Emma stumbled, faltered, eyes wide from the shock of the attack. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she said, hands held up, palms outwards, ‘I don’t know what you think I’ve done, but—’
‘Stop lying!’ Nuala lunged, pushed Emma again, forced her against the wall by the fireplace, the heat from the flames growing stronger.
‘Why would you think I would still want him after he left me like that? Left me to face everyone alone?’ Emma shouted.
‘I can see it in your face,’ Nuala said, pushing Emma into the brickwork, holding here there with both hands. ‘The effect he had on you, the longing you still have for him. Why else would you write him those letters?’
Nuala’s voice broke, a split second of weakness and Emma turned, shoved her hard, watched Nuala fall, stumbling back, holding on to the side of the armchair to stop herself falling.
‘As if I don’t have enough to worry about!’ Emma cried. ‘Why would I write to him, beg for his attention, when I have so much more to worry about?’
Emma moved towards the fireplace, the hearth cluttered with tools for the fire, a penknife, coal shovel, tongs. She turned with a cast-iron poker held firmly in her fist.
‘When I have Maggie to look after, this pub to sort out? When everything around me is falling apart?’
The tip of the poker gleamed dangerously as she held it aloft.
‘Go ahead!’ Nuala shouted, not cowering. ‘Hit me, hit me as hard as you like! It won’t make the least bit of difference!’ She started to laugh, the laugh growing manic, her shoulders shuddering and face contorted. ‘I came here to find family, solace,’ she said. ‘But that was all wrong. You see, my family is gone, they can’t be replaced. I’ll show you how much they meant to me, how far I’m willing to go to prove my love for James. To prove that our love was real.’ She darted forward, grabbed Emma’s wrist and yanked the poker cleanly away.
Emma lunged, hands reaching up to grab at the weapon but missed, fell at the floor between Nuala’s feet and the hearth.
The poker was hard and hot in her hand. Nuala raised it above her head.
Emma scrabbled behind her, desperately trying to find something to counterattack with.
But Nuala was faster.
Emma screamed as the poker came down.
Seven years ago
Maggie
Tuesday, 10th August, 2010
Maggie had to reach Lois. She had to make sure she was OK.
Her car dipped over the hill, making the final descent into the village, the sun burning through the rear windscreen and turning the car into a furnace, even with the windows down.
There had been no argument from Emma and Elaine when Maggie had burst into the room, told them where she suspected Arthur of having gone. ‘You have to go,’ Emma had said to Maggie. ‘You have to stop him.’ As if it were the simplest thing in the world.
She drove on through the village centre, her pub up ahead, beside it Lois’s house.
Lois’s garden gate was hanging loose, one of the hinges broken away from the wall.
The front door was ajar, something dark smeared on the white surround. Surely it wasn’t blood?
She slowed the car, tried to look inside the house but she couldn’t see a thing.
Frantic, she parked by the roadside, in between the pub and Lois’s house, stepped out of her car onto the pavement and nearly collided head on with Arthur.
Wild eyes, filled with a savage expression.
They were the first thing she noticed.
‘Where’s Lois?’ Maggie asked nervously, looking past him, seeing the door to Lois’s house was open.
‘Where the fuck were you?’ Arthur said, his teeth bared in a dog-like snarl. ‘Where were you when he was doing those things to my daughter?’ His spittle landed on Maggie’s cheek; he raised a hand and jabbed her in the shoulder. ‘You’re her godmother! Where the fuck were you?’
Maggie couldn’t answer, rendered mute by the expression in his eyes. She had never seen him like this, his whole being consumed with pure rage.
He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand, stormed away. His hair was dishevelled, his clothes too.
Above his collar, on the back of his neck, was a fresh scratch seeping blood onto his shirt.
Maggie looked towards the open door, and ran straight for Lois, calling her name as she entered the house.
The hallway itself was the same as it had been that morning, though the air hung thick and ripe with tension. She could feel it ooze across her skin, lift the hair on her forearms.
She heard a muffled cry, like a sob wept into a pillow.
It had come from the living room.
Maggie lunged forwards, barging open the door with her shoulder. She paused at the threshold, out of breath, her body frozen in shock.
