by S P Dawes
Feeling the hairs on the back of her neck stand up, she stopped chopping Oregano. With a breath of someone close behind her, she grabbed the carving knife. Spinning round, she held it towards the person who she’d not heard come in.
“Shit, Hayley!” Jesse exclaimed, holding his hands out to the sides to surrender.
“Shit, s... sorry,” realising Jesse was now directly in front of her and she was pointing a blade at his chest, she dropped the knife as her hand shook.
Jesse stood watching the panic drain from her face along with her blood. “Hey, it’s just me. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“No, it’s me,” she explained with tears filling her eyes. She tried to swallow the tight feeling there, whilst breathing in and out as deeply and as slowly as she could. Unable to look Jesse in the eyes, he was probably wondering what the hell was wrong with her? “I’m sorry; I shouldn’t have picked up the knife.”
“Reflex, I get it.” Turning back to the chopping board, she willed the tears not to fall, but one crept out, rolling down her hot cheek. “Hayley...”
“Don’t,” warned Hayley with a croaky throat. “Dinner will be ready soon, I’ll call you.”
She spoke lighter, attempting to make herself sound like she hadn’t just feared for her life moments ago. Sensing him standing behind her, she bit her lip, trying to stop the tremble and the damn bursting any further. He didn’t need to know how much they had broken her. Walking round to the fridge blocking her face so he couldn’t see her; she grabbed the cheese and pulled a grater out from under the work top cupboard.
“I’ll get changed; it smells amazing by the way,” he offered before opening the door that led to the stairs.
She smiled but didn’t turn, and then she was on her own again. Her shoulders sagging, she held onto the worktop, digging her fingers in to it. “Pull yourself together,” she repeated to herself until the emotions subsided. Once she felt more in control, she started grating the cheese. Trying to listen to the song playing, to take her mind off other things, till she realised ‘There You’ll Be’ by Faith Hill wasn’t really helping. Turning the radio off, she opened the oven door and took out the lasagne, scattering the cheese and herbs on top before replacing.
“Care to tell me what’s going on?” asked Jesse as the oven door shut.
Glancing at Jesse, she saw his suit had been replaced with a sport T-shirt and worn jeans. He looked concerned and maybe a little alarmed. Hayley didn’t know where to look. Grabbing a dishcloth from the sink, she cleaned down the mess she’d made.
“Hayley, I’m not cross. You’ve just pulled a knife on me, but I am worried you felt the need to.”
Swallowing hard, she carried on, hoping he’d walk away and leave it, but he didn’t. He continued and she could feel him directly behind her. Her anxiety rose again, but knowing it was Jesse stopped her from moving.
Jesse leant over her and took the rag from her hands, making her twist enough to acknowledge him. He placed the cloth on the worktop. Taking both of her hands, he held them, watching them as he rubbed his thumbs along the sides of them. “I know someone’s hurt you. It’s obvious by your reactions. You’re flighty, jumpy and as timid as a mouse, until you feel threatened then you either fight or flight. I don’t need to be a rocket scientist to see the signs, and you don’t have to talk to me about it. I won’t push. It’s your pain and your choice whether you want to share that with me. But if this relates to the person at that party, I need to know if you’re in immediate danger.”
“He doesn’t know where I am,” she whispered, keeping her eyes on his grip, hoping it was true. She didn’t want to have to leave Jesse just yet.
“Is he looking for you?” Jesse asked calmly.
Hayley shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“OK.” Tugging her hands, he wrapped them around his waist and buried her head under his chin. As the tension left her body, he felt her lean into him and noticed the wetness soaking through his shirt.
Rubbing her back, he let her cry. He needed to find whoever had hurt her. Who the hell could do that to her, make her scared of her own shadow? And what on earth had he done to inflict such scars? He wasn’t sure he wanted to know, and he couldn’t push her either. It had to be her choice.
After a few minutes had passed and her slight shaking had stopped, he told her to get washed up before his mum and dad came back, thinking he’d upset her. Having heard the car doors banging shut, she smiled her thanks before disappearing. Jesse grabbed the lasagne from the oven, placing it on the hob with oven gloves.
“Wow, now that smells amazing,” announced his Dad rubbing his palms eyeing the dish, walking into the kitchen from the back door.
“Yep, made with my own fair hands,” replied Jesse, grabbing the plates from the cupboard.
“Nice try, but we left Hayley preparing it.” Marie stated slipping her shoes off.
“Damn,” smirked Jesse. “Thought I could get away with that.”
“Ha, now if it had been a pot noodle, you would have done,” laughed his Dad.
“Where is she?” asked Marie, clutching knives and forks from the cutlery drawer.
“She’s getting washed up.”
Marie and Michael shared a look that didn’t go unnoticed by Jesse, but he didn’t want to ask or explain either, so he just handed them each a plate.
“I’ll go get her if you dish up.” Taking the spatula from Jesse before he left, Marie served.
After tapping on Hayley’s bedroom door, he gently opened it, revealing Hayley sat on the end of the bed with a red blotchy face and watery eyes. “We’re dishing up,” he explained softly.
“Yep, I’ll be down in two minutes, going to wash my face again, I’m an ugly crier,” she replied, half-jokingly.
