The Runaway by Martina Cole Page B

wide-eyed as her mother figured out whether she was going to kill him or kiss him.
    To Cathy’s horror, kissing won.
    Taking Ron’s arm, she pulled him from the room, cajoling him with a merry voice as she cried: ‘Come on then, let’s get a nice drink down our gregorys, and then we can all have a laugh, eh?’
    Ron, stretching himself to his full height, smiled benignly at her and allowed himself to be removed from Cathy’s room. Over her shoulder Madge winked at her daughter before rolling heavily painted eyes at the ceiling.
    Lying down again, Cathy wrapped her arms around herself and sighed. If this was how her life was always going to be, maybe it wasn’t worth the effort.
    Ron, full of drink and bravado, began baiting Madge in the lounge next door.
    ‘You treat her like a fucking china doll. She should be out grafting, bringing in a few bob. With her hair and eyes, she’d earn a fortune. A bleeding fortune.’ His voice was low now as he contemplated the vast sums of money to be earned off that little girl with her huge blue eyes and thick blonde hair. He wouldn’t be averse to breaking her in himself; unless that toerag Docherty had got there first, of course. The thought annoyed him.
    Pouring Ron a large Scotch, Madge closed her eyes tightly. Ron’s eyes had strayed a few times towards her daughter’s burgeoning charms and she had ignored it. Now, though, he was putting it into words, saying it out loud, and Madge was not happy about it.
    ‘Don’t talk like that, Ron.’ The steely tone was back in Madge’s voice. There was a coldness, a hardness, she could project in her voice, and anyone who knew her well always dropped the subject that had upset her. Madge with a drink taken could be a lunatic. Like most whores, she harboured grudges and gave vent to them every now and again. When she did, her outbursts were of Olympian standards.
    ‘Leave it out, Ron,’ she warned him now. ‘The girl was upset. At the end of the day, she’s still my kid.’
    He snorted derisively through his long beaked nose. ‘Pity you don’t think of that when she’s walking around like a replica whore. All that make-up on, those little tits pressing against her clothes . . . She’s her mother’s fucking daughter all right.’
    Madge looked at the man beside her, seeing the thinning hair, the moist mouth and slack lips, those grimy fingernails. Without a second’s thought she threw her drink in his face.
    ‘How dare you? How dare you talk about my child like that? I might not be an ideal mother, I know that, but she’s still my baby. My flesh and blood. No one speaks about my kid like that. No one, do you hear me?’
    She pressed her face to his and screamed into it: ‘You jumped-up pox doctor’s clerk! Look at you - take a fucking good butcher’s hook, mate. You’re a piece of shit. You and all your cronies, you’re scared of your own shadow. You’re a coward, mate, a twenty-two-carat coward. Now you want my girl, do you? You want my baby. Putting me on the game ain’t enough. You want the two of us whoring for you, do you? Well, let me tell you, even if I did want her on the bash, I wouldn’t let you touch her with a barge pole. My girl is worth fifty . . . no, a hundred of you and all your ilk, mate. She’ll be somebody.’
    Laughing scornfully, she said to him then: ‘Who the fucking hell do you think you are, with your tin pot club and your one-inch cock? What use are you to any woman, eh? Even an old whore like me. At least Eamonn could get me going, mate, get me all loved up. You couldn’t turn on a fucking light switch!’
    Somewhere in Madge’s drink-fuddled brain she was aware that she was going too far. But the drink seemed to have triggered something inside her. All her anger and frustration came bubbling to the surface and Ron was the recipient of her hatred of herself, her life, and all the ugliness she’d had to endure.
    ‘A step up, your club?’ Her voice was a screech by now. ‘That’s a