Jen bit her lip. ‘But once you start teaching them to use their fists that’s how they might deal with life every time they find themselves in a tight spot.’ Jen couldn’t help thinking of Nuts and the way he brutally used his fists on her every time they got into a bit of verbal. No way did she want to encourage her kids to go around decking other people. ‘I don’t want them to be like the other young ’uns around here, thinking the only way to go through life is to punch their way through it.’
Jen didn’t even realise she did it, but she smoothed her hand across her side where Nuts had punched her a couple of weeks back.
Babs took note of her daughter’s hand and worry lines creased her forehead and around her mouth. ‘You hurt yourself, love?’
Jen instantly dropped her hand, but wouldn’t meet her mum’s gaze. ‘It’s nothing. I think I hurt myself when I knocked into a table or something.’
Babs leaned over and stretched her hands towards her eldest child. ‘Let me be the judge of whether it’s nothing.’ She touched Jen’s top. ‘Let me have a look—’
Jen stormed to her feet, but couldn’t stop the tears forming in the bottom of her eyes. ‘I said it’s nothing, Mum. Now please, leave it out.’
Stone-faced, Babs got to her feet, the duster dropping onto the carpet. And in her mum voice, that Jen hadn’t heard for years, ordered, ‘Jennifer Miller, you stay right where you are.’
Jen pulled in a strong breath as her mum lifted her top. She looked away as her mum gasped at the fading blue-black-yellow bruise. She was too ashamed to look at her mother. Babs tenderly touched her fingertips to the bruise. The tears began to fall at the care her mum was showing her.
‘It ain’t . . .’ she gulped as the tears came stronger, ‘what you think, Mum.’
‘And what do I think, baby?’ The last time her mum had called her ‘baby’ was when she was ten and scraped the side of her face when she’d fallen off her bike. Babs had gently cleaned her face and whispered soothing words in her ear.
Babs pulled herself straight and looked her daughter in the eye. ‘I tell you what I think. I think that bastard of a husband of yours is using you as a punch bag. And don’t lie to me because my mate Terri had enough of these in the early part of her marriage – until her brothers made her old man see the error of his ways. How long, Jen?’
‘When I started carrying Courtney.’ The tears and emotions overwhelmed Jen and she collapsed in her mother’s arms and started sobbing as if her heart was breaking. Babs soothed and caressed her, like she was that ten-year-old again. Eventually she got her tears under control and allowed her mum to steer her back to the sofa. But Babs didn’t sit down, instead she said, ‘Let’s make you a nice cuppa.’
When Babs left the room Jen slumped back against the sofa. She was consumed by relief. It was like a large stone had been lifted from her chest. All the years when she’d had to hold back the pain, and wear long sleeves to cover the bruises and swelling on her arms, were now in the past. Just knowing that her mum was now in the picture made her feel strangely safe. But the safe feeling disappeared a minute later when she saw her mum headed for the door.
Jen jumped up and rushed into the passage. ‘Mum? Mum, what you doing?’
Babs turned displaying the rolling pin in her hand. Her eyes spat fire. ‘I tell you what I’m doing,’ she growled, ‘I’m going to find that no good son-in-law of mine and beat some sense into him—’
Jen frantically shook her head. ‘No, Mum, you can’t do that.’
‘I want him to know what it feels like to be beaten like a dog in the street.’
‘Mum, stop.’ Jen could see her mother was shaking with rage. She placed her hand gently on Babs’ arm. ‘Please, Mum. I don’t want any argy-bargy.’
‘But you don’t understand.’ Her mum’s face was so filled with pain that Jen regretted coming here. ‘It’s all my fault. I encouraged you to go out with the slimeball even when you pegged him for a bad penny.’
‘No, Mum. The only person to blame is Nuts. Those hands he hits me with belong to him.’
‘Stanley Miller might’ve been the Devil’s disciple from hell, but he never, never, laid a hand on me. Never laid a hand on you or your sister.’
Her mother rarely talked about the past or her dad, so seeing an opening, Jen asked, ‘So why did he do a bunk from our lives when Tiff was a baby and me not much older?’
