Big English Girl Read online

  Big English Girl

  a novel

  by Paula Clamp

  Copyright © Paula Clamp, 2020

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, or used in any manner, without the written permission of the copyright owner, except for the use of quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination, or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  For Jordi

  Contents

  Title Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  July 2020

  Chapter 1

  "There's a bitter nip in the air this morning." The driver on the Lough Neagh bus grinned from cauliflower ear to cauliflower ear, as his one waiting passenger ascended the steps.

  Ellie Edwards nodded and searched for her ticket.

  "Anyone not wearing a coat this Saturday morning hasn't got one," The bus driver scoffed, "Where are you for?"

  "Here it is," Ellie pulled out a tatty ticket from her rucksack, "Lusty Bus Station, please."

  "There's no bus station in Lusty."

  "Okay - any bus stop near the centre will be fine."

  "No centre either. Anyway, what do you want to go there for? Here in Cookstown is the best place for a pretty girl like you."

  Ellie took a moment to savour the word 'pretty'. It wasn't one that she was used to. She was familiar with the occasional 'distinctive' and had once received a 'handsome', but pretty - no, not that she could remember anyway.

  ‘So, is this what is known as Irish blarney?’ She asked herself, "No, Lusty will do." Ellie smiled.

  "Or Magherafelt - best shopping in the whole of Mid-Ulster."

  "No, thank you," Ellie spoke softly, before closing her tired eyes for a fleeting moment, "I just want to go to Lusty…" Inhaling deeper, she added tentatively, "I'm sorry, but please, that's really the only place I want to go."

  “Okay, Big English Girl.”

  Ellie shyly slipped her ticket on top of the coin tray and shuffled onto the bus. The driver began whistling a tune with no apparent ending; generating an infinite loop of irritation. In reference to herself, Ellie was all too familiar with the adjective 'big'. Still only seventeen, but standing at over six-foot-two in her stocking feet, Ellie was no stranger to, 'Aren't you a big girl?', frequently followed by, 'Is it cold up there?'.

  Ellie picked a mid-point seat on the empty bus. She immediately detected the familiar scented notes of musty, smoky bacon crisps, complimented by burning oil. She closed her pale-grey eyes, which felt like zipping the door shut on a tent, and a flimsy wall of canvas separated her from the world outside.

  She had been travelling since the early hours of the morning; a direct flight from Gatwick took less than an hour, but getting from Belfast Airport to Cookstown by bus had already taken a lifetime. This three-day trip was her first ever from home on her own and Ellie was excited and terrified in equal measures. The cocktail of fatigue and apprehension, however, made her entire body feel like it was treading-water in syrup, with a soggy Arran sweater for a bathing suit.

  If only she could get a short nap now. Ellie turned her weary body and rested her head against the cold glass.

  "Morning."

  Ellie opened her eyes and was faced with a beaming smile. The bus was still empty, except for the boy beside her. Her uninvited companion glared at her with massive brown eyes that looked to have been dipped in a melted Curly-Wurly. His over-large, fleece-hoodie swamped him. The expanse of thin wrist jutting out of his sleeve, just added to Ellie's first impression that this boy looked as awkward in his clothes as she did. Her father had said that even in July, Northern Ireland could be Baltic, so she was travelling in her battered Afghan coat, her father’s XL grey pullover, old jeans and her fluorescent green Doc Martins. Ellie hoped it would make her look cool somehow. But now she wasn’t so sure. Without making it obvious, she quickly pretended to pick lint off her shoulder and took the opportunity to guess that the stranger was about her own age.

  "Hiya." Ellie replied softly.

  She was indeed very tired, but didn’t want to appear rude to a boy who’d made the effort to talk to her. Ellie’s success rate with boys fluctuated like a limbo bar, but in general rarely rose much higher than her ankles. The boy glanced up towards the bus driver, who in turn looked back at him through his rear view mirror and gave him a knowing wink. Ellie sensed that she had already been the subject of conversation between driver and passenger.

  The stranger rested his chin on his hand and stared casually at Ellie, "I count sheep." His voice had a deep tone, with a dusting of Northern Irish lilt.

  Ellie pondered this revelation for a moment, before finally working out what he was talking about, "Oh, I see - you count sheep to get to sleep."

  "No, I count sheep for a living. I work in an abattoir. I count the sheep going in and the carcasses coming out."

  “Oh.” Ellie was truly lost for words.

  Putting the expression 'all ears' (which in this instance were in fact swollen and bulbous) to good use, the eavesdropping driver sniggered, "Don’t listen to him, Miss. He’s talking shite."

  The stranger beside Ellie burst into laughter.

  Ellie buried her chin underneath the neck of her lumpy jumper in a pitiful attempt to hide herself - ostrich-style.

  The boy was not that easily put off and turned his attention instantly back to her, “What do you do yourself?" He asked, his breath so close she felt its heat.

  "Not much.” Her soft voice appeared to hang in the acrid air of the public transportation. The truth of her words tightened her jaw.

