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NEW AUTHORS SHOWCASE

Keeping Control

Sharon Mawdesley

Synopsis

‘Keeping Control’ is a novel based in a small northern town on the Lancashire side of the Pennines, called Overdale. It is the story of a girl called Jenny Dobson, and her attempts to gain independence from the family home, which don’t work out quite as she expects.

The story begins with a glimpse of her life as she turns sixteen. She is still at school, and has little more to worry about than her sixteenth birthday party and her relationship with her boyfriend Darren. She lives with her parents and older brother; they are a close family, salt of the earth, if not exactly exciting. Her life is centred around Overdale – she has ambitions, she doesn’t want to become stuck in a rut, she is convinced there is more to life but doesn’t really know how to find it. Her parents arrange a party for her sixteenth birthday, which is marred when Darren turns up drunk. She falls for the singer in the local group who takes charge of the situation, and is disappointed when his interest in her is fleeting.

Things start to change when her father, who has been working for a building company ‘cash in hand’, takes a fall from a roof and is unable to work. Her mother’s income won’t pay the bills, so she decides to leave school and get a job.

In her search for a job she is frustrated by the difficulty in finding something she likes – she is mocked by floor hands at a factory, and sexually harassed at an interview at her uncles butchers shop. She has good friends, however, who keep her spirits up.

She is saved from the prospect of having to work for the lecherous butcher when a kindly old couple called the Gardners extend her Saturday job on the market to a full-time position, and she falls into a regular routine of work.

Her brother Tony courts an un-married mother with a two year old girl, and when she loses her home, the Dobson family move them into their house. Jenny is forced to give up her room, and feels more and more pushed out.

One day working on the market she meets up again with Mitch, the singer from the band. A relationship develops between them. He is older than she, and seems very sophisticated compared to her family. He is exacting and manipulative, he draws her away from her family and friends and makes her home life seem even worse than it really is. A year has gone by, and her family are planning a get together for her at their home, but Mitch has other ideas and persuades her to go to Paris with him for the weekend. Thanks to the two-year-old chewing up a note she leaves for her parents, they don’t know where she is, and when she eventually returns home they have an argument, and she moves in with Mitch.

She thinks life with Mitch will be a bed of roses, but it soon proves to be anything but. He is a control freak – he separates her from her family and friends, and soon has her acting as his skivvy.

Besides having to keep house for him, she soon becomes aware that there is a darker side to Mitch. Over a period of time, she is more and more concerned about his sexual traits. He expects her to entertain him, he always leaves on the light when they make love, he tries to draw her into group sex with Lou and Alan, the couple who live in the flat upstairs.

Eventually alarm bells start to ring. She renews contact with her friends, who agree that she should be concerned. They tell her about rumours they have heard about Mitch being involved in dealing drugs and selling pornography.

Mitch goes away for a few days, supposedly on a booking with the band, but on investigation she finds out that he has gone to Amsterdam. Alan tells her about Mitch’s background, and how he was once involved with Lou. He tells her how Mitch’s father used to own a photographic studio where Mitch became drawn into producing and selling blue films.

She searches the house and finds a video camera hidden in the bedroom, pointing at the bed. She talks to Mitch’s mother, a meek woman who always seemed bullied by Mitch’s father, who is in hospital after ‘falling’ down stairs. She had assumed Mitch’s father had pushed her, and is horrified when she finds out that it was actually Mitch himself. Things go from bad to worse when her own father tells her that a friend of his in the local police has tipped him off that she is under suspicion of being involved in Mitch’s illegal activities. She discovers that he has infected her with a sexual disease, and has to face the embarrassment of going for treatment and the scare that he may have given her Aids. She eventually realises what she has got herself into, and turns to her family and friends for help.

They welcome her home with open arms, and help her to unpick the web of deceit that Mitch has woven around her. With her fathers help, they find videos and pictures that Mitch has taken of her, and of his previous girlfriend whom he had discarded when she became pregnant. Together, they eventually sort out the mess.

Mitch is arrested on his return from Amsterdam and at last her ordeal is over. She finds that Mitch had concealed money in her name to avoid incriminating himself. Once she is certain that the money is not part of the police investigation, she takes all her family on holiday to Greece, where her brother gets married. She spends the rest of the money on buying out the Gardners market stall when they retire, as a surprise for her father and herself to run.

At last Jenny has the chance to take control of her own life, and she realises what growing up is really all about.

First of seven chapters – (total book is 97,000 words)

Chapter One – Coming of age

“Well, have you decided what yer wearing yet?”

“No,” said Jenny, “ I just can’t decide – I really fancy a new get-up but I know me Mam can’t afford it!”

The topic of Jenny’s on-coming 16th birthday party had been the main topic of conversation between the two friends for the last few weeks, and as the big day drew nearer there were serious decisions to be made.

“What do you think?” she asked Tracy, “ I know Darren likes my red dress best, but I’m not sure…..”

“Yeah, right – and I wonder why that is? Could it be the fact that yer tits hang out when you lean over, by any chance?” scoffed Tracy, “ I saw his face last time you wore it, Jen, poor lad couldn’t keep his eyes above your neck!”

