by S. E. Lynes
Not Ted.
Ted must be upstairs. Nausea lurches in her belly. Somehow Johnny has got him upstairs. Unless he got there himself. In which case, he must have woken up. Oh God. A shuddering breath escapes her. In the cave of her chest, her heart thumps.
In the kitchen, she drinks a pint of water. She leans her hands on the counter, breathes in and out, in and out. She is aware of herself, of her hands on the counter, her breath, the prickling rise of sweat on her forehead.
She tiptoes back into the living room and shakes Johnny’s shoulder.
‘Johnny,’ she whispers.
He opens first one eye, then the other. ‘All right?’
She nods. ‘They stitched him up. I dropped him off at his hotel.’
Johnny is blinking, coming round. With a thick smacking sound, his tongue unsticks from the roof of his mouth. His hair is standing up at the back, his crisp white shirt all crumpled, his bottle-green satin tie off to one side. It’s funny to see him so dishevelled; he’s usually not got a hair out of place. ‘All right. I’ll get off.’
A flame flares in her chest. Tommy and Pauline will be back at the Holiday Inn by now, the place she’s just left. Honeymoon suite. Rose petals on the bed. She won’t be able to call on them tonight.
‘Stay if you like,’ she whispers to her brother.
He sits up, yawns. ‘I’ll get out of your hair.’
‘It’s no bother. I can make up a bed on the couch.’
He doesn’t reply, starts putting on his shoes.
‘Ted upstairs then, is he?’ she asks, like he could be anywhere else.
Johnny is on his feet now, pulling his suit jacket from the armchair, slipping his arms into the sleeves. Thirty seconds more and he’ll be gone.
‘He was out of it, don’t worry.’
‘Was he?’ She manages a fake laugh, as if that’s unusual. But why would her brother tell her not to worry unless he knows more than he’s ever let on? Eight years younger than Carol, Johnny’s not part of their social life, hasn’t seen that this is what Ted is like week in week out. Maybe he’s seen something. Heard a bit of gossip. ‘Did he say anything?’
Johnny shrugs. ‘Gibberish mostly, daft prick.’
She follows him to the door. He’s right to go, of course he is. Bachelor Boy keeps himself to himself, always has. Can’t be getting dragged into this lot.
‘See you then,’ she whispers as he steps out. She leans over, kisses him on the cheek, pats his shoulder. ‘Thanks, eh. Safe home.’
‘I’m sure I’ll manage.’
She breaks his gaze, scared that she might crack, fall to her knees and beg him to stay.
The darkness swallows him – the last she sees of him is his head tipping forward as he lights a cigarette, shoulders hunched against the chill of the night. She closes the door behind him, bites her lip against the tiny click of the latch.
On the stairs, her legs ache. Her heart starts its battering once again.
In Nicola’s room, the kids sleep. Graham is on the floor with his covers over him, as he often is. They must have been chatting or playing some game, bless them. Sometimes they play Name That Tune to get themselves to sleep, not that Graham would ever admit it.
She kisses their foreheads. She has left them alone tonight. She has thought only of herself, of her own delight. She has betrayed them, really. Put herself in danger when she is all they have. Never, ever will she let that happen again.
She steals across the landing to hers and Ted’s room. On the bed, on top of the covers, Ted lies face down in last night’s shirt, his pants and one black sock. Ugly and snoring, a stink that catches in the back of her throat. Johnny must have helped him up here. Must have. Who took off his trousers otherwise? Who put the glass of water on the bedside table?
She stares at the spare pillow; not for the first time wonders how easy or difficult it would be to suffocate him. The thought is stronger now than it has been in the past, almost overwhelming, but she’d have to be sure of finishing the job. It isn’t something she’d want to get wrong.
The digital alarm clock reads 2.15. She stands over him. He might be pretending to be asleep. He grunts, rolls onto his side. The snoring stops a moment, resumes. She steps back, a blunt pain in her chest.
She will not, cannot get into that bed. It’ll be her on the couch tonight.
