Looking for Bethan

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I woke up with a start, there was a dull ache in my head and my eyes felt like I’d slept in my contact lenses. I panicked,  I was late for work, but then I realised it was Saturday. Then I remembered last night, the insomnia, the doorbell, the tea lady, the tears. I padded into the living room and looked at the middle-aged woman under a blanked on my sofa. She looked so beautiful, so lovely, so serene despite the panda eyes. I gently picked up the mugs and took them into the kitchen. I’d make us a cup of tea and then shoo the woman home.

'Good morning,’ a sleepy voice said just as the kettle clicked.

‘Hello,’ I said, trying to keep my voice neutral. ‘How are you?’

‘Fine,’ she said, but I could tell she wasn’t. ‘ Thanks for making me stay last night.’

I’d insisted that she’d stayed, she’d already broken the curfew coming to me. She didn’t want to risk it again going home. I’d offered to take the sofa but she’d insisted on that.

Beryl took her tea and curled up on the sofa again lighting a cigarette.

‘She’s always known,’ Beryl said from nowhere. She took a lungful of smoke before continuing. ‘I told her her dad had run off with another woman, but she never believed me, I guess I just wasn’t a good liar.’

‘So where is your husband?’ I regretted asking the question, the less I knew, the better, but I had a feeling she was going to tell me anyway.

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘It was 3 days after the 2020 elections when they came for him. Three days, that’s all they took. It didn’t matter that he had papers, he was entitled to be here. What mattered was that he was Romanian, that he had swarthy skin and a heavy accent. He was an immigrant and he had to be returned home.’

I nodded my head. It was a familiar story. The UK had left the EU in 2018 and by 2020 the Tories and UKIP ran a joint campaign promising to send them all home. All immigrants who had come into the country since 2010 were to be sent home.

’15 years and nothing,’ Tears were welling in her eyes again. ‘I called his family back in Romania but they had not heard from him either. I can only guess that they had killed him. But…’ Her voice trailed off into sniffs and snivels.

‘Go home,’ I said to her, ‘Bethan might be there waiting. Let’s meet for coffee at 3.’

‘Will you know anything by then?’

I shrugged, I didn’t know what I would know by then, probably nothing, but this woman didn’t need to hear that.

When she was gone I took a shower, got dressed and left the flat, carefully watching around me for someone following me. I wouldn’t go directly to my destination, instead I would meander around, window shop, have coffee, look innocent.

I looked at the faces of the people passing by; they weren’t people anymore they were Games of Thrones drones.  What had those bastards done to this country? Gradually since 2015 our freedoms had been etched away. It may have started before that but 2015 with a catalyst in my mind. Apparently before then we’d been too passively tolerant as a nation; we’d left people alone as long as they didn’t break the law and although that seemed perfectly reasonable to me, to them it was a crime. So they took away our human rights and locked up those who complained. They fed the masses on a diet of football and HBO blockbusters, while scaring them with stories of Sharia Law coming to a street near you. Europeans were skivers, Muslims terrorists and Jews thieves. British values for a British race. Britain for the Brits. After 2020 and the Progressive Alliance landslide things got worse, immigrants were rounded up and sent home. We were told it was too dangerous to go out at night. the curfews were for our own good. And who needed to go out when Ant and Dec could entertain you in hologram form in your own living room.  But amazingly taxes were low, the streets clean and thanks to our new government providing free dental care Britain was smiling again. When the 2025 elections were cancelled, no one cared. Okay our internet was controlled, as was our freedom to travel, but people could still get their hands on porn, could still watch Big Brother and global warming made the British beaches the best in the world, so who needed to go abroad who needed to vote? 

I sat drinking my coffee waiting for the all clear. But before anyone could give me the signal, a figure slipped into the seat opposite me.

‘Bethan!’ I said. She didn’t look like she’d been detained overnight or had slept rough. 

‘I had to make you help me,’ she said. ‘I knew you had eyes for my mother.’  Another figure appeared.

‘I’m sorry,’ Beryl said, she looked like she’d just had a good shower. ‘It was the only way to get you to admit who you were.’

‘So can we join you?’ Bethan said.

I hadn’t admitted anything to anyone I thought. But these women had tricked me. Beryl was wasted as a tea lady; she should have been a actress. I nodded ever so slightly.

‘Let’s go to my place.’ I said. 

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