A silent Babs looked at her eldest. Her shoulders slumped, as if the life had been drained out of her, and she moved slowly back into the sitting room where she dropped back on to the sofa. ‘I only ever tried to do my best.’
Jen was instantly sorry. It wasn’t Babs’ fault she’d been dumped and had to bring up two children on her own. ‘I know, Mum. You done good.’ She hated her mum looking like this – like she’d aged a good twenty years. Her mum had lived a hard life and she didn’t want to make it any harder.
She eased down on the sofa again and took the rolling pin away from her mum and placed it on the carpet. ‘Don’t worry about me and Nuts. Things are going to get better because he’s got a job now. Maybe he’s been feeling frustrated, but now his mind’s going to be occupied, he’ll be a hell of a lot happier.’ She touched her mum’s arm. ‘Promise me you won’t let on to Tiffany.’
Babs nodded.
‘What am I going to do about the girls and their dinner money?’
Babs looked across at her. ‘Have you told . . .’ Her mouth twisted, then spat, ‘Nuts?’
Jen made a disgusted noise. ‘No point, he’ll only say that’s the mum’s department to get sorted.’
‘There’s only one thing you can do, Jen. Follow them when they leave the house for school on Monday morning with the dinner money.’
Forty-Four
Jen kissed both her daughters goodbye and then followed them as they set off to school. She wore her hair tucked under a hat and kept a respectable distance so the girls were less likely to notice her. The school was about a fifteen-minute walk from her home, across Mile End Road, in a little turning off the Georgian Square where Babs cleaned a few houses. Jen had initially been worried about the girls crossing to the other side of the street, because Mile End was such a busy road, but the only alternative had been to send them to the school around the corner where she and Tiff had gone. She knew first hand what that place was like and wouldn’t even send a dog there. She nodded her head with approval as she saw Courtney take her little sister’s hand when they got to the crossing. That’s what she’d told her Courtney – always keep your little sister safe. Just like she’d done with Tiffany when they went to primary school.
Jen held back, giving them time to get to the other side. As she got to the middle of the crossing, she saw a group of three other kids approach her girls. Right, I’ve got you, Jen thought triumphantly, I’m going to bloody wring your necks. She watched closely as the other children reached her daughters. Jen waited for Courtney to get out the dinner money, but it never happened. All the children did was laugh and chat. Jen quickly crossed over, but held back. She recognised two of the group as Courtney’s classmates. One of them was Dexter Ingram. He was a really good-looking kid, mixed race with dimples in his cheeks and big brown eyes. Shame he was a bloody Ingram because that kid had manners, respect and was always nicely turned out, unlike the rest of his clan. Mel Ingram claimed he was her cousin’s kid who she’d taken into her home out of the goodness of her heart when her cousin died, but the estate jungle vine told a different tale. People speculated that his real mum was the eldest Ingram girl who had had him when she was fourteen. Who the father was, no one knew. Still tea leafing was in his blood and he was going to rue the day he started on her daughters, if he turned out to be a bully.
Jen was astonished to see both her children let out loud giggles. Her girls wouldn’t be spinning a joke or two with a bunch of bullies. Then the other children left the girls and walked away. So, they weren’t the ones robbing her kids. In fact, what Jen saw was her Courtney gazing all dopey
eyed after Dexter Ingram. Courtney was sweet on the boy. There was no way – no way – her girl was getting ideas about an Ingram.
But before Jen could ponder that some more, her daughters were on the move again.
Just as they got to the street their school was on, the girls stopped at the corner as if they were waiting for someone. Jen stopped and tried to hide herself by moving to the side of the pavement. A man in a hooded top seemed to appear out of nowhere and was in front of the girls in seconds. Jen couldn’t make out his face, but she could make out Courtney passing him the small envelope with the dinner money inside. Bastard. Probably some junkie terrorising her kids to sort out his next fix. Not on her watch. Jen started barrelling forward just as Courtney leaned up and planted a kiss on the man’s cheek. Jen stopped in her tracks. What the hell was going on? The man turned and Jen caught his face.
Nuts.