“You’re not.”
“Snot does it for you, does it?” This time it was Jesse’s turn to smile, Hayley was just glad she could lighten the mood.
When Hayley made it downstairs, her face was flushed and eyes still pink, but the puffiness had gone down. Having checked the bathroom mirror, she contemplated using hay fever or chopping onions as an appropriate excuse. But walking into the kitchen, whilst trying not to make direct eye contact with anyone, she realised she didn’t need to. She spied a plate of lasagne on the countertop and carried it with a knife and fork to the table. Pulling out a chair, she was thankful they were in conversation so she could just slip in seemingly unnoticed.
“Hayley, that was delicious,” exclaimed Michael, tapping his belly on a lengthy breath out after he had finished eating.
“Do not undo your jeans, we have company,” warned Marie sternly.
Hayley looked at Jesse, who was trying to hide his smirk behind a glass of orange juice.
“I wasn’t even going to do that,” answered Michael defensively, before winking at Hayley when Marie was no longer watching. “Anyone would think I do it on the regular.”
Marie shook her head and smiled round a mouthful of lasagne.
“Who wants a glass of wine?” asked Jesse.
“No thanks, sweetheart, but why don’t you and Hayley go outside while the weather’s still nice?” Marie suggested, smiling at her son knowingly.
“Subtle Mum,” scoffed Jesse. “Hayley, wine?”
Hayley glanced from Michael to Marie, then Jesse before nodding.
Outside, the air was fresh, but still warm enough without a jumper. Sitting on the patio chairs with a white three-legged cafe table between them, Jesse watched Hayley looking up at the sky. She had beautiful, pale, flawless skin, mahogany hair and long lashes that fluttered as she surveyed the clouds. Underneath all that though, he could see insecurity, pain and deep suffering. She did her best to cover it over with a smile. But he had seen it twice now, when her defensive walls had crumbled, and a scared young girl stood behind it.
Turning, Hayley caught Jesse watching her, and glanced away again. “Whoever’s hurt you should be ashamed of himself.”
“Unfortunately, I
don’t think that’s the case,” answered Hayley, running her fingers down the stem of her glass to wipe at the condensation.
“Rarely is,” answered Jesse, taking a sip of his wine whilst observing a plane glide along the sky, leaving a white ribbon behind.
“I ran away.”
Jesse heard her but didn’t move. Everything in him was begging him to find out more, but he knew he had to tread carefully and at her own pace. If she was going to trust him, he had to give her a reason to.
“It’s taken a long time to be who I wanted to be, but the past never goes away, it follows you.” Hayley took a sip of wine. Her throat was dry, and she needed the courage to go on.
She hadn’t once looked at Jesse to gauge how he was taking the information, and she willed herself to continue before she did. It was as much about her ability to open up as it was for him to hear.
“You think if you can get away, you can put everything behind you, leave it where it was, but you don’t. And it makes you second guess everything and everyone, till you’re not sure if you’re being careful or suspicious and neurotic, but if you stop…” Hayley took a deep breath in and then back out.
“Then it might be him,” finished Jesse.
Hayley nodded.
“How long...”
“A few years.” Hayley swallowed a large gulp of wine.
“It can’t have been easy.” Jesse was watching Hayley battle with her demons as she dragged her thumbnail down the stem.
“I think he broke me,” announced Hayley quietly, looking up to Jesse when he said nothing.
“He might have tried, but the woman in front of me isn’t broken. Maybe a little hurt, a little apprehensive, and a little less confident. But she’s also a survivor. Strong, resilient and continuing on, regardless of what they put her through. They might have tried to break your spirit; even made you believe they had. But you’re still there, behind all the pain and the walls you’ve built to protect yourself. They didn’t break you. He just made you fight and build a fortress to stay alive. I’d say that makes the woman in front of me remarkable and anything but a victim. It makes the woman sitting in front of me pretty damn amazing, that she never gave up.”
Hayley couldn’t draw her eyes away from his. They held her like a hug, and they were genuine, kind and compassionate. No one had ever spoken to her like that. No one had ever thought of her like that. She wanted to view herself through his eyes, it seemed he saw much more than she had thought.
“I really want to kiss the amazing woman in front of me. Do you think she’d be OK with that?”
“I’m not sure, maybe you should ask her?” Hayley smirked, knowing she was being coy, but the smile was splitting her face as Jesse stood up and pulled her towards him.
Standing with noses touching, he looked down on her. “Hayley Timpson, you’re phenomenal. Can I kiss you?”
“I’ll allow it,” she playfully replied.
Jesse smiled before capturing her lips with his own and she momentarily forgot all about her past. The only thoughts that consumed her were of the man holding her now, and if she could stay in his embrace forever?
Chapter 12
On arriving at work, Jesse found he had a meeting to attend, discussing the up-and-coming music festival in town. Newark wasn’t his usual haunt. He’d only requested to transfer for the one case that brought him here. He’d been attempting to run up a lead on a drugs racket that was taking over Ollerton, Mansfield and Newark’s nightlife, not that there was much of one. But the idea was to stem the flow before the big cities were hit. It was dangerous, and what was worse was that each case had unfamiliar chemical elements to it. So, either they were testing it out, or they were sending out a defective product on purpose, causing blindness, seizures and sometimes brain damage and death.
