To Keep You Safe

by Kate Bradley

  But how was she there waiting for me?

  I pulled on the joint as I tried to figure it out, how she was waiting for me outside the school in school time. It only needed a moment to think it through, it was so simple. I had a note from the children’s home staff, to request that I leave early for my dentist appointment. That note would’ve been put on the computer system. She could’ve easily looked me up, seen I had permission to leave early and made her own excuses. I walked out of the front doors, down the drive, out of the school gates, completely legitimately, and she was there waiting for me. Her, in her head, believing I had somehow bunked over the school gates, as I was so fearful of my beloved Aleksander, although I was running straight to him.

  Gary asked me if I was OK.

  ‘She invented it all,’ I told them both, hearing my own incredulity in my voice. ‘She imagined I’d asked her for help. But I’d never asked her for help. I didn’t even want her help. But the worst time was—’ When she punched you, Aleksander, in the face and led me away. But I realised that was the wrong thing to say. He’d crossed his arms, his huge muscles bulging under his sleeve tattoos.

  I’d never seen anyone beat Aleksander in a fight and, of course, Miss was a woman. Although she wasn’t like any woman I’d ever met before: she was supercharged. She was strong and tall like a man and she didn’t let anyone tell her what to do. Even the toughest boys in school did what Miss told them to do. I’d even see her take apart the headmaster before. Despite her crazy ideas, I realised a small part of me admired her.

  ‘What was the worst time, Destiny?’

  I lifted my chin and looked Aleksander directly in the eye. ‘Being without you.’

  He touched my cheek. ‘You’re a good girl,’ he said with real pride. He then told Gary to fuck off and leave us alone for a moment. Gary got up saying he would get downstairs ready for tonight and went off into the cellar.

  Then Aleksander came up close to me and put his arms around me. I could smell his aftershave again; he wears too much but he won’t listen. I thought of him putting his dick into me while holding his gun at my head. He’d done it a couple of times before and maybe it was becoming a bit of a habit. ‘I’m sorry, Destiny, that I didn’t stop her taking you. I fucked up.’ He put a gentle finger under my chin and pulled it up so he could look me in the eyes. ‘I am sorry.’

  I shut my eyes briefly, then kissed him, quick, before he could stick his tongue in. ‘I love you, Aleksander.’

  ‘And I love you, Destiny.’ He kissed me softly on the tip of my nose and then smiled and I could see his gold tooth. ‘And I’m going to fuck up that cunt so she regrets the day she ever saw you.’

  I kissed him again. This time I put my tongue in his mouth first and he made a noise like he was pleased. When I broke away, I said to him, ‘Good.’ And I realised that this time I meant it. Because away from her and the situation, I couldn’t see her good points – like she was kind to me and wanted to help me – all I could feel was the fear of her dragging me away in public, pushing me into her car and then, when I thought I was free, punching Aleksander, beating the one person who made me feel safe and taking me away from him again. She had decided that she knew what was best for me. And all my life, that’s what I’ve had from social services, taking me away from where I really want to be, and making me live somewhere where there’s no safety, only fear. And despite the fact that she meant well, I realised that that counts for nothing, because lots of people mean well, but it doesn’t mean that they act well. And whether someone is ruining my life because of a heroin addiction or because of a risk assessment or because they’ve gone mad, in the end it doesn’t mean any different to me because they’re still making me feel scared and powerless. And I realised, that if Aleksander wanted to fuck her up, I wasn’t going to stand in his way. Sometimes I watched him do stuff and although I wouldn’t want to actually watch him with this one, I did mean it.

  Good.

  Saturday

  00:02

  Aleksander

  I watch Gary draw. Destiny bought him one of those artist’s pads and a pack of colouring pens. I swear he’s just a big kid. He loves it – everywhere he goes, out comes the sketch pad. All he draws is leaves and flowers but not like I thought he would. They’re good, good enough to sell – not that I’d tell him that. They’re proper detailed pictures that look real. Curling autumn leaves; pretty daisies. Destiny says its proper too – she says it’s botanical art. My lady is super smart.