  "Cool." He replied cheerfully.

  Ellie blushed from her head down to her size-nines. Her new companion kicked off his scruffy trainers and stretched out his feet. Ellie could see more of his toes than his socks.

  "They just need soled and heeled and they'll be as good as new." He winked at her and then closed his eyes to signal that their conversation was over.

  Once Main Street, Cookstown, was behind them, the bus began to trundle through a grey blanket of social housing. The bus driver tooted his horn and waved at someone he knew and then he tooted and waved at someone he clearly didn't. No matt
er how hard she tried, Ellie could no longer stop herself from closing her eyes. With her ear squashed against the glass and her face hidden by her hand, the never-ending loop of the driver's whistling was soon replaced with the gentle tap, tap of her earring as the bus wandered and weaved out of the town and into the heart of rural Mid-Ulster. The heat of the boy’s body beside her was comforting.

  After what felt like an eternity on the road, Ellie had found the sleep that she needed, but with it came no peace.

  Dreaming of her own birth had been part of Ellie’s life for as long as she could remember. The dream always began with her birth, on a brilliant April morning, with the smell of the local Indian takeaway wafting through the open window. Her proud parents are staring down at her with love as light as summer rain and confusion as heavy as a wintry hailstorm. She can see the astonished look in her father's eyes - a look that had only recently diminished. Beside him, her mother has that wet, red, bloated aspect of the aftermath of a forty-eight hour labour. Ellie, the baby, sees herself for the first time in her father’s astonished pupils as he tries to comprehend how their longed for daughter could have been born; weighing in at twelve pounds and eleven ounces. The midwife had thought that the scales must have been broken. Ellie's dream then would always skip to her proud father at his work, in the munitions factory in Putney, and his grand reveal of the latest addition to the factory's arsenal. The smell of madras is replaced with oil and grease. Her father lifts a grubby-looking dust sheet with a proud flourish and unveils a massive, shiny, missile. It’s a brute of a thing. There is a scattering of unenthusiastic applause, which only marginally increases when Ellie’s father puffs out his chest and duly announces its official name - the 'Ellie-Twelve-Eleven’.

  "Shift your arse. We’re here." The boy nudged Ellie’s shoulder and then abruptly stood to retrieve three, two-litre tins of emulsion paint that he had stashed in the overhead parcel-shelf when he first got on.

  Ellie was thankful to be woken. She hated the recurring dream that acted as an incessant reminder that probably her only achievement in life would be that she was named after a big bomb that may someday kill people. Self-consciously, with her sleeve, she wiped away a dribble of her saliva from her cheek.

  "Thanks for the company.” The boy held out his hand for Ellie and just as she was about to shake it, he quickly added, “Maybe, in your time here in Lusty, we'll meet up again...” He grinned, “And if I’m having any bother sleeping, it’ll be great to have your sparkling conversation to send me off again."

  Ellie didn’t shake his hand, but the boy hardly noticed as he then thrust the tins of paint under his arms and proceeded to march up the aisle of the bus, shouting over his shoulder, "Just ask for Conor Sullivan - but if I annoyed the crap out of you, my name’s Declan Mulligan." He winked at the driver and then jumped down the bus steps with one stride. He completed his departure with a cheerful, "See you, Declan." to the driver.

  "Not if I see you first." The driver shouted back.

  Conor skipped onto the pavement and disappeared down a muddy lane.

  Ellie’s resulting embarrassment, however, was very quickly replaced with nerves. Anxiously, she pottered up the aisle, searching through the grimy windows from side to side, looking for the Airbnb that her father had booked for her. All was granite rocks and broken barbed-wire fences, dotted with tiny tufts of wool.

  "Down that lane on the right - a few hundred yards or so," The driver pointed, "The road's too narrow for the bus, but you'll have no bother in finding Lusty."

  There was a vulnerability to the young girl that appeared to soften the driver, Declan Mulligan’s, mood. Her eyes looked so heavy with sleep and her body battle-weary. He couldn’t help but wonder what could have brought this young, big English girl to Lusty - of all places.

  Ellie stepped off the bus, straight into a puddle. She heaved her heavy rucksack onto her back and turned to face the lane. She had only spent a few minutes of her long dreamt of visit to Lusty, but she already sensed that she was entering a world that was a million miles away from the bright lights of home and the dark shadows that was her life there.

  Chapter 2

  Ellie felt a wet spray against the back of her legs, as the bus sped away. But she didn’t turn around. Her journey was forwards, not back. As she began to walk up the lane, her spirits were lifted slightly by the substitution of the rocks either side of her with luminous Spanish Gold. The bright blossoms had devoured the spattering of summer rain and a buttery scent now accompanied her. The lane ahead was completely straight for a few hundred metres, before leading to a sharp bend that was shielded by a manmade forest of conifers. More used to the urban-living of London, for a second, Ellie closed her eyes and wistfully inhaled the fresh aroma into her lungs. She swallowed a fly in the process.

