by C. L. Taylor
I trail from the kitchen to the living room and sit down on the sofa. Dad’s chair, in all its horrible tweedy green worn glory, is closer to the TV, but I haven’t sat in it once since I got here. I’m trying to work up the nerve to throw it away.
Dad’s friend Bill was the one who found him. He realised something was wrong, he told me on the phone, when the local pub landlord told him that Dad hadn’t been in in over a week. He went to check on him after closing time. The curtains weren’t drawn, the lights were on and the TV was blaring away in the corner of the room. Bill said he could tell by the way Dad was slumped in his chair that he was dead. A heart attack, the coroner said.
It wasn’t hard to pick Bill out from the mourners at Dad’s cremation. Other than me, the only other people in the room were the celebrant, the funeral director and three elderly men. Unsure what to do after the ceremony ended, I stood by the door and shook hands with the scant group of mourners as they left. Bill gripped my hand in both of his.
‘I know your dad was a grumpy old bugger,’ he said, his voice rough and rasping, ‘but he was proud of you. He told me a few times that he had a daughter living the high life and earning herself a small fortune in London.’
I smiled and thanked Bill for his good wishes. I didn’t mention that Dad and I hadn’t spoken in over ten years – other than a brief and awkward phone call when I rang him five years ago to tell him that Mum had died of cancer – and that he had no idea what I was doing or how much I was earning in London (certainly not a small fortune). I did cry though, when I got back to my car. Proud was not a word in Dad’s vocabulary when it came to me. Disgrace – yes. Embarrassment – that too. While Mum rushed up to me and wrapped me in her arms after I was brought back from France, Dad could barely look at me. When he did it was to ask whether I had been harmed. Harmed. He meant, had I had sex with Mike? I could tell by the way his eyes swept the length of my body then focussed on a spot on the floor near my feet. Afterwards, Mum and I went back to our flat. We stayed there, locked together on the sofa with the TV on loud while the phone rang off the hook and journalists tapped at the kitchen window and thumped on the front door. One night I heard an argument between Mum and Dad on the phone. She was trying to keep her voice down but I heard her snap, ‘I can’t believe you’d suggest that, Steve. This is your daughter we’re talking about and she’s fourteen years old.’ Dad thought I’d brought it all on myself. He wasn’t the only one who thought that. I did too.
Mum tried to convince me to testify against Mike. She said she knew that I loved him but what he had done was wrong and he had to be stopped from doing it to anyone else. I started to cry then, not because of what she’d said but because she’d got me so wrong. What I felt towards Mike wasn’t love. It was a strange limbo emotion – a longing for the love I thought we’d had, wrapped up in guilt, regret and fear. When Mum, and the police, finally accepted that I wouldn’t testify against Mike, she decided that we should move to London before the trial started. Mum said it was for the best.
I turn on the TV, watch a couple of seconds of a game show, then change the channel. I watch a couple of seconds of a period drama, then press a button on the remote. I change the channel once more, then turn it off. I look at my watch again.
6.08 p.m.
Not enough time to go for a run.
Mike will be here in less than forty-five minutes.
After Chloe told me to fuck off this morning, I was so frustrated I drove to the nearest phone box, rang Mike’s work and asked to speak to him. If the police weren’t going to prosecute, and Chloe and her family refused to listen to me, the only option I had left was to confront him directly. Ringing from the phone box was a deliberate decision. It meant Mike wouldn’t have my number or any way of contacting me. He’d be shocked to hear from me, wrong-footed, and I’d be the one in control. I’d call, tell him who I was and say that I needed to speak to him in a public place (a park maybe or St Anne’s Well on the Malvern Hills). I’d tell him how he’d ruined my life. How I’d end a relationship as soon as a boyfriend told me they loved me because I associated love with control. How I’d freak out if anyone so much as brushed my neck with their fingers. How promiscuous I’d been because my self-worth was in the toilet. How I’d only have sex if I was the one who initiated it and it took place in my home. I’d tell him all of these things, and more, and then I’d scream in his face that it was his fault. That he’d made me like this. That I’d spent eighteen years denying how much of a fuck-up I was, but I wasn’t going to do it anymore. And especially not when he was about to screw up another innocent girl’s life as much as he’d screwed up mine.
