Next of Kin

by TL Dyer

  But the man standing on my doorstep in his shirtsleeves is not the devil I was expecting.

  Chapter 55

  ‘If you don’t leave now, I’ll call the police.’

  ‘Don’t be absurd, Sacha, you are the police.’ Darren pushes past me into the hallway just as Jake trots down the stairs, his excitement freezing on his face when he sees this is not the man he thought it would be.

  ‘Darren, please,’ I seethe, but he steadies himself with a hand on the banister, a smile breaking out as he looks up to where Jake has stopped on the stairs.

  ‘Son. Remember me? Your dad. I’ve been waiting ages to see you. Have you grown again? I think you have.’

  Jake glances at me, unsure of which question to answer and how. Unsure too of the man’s strange behaviour, his sharp stare, his gentle sway and grimacing smile. Perhaps he even smells the alcohol fumes coming off him, just as I do.

  ‘Darren, you really should go,’ I say. ‘This won’t help anyone.’

  ‘You remember who I am, don’t you, son? Who I said I was that day I picked you up from football practice? You remember what I said?’

  ‘That’s enough.’ I take hold of his arm, but he snatches it from my grasp, eyes focused on Jake, whose lip trembles.

  ‘You’re Darren,’ he says, as if by answering the question maybe this man will go away.

  But he doesn’t, he only sways a little more and laughs. ‘Don’t be silly, I’m Dad. Your dad.’

  ‘Jake, why don’t you go upstairs?’ I step to the banister and smile as best I can.

  He puts one foot on the stair above him, but Darren raises his voice to stop him. ‘I said I’m your dad. Your daddy. Your real father. What do you think of that, eh? They want to keep us apart, but we won’t let them, will we?’

  ‘Go to your room, Jake. Now,’ I say, firmer.

  Darren turns and puts his fingers to the front door, slamming it shut.

  Jake jumps and gasps. ‘Mam.’ His eyes fill with tears.

  And from somewhere, I don’t know where, a calm descends. I meet his eye and silently urge him to trust me. ‘It’s fine, sweetheart. Room. Go on. In the den. Uncle Shaun will be along any second. I promise.’

  While he does as I ask, turning and running up the stairs and across the landing to his room, I keep my eye on our unexpected visitor and make a quick assessment. He’s furious – at his own ignorance that the things exposed in court earlier would be relevant to the hearing; perhaps he had assumed only convictions would be counted. He’s also here for a reason. But what that is, I’m yet to find out. He must know he’s walking a tightrope by being here. Though maybe the drinks he’s consumed since he left the courtroom have afforded him a different mindset. And that’s what worries me the most.

  The second I hear the slam of Jake’s bedroom door, I bolt down the hall for the kitchen. I get as far as the counter, my fingers brushing my phone, when a force at the back of my head propels me forward into the wall cabinet, my forehead splits on impact. The shock of the attack and blood in my eyes means with one shove from his palm, I stumble to the floor, the phone skittering away over the floor tiles.

  ‘He’s my son, you bitch. My son.’

  Scrambling over the kitchen tiles, my back lands against the door and I push myself to my feet, ready for the arm he extends out towards me. I strike it away with my forearm, then grab hold to twist it behind his back, my left foot hooking around his right ankle. But despite the drink, he still has several inches in height on me, broader shoulders, a brutal temper, and right now a severely dented pride that’s driving him on. He twists out of my grip, all the momentum dropping into his fist, so when it lands on my cheek, it’s with enough force to send me down a second time.

  ‘You can’t take that away from me, do you understand?’ he yells above me.

  I dip my head to protect against more punches, try to catch my breath, blood peeling down beside my eye and dripping to the floor, cheek hot and throbbing, pulses of pain stabbing at my skull. But from the corner of my vision, I see him take a step back, then another, a stumble. I hear his heavy sigh and a whimper of self-pity as he slides down the kitchen cupboard to sit on the floor.

  Dabbing my wrist against the cut on my forehead, I try to wipe away as much as I can while hoping Jake does as he’s told and stays in his room. And with that thought, I have an image of him cowering in his den beneath the bed, clutching Suzu, terrified at the sounds he hears downstairs, in his own home, his mum being hurt, his normality threatened. Just as his brother had done. His sister too. It had tortured them both in different ways – Craig running from it, Lauren defying it – but tortured them all the same. Eliza too. And I’d wanted to be like her. I’d wanted their perfect family, their perfect life.