At eleven-thirty an officer informed Jesse somebody had been brought in for questioning regarding the robbery at the Spa. He had asked to be kept updated, just in case it held any links to his own problem. At midday Jesse sat in the dining hall, eating his prepacked chicken and bacon sandwich, flicking through a report they had handed him on the way down.
“I think I might have something?” said Dave, slamming a brown manila folder down on the canteen table, looking very proud of himself.
Jesse looked up and beckoned him to continue as he had a mouthful.
“We’ve just had some kid in about the burglary at the beauty place, it seems they organised it to set someone up.”
Jesse raised his left eyebrow and put his other half of the sandwich back in the packet.
“Set who up?” He asked, after swallowing a large bite.
“Well, that’s just it. Apparently, the bloke who hired him to do the place over at the Spa said that he needed to make it look like an inside job,” replied Dave, smugly.
“Didn’t think you had a suspect?” Queried Jesse.
“That’s cus he did a lousy job of it. We had a couple of suspects but we are still waiting on other lines of inquiry,” added Dave soberly.
“And he’s just spilled his guts?” Jesse wasn’t sure how confident they should feel about someone who’d only seen the inside of a cell a few hours ago. Organised criminals didn’t break that easily, not unless they had their own scores to settle. “You know what Rosa would say?”
Dave rolled his eyes. “I know what you’re thinking, how reliable is this guy? But even if it’s not true, we need to look at some of what he’s said.” He opened the folder and a picture of a white skin head was staring back at him. Dave took the print from the folder to hold it up. “Right, so this guy,” he waved the picture “Is Paul Gleeson, I’ve been doing some digging around and he’s a nasty piece of work. The guy sitting in the banger, says he’s obsessed with finding some girl.” The Detective shrugged, “We just need to find out who?”
“Good luck with that,” answered Jesse, rising from his seat.
“The lad said they ordered him to carry out the robbery. To make it look like the woman that works there had done it. He says Gleeson wanted her locking up,” continued D. C David Turner “As payback.”
“For what?”
“The youngster doesn’t know,” explained Dave.
“Sounds fishy,” replied Jesse.
Dave shook his head despondently, while Jesse walked over to the bin in the canteen's corner. “Without the girl’s name we can’t run with it,” answered Jesse, throwing his half-eaten sandwich in the bin. “Sounds to me like he’s playing for time by throwing us tidbits.”
“Apart from the fact he says that Gleeson is out to get her. Apparently, she ran from him before. Stole something from him, and the lad says we should be worrying about her.” Dave joined him at the bin after retrieving the folder from the table.
“Does Gleeson know the lads in custody?” Asked Jesse.
Dave shrugged.
“How did you get him in?”
“His prints were on that knife you brought in, and it’s on the CCTV from the Spa.”
Jesse still didn’t understand the significance of someone planting it there. “What else did they take?” He asked, opening and closing the swing doors as they went through on their way to his office.
“They ransacked the shop part; salts, bath bombs, powders etc, were all missing.”
“Anything ground down so they could cut product then?” Said Jesse, rhetorically.
“I wonder how this girl fit in?” Asked Dave.
He gave David the look that told him he was being fed a red herring. “Collateral damage? Or maybe he’s mixing business with pleasure; maybe that lad’s right about revenge.” Jesse was unconvinced.
“Or maybe it’s a pile of horseshit.”
“So, you don’t think she’s involved?” Dave looked at his senior while he sat down in his swivel chair, trying to gauge his thinking.
“Do you?” Asked Jesse, knowing more than anyone, sometimes it was how things were relayed rather than the content.
Dave looked away, unconvinced
and defeated. Jesse turned to a computer in the main room. He had work to do.
Spinning back round in his chair before Dave made for the door, he called him back. “What’s the kid’s name?”
“Leon Carter!”
“Fuck!” Dave raised an eyebrow at his senior’s outburst, but Jesse waved him away, before burying his head in his hands.
Jesse knocked on his brother’s door at ten past two, Caitlyn smiled on opening. “Hi Jesse, Rob’s at work.”
“I know, it’s you I need to speak with.” Caitlyn stepped backwards and let Jesse enter. Closing the door behind him, she walked to the kettle, filling it up from the tap before she set it down on its stand and flicked the switch down.
“What’s up?” Turning to the cupboard, she pulled two cups down.
“I need to ask you about Leon.” Caitlyn sighed and rolled eyes.
“What’s he done now?” She knew he was wheeling and dealing, but tried to ignore it the best she could. She wanted no part in it.
“Do you know a guy called Paul Gleeson?” Jesse watched Caitlyn’s face blanch over the name, then try to relax her features with a tentative smile. “I’m guessing that’s a yes.”
Looking away, she spooned coffee into both cups.
“I think your cousin might be in trouble.”
Caitlyn watched the water boil through the window on the kettle.
“Caitlyn, I’m not supposed to be here telling you this, but they have arrested him, and he’s already dropped Gleeson’s name.”