by Agatha Frost
“She’s already awake,” Jamie mumbled.
“What?” Terry cried, tossing Julia up so that she landed hard on his shoulder. “For how long?”
“Couple of minutes.”
Terry turned, sending Julia into a spin. She opened her eyes and caught Joanne whizzing by. She didn’t need to see Terry striking his son because she felt the back of his hand hitting Jamie’s cheek through her body.
“This is all your fault!” Terry sneered. “You’re pathetic.”
Terry turned and started walking even quicker towards the house. She could hear Jamie sniffling into his sleeve, muffling his cries the best he could. They were the sobs of somebody who had learned to hide them.
“Get the key,” Terry ordered again. “Come on! Hurry up! This needs to be now!”
Julia felt Joanne rummage under her restrained foot to pull something out of his pocket. Julia looked down and the gravel had turned to grass. They had reached Peridale Manor.
She heard the click of a lock and they left the rain. Just from the tiles, she could tell she was in the kitchen. It was cold, which meant the heating had been turned off for hours, likely making it the early hours of the morning.
The ground came from under Julia as Terry tossed her over his shoulder and slammed her onto the table as though she were a bag of sand. He gripped the front of her soaked dress and yanked her up into a sitting position so they were face to face. She stared into his dark eyes, the stubble around his mouth was peppered grey like the edges of Barker’s hairline. She remembered their date and she started to uncontrollably sob and shake.
“Listen to me!” Terry said, shaking her shoulders. “Shut up, woman! Joanne, pass me that knife.”
Joanne snatched up a large knife from the counter at the very moment a crack of white lightning pierced through the dark rain. It illuminated the kitchen, showing the madness in Terry’s eyes and the fear in his wife and son’s.
“Are you going to be good?” Terry asked, pressing the cold blade of the knife against Julia’s face. “Or do I need to do this the painful way?”
Julia forced her cries to stop. In that moment, a sudden calmness fell over her as she stared into Terry’s murky soul.
“Find me something to drink,” he shot over his shoulder at Joanne. “I need something to take the edge off.”
Joanne hurried over to the fridge, pulling its heavy doors open. The light flooded the kitchen. Julia could see Jamie pacing back and forth, sobbing silently and shaking out of control.
“There’s only lemonade,” she called.
“I need something strong!” Terry cried. “Dammit, woman. Get me some alcohol.”
Joanne rummaged through every cupboard until she found a bottle of cooking wine. That seemed to suit Terry perfectly. He pulled the cork out with his teeth, spat it out, and crammed the bottleneck into his mouth. Head tossed back, he gulped the dark wine like it was water, only stopping when he had drained every last drop. Eyes clenched, he bobbed his head forward as he panted for breath, his teeth and lips stained blood red.
“You’re going to walk up those stairs,” Terry said, pointing the knife in Julia’s face, his large gut pressing against her knees. “And you’re going to do it quietly, or else I kill every person in this house as they sleep. Do you understand?”
Julia nodded without thinking, making the dizziness return. She forced herself to stay with this world and not float through into the darkness between this and the next. She knew if she had any chance of walking out of the manor alive, she needed to stay focussed.
Terry quickly slid the knife down, making her think he was going to stab her. Instead, he sliced the restraints from her feet and dragged her off the table. Her ankles were weak and her head swirled from standing on her own for the first time. She caught her reflection in the dark kitchen window, the side of her face stained in scarlet.
“Move,” he ordered, grabbing a fistful of the back of her dress and placing the knife dangerously close to her spine. “Come on. Walk.”
Julia stumbled forward. She frantically looked to Jamie, but he was as with them as Julia had been during the second part of their car journey.
She took the steps as slowly as she could, trying to formulate a plan. She played up to her injury, staggering and grabbing the handrail. Terry’s need for silence meant he wasn’t going to hurt her until completely necessary, so as long as she kept her gagged mouth shut, she was keeping herself alive. She knew when she reached the top she would be walking towards the window like a pirate down the plank.