I was shaking – with anger and fear – as I tapped the number out on the buttons and waited for the call to connect. My voice wavered as I asked to speak to Mike Hughes. The receptionist had to ask me to repeat myself. When she said he wasn’t in – he was already on the delivery run – I slumped against the glass side of the phone booth.
‘You could try his mobile,’ she said.
It took me three attempts to call his number. Twice I slammed the phone down before the call connected.
‘Mike Hughes speaking.’
I pressed myself up against the glass as though pinned by his voice.
‘Hello?’
Tears burned beneath my closed eyelids.
‘Hello, is there anyone there?’
My courage had vanished. I could barely breathe.
‘Are you after a delivery or a collection? Hello? I’m going to put the phone down now.’
‘Do you know who this is?’ Panic forced the words out of my mouth.
‘No? Should I?’
A pause. A silence that stretched eighteen years. I didn’t have any control. The moment I told Mike who I was he’d have a choice. He could tell me to fuck off. He could refuse to meet me and put the phone down. The only way to help myself, and save Chloe, was to take away that choice and put him in a situation where he had to listen.
‘My name is Milly Dawson. I’d like to arrange a collection please.’
‘What is it and where are you?’
‘An armchair. It needs to go to the dump. I live in Acton Green.’
‘That’s a way out so it’ll be pricey. Forty quid.’
‘That’s fine. When can you get here?’
‘Six thirty all right?’
I told him it was fine and gave him my address. I held my breath, waiting for that spark of recognition, for him to comment that he’d been to the farm before. Instead he said,
‘All right then Milly, I’ll see you later.’
Then the call ended, just like that.
By the time I got to work I didn’t have more than five minutes to run a comb through my hair and print out my emails before Alison buzzed me to tell me that Dr Wendy Harrison was waiting in reception for me. That was a strange meeting. I’ve met some interesting clients in my time – including the man who talked to my chin rather than looking me in the eye, a woman who continuously tapped a pen against her teeth and the man who addressed all of his questions to my male colleagues rather than me – but I’ve never met anyone like Dr Harrison before. She had a very odd manner for someone with a background in nursing – clinical, rather than caring. I could feel her watching me while Gary gave his presentation and then, after she’d ordered him from the room to make more tea, she stared at me like a specimen under a microscope. Then she started asking me personal questions, her strange, fixed smile not faltering once. As I wondered if she might be on the autistic spectrum, she sprayed me with ink.
Let’s just say I won’t be gutted if we don’t win the bid.
6.12 p.m.
After a week’s worth of tidying, the house finally looks as I remember it, but it doesn’t feel like the house where I grew up. I always used to feel safe here – until the arguments started between Mum and Dad anyway. It was always draughty and the ancient cracked tiles in the kitchen were so cold I’d hop from foot to foot as I poured out my cereal, but
the sounds were reassuring. It was always so noisy – the radio babbling away in the kitchen, the television blaring in the living room and Dad chopping logs in the garden while the dog barked at birds. All those noises have gone now and it’s eerily quiet. It’s true what they say, about people making a house a home. I never really understood that until now.
‘Right.’ I grab the arm of Dad’s old green armchair and pull. ‘I’m not letting Mike in this house, which means you’re going in the barn.’
I am dripping with sweat by the time I reach the back garden. The lawn is more weeds than grass and the bright pots of flowers that Mum spent hours planting and tending are long gone. The only decorative touch Dad added is a pile of abandoned car tyres and a collapsed pile of logs. The gate at the back of the garden is almost rusted shut. I have to give it a good shove before it swings open, then I drag the armchair into the yard. When this was a working farm, there would have been tractors, trailers and farm machinery filling the space, but all that’s left is a huge dilapidated barn and the three fields that wrap around the house. Dad was an architect but he had designs about becoming a farmer when he bought this place. He swiftly changed his mind after the chickens he kept in the back garden were wiped out by foxes. His next bright idea was to try and convert the barn. It’s accessible by a track that runs down the side of the house as well as through the garden, but the council rejected his planning application. He pretty much gave up on the place then, and himself.
