by Jess Ryder
‘Amazon?’ she hazards.
‘No.’ I stand up. ‘Maybe it’s Alan.’
‘I doubt it,’ Lori replies. ‘You won’t see him for dust.’
I go into the hallway and she follows, but hangs back at the threshold. There’s a dark shape behind the reinforced glass and I immediately think of Lori’s arrival all those weeks ago. Surely it’s not another abuse victim seeking shelter?
‘What if it’s Darren?’ I whisper.
She shakes her head. ‘Too small.’
Taking a breath, I turn the handle and open the door. A small cry escapes from Lori’s mouth as we stare at the woman standing before us. She looks to be in her mid forties, her wavy black hair flecked with silver grey. Her features are heavy – brown eyes, thick straight brows, olive skin, full lips.
‘Abigail!’ Lori says, springing forward, a look of panic on her face. ‘For Christ’s sake, what are you doing here?’
Chapter Twenty-Three
Kay
Then
There was a pattern to their lives, thought Kay as she squirted window cleaner on the glass. Not the normal kind of pattern that most married couples followed – work during the week, Friday night at the pub, the supermarket shop on Saturday morning, Sunday lunch with family … All that happened too, of course, but it was underscored by a darker tune.
Three weeks would go by quite happily, with barely a cross word between them. He would insult and criticise her for sure – she was lazy, she cared for Abigail more than him, she overspent his hard-earned wages, she was too friendly with the neighbours – but if she managed to stick to her promise to herself not to retaliate, it wouldn’t go any further. Sometimes she bit her tongue so hard she thought her teeth would cut right through it.
Then some little thing would go wrong – she would run out of sugar for his tea, or a stain on his shirt would refuse to come out – or he’d accuse her of ‘carrying on’ with the postman or the mobile fishmonger. She’d stupidly defend herself, and once his voice was raised, the flying fists were not far behind. It was always her fault. He didn’t want to beat her but she made him lose his temper. Why couldn’t she behave herself like other wives?
Immediately after each attack, he went into a lighter key. He tended her wounds, rubbing in arnica for the bruises, cleaning any cuts or bites so they wouldn’t become infected. When he broke her arm, he took her straight to hospital, claiming she’d slipped on the wet kitchen floor. She didn’t dare to contradict him. Sometimes her injuries were so bad she could hardly walk.
She squeezed out the cloth and wiped the glass. The windows had become so dirty over the winter months, the water was almost black. But now it was March, almost spring. Feeling oddly tired, she paused to stare into their neat rectangular garden. The forsythia had just come out – she loved its sunny yellow flowers; they were so cheering. And there was pink blossom on the cherry tree. The lawn could have its first cut of the year soon, and Abigail would be able to play on the grass again without getting covered in mud.
But the warmer weather would bring complications as she tried to cover up the marks on her flesh. ‘You mustn’t let anyone see,’ he’d warned her the last time. ‘Just think what your parents would say if they knew how badly you treated me. They would be so angry with you, Kay. After all I’ve done – making an honest woman of you, giving you a lovely home, looking after your bastard kid …’
Honest woman. It was ridiculous, talking like that, as if she was some nineteenth-century tragic heroine. This was 1978, the era of punk. Some people of her age were walking around with spiky dog collars on and safety pins in their ears; they took the mickey out of the royal family and didn’t give a shit about marriage. In some circles, being a single parent was a badge of honour.
Just not the circles she moved in, Kay reflected as she emptied the bucket and refilled it with clean water. What you saw on the telly or read about in the papers didn’t bear much relation to most people’s lives. In this town, change moved at a snail’s pace. Her parents had lived through the privations of the war, and their narrow views had been passed down to their children. But Kay had always felt that urge to be part of the new, more liberal generation, as she’d proved that night in Torremolinos. Some would say she’d simply been a naïve fool, but she preferred to think of it as an act of rebellion, albeit not a conscious one.