The moment Julia’s shoe touched the top step, her body convulsed beyond her control. She wondered if the injury to her head was causing her to have a seizure, but she quickly realised it was out of sheer terror. She had stared down a blade before and expected death, but her life hadn’t flashed before her eyes then. As she stared down at the polished mahogany floorboards, she saw everything before her. She thought of Sue, and her gran finding out she had been thrown from the same window as Charles Wellington. She thought of Jessie being cast back into the care system, and Mowgli back to the streets. She would never know what it would be like to finish a date with Barker, nor would she die divorced from the man she detested. Her café would gather dust, and her father would die an old man in prison after the Lewis family successfully framed the drunken man for her murder. The worse part was, she wondered if her father might even believe he did it. She didn’t know how much of that whiskey he had drank, but she remembered how much he had drunk after her mother died, and it was a lot.
Thinking of her mother calmed her. It even sent a flicker of warmth through her body. She didn’t know if she believed in a God, or in an afterlife, but the thought of possibly being reunited with her mother filled her with a swelling light. She had always known this day was coming and it had comforted her to think she might one day see her mother again, even if she hadn’t expected it to be so soon.
The convulsing started again, and she looked up from the ground. She caught a man’s eyes, but they weren’t Terry’s or Jamie’s, they were much older and much blanker. She realised she was looking through a crack into Vincent Wellington’s bedroom, where he was sitting under a blanket in his wheelchair in front of a silent TV. For a moment, she thought she saw those old vacant eyes widen, but before she could be sure, Terry pushed her on.
She turned her attention to the window. Its glass was fresh, but that wouldn’t last long. Would death hurt? It wouldn’t be like falling asleep, more like falling into a nightmare she wouldn’t jolt from. She reconsidered if it was a nightmare, but it felt too real; the pain in her head felt too real.
Just thinking of the pain in her head made her ears burn with a deafening buzzing. She clenched her eyes and stopped, wanting to clutch her head. When she opened them, she realised the Lewis family could hear it too.
“What is that?” Joanne seethed through gritted teeth. “An alarm?”
“There wasn’t an alarm when I put the bust back yesterday,” Terry said.
Julia heard a door open, and then another. They all turned to see Brian and Hilary squinting into the dark, both disgruntled and half asleep.
“What the -,” Brian mumbled over the alarm as he walked forward and flicked on a light. “Julia?”
Just hearing her father say her name immediately broke her. Tears flooded her cheeks, mixing with the blood and dripping through the gag so she could taste the mixture of iron and salt. Julia felt a renewed urge to survive this horrible night, so she ran in the only direction she could, towards the window.
Pushing her body up against the cold glass, she watched as Terry advanced on her brandishing his knife. Brian charged forward as Hilary stood screaming from behind her hands. Julia knew her father was never going to catch up to save her. She didn’t want to fall onto the blade of a madman regretting so many years of her life, but she did. All she wanted was a hug from her dad.
“No!” a voice cried and a dark shadow appeared in front of her like a ghost, standing
between her and the knife.
She heard a small whimper, but she didn’t stick around to see what had happened. She leapt into her father’s arms, her hands still restrained. Painful sobs escaped her throat and her father’s lips pressed up against her forehead.
“It’s all going to be okay,” he whispered. “It’s all going to be okay.”
Julia realised she had been waiting to hear those words from him since the day her mother died.
Forcing back her tears, the sound of another’s was drowning out the piercing alarm. She pulled away from her father to see Jamie and Terry stumbling towards the window. It looked as though they were hugging, but from the strained cries leaving Joanne’s mouth, she knew something more serious had happened.
Jamie’s eyes met her and they tensed, apologising in a way words couldn’t. It was then she saw the blood dripping between them, and she realised exactly what had happened. Jamie had jumped in between her and the blade.
Julia noticed why it looked like they were hugging. Jamie was clutching onto his father’s shirt as though the two were fused. With the strength of ten men, Jamie dragged his father with him through the window. The glass shattered and they both fell into the rain.
