by Ruth Mancini
“So have you got a pen?” Lindsay was asking. “I’ll give you the address. I have to leave for work at around eleven thirty, but Martin should be home by four. And if not, as you say, you can just pop it through the letterbox.”
“I’ll probably do that,” I agreed.
Next, I dialled Oli’s number. I left a message to tell him about my mum and that I wouldn’t be back at work for a day or two. I located my mum’s car keys and packed her a bag of clean clothes, a clean nightdress – just in case – her wash stuff and the two library books that were sitting on her bedside cabinet, both with bookmarks in. I drove to the local Tesco Express for petrol and at the checkout bought her a tasty-looking poached salmon sandwich, a carton of grapes and a pack of custard creams. Her favourites.
She was sitting up in bed when I arrived, looking loads better. The consultant had done his rounds and had said she would be allowed to go home later that afternoon, once she’d been shown how to inject herself with the blood-thinning agent she’d been prescribed and once her levels had been monitored for another few hours. When I saw Keri’s head outside in the corridor, I immediately jumped up and ran out to meet her.
“Mum’s fine, don’t worry,” I told her, seeing the look of alarm spreading across her face. “She can come home today, in fact. It’s all good news.”
She breathed out. “Phew. So... what’s up?”
I took a deep breath. “Keri, please keep this to yourself.”
She nodded. “Of course. I promise. What is it?”
“I really don’t want Helena to know.”
Keri nodded again. “Okay.”
“I’ve discovered that she’s been seeing her father.”
Keri gasped. “Seriously?”
“Yeah. Anyway, she wasn’t at a competition yesterday and she wasn’t in Bath. She was in Cambridge, at his house. That’s how she managed to get here so quickly.”
Keri looked at me and nodded slowly. “Wow,” she said. She didn’t drive and her geography was hopeless. I could tell she had no idea where Bath was.
“So, anyway, I found a wallet belonging to her half-brother, Sky.”
“Oh yeah. She told me all about him.”
“Right. Well, I found it. Last night. Cut a long story short, I phoned her dad’s house and spoke to his girlfriend and I pretended to be you.”
“You did what?” Keri looked alarmed.
“Don’t worry. I’m just going to go round there and drop it through the letter box, that’s all.”
She frowned. “Why did you pretend to be me?”
“Because I don’t want any contact with her dad. It was just easier that way. But if Helena phones you and thanks you for finding and returning the wallet, could you please just say ‘You’re welcome’? Please? For me?”
Keri looked at me for a moment. I thought she was going to be angry with me, but instead she just said, ”So where did I find it?”
I smiled. “Thanks, Sis. I owe you one. You found it on the pavement outside your flat, this morning. In the exact spot where Helena’s car was last night.”
Keri nodded. “Got it,” she said, though I could see she was still asking herself all sorts of questions. She opened her mouth. “Why...?”
“I’ve gotta go.” I kissed her. “I don’t want to bump into him. I’ll be back in a couple of hours.”
14
I was vaguely satisfied to see that Martin lived in a small terraced house on a council housing estate in Cherry Hinton. If he’d owned a great big mansion in the City or on the river somewhere, I’d have probably been tempted to commit an act of vandalism. I parked opposite and looked at the clock on my mum’s dashboard, which said it was eleven o’clock. It was clearly wrong. I pulled my phone out of my bag. It was five past two. I picked up Sky’s wallet and got out of the car. My legs seemed to have turned to jelly and I stumbled a little as I crossed the road.
Don’t be silly, I told myself. They’ll both be at work.
But as I walked down the path to the house, my hand outstretched, ready to lift the letterbox, the door swung open quickly and Martin stepped out to meet me. I stopped in my tracks. My knees were so weak that I thought they might actually give way, so I stood stock still on the path in front of him, searching desperately for the right thing to say.
“I brought this,” I said, and held out Sky’s wallet.