She took the bucket back to the living room and began to rinse the suds off the patio doors. If only she’d been able to follow through – left home barefoot and pregnant, travelled around Europe, joined a commune, shacked up with some bloke who believed in free love, given birth under the stars. Instead, she’d allowed herself to feel ashamed and unworthy and had ended up with a deeply traditional man whose views were bloody Victorian.
‘You made your bed, now you have to lie in it,’ her mother had said when she fell pregnant. It was the same now – she’d made a new bed when she married Foxy and there was no getting out of it. So when he hit her, she accepted his perverted logic and took the blame; tried to hide her injuries, especially from him. At bedtime, she got undressed and put on her nightie in the bathroom, so as not to remind him of what he’d done.
‘Look at the state of you,’ he’d say if he walked in on her naked. ‘You’re disgusting. If you’re not careful, you’re going to end up dead. Do you want me to have a criminal record like Micky and not be able to get a decent job? Am I going to end up in jail for the rest of my life just because you’re such a crappy wife?’
Poor Micky was no longer invited to the house, and Foxy refused to take his calls. Kay was blamed for the family split. ‘If you hadn’t been giving him the come-on every time my back was turned, none of this would have happened,’ she was told. Not that she’d flirted with him for one single second. All she’d done was smile when he praised her apple crumble.
She sighed to herself. She’d never thought she’d say it, but she missed Micky. He wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer – too easily led – but last summer he’d stood up for her, and shown himself to be a man, whatever that meant. Since then, they hadn’t had any visitors for Sunday lunch, not even her parents. Foxy had refused the dinner invitations they’d received when they first moved to Fairmead and nobody had asked a second time. Kay’s job was a distant memory, and she hardly ever saw any of her old friends. Foxy refused to babysit and she could hardly ask her parents to come over when he was in the house. Even if he had let her go out with the girls, he’d have accused her of getting off with men and given her a hiding. It simply wasn’t worth it.
She stood back from the glass, changing her position and angling her head to check for smears. Her mother swore by newspaper for the final polish, but it made no sense to her. Why rub dirty newsprint over nice clean glass? She pulled off her pink Marigolds and flung them into the plastic box of cloths, brushes, creams and sprays, where they hung like dead hands. She was sick of cleaning. Nobody ever came over to admire her efforts. She only did it because he’d moan if there was fluff on the carpet or a dirty ring around the bath.
Exhausted, she sat down on the sofa, kicked off her slippers and put her legs up. He was such a different man to the charming Foxy she’d married eighteen months ago. She picked a feather off the cushion and put it in her apron pocket. It was only half nine, far too early for elevenses, but she had an empty feeling in her stomach and craved a dry biscuit. Her breasts were tender too. The curse must be on its way, she thought, although it was hard to know because her cycle was all messed up since she’d stopped taking her contraception. She’d thought she’d fallen at first, but the test was negative. Dr Davison said it was something called ‘amenorrhoea’ – apparently some women stopped having periods altogether when they came off the pill. It had sounded very serious. She’d panicked and started taking it again, but then she’d missed a few and now she didn’t know where she was. She was no longer sure she wanted another baby anyway.
She hugged her breasts. Her nipples were stinging and she had a strange tast
e in her mouth. It was like when a filling fell out, or you accidentally bit on Kit Kat foil. Metallic. She’d tasted it before, exactly the same, years ago. The sensation had only lasted a couple of days and she’d forgotten about it.
Her stomach flipped. Sore, heavy breasts, unusual tiredness, no curse, slight sick feeling and now this peculiar taste. Jesus wept … Was she pregnant? Was there already a new little person growing inside her? A flutter of excitement instantly spread through her body and she sat up straight, eyes wide open.
What had she done?
She leapt off the sofa and her legs almost buckled beneath her. How many weeks gone was she? It was impossible to tell. But first, it had to be confirmed. Running into the hallway, she picked up the phone and dialled the surgery. Luckily there’d been a cancellation – could she get down there in twenty minutes? She said she could.
