Chapter 2
1996 – fourteen years earlier
As soon as she had been old enough, Mary Murphy had changed her name. Then, she had moved to London. The combination had been an exhilarating, liberating experience. She was a ‘born again’ eighteen year old. She didn’t consider that the name change had turned a caterpillar into a butterfly but rather a larva into a beetle. Her metamorphosis into Cleo Kingsley had left her encased in a hard shell which not only protected a sturdy pair of wings for getting ahead in life but which also armoured her very essence, against any battles that would ensue. The move to London had assured her of anonymity in a teeming city. She could be as she liked without having a finger pointed at her.
Against all odds, she had risen above her humble social beginnings and escaped the ineffectual parents who had sucked her dry in their never-ending quest for their next bottle or packet of fags. The higher she rose, the lower they seemed to sink but, she realised, that that wasn’t really true. They had always been scraping the bottom. For some unknown reason, she had not been cast from the same mould and had, from her earliest recollection, tried to distance herself from the ‘Murphy stigma’.
School had been a nightmare. If she had had a brother or sister, it might have been more tolerable knowing that she wasn’t on her own but her parents had only been sober long enough to produce her. Social Services had made sure that she was clothed and had a hot meal each day at the canteen; blatant charity which had been hard to accept, even as a child. It was just a shame that it was so obvious that she was a ‘social case’ because she had been ostracized by all the other pupils. How many times had she overheard whispering about the Murphys or giggling at her expense? Other social cases, who might have had things in common and provided moral support for fellow sufferers, had shied away from each other, perhaps afraid of compounding their misery.
Years later, she wondered why Social Services hadn’t taken her away and put her into care but, as unhappy as she had been, it seemed that there had been cases even worse than her own which had had to take priority. At least her parents had been happy drunks who had never lifted a hand to her. ‘Perhaps it had been better to be neglected, living in near squalor, than to have had to submit to foul treatment before being put into care,’ she was now able to rationalize.
Her father had finished by killing himself on a building site where he’d been hired by some unsuspecting foreman. Although it was doubtful that the company was responsible in any way for the death, they had paid a small amount of compensation to her mother, little suspecting that it would be the knell for her own death.
The money left over after the funeral had paid for a brief reprieve while Bridgette Murphy had splurged on some new clothes and evenings out, but it had been short lived. She had been found in an alley in a coma. It was never determined whether the blow to the head had been accidental or if she had been ‘mugged’. It was, however, alcoholic poisoning that had finished her – because she had been blind drunk. Neither parent had reached forty-five.
Guilt had been mixed with relief. Mary had not let any of it show. Many years of neglect had taught her to keep her feelings to herself and even alone in the confines of her own small bed-sit, she had successfully buried any she had. Any feeling might lead to hurting. She was definitely on her own and she had always known that if she were to get anywhere in this world she could only count on herself, the new Cleo Kingsley. Mary Murphy was a thing of the past, a nasty taste in the mouth, a bad dream, a skin shed that took her old identity with it. Her first eighteen years and the miserable memories were left behind as Cleo’s ambition took firm hold. It had meant sacrificing any social life for that of work but Cleo had long ago realised that she had survived without ‘friends’ in her school years and so wasn’t about to burden herself with the superficiality of them at any time in the near future. All her energy would be going into advancing herself. It had begun by attending night school straight from her job at the store. No, there wouldn’t have been a lot of energy to spare for socializing anyway, because every ounce had gone into her rise in the world and especially her rise above all those kids at school who had made her life so desolate.