  *

  We dance together, her and me. She has her arms around my neck, but they’re not holding me tight. Her arms are straight, resting on my shoulders, like I’m scaffolding holding her up. Or perhaps I’m convenient. Perhaps, if there was somebody else, another man, then she would let them hold her up too.

  My hands tighten around her waist. She moves, a flex, to encourage me to loosen my hold. Instead, I tighten again, like the python. She can never get away.

  I like that part of her body, where it narrows down to her hips before they flare out. I pull her to me and inhale her smell. It’s her deodorant and something else I can smell in her hair, perhaps shampoo. She doesn’t wear perfume; no matter how much I buy for her, she won’t wear it. She says she will when I complain, but she doesn’t.

  Under her other smells, I can smell her sweat. Her arms are bare and I lift the right one up. Underneath, the flesh is soft, smooth and I nuzzle it before I get the urge to bite. The smell of sweat is stronger there. Despite her faults, I love her so much, sometimes it scares me. I want to consume her, take her into me so that she can be only mine. I bite her there, where it is soft, and feel her body stiffen: that excites me. I want to do it again, but I can see that I’ve already left my teeth marks red against the pale of her skin. I know that the wanting to makes me like my father.

  Of course I am like him, but I mind less now that I have decided that my children will not be. Destiny will be their mother. I will put a baby in her as soon as she is twenty-one. Together we will raise them to be so much better than us. They will be the finest of the fine. Good people will look up to them.

  Destiny will be a good mother. She wants the chance to start our own family. She has none of her own who are any good. Her own mother is a drug-soaked slag. I know it because I met her mother first, through Jakob. Her mother, Simone, was getting her brown from him, cutting it and passing it on to other people. She had a wicked sense of humour, laughed lots and had a great pair of legs. Shrewd too, she did all right. When Jakob knew I liked Destiny, he asked Simone out for him and Destiny for me.

  But Simone let her down. We didn’t know that Destiny wasn’t supposed to be with her mother, but instead was running away from foster homes to be with her. When Simone was nicked for dealing, the social workers found out and put her into a secure unit. After Destiny was gone, it changed. The magic left for Jakob. Family is important to us and she’d let Destiny down. We didn’t know about the beatings, about the men. It was good Simone was nicked – I think it would’ve been worse for her if we had sorted her.

  But for nearly five months, we were a happy four: Jakob and Simone, me and Destiny.

  I was disappointed when it finished: I had enjoyed spending time with my uncle, taking the women to fancy restaurants. I was still new to the country then and it wasn’t just Destiny I fell in love with. I loved London the most: the buildings, the food, the cars, the nightlife. I loved it all, but most of all I loved the class. I loved the feeling of being important, of being stylish. I loved that it made me feel anything was possible.

  It was a crazy time; we went everywhere together. Jakob had enough money for us all – anything we wanted. He knew things at home were dead for me, he told me he wanted me to see that there was something else. The four of us saw that something else together. Although Destiny was still fourteen, she was well developed and with make-up she passed for eighteen. We went out every night; we made a strange little family and we used to joke that Destiny was my cousin. It was nice –
I had never gone anywhere with my family and now we had a tight little group: a beautiful girl on my arm, Destiny’s mother and my uncle. Together we lived the life: Jakob gave me a taste of what it was like to have money, how money let you fit in. I felt the power of sitting in a Bentley. I will have a Bentley one day and then I will truly feel that I’ve made it.

  Jakob’s business is still going well. I’m glad for him – he is a good uncle and I owe him a lot. It’s his contacts that set me up. Have everything that is mine, he said, but stay out of my patch. I thought of him sharing a meal at my house when I was a small boy and I thought of us now, sharing expensive wine. Times had changed, we’d moved on, but he was still my uncle, sharing what he had with me, trying to help me.