  Across the room, Darren draws up one knee and sniffs. His cheeks are damp, eyes brimming with colour, adrift in a sea of weary, drunken tears.

  ‘Bringing up my past, everything I’ve left behind.’ He raises his head to look at me, while looking right through me at the same time. ‘I’m not like that any more. Do you know how hard it’s been to become the man I am now? What I’ve had to put up with, work through? Of course not. You don’t know. No one knows.’

  Despite my heavy head, the hard beating of my heart in my chest, I inch myself upright until I’m resting my shoulder against the cupboard opposite him. Just several feet to my right, beside the leg of the table, is my phone

  ‘We were a private family,’ he goes on. ‘We didn’t flaunt our problems like everyone else, airing our dirty laundry in public. So don’t think you know, because you don’t. You knew nothing then and you know nothing now.’

  ‘Craig. Lauren.’

  He tilts his head. ‘What about them? Craig was as timid as a dormouse, frightened of his own shadow. And Lauren… Well, she takes after the worst side of her mother. She knows how to play people. She played you enough.’

  ‘She told me about the night you hurt Craig. He was trying to protect his mother.’

  ‘There you go.’ He slaps his hands against his thighs. ‘My daughter. Twisting the story as usual. Craig was acting up that night. As all kids do. Throwing his weight around, testing the boundaries. First by arguing with his mother, then when I intervened he took his temper out on me. So yes, I had to discipline him then. A smack across his legs. I couldn’t have him disrespecting his mother, or me.’

  ‘And the night of the dinner, your work’s company dinner, when you returned home and the scotch was missing. Lauren told me what you did to Eliza, Darren, how you hurt her.’

  He sucks his bottom lip between his teeth. ‘Hm. You see? No.’ He shakes his head. ‘See, this is what I hate. When people get it wrong. They get it wildly wrong, Sacha. And you do too. You suck up all you’re told and make your judgements, thinking you’ve got the whole story. Well, you haven’t. You have no fucking idea. Much as I love my daughter, her imagination is as fertile as her mother’s. That includes being flexible with the facts.’

  ‘So then, why don’t you tell me?’ I say, clutching my sore head and shifting as if to get comfortable, while edging another few inches closer to the table leg. ‘If Lauren was wrong, then what really happened when you and Eliza came home that night?’

  A thin smile becomes a weary chuckle. He peers over at me through one half-closed eye, its spark of amusement so far out of place in this conversation it’s sickening.

  ‘I knew it was you, too, by the way. Helped yourself to my drinks cabinet.’ He points a teasing finger at me. ‘You’d already skipped off home early, but I knew you’d be involved there somewhere. Little Miss Perfect, Lauren liked to call you, but that never washed with me. There was another side to you, Sacha Sanderson. I sensed it. Not obvious like it is with others. Not a crude, over-cooked rebellious streak. Something more subtle. Intriguing—’

  ‘So what happened? You were angry that we’d taken your scotch?’

  He sighs, raising his eyes to the ceiling. ‘The scotch, the scotch, it was never about th
e fucking scotch.’

  I reach out my hand, fingers almost in touching distance of the phone. ‘You were annoyed about something. There was an argument.’

  ‘Yes. Okay? Yes, there was an argument. Lauren may have heard us having a… discussion. Her mother and I both had a little to drink that night, and things got heated.’

  ‘You beat her.’

  ‘I did not—’ He catches his rising tone. Tempers it. ‘I did not beat her. That is pure fantasy. We had words. Eliza and I had words, and she wouldn’t speak to me for days. She got depressed, took to her bed, punishing all of us yet again for her own weaknesses.’

  ‘Weaknesses?’

  He reaches for the table and pulls himself up off the floor to take out a chair and drop down on it. Leaning forward, he clasps his fingers together as if he’s about to tell a bedtime story. But something tells me it’ll be the kind that gives me nightmares.