Unable to hold on anymore, Julia let the darkness take her as Joanne’s screams rang throughout the whole of Peridale.
Julia’s eyes shot open, instantly closing because of the bright daylight. She forced them open again, realising it wasn’t daylight at all, but florescent tubes in the hospital ceiling.
“She’s awake!” she heard her gran cry. “Sue, wake up! She’s awake!”
Julia blinked hard, feeling like she had been asleep for years. Against the beeping, she heard Sue’s groans as their gran woke her. Next to Sue, Jessie stirred from her sleep too.
“Huh?” Sue groaned, sitting up and rubbing her eyes. “What’s happening?”
“She’s awake!”
Sue, Jessie and Dot all rushed over to her side. Jessie clutched one hand, Sue clutched another and Dot rested her own hand on Julia’s forehead, which she realised was bandaged up.
“How long have I been out?” she asked, her croakiness surprising her.
“Just a day,” Dot said soothingly, her thumb rubbing over the bandages. “You gave us all quite a fright.”
Julia remembered the blow to the head and everything that had happened following it. She remembered watching Terry and Jamie tumbling out of the window, and then fading into darkness in her father’s arms. She knew it was all too bizarre to be a dream.
“Joanne?” she mumbled.
“She’s been arrested,” Sue said, squeezing Julia’s hand. “You don’t have to worry about them.”
“The others?” she asked.
Sue looked to Jessie, who looked to Dot, who looked to Julia. None of them seemed to want to tell her what had happened.
“Terry died,” Jessie said in a soft voice Julia didn’t recognise. “Jamie is in intensive care.”
“He survived?”
“He did it, Julia,” Dot said. “Jamie struck Charles over the head. Joanne confessed everything.”
“I know,” Julia said. “I know why.”
“It doesn’t matter why,” Sue said, squeezing Julia’s hand again. “All that matters is you’re safe, and that boy will leave this place in a box, or in handcuffs. Either way, he can’t hurt you.”
“No,” Julia mumbled, coughing as she struggled for words. “He saved me. He stood in front of the blade.”
They all looked from one to the other again, and she could tell they were wondering if she was under the influence of the heavy drugs she could feel pumping through her system. It was all so bizarre, she began to wonder that herself.
She was about to start explaining again, but the door creaked open and Barker walked through, clutching a tray of plastic coffees.
“I thought we could all use some -,” Barker said, his voice trailing off and his eyes meeting Julia’s. “You’re awake!”
“Barely,” Dot said. “She’s delirious. Thinks that dreadful Lewis boy jumped in front of his mad father’s blade to save her.”
“He did,” Julia said, fighting off more coughing. “He is just a boy.”
Dot, Sue and Jessie all backed away, making room for Barker to stand by Julia’s side. He didn’t hesitate in scooping up her hand and when he squeezed, she squeezed back.
“I was so worried about you,” Barker said, his bottom lip trembling. “Why did you have to go snooping, hmm?”
“I didn’t,” Julia said, attempting to laugh but coughing instead. “Not this time. I went to get a prospectus for Jessie. For college.”
Jessie looked guiltily to the floor, and Julia tried to tell her she didn’t need to feel guilty, but she couldn’t summon the energy to raise her voice loud enough to reach her across the room.
“You can explain later,” Barker said, his hand clutching Julia’s hand so tight she felt safe enough to forget what had happened. “All that matters is you are safe.”
“The alarm?” Julia asked.
“It was Vincent’s medical alarm,” Barker said, with a small laugh. “He saw you and he saved you. He pressed the button and woke everyone up. The man is still in there somewhere.”
“Katie was telling the truth,” Julia croaked, her eyelids fluttering. “The burglar was real – I found – I found -,”
Darkness took her once again.