The chair’s wheeled feet creak and groan as I drag it over the concreted yard and pull at the barn door. It’s the first time I’ve been inside since I came back. Mum hated this building. I did too.
I brace myself as the barn door swings open, but the row of steel cages still makes me catch my breath. Dad’s decision to allow the local hunt to house some of their dogs here caused the biggest argument I can ever remember my parents having. Mum, an out-and-out city girl who’d met Dad at a wedding, was horrified at the idea.
‘Fox hunting!’ she screamed as I perched at the top of the stairs in my pyjamas. ‘I’m not supporting fox hunting.’
‘No one’s saying you have to support it. You’re not going to be shoved onto a horse and made to blow a bloody horn. We’ll just be looking after the dogs. Geoffrey needs somewhere to keep them for a little—’
‘I don’t want animal rights protesters throwing paint at our car and shouting and blowing whistles outside our house. We’ve got a thirteen-year-old daughter, Steve. What if they set fire to our house like they did to Geoff’s barn?’
‘That’s not going to happen, and anyway, there’s no proof that they burned—’
‘Of course it was them. It was the same people who threw red paint all over William’s haulage trucks last year. If it was some random arsonist, why wait until the dogs were on a hunt?’
‘Oh, for god’s sake. No one’s going to burn the barn down or hurt Louise. Anyway, it’s just for a few months, until Geoff’s barn is rebuilt. You were the one who said we need to make more of an effort to be part of the community and it’s not like we’re doing anything with it.’
‘It’s our barn. We don’t have to—’
‘Whose barn is it?’
The cold silence that followed made me shiver.
‘I knew you’d do this,’ my mother said tightly. ‘Lay down the law when it suits you.’
‘I did buy the house, Maggie.’
‘You think I don’t know that?’
I’d long stopped asking my parents why they weren’t married. They both claimed that they didn’t need a piece of paper and an expensive wedding to prove how much they loved each other, but I’d once heard my mum confess to a friend that she was sad she’d never got to have her big day.
When Mum and Dad split up, she told him that he should sell the house so she could buy somewhere for me and her to live. Dad said he wasn’t going anywhere and if she was that worried about me living somewhere nice she should leave me behind. Mum said she’d rather bring me up in a hovel.
The sound of their argument was still ringing in my ears as I trudged down the stone steps that led to the dojo and opened the door. Mike was sorting the pads and gloves in the corner of the room. He took one look at me and asked what was wrong. The concern in his voice made me burst into tears. My parents were splitting up. It was the end of my world.
He put an arm around my shoulders and squeezed the top of my arm. His palm wasn’t touching the soft material of my gi for more than a couple of seconds but the warmth of his touch remained—
A violent shiver courses through me. The sun has disappeared and the sky is thick with heavy, black rain clouds so, mustering all the energy I have left, I drag the armchair into the barn. The cages are even bigger and more imposing than I remember. They’re tall enough for a man to stand up in and almost as wide, with huge great padlocks hanging from the doors. They look like somewhere to house prisoners of war, not animals. The musky, yeasty smell of dogs is long gone but the air is rich with the sour, musty scent of sawdust, hay and ammonia.
When I reach the other side of the barn, I abandon the armchair, push open the door and peer outside. Rain is bouncing off the tarmac and puddling in the cracks. The field at the end of the yard is already flooded where it dips down into the lake. Much more of this rain and the roads will flood too. I’d be cut off from the world and no one other than my solicitor and a handful of friends in London know that I’m here.
A loud, angry, insistent sound cuts through the soft pattering of the rain.
It’s a car horn.
Mike is here.