Unable to tear her eyes from the rise and fall of his chest, she takes off her clothes. The sight of him has made her feel dirty. Dirty, yes, that’s what she feels. Skin thick with filth that no brush or soap could ever scrub away. She tiptoes into the bathroom and closes the door. Sits on the loo long after she’s finished peeing, staring at nothing. The rubber shower attachment is still wedged onto the bath taps where she rinsed the shampoo out of her hair this morning.
This morning, so long ago.
Jim.
She’d almost …
Through the wall comes the beast-like rumble of Ted. She finds that she’s taken off the shower hose and is running a bath, though she can’t remember deciding to do this. She’s turned the taps to slow so as not to wake him – a habit. She pours in her favourite peach bath foam. Once in the hot water, she closes her eyes and pushes her head under the bubbles. The world fades, the repulsive pig noise of her husband all but gone. The heat eases her shoulders, slackens the tendons in her neck. Memories of Jim return in flashes: his hand on her waist, the crinkles at the corners of his eyes – you cannae be sitting here on your own all night. His voice. His touch.
Tommy’s got my number … Give us a call, eh?
She sits up a little and draws up her knees. The bathroom light splits into hundreds of little stars, reflected tiny in each soap bubble as it slides down her legs. She crosses her arms and runs her fingers over her shoulders, down to her elbows. But her hands are too small to feel like Jim’s.
A creak on the landing. She curls up. The water swishes loud in the tub; she cringes at the noise. Ted. He’s woken up. He’s woken up and he’s—
The bathroom door flies open. Ted. Eyes bloodshot and wild, blind but seeing, a look full of hate aimed only at her. His nose wrinkles, his hand shoots out in front of him, a starfish of fingers. She shrieks, folds herself smaller still, arms over her head, eyes closed. The smell of whisky goes up her nose, whisky and smoke, sweat and pubs. This is it. She has not got away with it. The punishment is now.
She opens one eye. ‘Ted—’
His pink hand blurs in her face; she closes her eyes. Here it comes.
A pressure on her forehead. The heel of his hand on her nose.
‘Ted—’
Holding her fast, he pushes her down, down under the water.
The back of her head jams against the bottom of the bath. Her mouth and nostrils are under … under … under the water. Her arms flail, find his. Up again, out of the water. She gasps. Another splash, a white roar in her ears. His hand on her face. Underwater, underwater. Her nose … the heel of his hand on her nose … pain, so much pain. She can’t breathe. Her throat throbs. She gulps, chokes. She’s suffocating. She can’t move her … can’t move her head. She can’t … He’s too strong he’s too strong he’s too …
The weight of Ted’s hand pushes, pushes on her face, pain in her nose, pain in the back of her head. Her own hands are loose in the water. The life is draining from her. The life is … Jim’s hand on her waist. I’m a car crash. You’re not … The kids … the kids standing by a hole in the ground, a coffin being lowered into the earth … It’s her in the coffin … The kids have no mother, they don’t understand, they’ll never understand … The kids, alone with Ted … She’s dead, she’s dead and she can never tell them she’d never leave them … never … Some woman, some other woman in their lives, never able to love them like she does … Her kids are walking away. Come back, she calls after them. They’re walking away. The beach is white sand. Their backs, their little hooded coats … They’re little again, they’re only small, they’re only children … I’m coming. She’s runn
ing. Wait. Hang on. She’s running … running after her children on the white sand. The sand sucks at her feet, won’t let her run, but she has to reach her kids … Wait. I’m coming. Mummy’s coming. Hang on. Hang on, I’m …
The weight of Ted’s hand. Hands loose in the water. The weight, the weight …
The weight lifts.
She’s up, she’s out of the water. A gasp. Her own.
Ted crashes against the door frame. He lurches, goes growling down the landing.
She coughs. Grips the side of the bath. Not enough air – her mouth widens and sucks. Sucks. Filling her lungs. Gasping. Air. Air. Her head is light. It’s heavy. She rests it on the hard edge of the bath. Her nose throbs, the back of her head burns. She gathers up handfuls of foam and rubs her face. The smell of him is on her hands: cigarettes, whisky. Snivelling, she grabs the nailbrush. The nailbrush is in her hand. She stares at it.
