perfect had obviously not worked, for the boy had paid her scant attention, but maybe now was her chance and she was not at all unhappy to find herself rammed up close to him, glad that she had refreshed her lipstick just before coming out of the building. Her mum had helped her get ready, doingher hair for her – it was good to have a hairdresser as a mum – and issuing some cheerful instructions about the perils of dealing with the opposite sex.
    ‘Mum, I know …’ she had said, embarrassed.
    ‘You’re only sixteen, too young for any of that,’ her mum said with a smile, waving her cigarette as she spoke. ‘Don’t you let me down. Don’t you let yourself down. I don’t want you getting knocked up. If you think I’m ready to be a grandma, you can think again. Give yourself another couple of years before you let a boy start any funny business. And remember, it’s different for them. They soon get carried away. It’s up to you, love, to say no.’
    She remembered the advice as she was forced, under the circumstances , to adopt rather an intimate closeness to Paul. She could smell his strong aftershave, see the rash of spots on his face at close quarters – but then they all suffered in varying degrees from those. Her skirt had ridden up to her thighs but it was a waste of time trying to do anything about it and she caught the look Paul gave her legs. She knew she had good legs; a short body and surprisingly long legs. She wouldn’t mind just a kiss from him at the end of the night. The thought of anything more – and she wasn’t sure what Janet was up to these days – scared her to death. Janet, laughing, had to sit on her boyfriend’s knee, her head against the car roof, as Gerry, who had only passed his test the week before, started up the car.
    ‘Hold tight!’ he yelled at them.
    They roared off into the night.
    Not one of them had bothered to wear a seatbelt.
    It took her a year to get over it. No, that wasn’t true. Twenty years later, she still wasn’t over it.
     
    Until she met Simon Blundell, only her father had called her Rebecca. It mattered that the two men who meant the most to her in the whole world should both think of her as Rebecca, so much prettier a name than Becky, although she thought of herself as that. Rebecca was so much softer, rolled off the tongue, whereas Becky … well, she thought of the Becky in Vanity Fair . Becky equalled feisty and she had been called a lot of things but never that. She was soft as putty, according to her mum, which was all very well but sometimes it