Stunned, Jen stumbled around and quickly walked back the other way. She couldn’t believe it. Nuts had told her he was working in a car dealership in Romford. But he wasn’t. He was ripping his own kids off, the dirty low life. No wonder the girls had kept schtum; they didn’t want to grass up their dad to her; they loved him to bits. Poxy cunt. Every curse word Jen knew battered around her head. She followed him and saw him get in a flash motor with tinted windows so she couldn’t see who was inside. Probably some bird with boobs as big as her bimbo hairdo. She wasn’t surprised; the stories of Nuts sticking his wick where it didn’t belong had reached her years ago. She could live with that. She could live with him knocking her around. But what she couldn’t, and wouldn’t, live with was him literally taking the food from her daughters’ mouths and making a liar of them into the bargain, just so he could shag his useless life away.
Jen immediately got the overland train to Romford. She used to come out with Bex and some of the other girls back in the day, to shake a leg and paint the town redder than red on a Saturday night. The high street was the same, but also different. The Liberty Shopping Centre she knew well, but she didn’t know what the large building called The Brewery was all about, and she didn’t have time to find out. From what Nuts had told her, the car dealership he worked in was near the market at the top of the High Street. She looked for almost half an hour and didn’t find the address. In the end, she asked an older woman who was passing by.
‘Car dealership?’ The woman looked baffled. ‘I’ve lived here for thirty years love and if there was a car place up here I’d know about it.’
Jen thanked the woman and started walking away. Car dealership my arse. Nuts had been having one over on her. He never had any job, the kiddie-money-nicking bastard. She didn’t feel rage, anger or fury. Instead her mind was calm as she got the train back. One of the other passengers had his CD portable on too loud so she caught the tune he was playing – Destiny’s Child’s ‘Survivor’. Yes, Jen decided, taking a leaf out of Beyoncé and her girls’ advice – she was better than this. She made a life changing decision.
Nuts was going to have to go.
‘He’ll fucking kill you, Jen,’ Bex warned her friend.
They sat at the back near the foot spas, in the nail bar Bex managed in Roman Road Market. Bex was still a good-looking girl, but boy had she piled on the pounds over the years. She looked more like a Buddha than a Bex. Plus, she’d had a baby with some Turkish bastard who had conveniently forgotten to mention he already had a missus tucked up indoors. And when his wife had gone gunning for Bex with a baby oil bottle, filled with acid, the poor girl had been left with a scar on her face for the rest of her life.
But Bex spoiled that boy of hers something chronic, believing she had to make up for his absent father. Meanwhile, she tried to keep herself looking hip, with clobber she got from one of the more trendy stalls in the market and high-end perfume (that Jen couldn’t afford, although she couldn’t say she liked the scent Bex was smothered in today).
‘Mum told me that too,’ Jen said, as she watched Bex lick her fingers after eating a family bag of Doritos Chilli Heatwave.
‘You’d better listen to her. If you go to the authorities about Nuts or go to one of them women refuge places, he’ll track you down and squeeze the life out of you.’
‘But he’s bloody filching from his own kids and pissing all over me, taking me for a mug.’ Tears sprang to Jen’s eyes. ‘He crossed his heart and swore that job was the real deal. I can’t live like this anymore, Bex. I’ve got to get out.’
Bex started on another pack of Doritos. ‘Only thing I can think of is for you to leave the country. Got any people in Spain?’
Jen slumped back in despair. Bex wasn’t saying anything that her mum hadn’t said already, apart from do a bunk out of the country. The message from her best mate was clear – if she tried to leave Nuts he was going to murder her. And she wasn’t joking. You didn’t have a laugh about that kind of stuff in East London. Who could forget poor Maureen Ryan, who’d lived on The Devil? A gentle woman, bit of a Jack Daniels follower but went out of her way to be respectful to everyone and always took care that her kids were done up nice and tidy. But that bastard of an old man of hers had beat her black and blue like it was his hobby, even in public. She’d finally left him and taken the kids with her to some refuge in Whitechapel. She didn’t even last a week; he found her and snapped her neck. The fucker went down for life and poor, dead Maureen’s children ended up going to live with their nan and grandad in Ireland. The thought of Courtney and Little Bea being brought up by other people twisted Jen’s heart more than her own death.
