Welcome to Ferry Lane Market - Nicola May Page 0,10
long hours on here, but she never went without, Doryty, my missus.’ He paused. ‘I met her right here – on this spot, actually. She had a week in Crowsbridge with her sister and came over on the ferry to check out the market. Just one catch of those piercing green eyes and swish of those long auburn locks and I fell for her hook, line and sinker.’
‘I can imagine,’ Billy replied softly, knowing the effect that Kara had on him whenever he caught sight of her.
‘We didn’t mess about. She was twenty-one then, so old enough to decide,’ Joe went on. ‘We married within a year of meeting and she seemed only too happy to move down here and escape the rat race. She did sometimes say she missed the faster pace of London – that was where she was brought up, see, lived in a block of flats near Marble Arch – but she never seemed to fret to the extent I should worry. I showered her with jewellery, gave her money for clothes, funded visits for her to go by train to visit her sister in London. Gave her anything she wanted, really.’ Joe took a drink of his coffee. His doughnut remained untouched.
‘It was when our Jen went away to university that she started to get itchy feet,’ he resumed. ‘My Kerry had always been a daddy’s girl. Doryty wasn’t that enamoured with motherhood and would have been quite happy with just our Jen. In fact, if it weren’t for me, she wouldn’t have had any kids at all, I don’t think. When an unplanned Kerry came along, the thought of more nappies and sleepless nights threw her slightly. She didn’t even want maternity leave from the job she had taken in Penrigan when Jen had started school, either. We had a few tough years. Then when Jen flew the nest, Doryty became really agitated. Not because she’d lost a child, but I think more likely because if we hadn’t have had Kerry, she would have been free to leave here. She’d always harped on about going abroad, so I decided to surprise the two of them – our Kerry and the wife, that is – and booked a hotel in Majorca. Beautiful it was, four stars, right on its own private beach with wall-to-wall sunshine.’
‘Nice one,’ Billy said, interrupting Joe’s sorrowful soliloquy.
‘Our Kerry was thirteen then and excited that at last we were venturing abroad.’ Joe took a big mouthful of coffee. ‘As for Doryty, it was as if she had had her eyes opened to a whole new world, and I suppose she had. You get used to being down here, by the sea; neither of us had travelled a lot and where I couldn’t wait to get home to the ferry and our comfy cottage, something switched in her.’
‘So, I guess you all came back, and she realised life down here wasn’t enough for her.’
Frank shook his head. ‘Worse than that,’ he said in a low voice. ‘She did a proper Shirley Valentine on me and went off with the hotel manager.’
‘Shirley Valentine?’ Billy looked bemused.
‘I forget how young you are, lad. It was a film from the eighties. I’ll let you google it. It’s about a wife who leaves her husband and goes to live abroad. She’s bored at home, see.’
‘Blimey. That’s so harsh,’ was all the lad could manage, knowing that if the look of distress on his boss’s face wasn’t so great, he might have burst out laughing at the absurdity of it all.
‘Yep. Didn’t even come home with us. Said there was no point in trying to persuade her otherwise and that her mind was fully made up. She kissed our Kerry on the cheek, promised she would be in touch and walked out of the hotel room. Just. Like. That.’
‘And was she? In touch, I mean?’ Billy finished his doughnut and licked the remaining heavenly sweet custard from between his fingers.
‘We never saw her again. Obviously, smarmy Jesus – yes, that really was his name – had something far greater than bread and fishes on offer,’ Joe said bitterly. ‘It didn’t affect our Jen so much as she was up and away, but Kerry became a different girl after losing her mum like that. It proper shook her up. Terrible thing to do to a youngster.’
Billy let out a soft whistle. ‘I’m so sorry. And … is your wife still with this Jesus fella?’