  ‘See, the thing about Eliza was, Sacha, she was beautiful.’ His gaze drifts to his hands, where his thumb strokes the spot where his wedding ring once sat. ‘So beautiful, in fact, that it brought out the ugly in everyone else around her. Especially men. They wanted her. She knew that. She would deny it, but I had eyes, I saw. She loved the attention they gave her, didn’t matter who they were or what they looked like, they were all fair game. It was almost as if she did it on purpose. To get at me. For reasons known only to her, of course, she could be cruel like that. She was intelligent too, and that was a dangerous combination. It meant she could make my life difficult. Very difficult.’

  ‘So you put her in her place.’ Another inch to the right and my fingers land on the phone.

  ‘Put her in her place? What does that even mean? We were a married couple, Sacha, our private life was private. We had arguments, we made compromises, we drew up lines that could and couldn’t be crossed. It was our life to live, in the way we wanted to live it. And they were our problems to contend with, same as any other family.’

  ‘Except Eliza wasn’t really living, was she? Those lines you drew up so tightly bound her she became only what you wanted her to be, with no room for her to be anything else.’

  His fist slams on the table so unexpectedly that I let go of the phone, snatch my hand back.

  ‘Bloody hell, Sacha, you’re not listening. Will you just listen?’ He swivels in the chair to face me. ‘Do you know, after my father died when I was twelve years old – just twelve years old, Sacha – my older brothers were useless. Three of them. All lazy layabouts who wouldn’t lift a finger to help our mother. She went out to work two jobs and still did everything around the house when she got home. They never put a penny in her hand to support her. Me – I got a job after school posting leaflets through letter boxes, cash in hand. On weekends I washed cars for the neighbours, mowed lawns, ran errands. By sixteen, I got my first job in the supermarket, stacking shelves and shifting stock, legally employed. But always, always, the money I made went to my mother. And do you know what, Sacha? Do you know what she did? She waited on my brothers hand and foot, never asked them to do anything. But when I kept back a few pounds for myself, to buy a magazine, or a packet of cigarettes, she’d clip me round the ear and tell me not to be so selfish. So as soon as I could, I left.

  ‘I met Eliza not long after. Thought all my Christmases had come at once. This incredibly beautiful woman, and she was in love with me. It was a few more years before I was wise enough to understand the truth. All I’d done was exchange one ungrateful bitch for another.’

  ‘Darren—’

  ‘No, I know what you’re going to say, Sacha, but this is the truth, how it really was. I’m sick to death of women looking down their noses at me, I’ve had it all my life. False smiles, empty words, getting what you want when you want it. You do it too. You never used to, not back when you were a good kid, saying your please and thank yous at our table, blushing when I smiled at you. It was very sweet, Sacha. Up to a point. But it drove Eliza crazy. She was jealous of you, did you know that?’

  ‘Jealous? That’s ridiculous. Of course she wasn’t.’

  He tips his head back to laugh, and I reach out to tap the phone screen on and hit the contacts list. At the top of my most-called recent numbers is Dad. Jake. Then Shaun. Jen. John Russell…

  ‘Sacha, Sacha, Sacha.’ Darren slips from the chair to kneel in front of me. I snatch my hand back, but with no time to shut off the screen. ‘Either you were so naïve back then it’s beautiful. Or you’re just acting the fool.’

  We both go for the phone at the same time. I get my hand to it, my finger landing on Russell’s name, but he punches it away before I have the chance to hit connect. Clamping his hands around my wrists, his knees come down over my legs and pin them to the floor.

  ‘So what was I saying?’ he says, palms tightening around my struggling wrists, head close but tilted away from the prospect of another headbutt. On his breath, heavy from his exertions, is the overpowering stench of spirits, and in his eyes an intensity that doesn’t belong there, one that our fighting is provoking. ‘Oh yes, that’s right. What I meant to say was that being a copper has changed you, made you harder, Sacha. Maybe even fools you into thinking you’re better than me. I can see you want me to think I’m not good enough for you. But the trouble with that argument is, we both know it’s not true, don’t we?’

  He drops his knees on either side of my thighs, shuffles up my lap, his gaze dropping to my blouse, the one I wore to the courtroom earlier.

  ‘I was good enough for you once, sweetheart, isn’t that right?’ With my wrists still clamped in his fists, he reaches out a finger to nudge open the lapel of my blouse. ‘I was your first too, wasn’t I? You never said, but I knew.’