  Our agreement was that I work the north, so he can keep the south. The only issue was when Destiny was moved south. Although the care home has given up fighting her about leaving with me at the weekends, she ain’t going back now. We are done pretending. They think I am her cousin anyway. At the time she was taken back into care, her mum was still with Jakob, so it was true. Destiny’s mum told them I was her cousin, but why they believed that stoned cow, I don’t know. Sometimes people choose to believe something if it suits them. And when they choose, most people pick the easy option.

  I think of that now, with Destiny in my arms as we move to the music. I think about what she tells me: that she will love me for ever, that she will have my babies, be my wife. I feel a flicker of doubt. Am I believing her because it suits me? Am I making a choice?

  I remember Simone looking at me one night. She was stoned and she looked at me, my arm around Destiny as Destiny cuddled up to me, like something was funny. What’s making you laugh, woman? I asked her. Destiny, her mother said. I asked her why. Because she’s like me, Simone said. She’s a survivor.

  I thought of the rats we caught that we drowned in the well when I was a kid. I remember how they would scrabble on their dead brothers and sisters to try and stay afloat. I thought of how me and a boy from the village would watch with our torches, fascinated how they would do anything to survive. Was I just another body for Destiny to scrabble up from, in her desperation to stay alive?

  I’m not dancing now; I’m only holding her tight. She’s stopped trying to move and lets me stand like this for a while.

  She knows I will never let her go.

  Saturday

  00:06

  Destiny

  The doorbell went again; my job was to play party girl hostess with the mostess and answer it with a beaming smile. ‘Come in!’ I yelled over the noise of the party to the group standing on the doorstep. Part of the evening involved weeding the right people out from the wrong, but that came later. To start with, nearly everyone was welcome. Because even if they weren’t right, they might have brought someone with them who was.

  In they came, loads of them, the invite having been passed round from groups of strangers to groups of strangers – social networking made my job easy. All of them thought they were the lucky ones, getting into a house party, when really, we were the ones who were lucky.

  The gig was always the same, no matter what town we were in. This bit was always ‘my’ part. My patter was that this is my parents’ house and they’re away for the weekend. It didn’t matter that I don’t know these people – everyone assumed everyone else was my friend. Everyone assumed this was a normal situation.

  The bell sounded again. This time there were six people on the doorstep, two boys, and four girls, all around seventeen. I heard the clink of booze in carrier bags. I gave one of them a high-five and they went into the kitchen. They’re all here for one thing: a good time. My job was to create the good time – until that’s no longer needed.

  I’d barely shut the door before the bell rang again. I opened it and this time it was six girls, definitely too old, but I let them in anyway.

  The music was loud enough for a party, but quiet enough not to bother the neighbours too much. We’ve marked the right volume on the stereo in Tippex. We can never risk the police.

  I hung around, twitchy from the coke, twitchy from the adrenalin from the day, twitchy about the evening. Jay and Ollie chatted people up, poured drinks, lined up lines for the lucky girls and gave the boys too-strong joints or machoed them into pulling a cone on a bong. Within a couple of hours, there’d be the usual divide of over-hyped girls and sleeping boys.

  But that would come later.

  The door had eventually quietened down, so I started a bit of vetting. I was the best at this because I’m a girl and they trusted me – by ‘they’, I mean the girls trusted me. The lighting was low, and I moved through the shadows like a jaguar. It felt good to be the one doing the hunting. I felt powerful. In my entire life, it was only doing this that ever stopped me feeling like the victim.

  I wore skinny jeans – the ones Miss bought me – and a pair of heels and a low-cut top that I’d left upstairs ready, when we were doing up the place. And my short blonde wig. I loved it. It was made of real hair and dead convincing, especially after I lopped six inches off my own hair to make it fit right. Aleksander wouldn’t be happy when he’d clocked my cut, but as I twiddled a lock into place, I knew I loved this look and would cut all my hair off and dye it blonde as soon as I could. For now, though, it would remain. With my make-up done, I knew I passed for eighteen. I also knew that someone might try to chat me up, so it was just as well that Aleksander was out of the way. He used to be cool with it, with me being the honeypot, but I’d noticed it had worn too thin for him. He couldn’t bear anyone else touching me, which considering how I came to know him, is pretty funny really.