3 Weeks Later
Julia’s first day back in the café was a surreal one. She was given more flowers and sympathy cards than she knew what to do with, and she recounted the tale of what had happened so many times it had started to feel like it had happened to somebody else. Even though they had all heard the story on the Peridale grapevine, there wasn’t a dry eye or a gasp free mouth in her café that day.
A little after noon, Sally Marriott came into the café alone. All heads turned and watched as she walked towards the counter, her head bowed in silence. When she met Julia’s eyes, she immediately broke out into tears.
“Oh, Julia!” she cried. “I feel like all of this is my fault.”
“Don’t be silly,” Julia said as she took Sally into the kitchen to get her away from the eavesdroppers. “You didn’t have anything to do with this.”
“I just can’t help but think if I hadn’t lied to the police, or to you, maybe the truth would have helped them in some way.”
Sally sat down and Julia made her a strong cup of coffee. Sally explained how when she had visited Peridale Manor, she had found Richard pinning Charles to the ground and punching him in the face. She told Julia that she managed to drag him away and convince him to come home with her so they could talk. As they were leaving, they saw Charles fall out of the window, so they quickly left the scene so they wouldn’t be suspected.
“I understand,” Julia said, resting her hand on Sally’s jittery knee. “You don’t have to feel guilty.”
Sally sipped her coffee and attempted to smile, but Julia could sense sadness still deep within her.
“I really loved him, Julia,” she said, nodding her head and holding back tears. “I thought Charles was the one. We met late last year at The Comfy Corner. Richard had stood me up and Charles was supposed to be meeting his sister because she wanted to tell him something, but she didn’t show up. I suppose it was about the spa, but she decided against telling him so she could get on with things. If she had just told him, none of this would have happened. He wasn’t as bad as people said. We got talking and he was so kind and sensitive in a way Richard wasn’t. One thing led to another and – well, you know the rest. Richard found messages on my phone the night before the garden party, so he went up to the manor looking for Charles because he knew everybody in the village would be there. I was such a fool, Julia.”
“Do you think marrying him is the best decision?”
“I’ve left him,” Sally said, calming herself long enough to take a sip of coffee. “For good, this time. We were never right for each other. I was just in
love with the idea of the fairy tale. Cinderella and her Prince Charming. He showed me attention and I fell in love with the fantasy. I’m sorry to cancel my wedding cake order again.”
Julia smiled and stood up. She walked over to the fridge and pulled out a plastic box filled with small slices of cake. She peeled off the lid and offered it to Sally, who looked suspiciously at them before plucking one out.
“Cinnamon, rose and orange!” she exclaimed as she bit into it. “Oh, Julia! It’s delicious! It’s better than I ever could have imagined.”
“Keep them,” Julia said. “Those three weeks at home gave me plenty of time to practice. I had a feeling you wouldn’t be walking down the aisle with Richard, but I wanted to perfect it for my own sake. Now that I have the recipe, you can ask me for that any time. I see where you were coming from. It is an unusual taste, but it’s quite refreshing on the palette.”
After Sally finished her coffee, she once again exited through the backdoor away from prying eyes. This time, Julia knew Sally was walking towards a better life for herself.
No sooner had Sally left did another unexpected guest arrive. Julia watched as her father walked into her café for the first time. He looked around the room, appearing surprised by what he saw. Jessie scowled at him over her shoulder as she sprayed cleaner on the cake display case.
“You’ve done a really nice job in here,” he said as he walked towards the counter. “What do you recommend?”
“I have your favourite Victoria sponge,” Julia said, already reaching into the counter for it.
“I fancy something different today,” he said calmly. “It’s time for a change.”
Julia paused, her hand hovering over the Victoria sponge. She smiled at her father, and he smiled at her. She could feel the first page of their new story being written in that moment. She plucked out a chocolate brownie, added it to a plate with cream, and slid it across the counter.
“On me,” Julia said. “How’s Katie?”
“Recovering,” he said as he ran his finger through the cream and dropped it into his mouth. “Her brother dying, being arrested, and then what happened to those two lads. It’s all just hit her hard.”