“So I hear.” Martin looked straight into my eyes, his facial muscles unmoving. He held out his hand and snatched the wallet from me. He put it into his back pocket and continued to stare at me as though that exchange had never happened, as if I was someone he’d never seen before. Then he said, loudly. “What are you doing here? Why can’t you just leave me alone?”
“I told you,” I said, my voice breaking up with fear. I cleared my throat. “I came to bring...”
“What do you want from me?” he shouted at me, making me jump.
In truth, I had no idea. The last thing I’d expected was for him to be at home. I’d simply wanted to find out the truth about what was going on, to see where he lived, to check out where Helena was spending her time. I’d struck lucky, it was true, when Lindsay had answered the phone, but I didn’t really have a plan as to what I would do once I’d put the wallet through the letterbox. I hadn’t got to that stage just yet.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I thought you’d be at work.”
I hated myself for being so feeble and demonstrably scared in front of him, but he’d caught me off guard, and I didn’t know how to explain my presence to him. It was pretty obvious by now that he’d seen through my pretence about the wallet, that it had just been an excuse to go to his house. I realised it had been pretty stupid. But on the other hand, now that he was stood there in front of me, I couldn’t just walk away. I had to do something; I needed to see what his intentions were towards my daughter.
I said, “I need to talk to you.”
Martin’s expression remained hostile. His arms were folded defensively across his chest. I then noticed his eyes flicker slightly to the left. I turned my head to see a woman, who looked to be in her late sixties, surveying us from the front garden next door.
“It’s alright, Mrs Bennett,” Martin called to her. “I can handle this. Don’t worry. Everything’s okay.”
The woman nodded and carried on up the path to her house, still glancing back at us as she went. Martin watched as she turned the key in the lock and disappeared inside. Then, all of a sudden, his face broke into a huge smile. “Well. Lizzie. What a pleasant surprise,” he said softly. “Come on in.”
“I don’t really want to,” I said, taken aback at his sudden change in tone. “Can we just talk here?”
“It’s kind of a busy neighbourhood, as you can see,” Martin whispered to me, and gave me a wink. “Dirty laundry and all that... best aired behind closed doors. Come on in.” He took a step back and held the door open for me.
“I’d rather not,” I said.
Martin shrugged. “Suit yourself.” He started to close the door in my face.
“Wait!” I put one palm up against the door and it stopped.
Martin opened it again. “Look, if you want to talk, that’s fine,” he said, “But I’m not into street theatre. That’s for chavs.” He could see me wavering. “Come on.” He inclined his head in the direction of the kitchen behind him. His voice was now friendly and warm. “Kettle’s just boiled. What do you want? Tea or coffee?”
I stepped into the hallway and followed him into the kitchen.
“Oh. Helena’s hat,” he said, picking my daughter’s royal blue baseball cap up off the bottom stair and handing it to me. “She left it here. It was all a bit of a rush, yesterday, what with your mum and everything. I hope she’s okay?”
“She’s much better,” I said. I stood and watched as Martin fetched two mugs from the cupboard and put a teabag in each one. I looked at Helena’s hat for a moment and then tucked it into my bag. “How long was she here?” I couldn’t help but ask. I ne
eded to know how entrenched their relationship was. “How many times has she stayed?”
Martin turned to me and smiled. “You’d think I’d be the one with all the questions about her, wouldn’t you? After all these years?”
I didn’t answer. “I don’t want any tea,” I said.
Martin shrugged. “Fine. So what do you want?”
“I want to know what you want from her. What your intentions are.”
“My intentions?” Martin poured milk into his cup and stirred it for a good long minute, his back to me. He turned to face me again. “I’m her father. What do you think my intentions are?”
I looked him directly in the eye. I was feeling braver, now that the shock of being caught walking up his garden path had worn off. “You tell me.”
He leaned against the worktop and sipped his tea. “I want to get to know my daughter,” he said. “Obviously.”
“Why?”