She hadn’t expected Arthur to go so far.
She hadn’t predicted this.
Lois sat slumped on the floorboards by the sagging beige sofa.
Blood leaked from her right nostril in a thin line.
One eye was swollen shut, the eyebrow above it cut, blood smeared across her forehead and crusted black at the hairline. Her throat was ringed with red, a purple thumb mark on the side of her neck. Maggie thought of Elaine’s bruised wrist and shivered.
A smear of blood marked the sofa cushion behind her.
‘Oh my God, Lois! I’m calling the police.’ Maggie said, one foot already pointing out of the door.
Lois gave a muffled sob, opening her good eye. ‘No police!’ Her words were thick and slurred and Maggie could see blood on the edge of her tongue. ‘Arthur said he’d report James if I called the police!’
Maggie was still turned to go, desperate to report Arthur, draw the police in, but Lois managed to stand and grab her arm before her weak legs failed her. Maggie noticed that her knees were scuffed red with carpet burns.
‘No police,’ Lois said again, frantically. Her bottom lip was swelling before Maggie’s eyes. ‘I won’t let this ruin my son’s life.’ There were marks beside her left ear, small half-moons the shape of a man’s fingernails. At some point, Arthur must have grabbed Lois’s ear, dug his claws into that sensitive flesh.
In the hallway, through the living room door, Maggie could see the school portraits of a young, smiling James. She knew that Lois would take countless more punches to protect her only child. It’s what Maggie had always suspected she had done with Jim: taken the hit from her husband to save her boy. Until the night that Jim fell down the stairs, broke his neck, and finally Lois was left alone.
‘OK.’ Maggie held Lois’s elbow, helped her steady herself, ‘But you’re coming next door with me. I’m not leaving you like this.’
Lois winced, but stayed still, didn’t cry out in pain.
‘Nearly done.’ Maggie lifted the cotton, dabbed in vodka from the bar because she’d long ago run out of antiseptic.
‘I need to get back,’ Lois said again, the third time since Maggie had dragged her to the pub to clean her up. Lois had nothing at home, no plasters or gauze, nothing to clean a wound with other than tap water.
‘You can stay here, tonight, if you want to.’
‘I don’t want to.’ Lois wouldn’t look at Maggie but kept her eyes on the door. ‘I knew he’d blame me,’ she said. ‘I just wanted to keep out of it, but you wouldn’t let me, you had to tell him that Emma had been here.’
‘I didn’t think he’d do this!’ Maggie said. ‘I had no idea!’
‘Neither did I,’ Lois said, looking down at her hands, her fingers worrying in her lap.
The light in the bar didn’t help Maggie much, the dimness perfect for drinking but not much else. She touched Lois’s chin, tried to get her to look up, to make sure the wound above her eye was all clean.
Lois flinched, squeezed the bloody tissue in her hand.
There was something unsettling about that tissue, held in her hand, something about the way Lois wouldn’t quite meet Maggie’s eye. Maybe it was the l
ight, highlighting the youth in Lois’s face, maybe it was the purpling cheekbone, reminding Maggie of her son, Lee, how his face had bloomed with bruises beneath her fist during that one, terrible time when she had lost her senses completely, drunk on gin and wallowing in grief.
‘I really wish you’d let me take you to the hospital. I can patch you up, but the cut on your eyebrow will probably scar. A nurse would do a much better job.’
‘I’m not going to the hospital.’
‘And your tongue needs looking at, too.’ The underside of Lois’s tongue had been ripped, the frenulum torn. ‘What the hell did he do?’
‘He pulled it out between finger and thumb. Wouldn’t let go till I promised not to tell anyone about this.’ Lois’ gestured towards her bruised face and neck, tried to say more but her chin began to quiver.
Maggie dropped the cottonwool ball, ‘Jesus, Lois! We have to tell the police, he has to be held accountable for this!’
Lois shook her head. ‘I just want to go home.’
‘Why? There’s no one there. Someone needs to look after you.’
‘What do you care?’
‘I’m trying to help,’ Maggie said, and lifted the cotton ball back up, inhaling the vodka evaporating from the wool.
