by Anna Bloom
“Shit.” I grab at my keys and fumble with them, trying to get the right key. Dan takes them, his fingers smoothing over mine, and slots the right key into the lock.
Inside nothing meets us apart from an eerie quiet. “Mum!” I call, shattering the silence.
“Sienna?”
I almost drop with relief when I hear her call back.
I grab Dan’s hand and run for where her call had come from, at the back of the house, in the kitchen.
“Maybe Dad’s out?” I say to Dan as we turn the corner and enter into the farmhouse style kitchen. The scene in front of me makes no sense. Mum’s whole body is shaking, a red mark across her cheek. But hanging loosely in her hands is one of Marta’s large stainless-steel frying pans.
“Mum?” My brain is chugging like a steam train on an uphill.
“Oh crap.” Dan leaps into action kneeling at the misformed shape of my father on the floor. He’s bent all crooked like he’s made from paper and has been tossed out with yesterday’s newspaper.
“Sienna,” Mum says. “I just had to make him stop.” She walks for the Range and places the frying pan down like she’s about to make an omelette. “I think he’s stopped now.”
“He’s got a pulse.”
My gaze swivels to Dan who’s crouched next to my dad.
“Sienna!” he shouts. “Call an ambulance and the police.”
Mum’s eyes widen. “The police?”
A burst of adrenaline rushes through my veins and I pull my phone out of my pocket and dial. Just as quick as I start, I stop.
Dan’s eyes harden on me. “Sienna, you need to dial now. His pulse is weak.”
I can’t make myself do it though. If I didn’t, and he died, this would all be over. Every bad weekend, every forced dinner, every bruise and every cut on my mother's skin. We’d be able to grieve for Will, properly.
“What would Will do?” I stare at mum wide-eyed. “What would Will want me to do?”
A tear drips down her face and then another. My own chase along my cheeks, faster and faster until uncontrollable sobs wrack my body and I drop my phone. Through the veil of saltwater, I see Dan grab it and finish hitting the buttons. “There’s been a domestic fight.” He turns to me. “Sienna, what’s the address?”
I take a moment to remember the road my old family home is in.
“Yes, my girlfriend’s father has attacked her mum, but she’s hit him in self-defence.” Dan is saying all the words I should I have thought of. All I have in my brain is static, an endless buzzing sound. “He’s got a weak pulse. We’ve just walked in and found them. She’s injured too.”
His eyes are on me and I know he’s giving her the emergency call that will help her defence in court if it goes that far.
I kneel next to Dan, the cold flagstones of the kitchen pressing into my kneecaps and I slide my hands around him. “Thank you,” I whisper. “Thank you.”
He brushes a kiss across my hair.
I can’t stop looking at my dad. The man who has terrorised us all for years doesn’t look any kind of man at all right now.
I cry. For my mum; for Will, the brother I miss so much; for every single moment of destruction I’ve had to fight my way through.
Then across the room my mother's voice cuts through my tears. “Is this the man with the tattoos, Sienna?”
I blink up at her, trying to see her through the tears. “Yes.” My bottom lip wobbles uncontrollably.
“He seems like a very nice man.”
Epilogue
The sun is warming and while winter was hardly a winter at all, the warmth of spring lands with a heated kiss on my skin.
“I can’t believe we’ve got to fly back already. It feels like we’ve only just got here.” Sienna stretches on her sun lounger next to mine and I drink in the satin skin I love so much. Despite her pouting she still only has one tattoo inked on her canvas of perfection, and that’s the way it will stay. For as long as I get a say in the matter, which I think may well be forever.
Ibiza has been a heaven-sent gift.
A time for us to just be. Sienna and Dan. Two people wrapped up in crazy love.
“I promised Elijah I would be there for the court case. Are you sure you don’t want to come? I know Faith would be so pleased to see you there.” Sienna speaks to Elijah often, although she’s asked him not to tell anyone else where we are.
Since the police cars came that fateful Saturday, and the press were all over the story of the Richards falling apart, Sienna has wanted to live low key.
Can’t get more low key than manning the reception at Big Bad Barry’s ink shop during the day and then drinking cocktails with me every night until we fall into bed.
What a life.
Seriously what a fucking life.
I pick up my beer and tilt my head up towards the sky. You’d have loved this, Dad, I think. Stupid bugger could have had the time of his life if he’d done something like this all those years ago. But then I wouldn’t have got the life I had, and I don’t think I would change it for anything.
“Can I be honest?” I meet her gaze. “I don’t need to be there. She has her crew now, so many people that care for her, but it’s taken me a long time to put the demons from our youth to bed. She’ll understand that I don’t want to bring them back to life by hearing it all again.”
Sienna nods, her green gaze sweeping and deep. “You don’t have nightmares anymore. Nothing makes me happier.”
I lean over and kiss her mouth, lingering and sweet. “I no longer have anything to have nightmares about.”
Another kiss. Another perfect moment I never thought I’d find. “And anyway, I’ll be there for the surprise wedding.” She will be massive. I can’t even imagine what her ink will look like. I chuckle to myself, turning slightly on my sun lounger, running a hand over the gentle tiny swell of Sienna’s tummy.