  Ellie opened her eyes and began to tentatively walk forwards, but immediately reduced her pace again when she spotted a figure turn round the bend and run in her direction. Initially, the figure was a blur of thick blonde hair, flailing limbs and a high-pitched whining sound. Very quickly, the blur cleared to reveal a teenage, male jogger advancing towards her. The whining sound also gradually revealed itself to be the boy singing along with earphones. The handsome jogger was now only a few metres away, with his out-of-tune, unintelligible singing getting louder and louder and his running pace, faster still. Ellie moved to her left to let him pass, he jogged to the left also, she quickly moved right and so did he.

  “Sorry!” Ellie screeched as she crossed her arms tightly in anticipation of the full-on collision.

  But the jogger, masterfully, skipped onto a clump of damp heather and dodged to the side of her. He didn’t even break his stride as he went past. Ellie couldn't resist turning back around and catching sight of a splendid, aesthetic, beautifully crafted, sweat patch that ran perfectly down the centre of his back. She also couldn’t help but feel disappointed that the jogger didn’t feel the need to give her a second look.

  Having now turned the bend, Ellie found herself immediately thrust into the ‘heart’ of Lusty. The grafittied ‘Lusty – Twinned with Nowhere’ sign gave the game away, along with the three, pebble-dashed terraced cottages, beside which a short path led on the right to a chapel and on the left to a pub.

  And that was it.

  Two of the terraced houses looked to be in need to major attention, especially the one in the centre, with barred windows, but Ellie was relieved to see that the modernised one, to the right of the abandoned one, had an Airbnb sticker glued to the window. The sign was tiny and would have easily been missed if she hadn’t been looking for it. Ellie rang the doorbell in anticipation of a cosy Irish landlady, wearing an apron dusted in flour and holding a plate of freshly-baked bread. The door opened immediately.

  “Ellie Edwards? You’re late. Your Da said you’d be here half an hour ago.”

  “I’m sorry, but…”

  “Never mind. I’m Ena – this is, Soupy, my husband. Your room is top of the stairs on the left. If you’re going out, Rosie, in the house at the other end of the terrace, will give you a key to lock the front door. We have to scoot. It’s already eleven and we’ve nine holes to get in before the weather breaks.”

  'Cosy Irish landlady’, was in reality, a pointy, flourish of pink culottes and matching polo-shirt. Her ‘cosy Irish landlord’ husband was hidden behind his-and-her golf bags. Only his nose, glasses and balding head, peaked out from behind a swarm of crocheted, club-head covers. Both looked to be in their mid-fifties.

  “Okay. Thank you.”

  Soupy now had the engine running in his car, but he obediently jumped back out, like a man half his age, to open the passenger door for his wife. Ellie thought for a moment that she saw him roll his eyes in her direction.

  Ena, suddenly, called out of the car window, “Just one more thing…”

  Ellie had already stepped through the opened door to the Airbnb and taken in the wonder of the hall and all things floral - and all things holy. What on earth
had she let herself in for? Isn’t that what her father wanted to know?

  “…Welcome to Lusty.”

  Chapter 3

  Ellie lay on the bed, unable to get the quick nap her body so badly needed. Her mind was racing. She had told her father that she’d phone him the minute she arrived. She hadn’t. On the bedside table besides her, the Virgin Mary shaped bottle of holy water unsettled her even further; the image of having to unscrew the Mother of God’s head to open it would surely only add to her nightmares.

  With a budget for a two-night/three-day trip only, Ellie decided that she couldn’t afford to waste any more time. Especially, not with her father at home alone - staring at a television set that wasn’t switched on and drinking tea that wasn’t poured.

  For all the room’s floral excess, it was scrupulously clean and the shower cubicle in the adjoining bathroom was a celebration of sparkling chrome and glass. The soap’s imprint of the Turin Shroud faded very quickly after a speedy wash and brush up.

  Ellie changed into a fresh pair of jeans and a faded-red, T-shirt with Che Guevara imprinted on it. In front of the full-length mirror, she brushed out the tangle of knots that her travels had inflicted on her long, dirty-blonde hair. Ellie’s hair, like the rest of her, was big and refused to conform to neatness. She had spent forever comparing herself to her female classmates, who were all finer-boned and could wear high-heels without stooping. As she now looked down at the stick of Vaseline lip balm in her hand and slowly unscrewed the top, Ellie remembered being about five and listening to her mother sing in her strange lilting accent, as she got herself ready for a rare night out. The singing was a signal – today was one of those few days when her mother was happy. When she was in a good mood, she always wore 'Moroccan Poppy’, a vibrant red lipstick that she would apply straight from the stick and then gently rub her lips together to even out the colour. Ellie would sit on the lid of the toilet seat, swinging her long legs, patiently waiting her turn. Her patience was always rewarded with a lick of lipstick, which Ellie would also disseminate with the smack her lips, spreading the lush red from her nose to her chin.