A Tempest of Blondes

The English Channel, 2007

The April sun was hot over the white water of the English Channel, and Sandy decided that a little drink would not be out of order. Peeling himself from the railing of the Dover ferry, he launched his feet in the direction of the staircase that led to the lower deck. He could have travelled by hovercraft or rail, but he was in no rush to get back to England. He was happy to escape the shores of France though, for he had just seen to the interment of his parents in Paris.

He felt deep grief at their demise. And this was as it should be. But gnawing beneath the skin of grief was shame. Shame that he was not up to the task before him.

Sandy blinked. What really was the task? Had his father expected him to undertake vengeance against the pair of crooks who had done them in – crooks he knew next to nothing about? His hand gripping the banister to the deck below turned white with pent-up frustration, but he managed to return the smile of a stunning blonde who was going past him to the deck he had just left. But the smile hurt.

He was ordinarily a light-hearted, cheerful soul, but he was painfully discovering that life sometimes could make a simple smile cost a grunt. "It was she," and his father's infirm finger quivered over the brunette in the tatty snapshot his father was showing him. "She was the cause – made your mother take her life. She ruined us – she and that rogue husband of hers. We lost everything."

Sandy was on the verge of asking what the brunette's husband looked like, but his father went into a fit of coughing, then lay his head back on the hospital bed and died, like his mother had earlier done, from a cocktail of lethal substances.

His mother and father had always been losers, leaving England in a bid to emigrate to Australia, but stopping first in Paris. "We'll be on our way soon, luv," they had written to him, as he remained in England, skivvying at odd-jobs. "We'll just see how a year looks in this dream city."

Though the dream city was doing nasty things to their savings, one year had become one more again, and then two, and then too, too many.

At the bottom of the stairs, he stepped towards the bar, begging his heart to conjure up bar-counter affability and lend his face a smile. He never could stand hangdog faces at bars and couldn't bear to be the culprit now. Settling on an empty stool, he contrived to do things to his face that he hoped would look like a smile.

We lost everything, his father had said. What everything? What did his parents have? What had they ever had? What fraud could the brunette and her husband have wrought on people who had nothing, to make them take their nothing lives?

Losers, his parents were. Losers! They were a perfect partnership. A partnership of losers!

Sandy swallowed. Losers, yes, but they were his parents still, and he had loved them. They shouldn't have died by suicide – no!

He breathed heavily. If he found the brunette and her husband, he would...

Would do what? Kill them?

He snorted with self-loathing. Not him – he wasn't tough enough. He didn't mind a little pilfering here and there, and a little scam. But kill?

A foaming tankard slid his way on the counter, and Sandy raised his eyes. The bartender pointed to the bloke sitting next to him.

The stranger grinned. "Thought you might want a little oiling-like."

He was in his late twenties. A rakish, devil-may-care fellow with loads of charm and a lot of hole in the dimple that adorned his handsome square chin. He shot out a hand. "I'm Roger."

Lager-bribed, Sandy eased into his preferred demeanour and shook hands. "Sandy," he returned.

The gorgeous blonde who had gone past him on the stairs sashayed over.

"Penelope," Roger said, introducing the blonde. "My sister."

Sandy tried not to stare. He was certain she was a celebrity of some sort. Her face seemed familiar. Quite familiar, really. Perhaps she and her brother were stars, but because he hadn't been watching much telly these days, he didn't know who they were. He really had to step up his TV viewing and not just glue his face to the English Premiership and the Champions League.

Squaring his shoulders, he gathered all his charm from the four winds and flashed Penelope a confident smile, hoping he could pull off the impression that he, too, was some kind of important bloke.

They chatted about little things and the conversation danced merrily along, but stalled when Sandy almost dropped his teeth at the news that Roger and Penelope were heading to London to assume domestic positions in a suburban household.

Sandy was certain he hadn't heard right. "Y-you're what?"

Roger gestured at his sister. "She's going to be the maid; I, the chauffeur."

Sandy groped for words. "I-I... I would have sworn you were..."

"What?" Roger's laugh was strong and warm.

Light caught the amused twinkle in Penelope's eye, making it sparkle like sapphire. "Probably thought you were Prince of Denmark and I, Marie Antoinette."

Sandy gulped. This was all so embarrassing.

"We're humble folk," Roger assured him, an indecipherable look in his eyes. "It pays to be humble, you know."

Penelope nodded. "The guv'nor's wife is very generous." She gave Sandy the feeling she was trying to tell him something. "Very, very generous."

Sandy swallowed his shock, and his throat did a triple beat. He thought he had an idea what Penelope was saying. Casting his eyes momentarily away from the two, he considered his situation. There was no job waiting for him in England; he'd been forced to quit his last job to be by his parents' deathbed. This wasn't the time to act hoity-toity. He turned to the two. "Any chance of striking it good with the guv'nor's wife?"

Roger grinned. "How good?"

Sandy liked the outdoor life. "Like gardener."

Penelope craned her beautiful neck up. "We could put in a word for you." She glanced at her brother. "Couldn't we?"

Roger nodded. "We could."