A crash from the stairs. The picture. He’s knocked it off the wall. The picture of the kids, smashed.
‘Fuck.’ Ted. His shambling steps quieter now. She listens, holds her breath, hears the creaking thud as he hits the settee.
Forehead back on the side of the bath, she lets out a quiet, high wail. After a moment, she pulls her ragged bones out of the water, dries herself, throws on some clothes and ties back her wet hair. By the light of the bathroom, she scurries about. Into two sports bags, Graham’s rucksack, anything she can lay her hands on in the dark, she stuffs hers and the kids’ clothes. She creeps downstairs and puts the bags by the door. Ted is on the couch, snoring, on his back, mouth open. Her finger shivers in the dial as she calls a taxi: treble six treble nine. The dial tone is so loud, the number wheel crawls back from the nine so slowly she almost throws the whole lot at the wall. Into the handset she hisses her address, eyes fixed on Ted.
‘Ask him just to wait,’ she tells the cab lady. ‘Ask him to wait at the end of the drive, please. He mustn’t knock. Tell him to wait in the cab. We’ll be out. It might take us a few minutes, but we’ll be there.’
She cuts the line but doesn’t let go of the receiver. In the phone table are bills, scraps of paper and, bingo, the piece of card with a picture of a robin on a snowy branch. She turns it over, reads the number that Pauline gave her, makes the call she never thought she’d make.
Back upstairs, she wakes Graham and switches on Nicky’s bedside lamp. He screws up his eyes against the dull amber light.
‘Graham, love. We’re going now. This is it.’
‘What?’ He’s confused, still asleep, rubbing his eyes.
‘Your dad, love. We’re leaving him. Can you do it? Only it needs to be now. I need you to help me.’
Now he’s awake, awake and understanding everything. ‘Oh. Y-yeah. Y-yeah. OK.’
The sound of Nicky’s bed creaking, the sour-sweet smell of sleepy children. Nicky’s arms thread through the sleeves of her T-shirt, thin as strands of white wool. We’re going on a trip, Carol tells her. But it’s a secret trip. Nicola’s still half asleep. She’s only ten – doesn’t know if this is a dream or what. Ten. To be fleeing like this, to be homeless. Years later, when Carol thinks about this moment, she will wonder what she was thinking, what the hell she was thinking, and remember that she wasn’t thinking at all. There was no thought, only a kind of heat in her body, and this, this whispered, frantic movement in the fraught, electric darkness.
She puts her finger to her lips, pulls the two of them into a huddle and shuts the bedroom door. Their eyes shine, their clothes lumpy over their pyjamas. She tries to keep her voice steady, to guide the ship of it over the roaring waves.
‘We mustn’t wake your dad. We can’t wake him, all right?’
They nod. Halfway down the stairs, they pass the broken picture frame. She turns and puts her finger to her lips again.
‘Shh.’ She widens her eyes at them, gesticulates for them to be careful of the smashed glass. Mouths clamped shut, they give tight little nods. On the next step down, Ted cries out – a half-eaten protest. Graham’s teeth are clenched. His eyelids flutter, hover, almost close.
‘Don’t …’ Ted shouts. The rest collapses away to nothing. Silence.
There are eight more stairs to the front door. Then the catch. The catch will make a noise; she will have to tease it. The bags might knock against the door frame, the wall. They should leave them here and just go with what they have on. She can hear them all breathing in the dark. She can see them, as from above, halfway down the stairs. She makes a stop sign with her hand.
Ted gives a loud snore. Another beat; he snores again. She looks back to the front door and waits for a third snore, to be sure. When it comes, she turns back to the kids.
‘OK,’ she mouths. She gives a thumbs-up and creeps ahead down the stairs.
The latch makes a dull clunk as she pulls the lever. Her heart batters against her ribs. Sweat runs down the sides of her face. Slowly, slowly she pulls the door open and ushers the kids outside. For the last time, she glances at her husband, the father of her children. His jokes, his brown eyes, the lock of black hair that falls over one eye, his cocky way. His face red in hers, his spit in flecks on her cheek, his sickening words in her ears, the vice of his thick fingers on her arms, the unseen and sudden blow to the side of her head.
