PINSTRIPE SPY - Chapter 2

As soon as I got my head around the theft of the boat I discovered that Tony and his friend Rob were telling the town that they had not stolen it. They were saying that because it was unmoored and on it's side they had salvaged it.
This was so deceptive and untenable in law that I was advised to report the theft to the police by my solicitor.
Once again, I hesitated to incriminate Dan's dad for fear of upsetting or worse, alienating him.
I decided that maybe the thing to do was to let them spend their money keeping the boat. I still had all the paperwork after all.
Friends that I thought I had were turning to enemies all around me. One accused me of fancying her husband and I was told in no uncertain terms that I was no longer welcome at her house. I found out later that the husband had remarked that I was a very attractive woman and this had been enough to drive a wedge between me and that so-called friend.
Another justified the theft of my boat and I discovered that this was because she was shagging Rob the Robber and therefore considered that the sun shone out of his tight cheeked arsehole.

Other friends were socialising with Tony at various venues around the town and I was not going out very much at all.
Tony took up his relationship with Lorraine again and the day soon arrived when, drunk and stinking of alcohol, Tony appeared at my flat to ask me to divorce him so that he could marry her.
"What grounds would you prefer?" I asked stiffly.
"Whatever" was the response.
So I went to the solicitor and asked what would be the quickest way to divorce this abuser out of my life.
I was advised to go for irretreivable breakdown of marriage and the whole sorry process was initiated.

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Dan had a friend who visited frequently and I often would share our food with the extra mouth.
One day he asked me to give him the recipe for my lasagna for his single parent father to learn how to cook.
Somehow this wound up with me inviting them to dinner one evening and from there a friendship grew between me and his father Alan.
That man behaved as if butter would not melt for at least 6 months and eventually persuaded me and Dan to move into his house with him.
Within less than 2 hours of getting all my stuff moved, he launched into his first physical assault of me.
I had given notice at the flat and the new tenant was moving in.
There was nowhere to run.

On the day of Live Aid, 13th of July 1985 I was running out of Alan's house in a torn shirt sporting a dislocated jaw.
I went to the hospital and from there knocked tentatively at a friend's house for shelter.

I could feel the buzz of Live Aid in the air. The streets were virtually deserted as everyone was glued to their television sets. My friend was in bed and her two kids were half dressed playing in the lounge. They let me in and, failing to arouse Lynn, their mother, I prepared them some food, found items of clothing to put on them and settled down to recover from the ordeal of being a domestic violence victim.

Dan was staying with his father because he had been assaulted by Alan's two sons and had been offered space with Tony and Lorraine. I was unable to argue with the arrangements, those two sons of diablo had stabbed Dan's bed pillow all around his head to terrorise him.

I was sitting in Lynn's house uninvited and devoid of possessions.
I picked up the local paper from the floor and began reading it.
An advertisement for trainee bus drivers caught my eye.
I applied for the job.

A few weeks later I was on a training course and loving it.
Bus driving was easy.
All the rules made perfect sense to me and I was determined to become the first female bus driver at our depot. I passed the exam with great marks. I was one of ten new employees at Eastern National Clacton Depot.
I found a dreadful bedsit with kitchen close to the bus station and I went to tell Dan of the changes I had made. He was delighted and came back to live with me immediately.

Within days of starting work I went to see the local council and arranged to be considered for a new house purchasing scheme that they were running. It meant that I could buy half of a property and they would cover the other half for which I would pay a nominal rent.
With my new salary, equal to a man doing the same work, I acquired sufficient mortgage qualification to begin looking for a suitable home for Dan and I.

It did not take us very long to find our next home. It was directly opposite to one of Dan's closest friends and it was neat beyond belief for the price.
It had only two bedrooms but the loft space had been converted into an extra room accessible via a permanently fixed ladder.
It was an adorable little terraced house and the day we moved in was so exciting!

I had been keeping some furniture from my home in Scotland that I had left years before in a local lock up. So it was brilliant to be able to house it all finally.
That house was, from day one, a very happy place to live.
We discovered that we had a ley line running through it from north to south a few feet away from the party wall with our neighbours. As long as we did not put electrical equipment in that area we had no problems.
We acknowledged that we had ghosts, we didn't have a lot of choice in the matter.
Our ghosts seemed to love us very much and performed some astonishing tricks in the nick of time on very many occasions.
There was a brief time when Alan, the domestic abuser, tried to regain my confidence but the house locked him out of the building and I could not undo the locks at all.
Another time he gained entry and attempted to strangle me at the top of the stairs.
Somehow I shattered one of my finger joints pulling at his fingers on my throat but just as I thought I would pass out he fell down the stairs so hard it looked as if he had been forcefully thrown.
I ran over him to get out of the house and ran to a neighbour who immediately called the police.
Strangely enough, Alan did not attempt to invade my life again.

As 1986 New Year's Day came in I was determined that I no longer needed a man in my life and decided to become celibate at 34 years of age.
That might well have been one of my better decisions in life.
I was loving driving buses, making a lot of new friends at work and was still studying Chinese philosophy in my spare time.
Dan was happy to have a proper house for a home again at last.
We felt secure.
For a while.