  I kept to beer. I opened it myself, I held on to it, drank it quickly and it was fine.

  I had a long conversation with two girls who are seventeen. I found out where they live, what their parents do, what their relationship was like with their parents. Stuff like that can really help. I offered them a line upstairs and one accepted. The other hesitated and made an excuse that she had a cold. I shrugged and then turned to the other – a pretty dark-haired girl – and asked, ‘Are you coming anyway?’

  She said yes, and I thought: gotcha. It’s crucial to know if she would leave her friend behind and she would. We went upstairs and I looked down over the banister and her friend seemed relaxed, leaning against the wall drinking from her glass. It’s a glass from Ollie; I know this because we are careful to use certain glasses for certain things – that way the wrong person doesn’t get drugged.

  The bathroom was occupied so I took her into ‘my room’. I got a kick from kitting this room out – I chose posters of bands I don’t listen to, and got a duvet set, mattress and a second-hand wardrobe, which if anyone looked inside they would find empty. It all cost less than thirty quid from the same place as the sofa.

  I blew the top of the chest of drawers to make sure it was clean, then tipped out some coke from my wrap. It’s great shit, but then it should be, because Aleksander bought it in directly from the importer. There were still crystals in it, so I used my bank card to flatten them before I cut it even finer. I then made two generous lines. I’ve got my eye on her, so I’m happy to blast her socks off.

  I found a note and rolled it into a tube. Since Aleksander, I’ve always had a real wedge folded in my pocket. Someone at my last children’s home, not far from here, before they moved me all the way down south, must’ve noticed, because a social worker came to talk to me about it. They thought I was turning tricks. I felt like shouting at them: do you think I’m stupid? Do you think I’m my mother? But I didn’t. I looked out of the window and tried to be as bland and non-committal as possible. Looking back, I suspect it went against me. I bet they talked about my cash flow in my review. We’re allowed to know what is discussed, but I refused to be patronised by their condescension and filtered information, so I haven’t asked, but it may have contributed to my move out of the area.

  I put the end of the tube in my nose and inhaled.

  For a moment
, everything went sexy marshmallow and I thought nothing about anything except how I felt in that moment. Electric ooze. Vibrant power.

  I passed the rolled note to her and watched: she looked confused. Good. Another tick on the ol’ checklist. And there was an actual checklist that the four of us – not Gary – devised together.

  ‘Block one nostril with your finger, like this,’ I said, as I pressed my fingertip against my right nostril. ‘Most people have a favourite side, where they can inhale more strongly. Why not try?’

  The girl practised with one side and then the other. ‘I think my right side is strongest,’ she said tentatively.

  I gave her an impressed face. ‘That’s supposed to be a sign of genius,’ I told her. It was meant to be a joke, but she looked pleased. This girl could give Gary a run for his money. That’s another tick. The blue-eyed, reasonably pretty girl started to look like the rabbit and if she was, I realised, we could get to bed before two. Right then, that idea was amazing. ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Macey.’

  ‘Well, Macey, who’s very possibly a genius, take a blast.’

  She bent over and inhaled, following down the line. She was too far away, so her hoovering was poor.

  ‘Closer!’

  She obliged and did better. When she sat up, I thought her eyes were going to pop out.

  ‘Good, hey?’

  She couldn’t speak. She couldn’t even look at me. But I thought she was happy.

  I took another pop and offered her another. Although she’d clearly had enough and she should say no, she agreed. Another tick.

  ‘So,’ I asked her after she came back to earth after her line. ‘Macey, I think you said you’re at college?’

  She nodded, expression tranquil. ‘Catering,’ she said, then added, ‘but only part-time, which is just as well because it’s super boring. We have to do all the stuff with numbers and I didn’t think it would be like that but what’s even worse is customer service which I thought I would . . .’