She looked pleadingly at her friend. ‘I’ve got to do something, Bex. If I don’t I’m going to go mad.’
Bex licked her fingers again. ‘But what, Jen? What are you going to do?’
Forty-Five
When they arrived back at John and Dee’s after a special evening out – a treat to the local chicken ’n’ chips eating hole, because Nicky had been readmitted to school – Tiffany took him to one side before they went into the house.
‘Don’t forget to be humble and promise you’ll be a good pupil from now on. Do you hear?’
‘Whatever . . .’ He was smiling his teeth off.
Tiffany was confused. ‘What are you beaming about? You can’t be that happy that the school’s taking you back, surely?’
Nicky was radiant. ‘Nah, two fingers to school – but I’m bound to be on a sweetener from mum and dad now the posh joint’s taken me back. Stands to reason, they had the right hump when I was slung out – now I’m back in, they’ll be giving me a little reward.’ He rubbed his hands eagerly together. ‘Can’t make me mind up what I want, but I fancy a motorbike to tell you the truth, Tiff.’
Tiffany rolled her eyes. ‘If anyone deserves a reward, it’s the school, not you. And you’re only fifteen – too young to be on the back of a motorbike, you little runt. And stop calling me Tiff; I’m not a fucking charwoman.’
‘I can ride a bike – Tiffany. We ride them around the local playing fields. Piece of piss.’
They found Dee, John and Banshee in the cinema room watching the carry-ons on Big Brother.
‘That bimbo’s a right twat,’ Dee announced. ‘They shouldn’t wait for a vote but throw her arse out the door right . . . Oh you’re back.’
Then Dee went into overdrive, still on cloud nine that her son was going back to school. She greeted her little soldier as if he’d just won a couple of gold medals at the Olympics. Squealing with joy, like a teenager who’d seen her idol at the stage door after a concert, she threw her arms around him. ‘John! John! The school’s admitted they’ve made a mistake and they’ve taken Nicky back.’
John was skipping the celebrations. He sat in an armchair with a glass of his favourite tipple – whiskey. Tiffany overheard him muttering, ‘Yeah and I’m sure that donation I gave to the school’s sports fund had nothing to do with it. If I’d tried that trick anywhere else the Bill would have run me in for extortion.’
When she’d finished fussing over her son, Dee got
serious and told him to get in his room and start swotting up so he wasn’t behind when he went back to class. She also gently reminded Nicky that he was to apply himself from now on and there was to be no more hitting other boys with any types of sticks. Like an eager puppy, Nicky promised he was going to be kosher at school from now on. Then he stood, pointedly, with his arms folded and a big smile on his face like a dustman who’d just wished a resident a Merry Christmas. Dee didn’t get it and furrowed her brow. ‘What you looking at me like that for?’
Nicky didn’t get the fact that she didn’t get it. ‘Well, you know . . .’
‘No, what don’t I know?’
Nicky realised he’d drawn a blank on his sweetener and the smile faded to a frown and he began to stomp off.
‘Oi,’ Dee said, ‘get back here.’
Nicky turned around and Tiffany was surprised to see the smile on his face instead of his usual sulky routine when he didn’t get his own way.
Dee pointed at her cheek. ‘Ain’t you forgotten something?’
Nicky dutifully kissed her and left the room to begin swotting, mumbling under his breath.
Dee didn’t like champagne – she liked to compare it to fizzy apple juice from a bargain store – but she had a sense of occasion and she opened a bottle from the room that she used as a bar when she had guests. She shared it with Tiffany and John while hunting around in a drawer where she found a grand, in assorted bank notes. She folded them together and gave them to Tiffany. ‘Get yourself something nice, babes. You’ve done wonders with my boy – hasn’t she, John?’
John ignored the question, but he did look up like he was listening out for something. He then shook his head and returned back to his newspaper. Dee and Tiffany kicked off their shoes and swapped stories about schools, kids, ambitions and their respective mothers.
Blood Sister: A thrilling and gritty crime drama Page 26