  His eyes come up to mine, as vivid as they were that night in the car, except then what I’d thought of as tenderness, I see now in the harsh light of the kitchen while I’m pinned under him on the cold, hard tiles is only lust. Misguided and misdirected, selfish, empty lust.

  His finger barely brushes my skin when I fight with everything I have. First my arms, twisting my wrists while pushing against him, then my legs beneath his, hardly shifting him, but if I can just catch him off guard I can land another headbutt. That would give me time to get out from under him, grab my phone, rush for the door and scream blue murder, or take a knife from the cupboard. Anything, anything. But above me he laughs, enjoying the struggle. And when the blow comes, his forehead landing on my nose with a hard crack, the fight immediately goes out of me.

  Pain explodes in my head, tears flood my eyes. Blood drips down my throat and spills from my nose to my lips. I can barely breathe, can’t think. I choke on the blood, my blouse is torn open. Aftershave and alcohol smother the rest of my senses as his face comes down to mine, lips beside my ear, rough hands running down over my chest and bra, gripping my waist.

  ‘You can take the girl out of the valleys, but you can’t take the valleys out of the girl. Isn’t that what they say, Sacha? This is who you are, where you come from. Don’t forget it. Next time you think about looking down your nose at me, remember that your son is a reminder of how quick you were to drop your knickers. The first chance I gave you.’

  I cough blood from my throat. It spatters across the tiles. Air reaches my thighs, my skirt pulled up.

  ‘This is what you want, isn’t it? This is all you ever wanted. You think I forgot? How you couldn’t get into my trousers quick enough? That sorry excuse for a boyfriend, the one who dumped you, he never pleased you. My poor, confused son, he wasn’t able to either. But I did, didn’t I? Just like you knew I would.’

  I stare at the spots of blood on the tiles. My tiles, my blood, my kitchen, my house.

  ‘You got me in the end, Sacha. You came into our lives, into our family, became one of us.’ His palm is clammy on my skin. ‘And even when you left, you couldn’t stay away, could you? You came back to me, sweetheart.’ Breath hot on my neck ‘You returned to my home and you brought my son to me because you needed me, just like
you’ve always done. And now we’re a family again.’

  In the split second his hand touches my underwear and his weight shifts I bring my knee up hard between his legs. Slowed by the alcohol, he crumples. I push his heavy frame off me, flip away from him and scramble to my feet, rushing for the end cupboard where the knife block is. He’s cursing behind me, the table scraping as he uses it to hold on to. Any moment he’ll be upright and coming at me. I struggle with the knife, can’t get it free from the block. I curse and tug hard, and it loosens only when the whole thing comes crashing from the shelf and bounces over the counter. But before I have a chance to use it to my defence, something locks around my left ankle and tugs my foot from under me. I tip forward, my face bouncing off the edge of the counter. The knife falls from my grip as I land once again dazed to the tile, more blood in my mouth.

  Darren smothers me again, his hand goes around my throat. ‘I can ruin you, you bitch. Just like I ruined that other bitch,’ he seethes in my ear. ‘Don’t underestimate me. I told her that. Never, never underestimate me. But she didn’t listen. You will, you’re cleverer than she was. You know that anything you do to me, I’ll do back tenfold. Your worst nightmare, Sacha, your one greatest fear. I’ll take your boy from you. I’ll take him when you’re not expecting it and make sure it’s you he blames. He’ll hate you. Just like Craig turned his back on his mother. She never could forgive me for that. She thought it was my fault. She couldn’t see that it was all her own doing. So don’t play me, Sacha. Never play me. You’ll spend the rest of your life regretting it. Do you understand?’

  I’m numb when I nod. His fingers dig into my windpipe, his weight holds me down. Though for what purpose, I don’t know, I have nothing left to fight with. I’m thinking of Scotland. I’m thinking of somewhere far, far away. I’m thinking of my son and how I brought us to this…

  ‘Oh, Sacha, don’t. Please. No, don’t do that. Don’t cry, there’s no need for that.’

  As urgently as his rage had erupted, it evaporates. His voice softens, hand releases my throat to brush at my cheek.