‘You’re too late to help!’ Lois held her chin high. ‘You’re always too late.’
Lois was looking at her at last, eyes flaming, lips trembling. Beneath her defiance was something else, a fragment of her teenage self. The blood on Lois’s face, the sight of the tissue in her hands, reawakened a memory of Maggie’s.
Lois at fifteen, standing in the village’s main street on a humid summer’s day, her father’s oil-marked hand between her shoulder blades.
Maggie had seen her, had watched from the aisles of the shop.
‘Go on then!’ he’d shouted through fag-stained teeth and Lois flinched, her eyes on the ground, as he pushed her towards three of the village’s most recognisable figures. Arthur Bradbury, who was swiftly making a name for himself as a businessman. Dark blond hair slicked back from his forehead, a brown tweed blazer on over his broad, farmer’s shoulders and a year-old wedding ring glinting on his left hand. A third of the locals were in Arthur’s employment already, working either on his farm, in his dairy or in his production yard. Next to him was Edward Burrows, Arthur’s secretary (though lackey was the term Maggie’s husband Tom favoured, having never taken a shine to his cousin’s right-hand man). And then there was Jim Lunglow, the only unmarried man between them, steel-capped boots on his feet and mechanic’s overalls on his back, completing the trio. All three of them were in their forties; a powerful group of imposing men, and were rarely seen without each other.
‘Ask ’em then, girl, ask ’em.’ Lois’s father spat on the pavement, his spit yellow and thick. ‘You want a lift into town, and I’m not going to bloody well take you!’
Arthur flicked his cigarette to the floor, looked towards the shop and caught Maggie’s eye. She looked down, back at the tins of soup on the shelf. Lois’s father raised his foot and stamped the cigarette out.
The young girl mumbled something.
‘I’ll drive you to town,’ Edward offered. He dug the corner of his elbow into Jim’s side, winked at him when Lois’s father wasn’t looking. Jim, his open mouth adding to his air of idiocy, rubbed his hands on the flank of his overalls.
‘Well, wha’ d’you say?’ Lois’s father again, pushing her forward so she stumbled and Edward caught her by her upper arms, his fingers denting her flesh.
‘Thank you,’ Lois mumbled. So unlike her, Maggie thought. Where was the rudeness she was used to, the obstinate lack of respect? In all the years she had known her, and she had known the girl all her life, she had never once said thank you for anything.
‘Where’s it you wanna go to, lovely?’ And Edward’s fingers moved from her arm to her waist, waving the girl’s father away with his spare hand.
Lois’s father walked off, visibly relieved he didn’t have to drive his daughter himself, a plume of cheap tobacco smoke left in his wake.
Lois watched him go silently.
Maggie moved closer to the open shop door so she could catch what was said. She couldn’t take her eyes off the young girl outside, off the older man holding her waist.
Maggie looked around. No one here was paying the scene any attention at all.
Not entirely sure what she was going to achieve, other than the very fact she was doing something, Maggie stepped out of the shop.
‘Hello there, Lois. Want me to walk you home?’ she said. ‘I’m heading that way now—’
Edward’s stare turned dark at her approach. ‘You’re not needed here, Maggie.’
Lois was silent, her face blank, and Maggie said, ‘You all right, Lois?’
‘Why wouldn’t she be?’ Jim squared his shoulders and stared Maggie down. ‘What are you implying?’ He was taller than Maggie by a head, the muscles on his thick arms flexing as he took a step towards her.
‘Nothing.’ Maggie backed away, wished Tom was there with her. ‘Just wanted to make sure Lois was all right.’
Arthur folded his arms, looked at Jim grimly with his eyebrows slightly raised. The mechanic followed the silent orders and stepped down.
‘You’re fine, aren’t you, sweetheart?’ Edward’s tone was light, almost jovial, his eyes on Lois as he waited for her answer.
The girl nodded, eyes on the floor.
‘Say hello to Tom for me,’ Arthur said by way of goodbye, putting an end to Maggie’s involvement.
‘Right you are,’ she said awkwardly, not wanting to leave but feeling she had little choice.