She threw on the first jacket that came to hand, pushed her feet into some shoes and picked up her bag. She left the house in a fluster, forgetting to check that the taps had been turned off and the back door had been locked. Her heart was beating a gallop, struggling to keep up with the sudden change of pace. Just a few minutes ago she was cleaning the windows and feeling a bit grotty; now she was about to find out something that might change the entire direction of her life.
It would be all right, wouldn’t it, if she were pregnant? Her mother had said countless times that what Foxy needed was a child of his own, to complete the family and cement the marriage. He’d said that he didn’t want children, but she didn’t believe him. How could you not want to be a parent? She couldn’t think of anything more satisfying than to love and care for a child. And Foxy was so full of his own importance, she thought he’d want to leave something of himself behind after he died.
Her footsteps quickened as she approached the parade of shops that served the new estate – a butcher’s, a newsagent, a small budget supermarket, launderette, hairdresser, chemist and post office. Everything you needed, close at hand. The doctor’s surgery was on the corner of the next block, where rambling Edwardian terraces met the new, compact semi-detached houses. She’d been there several times before, mostly for Abigail, but also for the previous pregnancy test that had been a false alarm. But this wasn’t a false alarm, she knew it. As she pounded along the pavement, she felt her breasts bouncing and imagined them full of milk.
Enormous thoughts tumbled around her, making her breathless. She felt simultaneously joyous and terrified. It would be all right. Hard work, of course, but in the end, it would make life easier. He wouldn’t strike a pregnant woman, for a start. The kind, loving Foxy would emerge and the cycle of violence would be broken; she would protect the baby and it would protect her. And once it was born, she would have more freedom – he could hardly refuse to babysit his own flesh and blood. He would have someone else to love and lavish attention on, lifting some of the pressure off her shoulders.
It would be good for Abigail, too. Only children were often high achievers, but it was just as important for children to learn to share. She was sure the little girl would be thrilled to have a baby brother or sister.
She paused at the door of the surgery, placing her hand on her tummy, as yet as flat as an ironing board. Was it a girl or a boy? she wondered. She’d always known Abigail was female, but her instincts weren’t telling her anything with this one. Presuming, of course, that she was actually pregnant. Well, there was only one way to find out. She inhaled deeply and pushed open the door.
* * *
‘You’re WHAT?!’ he screamed when she told him that evening after they’d eaten. She’d cooked smoked haddock, one of his favourites. ‘How’s that even possible? You’re on the pill!’
‘It’s not a hundred per cent reliable, everyone knows that,’ she answered, having already rehearsed her defence. ‘And I had a stomach upset a while ago, remember? I think it must have passed straight through.’
He looked at her keenly. ‘How far gone are you?’
‘About six weeks, the doctor thinks. Due late November.’
‘Not too late then.’
Her blood ran cold. ‘What do you mean?’ she said, although she knew full well.
‘Not too late to get rid of it.’
‘But why would we want to get rid of it? We’ve created a new life, Foxy, that’s a beautiful thing.’
He snorted dismissively. ‘How do I know it’s mine?’
‘Of course it’s yours,’ she answered, wringing her hands. ‘Don’t say that, it’s hurtful.’
‘You’re on your own here, hours on end, day after day. You could be entertaining all sorts.’
‘For God’s sake, you make me sound like a prostitute. I’m your wife. We’re going to have a baby.’
He shoved his empty dinner plate away. ‘Nothing to do with me. You told me you were on the pill.’
‘I was, you know I was – I mean, I still am, only obviously I’ve got to stop taking it now, the doctor said.’ The lies were making her burble. It had been so easy at the time, popping the pill into her mouth in front of him, then keeping it on her tongue until she could spit it into the toilet bowl. She’d convinced herself that she was doing the right thing, that he would be delighted once he’d got over the initial shock. But now his eyes were blazing with anger and she could feel the steam rising inside him, like a pressure cooker about to explode.
‘I love you,’ she said, trying to control the fear in her voice. ‘This is your baby, our baby. We can have a fresh start, be a proper family.’
He stood up, pushing over the chair. ‘Well I don’t want it, so get rid of it.’
