Betrayal

by Martina Cole

betray, What charm can soothe her melancholy, What art can wash her guilt away? The Vicar of Wakefield, Oliver Goldsmith (1728–74)

could be very funny when the fancy took her. ‘So I said, “Go and find your fucking fathers and get some sweet money off them!”’ She screeched with laughter at her own wit and a few of the other mothers in the busy shop joined in. Reeva’s ever-present cigarette was dangling from her red-stained lips and her distended belly told anyone who cared to look that she was nearly on her time. Jack Walters, the manager of the Co-op, liked Reeva. She wasn’t a bad girl really – she had just been badly used in her time by the many men she seemed to attract. She attracted him. She was a good-looking young woman with a warm and generous personality and clearly a healthy attitude towards sex – unlike his wife, Doris, who