“Why? Why do you think? Because she’s eighteen and I didn’t know about her until five minutes ago, that’s why.”
“There are good reasons for that,” I told him.
“Are there, now?” Martin nodded silently for a moment. “You think that you falling out with Cath was a good reason not to tell me about my own child?”
I shook my head in disbelief. “Me falling out with Catherine? You’re trying to suggest that’s all there was to it? As if that wasn’t your fault in the first place!”
Martin gave me a look of contempt. “My fault? How was it my fault? You tried to split the two of us up, and after that she didn’t want to know you. Who could blame her?”
I could feel the anger rising inside me. “That’s not what happened and you know it! You raped me!”
Martin set his tea down on the worktop and leaned back against it, his arms folded. “Raped you? What the fuck are you going on about? You’re deluded, d’you know that?” He put his forefinger to his temple and made a circular motion. “You’re off your head. God knows how you dragged that girl up by yourself. Eighteen years of your bullshit, she’s had to put up with. No wonder she had to leave the country to get away from you. She must have had it up to here,” he thrust his hand up against his chin, “with your drivel...”
“You know what you did,” I said, firmly, looking him squarely in the face, though his words had stung me.
“...And then you follow her. She still can’t get away from you. You’re there, wherever she goes, like a frigging leech. She just can’t seem to shake you off, can she?”
His words cut into me. Had Helena been talking about me to him? Complaining about me? I knew that I’d been a little overprotective in recent months, but I’d had good reason.
“I’ve had good reason to want to keep her away from you,” I ventured.
“She’s my daughter, and she wants to get to know me. Get used to it,” he said. “Because by the time I’m finished, she won’t want to know you.”
Angry tears sprang to my eyes. “I knew it. I knew what you were after. You don’t care about her. You’re just using her to get back at me.”
Martin leaned back against the worktop again for a moment and stared at me in stony silence. Then he said. “You think you can get one over on me, do you? Eh? You think you’re clever? Eighteen years of her fucking life you’ve kept her from me.”
“And why do you think? Why do you think I left the country? You raped me.”
“Bullshit. You threw yourself at me. You were desperate.”
“I was asleep!”
“You wanted me. You couldn’t get enough of me. You were gagging for it.”
”I didn’t want you. I wanted my friendship with Catherine, so I tolerated you. But I never wanted you and you couldn’t stand that. So you made sure that Catherine wouldn’t want to know me.”
“She didn’t want to know you because you had sex with her fiancé! Some friend you turned out to be.”
“You slept with her best friend, but she forgave you.”
“She knew it was you who came on to me, that’s why. I’m a red-blooded man, after all. When you’ve got some woman throwing herself at you, well...”
“That’s what you told her, but it’s not what happened.”
“I didn’t have to tell her. She saw it with her own eyes. You were always flirting with me.”
“No I wasn’t! You just saw what you wanted to see, and so did she.”
Martin ignored me and continued, “And it wasn’t just me, was it? Look at that poor bloody sod you were messing around, that nurse guy. You were in his bed a couple of weeks before. You’re just a cheap tart.”
“My relationship with Tim was nothing to do with you. You were jealous of him. You wanted what he had.”
Martin threw his head back and roared with laughter. “You think I was jealous of him? That pathetic excuse for a man. He followed you around like a puppy and he still wasn’t getting any.” He stood up straight and flexed his muscles. “You think I have to beg women to sleep with me?”
I shook my head. “No. You just force yourself on them, instead.”
“I didn’t have to force you,” he sneered. “I didn’t have to try at all. You just lay there like a sack of spuds...”
“I was asleep!” I shouted, again. “That’s why. I was practically unconscious, and you know it!” My breath came out in short gasps. There was a steady throbbing in my left temple; it felt as though my head might explode. “You knew those friends of Shelley’s had either drugged me or poisoned me with alcohol, and you decided to just jump on that bandwagon – after kicking them out! You packed them off home and then you had sex with me, without my consent. That’s rape!”