Jenny pondered on this as they walked along, and decided to herself that maybe the red dress was not such a good idea after all – she and Darren had been courting now for almost six months, and it was becoming more and more difficult to hold off his clumsy advances. Apart from the usual snogging sessions and the evermore persistant groping hands, she had managed to hold his advances at bay. It wasn’t that she didn’t like him – she did, but she’d known him all her life, they lived across the street from each other, they’d ridden their bikes together and played in each others yards, gone to school together (even though he was a year higher, he’d hung around with her in the playground), and now this! It just didn’t feel right – it was like kissing your brother – she shuddered at the thought. She’d always expected first love to be like a firework display, but this was more like one of those cheap roman candles that promises excitement on the wrapper and turns out to be a feeble splutter of sparks. The least encouragement the better, maybe, especially since one of her main excuses for not allowing him to go further, her age, would no longer bear any weight come a week on Saturday.

“Maybe I’ll get something out of your Mam’s catalogue,” she said, “I can just manage it out of my Saturday job”

“You’d better get a move on, then, it’s only ten days away – anyway, I’m off, see you in the morning!”

Tracy let herself into the stone terraced house, and with a wave, Jenny carried on up the hill towards home. One thing that you could pretty well count on living in Overdale was that wherever you walked you were more than likely to be going up or down a hill. The town nestled in the foothills of the Pennines, in Lancashires’ hill country. It was not a large town, more of a village really, made up predominantly of stone houses turned a murky grey from years of soot and rain. A new superstore on the outskirts had taken most of the life out of the main streets, and the shops scraping a living looked run down and empty. The most thriving places these days were the three pubs and the working mens’club, which by mid-afternoon were filled with men with no jobs to go to, and a need to escape from under the feet of their wives and kids. It hadn’t always been like this – the town had thrived in the 50’s and 60’s, with shoe factories taking advantage of the damp atmosphere to work the leather. But this was 1985, and the market for quality shoes had been drowned out by cheap imported footwear, and the people living there still had the discomfort of the dampness but none of the advantages any more. A new estate had been built in an attempt to bring in commutors working in Manchester, but the uptake was slow.

Jenny arrived home, pushed through the gate and walked wearily up to the house, school bag slung over her shoulder, jumper tied round her waist even though it was still only May and not that warm. It was just that once she left the school grounds she couldn’t wait to take off her tie and jumper, it somehow gave her a feeling of freedom after the confines of the dismal school building.

“Is that you, love? Am I glad you’re back, I’m gasping for a cuppa – put the kettle on, there’s a good girl!”

“Hi, Dad”, said Jenny, walking into the front room, where her father was stretched out on the sofa, watching the horseracing. “I thought you’d be down at the club today”

“Aye, well, not much to spare for afternoon drinking, what with your big day coming up, is there?”

Jenny couldn’t help the small pang of resentment as she thought “no, but you don’t go out and get a job, do you, Dad” and then felt guilty because she knew he had tried, for a while, when the factory closed down, but it wasn’t easy when you were forty-five and your only experience of work was making shoes which nobody wanted any more. Good thing Mam was still working, because the casual building work that he found from time to time wasn’t enough to keep them. It helped now that Tony, her older brother, was working full time at the Red Lion, and bringing home a few quid for the kitty and a few bottles when he could get away with it. They weren’t badly off compared to some, she supposed, but holidays were a thing of the past and clothes were repaired where once they would have been replaced. Still, another few weeks and she could leave school and get a job. She knew her parents wanted her to stay on, get some qualifications, but for what? In Overdale, A-levels weren’t worth a lot when the biggest local employer was Tesco’s.

She dumped her schoolbag on the floor and went through to the kitchen.

“Aw, Dad, you could at least have washed up” she said, gazing at the pile of dirty dishes in the sink.

“Tony came home for lunch, but he had to rush off back to the pub, and besides, racing was starting. Your Mum will do it when she gets home,”

“But she’s been working all day…..” Jenny started to say, before she realized that her words were falling on deaf ears. So far as the male members of the household were concerned, washing up – or any other kind of housework for that matter – were definitely ‘women’s work’. A local saying was that once a woman married an Overdale man, it wasn’t a question of whether she would be chained to the kitchen sink – the only question was ‘how long was the chain?’ She switched on the kettle, and made a start on the dishes.

For the next couple of days, the whole town was shrouded in a mist of fine rain – the kind of rain that you could hardly see, but it still ate into your clothes and soaked you to the bone. Then Jenny was awakened early on Saturday morning by her alarm clock, and drew back the curtains to let in a flood of glorious sunshine. She stood at her back bedroom window and looked out down the long back garden, to the hills beyond, and everything looked fresh and new – it was on days like this that it was a joy to live around here. Their stone semi was on the edge of the town, it had once been rented from the local council, but when her Mum’s parents had died five years ago – one after the other, as if they couldn’t bear to be apart any longer than necessary – the money her mother inherited had given them the chance to buy the property, and as they had already lived in it for over twenty years, they got a good discount off the council. Those were good days, Dad was in full time work, Mum had just started at the slipper factory where she still worked today, and there was enough money left over to improve their home – new double glazing to keep out the winter winds that howled down the hills, and Mum’s pride and joy, a new kitchen – and still enough left for the family to go to Cornwall for two weeks in the summer. This was the furthest Jenny had been in her ten years of living in the Lancashire town, and she remembered the surprise she had felt at how far it was – she hadn’t been further than Blackpool before (or since, come to that), and she had been entranced by the fact that there were so many other places to see. She spent most of the five hour drive to the south coast with her nose pressed against the window of the car, wanting to soak in as much of this new landscape as she could, and thinking how when she was grown up, she would ...