When Maggie looked back, from inside the shop, Arthur was talking seriously to Jim but Edward was still holding Lois by the waist. Maggie tried to reassure herself that he was doing the young girl a favour, giving her a lift. That there wasn’t something intrinsically off.
Lois was just a kid, after all.
Wore too much makeup, used language unfit for a lady, but she was just a kid.
Edward was a decent married man, for God’s sake. And Arthur was Tom’s cousin. He was trustworthy; a businessman with a reputation to protect. Lois would be perfectly fine with him.
Later that day, when Maggie was walking back from the church after sorting the flowers and dusting the pews, she saw them again.
Edward had beckoned her over to his green Ford Cortina with a beep of the horn.
‘All right, Mags?’
She was nearly home. She was tired. She wanted to see Tom, was confused as to why Edward would call her over.
Maggie glanced in through the passenger window. The car was hot and the inside smelled sour, of sweat and hot skin. ‘I’m just back from town, took Lois to the library,’ Edward said, jauntily. There was no sign of Arthur, or of Jim.
She noticed Lois then, so still on the backseat that Maggie hadn’t realised she was in the car. Her face pale, eyes red rimmed, a hanky in her hand.
‘Everything OK, Lois?’ Maggie asked.
But Lois didn’t say a word. She pressed her lips together and gave the slightest shake of her head. Her hands were in her lap, worrying the hanky between them, knees tight together beneath her skirt.
‘She’s fine,’ Edward said and Maggie looked back at him, his easy confidence, relaxed smile, off-white teeth. ‘Just taking her home to her folks, safe and sound.’
Beside Lois was a dark, damp patch on the tan corduroy seat, and another tissue lay scrunched up by the seatbelt.
Maggie caught her eye and the girl looked away, her bottom lip quivering again.
‘She’s had her little trip to the library and now I’m bringing her back. Looked after you the whole time, didn’t I, little girl?’
Maggie wondered what the point had been in calling her over. The heat from the sun on her shoulders was getting stronger, and her bent back was beginning to ache. ‘What are you after, Edward?’
‘Just wanted to say hello, that’s all. Anything you w
ant to say, Lois?’ He turned so that his expression was hidden from Maggie. ‘You’re the one who wanted to talk to Maggie, isn’t that right? Isn’t that what you said to me earlier? Well, here she is, what was it you wanted to tell her?’
Maggie rubbed the sweat from her brow. ‘What is it, Lois?’
Lois said nothing; dropped her eyes to her knees. Edward turned back with a smile. ‘She must have forgotten,’ he said. ‘You know what teenagers are like.’
‘I’ll be off then,’ said Maggie, still confused by the exchange, not knowing if Lois had really wanted to talk to her or not.
As she went to leave, she saw Lois raise the hanky to her eyes again.
A label was sticking out of the hanky, a BHS label – the kind found in the backs of girls’ knickers.
Maggie stepped back, opened her mouth in shock, but the car drove away and she lost her chance to speak.
She hadn’t seen anything concrete, she told herself as she walked home. She didn’t know anything for sure.
Back at home she had helped Tom set the bar up for the evening, cooked dinner for the family. She poured pints of cider, ale, bitter, the occasional gin. Helped Tom tidy up after last orders.
But she couldn’t get the image out of her head, couldn’t stop thinking about the girl in the car, the hanky that might, or might not, have been a pair of knickers scrunched up in her hand, tissues in a ball by the seatbelt.
She began to take notice of how often she saw the young girl in the company of that tight group of three, Edward, Jim and Arthur. Sometimes it was Edward who drove Lois out of the village, sometimes it was Jim, Arthur seemingly never directly involved.
Eventually she heard the village gossip, mostly from customers at the bar, once from Lois’s mother herself who came in to drown her shame in cheap wine. Arthur had for once driven Lois home, practically thrown her on the doorstep of her father’s terrace house, and told the man that his daughter was a disgrace, a bloody disgrace, that Lois had come to him and begged him for money to help her and how dare she do that, how dare she, when it had nothing to do with him? That she’d been sleeping with Jim, like a cheap little whore, tried throwing herself at Edward too, but he was married, of course, so refused her.
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