Suddenly Martin lunged towards me. He took hold of both my wrists and bent my arms back, hard. I dropped my bag to the floor and shouted out in pain. He leaned forward and hissed into my ear. “That wasn’t rape. You wanna know what rape is?”
He continued to apply pressure to my wrists, twisting my arms and forcing me to the ground at the same time, until I dropped to my knees. He then let go of one of my wrists and swiftly clamped his hand over my mouth, lowering himself to the ground and pushing me back onto the floor. I swung my free hand at his face and raked my nails down his cheek as hard as I could. He slapped me round the head and I felt my ear burning. I then tried to open my mouth to bite him, but his hand was pressed so tightly against my pursed lips and part of my nose that it was all I could do to breathe. We stayed like that, nose to nose for a moment, staring into each other’s eyes.
“Now, then Lizzie. Are you going to behave yourself?” he asked me, and I relaxed very slightly, praying that he’d just been enjoying the power he had over me and that, now that he’d proved who was the strongest – and who would therefore have the last word – that he would let me go. He still had hold of my wrist, and it was hurting. He was heavy on top of me. I needed him to let me up.
He took his hand away from my mouth and pulled my head close to his and said into my ear. “You shouldn’t come round people’s houses, harassing them and then shouting and screeching and accusing them of stuff they haven’t done. What will the neighbours think? You frightened poor Mrs Bennett. She saw you at the front door earlier, upsetting me. She’s bound to have heard you screaming and shouting at me. And now you’ve attacked me, you’ve scratched my face. It’s been all I can do to restrain you.”
He took his hand away from my mouth and shifted off me slightly. But then I felt the button on my jeans being undone.
“No!” I screamed and clawed at his face again, before pushing him hard and rolling onto my side. I started to get up.
“You bitch!” Martin pushed me back to the ground. He flung himself on top of me again and started to wrestle with my jeans. I felt them loosen as the zip slid open and Martin’s hand moved inside them, over my hip.
The piercing sound of more than one milk bottle toppling over and breaking erupted from outside the back door, just inches from my head. Martin stopped what he was doing and looked up, startled
. I seized my moment and pushed him as hard as I could. He put one hand on the ground as he lost his balance slightly. I quickly wriggled out from underneath him, jumped up and backed away towards the sink. I looked over my shoulder onto the draining board, where a black-handled kitchen knife was lying. I picked it up and held it out in front of me.
Martin was stood up, peering out of the back window. “Bloody cats,” he said, and turned towards me.
“Stay away from me!” I screamed, holding the knife out in front of me with one hand and pulling my jeans back round my waist with the other and pulling up the zip.
Martin looked at me for a moment and then a broad grin started to spread across his face. He burst out laughing. “Don’t be so silly, Lizzie. Put it down.”
“Get out of my way,” I said.
Martin carried on laughing, as if it was the funniest thing he’d ever seen. He started laughing so hard, that his shoulders were shaking.
“Go,” he waved me past him, still laughing. My knees were trembling so hard, I wasn’t sure that I could. I knew that it would only take a second for him to stop laughing and to pounce and disarm me, and that if that happened I could get really badly hurt – or worse. I looked across the kitchen to where my bag was, on the floor, then started to inch my way across the room towards it. Martin continued to stand there looking at me as if I were crazy, as if I’d just picked up the knife and started waving it at him in the middle of a nice cup of tea and a chat. I bent my knees and picked up my bag without taking my eyes off him. I then, slowly, backed my way towards the door to the hallway, the knife moving up and down in my trembling hand.
“’Bye then,” said Martin, folding his arms and watching me go.
I reached behind me and found the door handle. My heart was hammering against my chest and there were pains shooting down my arms. I gasped for breath and wondered whether I might be having a heart attack. I hoped desperately that I would make it outside; I couldn’t bear the thought of dying in Martin’s house, right there in front of him, with my jeans undone.