She clutched at her stomach. ‘I can’t … I won’t.’
‘Jesus Christ, woman,’ he shouted, coming towards her with a raised fist. ‘Why won’t you ever do as you’re bloody told?’
Chapter Twenty-Four
Stella
Now
‘What’s going on?’ I say, my eyes flicking between Lori and the woman standing in my hallway. ‘I thought nobody knew where you were.’
Lori reddens, ‘They don’t … I mean, Darren doesn’t know. Just … just …’ she fixes the woman with a look, ‘Abigail.’
‘Call me Abi. I’m Lori’s friend, her best friend,’ Abigail says, extending her hand. ‘I was so worried, I made her tell me where she was hiding.’ Ours eyes meet as we shake – her grip is firm and she holds onto my fingers for a second longer than feels comfortable. ‘But please don’t worry, her secret’s safe with me.’
‘I’m sorry, Stella,’ Lori begins, twisting the edge of her jumper as she always does when she’s stressed. ‘I wanted to ask you if she could visit, only I never got the chance.’
Never got the chance? We’ve been working side by side all week. I quickly scan my memory. I’m sure Lori’s never mentioned Abigail. She’s only ever talked about Darren, her kids and her mother. No siblings, no friends by name – best or otherwise.
‘You should have told me you were coming, Abi,’ Lori says ruefully.
‘I got sick of waiting for an invite. I was frantic, I wanted to make sure you were okay.’
The three of us stand there awkwardly, unsure of what to say next. Our visitor glances from left to right and up and down, soaking in her surroundings. Looking at it from her perspective, I realise what a terrible mess we’re in. Bags of plaster are stacked up by the door next to lengths of plastic trunking and metal edging strips. Small lumps of rubble, splinters of wood and torn pieces of packaging litter the floor. Everything is covered in a thick film of dust. Large dirty boot prints have been pressed into the stair carpet, and the floor tiles are streaked with mud.
‘You weren’t joking when you said it was a building site,’ she remarks.
‘I don’t mind,’ Lori says stiffly. ‘It’s better than being on the streets.’
‘True.’ Abi reaches into her bag and pulls out a bottle of wine. ‘I haven’t come empty-handed,’ she grins. ‘Do you have glasses, or is it paper cups around here?’
&
nbsp; ‘Glasses.’ I gesture towards the kitchen, but she’s already heading there, seeming to know her way.
‘Sorry, she’s always like this,’ says Lori, before running after her. I remain in the hallway, feeling like I’ve just let a tornado into the house.
* * *
Abi pours out the wine and, feeling uneasy about letting her into my private space, I suggest we sit in the chilly conservatory. She and Lori plant themselves in the musty deckchairs while I pop to my room in search of blankets and something for me to sit on. As soon as I exit, they start to whisper. I linger in the kitchen, straining to hear, but I can’t make out any words, just their tone. Lori sounds a bit pissed off, Abi is being placatory, but firm. I tuck two blankets under my arm and push the office chair into the corridor. The squeaky wheels herald my approach and they stop talking.
‘Marvellous,’ says Abi, taking a blanket off me and smoothing it over her woollen skirt. ‘Brrr … So, here we all are … It’s lovely to meet you at last, Stella. I’ve heard so much about you. I have to say, I think you’re amazing.’
‘No, I’m not.’
‘You are, you are. Poor Lori turns up on your doorstep, battered and bleeding, and you just take her in, no questions asked. Not many people would have done that.’
‘I only did what seemed right,’ I say. ‘She was in a bad way and she thought we were a refuge.’
‘Yes, I know. It’s outrageous that the place was closed down. The government says it cares about abuse victims and then cuts most of the funding—’
‘Get off your soapbox, Abi.’ Lori gives her a warning look.
‘I’m sorry. It just makes me so angry. Women are getting murdered every week and nobody helps them. Only kind, decent people like you.’ There are tears in her eyes as she raises her glass. ‘A toast. To Queen Stella, long may she reign.’