His mouth is open. His leg hangs off the sofa.
‘Goodbye, Ted,’ she whispers, and closes the door.
Ten
Carol
Huddled together in the taxi, stunned into silence, the kids stare out: round black eyes, knees pressed together. She has no right to drag them from their home. She has no right to ask them to stay. Through the dark, Graham smiles doubtfully at her and she knows then how worried he is, how scared. She should tell the driver to turn around and go back, she thinks. There was no time to tell Pauline. What on earth will she think when she gets back from her honeymoon? Will there even be a phone in this place? Is the place still a safe house?
Of course it is. Of course. She’s just called them, hasn’t she?
She realises she’s left the number at home and immediately a new cloud of panic mushrooms in her chest. Ted might find the number and trace it. He might … but no, no. Pauline is the only other person who would recognise that scrap of card.
It was the only time Pauline ever let on about the bruises, about what she must have heard through the wall for years. ‘It’s one of them shelters.’ She bit her bottom lip, unable to meet Carol’s eyes. Carol didn’t know what to say; simply stared at the card and let Pauline babble on. ‘A safe house, like, a refuge. Where you go if … you know … if you need to, like.’
The figures went in and out of focus.
‘It’s not like you could come to ours,’ Pauline went on. ‘He wouldn’t exactly have to be Sherlock Holmes, would he? I mean, we’re next bloody door.’ She laughed, though she still wasn’t looking at Carol. ‘I took a copy of it myself. Never know, I might come with you.’
All Carol could think was: Pauline knows. Of course she did; always had. That was friendship, wasn’t it? All the things you knew about each other, both knew you knew, but never said in words.
Eventually the cab slows, the gears surge. Nicola has fallen asleep against her brother. They’re driving through an estate, one Carol doesn’t recognise. A shudder and the cab stops outside a house. She peers out of the window. The refuge is just a house – after all that. Just a house in a row of other houses, all of them built around an area of grass with what looks like a community centre or a church. How daft she is. She was expecting an air-raid shelter or a World War Two bunker or something.
‘Here we are,’ the driver says, smiling at her in the rear-view. His eyes are brown, like Ted’s.
Nicola stretches. ‘Are we there?’
‘Yes, love.’ Carol ducks out of the cab and helps her drowsy, blinking children down. The cab driver’s dark, hairy forearm lies along the lowered window. He is humming softly.
‘How much?’ she asks.
He waves hi
s hand. ‘Don’t worry about it.’
‘Don’t be daft. How much?’ She meets his eyes, sees kindness. Pity. She takes out her purse, pulling out thirty pounds, all she has.
He shakes his head. ‘Good luck to you, sweetheart, all right? God bless you.’
Before she can protest, he pulls away.
She calls her thanks but he doesn’t hear. He’s reversing around the kerb, stopping now at a distance, making sure she gets in safe. There are good men in the world, she thinks.
She knocks softly on the door. Within seconds, a pale woman with long, thin white-blonde hair and buck teeth answers.
‘Come in, come in,’ she whispers, reaches forward for their bags.
Carol turns to see the cab drive away, a big black crow eating up breadcrumbs from the road, leaving no link between the house she’s left and the one she’s about to enter. She should get back. If she goes back now, Ted will never even know she’s been gone.
‘Come in, love, it’s cold.’ The woman’s accent is Northern, but Carol can’t pin it to anywhere specific.
‘I’m not sure I should …’ she begins. ‘I think I should …’
‘Come in, love,’ the woman says for the third time. ‘Come on, out of the cold.’
Carol nods, steps into the house after her children.
The woman tells them she’s Julie, the warden. She leads them upstairs. The carpet sinks under Carol’s shoes. Words run around in her head, words she’s trying out to make some sense of them, for herself, for the kids.
Your dad isn’t well.
We have to let your dad be on his own for a while.