Some surprises are welcome, and while I know when Faith and I do finally talk she’ll tell me this is purely a case of my FOMO, I know I’ll just laugh and know otherwise.
This was a decision made by Sienna and me. Two people who want to be a family.
“So you think she will enjoy the secret wedding idea? Elijah isn’t sure, but he’s kind of running with it.”
I squint up into the sky and remember the Faith of my youth, the girl so bright and bold and I know she’ll be that woman again once she’s received justice—I’ve seen someone else flourish under the freedom of escaping repression. She’s sitting right by my side. “I think she’ll love it and squeal a lot.”
“How do you feel knowing you are going back, but no longer own any stake in your home town?”
I snigger and take a swig of my beer. “Like when we were there last month signing the paperwork, I'll feel it was the best fucking idea I ever had.”
Her hand lands on my chest, pressing against my sun-warmed skin. “I love you, Dan Smith.”
“And I love you. And I’ll miss you while you’re gone.”
“Me too.”
I kiss her again. Never enough with the kisses. “Oh, one last thing. Can you make sure your mother isn’t doing a naked limbo with Enrique when I get home this time?”
Sienna snorts. “That’s the best all of us can hope for.”
Two weeks pass quickly, my thoughts are with her. Every minute spent waiting to hear her voice, wondering how she is. Worried that something bad will happen to her.
When the plane lands at Heathrow it’s like I can breathe again. No one has ever seen a grown man run quite that fast through passport control and customs before.
When she’s in my arms, her body pressed against mine, then I can breathe.
“Marry me,” I whisper into her hair as I swirl her around in the air.
Her eyes shine a brilliant green, who see me like no other. “Try to stop me.”
I tuck her into my side, and we walk for the car park. “Is your mother decent?”
“Yes, yes. She’s given Enrique the boot and now Ray
is the man of the month.”
“Bloody hell. She’s moving fast.”
“Making up for lost time.” She grins up at me and I pop a kiss onto her lips.
“How’s Faith?”
“Totally and utterly oblivious.” She slants a glance up at me. “About the wedding. And honestly, I think the moment the trial was over she was just so relieved. It was like she could just live life.”
“Tell me how big she is, so I don’t laugh when I see her.”
“Huge. Don’t let me get that big. Please.”
“I think that’s mother nature you have to take that up with.”
I run my hand across her belly. “Has anyone guessed?”
“Nope.”
“Good. Let’s keep it that way. I like this incognito life we have.”
“So do I. Have I mentioned I missed you?”
“Not yet.”
“I missed you.”
Later I’m leant against the pier at Brighton. Only my childhood friend could get married and not know about it. It seems so Faith.
I haven’t seen her since the fateful day when I stormed out of her house and straight into Sienna. Whereas for a long time I thought I’d hate to see her again, that I’d never get over the pain our tangled lives caused, now as I stand and wait for her to come into view, an old and familiar spark of anticipation settles inside me. One thing is crystal clear to me. That awful day where I shared a secret I promised to take to the grave; it was a life defining moment, but only for the woman it brought into my life. It was my moment.
My phone vibrates and I pull it out of my pocket. It’s Abs. Checking I’m not going to fuck everything up.
You'd better be here.
Smiling I type back a quick response.
I’m here. With Adam. Freezing my tits off.
I put my phone back into my pocket, brushing my hand across Sienna’s back. It’s hard to keep my hands off her, and part of me desperately wants everyone to know she’s mine, but part of me also wants to keep this good thing we’ve got just for ourselves.
“She’s coming.” Adam all but breaks my ribs as he elbows me. I follow his gaze and catch a sight I never thought I’d see. Faith in white walking along the pebbles of the beach. Even from this distance I can see the tears on her face, but unlike months ago, years ago, when I would have fought anyone to wipe them off, I know that’s a job for another man.
Instead, I turn to the woman I love by my side and I wipe the tears off her skin. “Isn’t it just wonderful?” she says.
“It is.” I kiss her, firm and hard, unable to stop myself, uncaring who sees. “You go, I’m going to hang back.”
“Are you okay?” A flicker of panic flashes across her face.
“Darling, I am more than fine.”
She walks up with Adam, following the wedding party and I step back as Elijah, His Lordship, the man I can only admire, kneels down and asks Faith to marry him.
Bit fucking late if you ask me.
Then they all walk past and I can see Faith is searching the crowd, her head twisting this way and that as she clutches Elijah’s hand.
I peel myself from the lamppost I’m leaning against and wait for her glance to land my way. Her expression when it does says it all. I nod and smile and go to walk away, but Abi who is as wily as a fox grabs my elbow.
“Not a chance. I don’t know where you’ve been, Dan Smith, but this is where you belong.”
Sienna is grinning, the wind whipping her hair across her face and I offer her a broad wink.
“It is.” Somewhere up above I know my dad is looking down, and he’s watching the kids he helped bring up grow and learn, and I know in my heart he’d be damn happy with how it all finally turned out.
I mutter my words so low no one else can hear, “She’s where I belong,” and as we follow the bride and groom down towards the Registry Office, I know the scars of the past have finally healed once and for all.
The End.