Chapter 12
Lou
I spot the white transit van through the gap between the house and the garage as I run across the lawn. The van windows are misty with condensation and the windscreen wipers are sweeping back and forth. My hair is stuck to my cheeks, my hoody is clinging to my back and my trainers are caked in mud. I slow my pace as I reach the house and duck under the eaves, out of sight of the van. My chest is tight and I’ve got pins and needles in both of my arms. I have never, ever felt more scared in my life. Why did I think this was a good idea? I’ve got no mobile signal, no neighbours and no way of calling for help. Mike never threatened me, but I know how dangerous he can be. If anything happened to me, it would be days before anyone sounded the alarm. But why would he turn on me? When the police arrested him, he was still in love with me. I didn’t testify against him. And he has no idea that I’m the one who reported him to the police for kissing Chloe.
The horn sounds again, making me jump. There’s no way Mike could have seen me. I could just stay here, out of sight, until he gives up and drives away. I don’t have to do this.
But what about Chloe? a small voice whispers at the back of my brain. Mike will continue to abuse her. If she’s not already broken, she soon will be. Could you live with that, knowing you could have stopped it?
I tried. I rang the police. I visited her parents. I spoke to her. Even if I do talk to Mike there’s no guarantee anything I say will make a difference.
You wanted to do this. You wanted to confront him, to make him face up to what he did to you. You wanted him to know how much his ‘love’ fucked up your life. That’s why you moved up here, Lou. To exorcise your demons. If you don’t, you’ll spend the rest of your life screwing up relationships with decent men like Ben. Just get it over and done with.
I step back into the rain, through the gap between the house and garage, and walk up to the van. The driver side window opens slowly. An elbow appears, swiftly followed by a face.
‘Milly Dawson?’
‘Mike.’
I brace myself, waiting for his eyebrows to raise and his jaw to drop. He didn’t react on the phone when I gave him my address but he had to recognise the house as he drove up the track. And he has to know who I am.
But there’s no spark of recognition in his eyes as they flit over my face.
It’s the strangest sensation, staring into the eyes of the man I once lov
ed and feared in equal measure. It’s him and yet it’s not him. His face, once so familiar, has been stolen by a much older man. There’s a sagginess to his jawline that wasn’t there before and a hollowing beneath his cheekbones. His eyebrows are thicker and wirier, the hoods of his eyes are heavier, almost obscuring the bright blue of his irises. There’s no passion or love behind his gaze. As I continue to stare, the edges of his lips curl up into a smile and he gives me a little nod. He doesn’t recognise me at all.
‘You might want to get a coat on,’ he says. ‘Although I’m not sure you could get much wetter.’
He laughs then and the sound catches me by surprise. His face may have changed and his voice may have become a little raspier but his laugh is the same.
‘I’m …’ I pull my hood over my head and plunge my hands into the pockets of my hoody. ‘I’m okay.’
‘Well, if you’re sure.’ He gestures at the house with his thumb. ‘In there, is it?’
For a moment I have no idea what he’s talking about but then I remember – I asked him to take the armchair to the tip.
‘It’s in the barn.’
‘Interesting place to keep a chair.’ He raises an eyebrow. ‘Where’s the barn?’
‘In the yard, past the garden.’
He moves to look out of the window even though there’s no way he can see into the garden from the angle of the van.
‘Or you could take the track round the house and I could open the gate to the yard.’
He looks back towards the garden, as though considering his options. A dimple appears in his chin as he presses his lips together. I used to push my little finger into that indentation to try and make it disappear.
‘My left leg’s a bit fucked. I’ll drive. Get in.’
The command makes my blood run cold but, after a moment’s hesitation, I do as he says.
We are sitting so close that, when he just changed gear, I had to lean to my left to avoid his forearm brushing mine. A wave of panic courses through me. The last time I was in a car with this man we were driving through France. But Mike doesn’t recognise me. He did a quick sweep of my body as I rounded the van, a casual appraisal any man might do to a woman he’s never met before, but there was no spark of interest when I opened the passenger door and got in. Why would there be? I’m a grown woman, not a child.