by Grant, D C
“So what are you going to do now?” asked Dad, always the practical one.
“I’ll have to get a job.”
“You’ve no qualifications.”
“I’ll find something,” I said. I was naïve back then.
“Well, this is not what we had planned for you,” Mum said with a sigh. “But it’s nice to see you so happy after …”
She halted. I knew what she meant.
Chapter 24
It was Gina’s mother’s reaction that astounded me. Gina and her Mum had never really got on, and I saw why. We sat in her flat in the city and Gina told her. She exploded immediately, turning her anger towards me.
“Could you not keep it in your bloody pants?”
“Hey, it takes two to make a baby.”
“So you’re saying this is all Gina’s fault?”
“Who said it had to be anyone’s fault? We’re going to have a baby, what’s wrong with that?”
“Wrong? There’s a whole lot wrong with it. You’re both too young for a start. What do you know about babies? It’s going to muck up your life and then, when you’re fed up with it all, young man, you’ll walk out and leave my daughter alone with the baby. I know what you boys are like – you’re all the same.”
“We’re not all the same.” I was really trying to keep a lid on my temper but it was about to explode. “I love Gina and I’m going to look after her and the baby.”
“Like hell. You’ll be gone quicker than I can say nappy change.” She turned to Gina while I fumed in silence.
“How far along are you?” she asked.
“The doctor thinks about six weeks.”
“Not too late then.” She sat back, satisfied.
“Not too late for what?” I asked.
“An abortion,” her mother said.
I sprung to my feet and pulled Gina up with me. “No one is killing my baby! Come on, Gina, let’s get out of here.”
I dragged Gina towards the door, eager to get away from this evil woman. Gina stumbled along behind me. Outside in the corridor, I paced back and forth as we waited for the lift.
“How could she say such a thing?” I asked.
“She’s only thinking about what’s best for me. She got knocked up with me and my dad said he would stick by her, but he left soon after I was born. I guess she doesn’t want the same to happen to me.”
She was crying. I pulled her close and said, “I’ll never leave you, Gina. I’m not the same as your father.”
“I never knew who he was. She doesn’t even have a photo of him. She burnt them all.”
The lift doors opened then. We got in and rode down to the ground floor.
Chapter 25
Life got a little complicated after that. Gina stayed at her flat and went to work each day while I stayed at home and trawled the internet looking for jobs. Mum helped me to put together a CV which went out many times, but nothing ever came back. Dad had been right: I had no employable qualifications. I couldn’t even do the labouring jobs because of my prosthetic leg.
Gina was subdued. She came round to my place often, and I stayed over at her place from time to time, but she was either sick or tired. It was hard to know what was going on inside her head.
I didn’t realize how persuasive her mother had been until one day when Gina didn’t answer her mobile phone. I sent numerous texts to which she didn’t reply, and then, in the evening, she didn’t pick up when I rang. Fine, I thought; she’s throwing another of her hissy fits – I’ll just leave her to come back to me like she always does. The next day, in the early afternoon, I gave in and drove around to her workplace to make sure that she was all right.
“Gina? No, she’s taken today off. Some sort of medical procedure, she said. Back at work tomorrow.”
The words “medical procedure” hit me like a baseball bat. Was something wrong with the baby? I dashed back to the car and drove round to her flat.
“Gina! Gina!” I shouted as I banged on the door. “Open up, come on, let me in.”
Her flatmate opened the door and I just walked in, looking for Gina.
“She’s not here,” the flatmate said.
“Where is she?”
“Her mum came and picked her up about half an hour ago.”
“Where were they going?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. Gina looked kind of upset though.”
I tried to think. I had to know where they were going. I went into Gina’s room but didn’t even know where to start to look. Reaching for the mobile in my pocket, I dialled Gina’s number, desperate for her to pick up. Instead a song started up, muffled, to my right, and I turned to see Gina’s handbag on the dresser. Wherever she had gone, she’d not taken her handbag or her phone.
I strode over to the handbag and started going through it. Her purse was in there as well as a piece of paper, folded over. I took it out and opened it up.
When I saw the name of the clinic in bold on the top, my blood went cold and I flew out of the room, racing back to my car. The flatmate closed the door after me, obviously glad that I had gone.
I entered the address into the satnav, and then started the car, flinging it into gear and taking off with significant loss of traction. I didn’t care.
Traffic was heavy for mid-afternoon and everyone was on the move. I pushed my way into queues, ignoring the finger gestures, and cut in front of slow drivers. I seemed to catch every red light. I cursed and hit the wheel, impatient. I had to get to the clinic before Gina killed our baby.
I screeched to a halt in the car park and raced to the entranceway. It was locked, but I saw people on the other side in a waiting room. I could not see Gina but I saw her mum, reading a magazine. I banged on the door, hard, and shouted as loud as I could. A man appeared in the room beyond the glass – a security guard, I guessed. I shouted louder. He reached over and pressed a button and the door slid open. He meant to come out to block me, but instead I forced my way in, pushing him aside as I headed towards Gina’s mum.
“Where is she?” I demanded.
She put down the magazine and rose to her feet, defiant. “You’re too late, she’s already gone through.”
I turned from her and looked towards the door at the rear of the waiting room.
“Gina!” I yelled as I headed towards it. “Gina, don’t do it! Please, no!”
The door was locked. To my right I saw a receptionist on the phone, glancing at me while talking rapidly into the mouthpiece. The guard had recovered and was heading towards me. I banged on the door in desperation. “Gina, Gina, please don’t. I love you. I love our baby. You don’t have to do this.”
“Come on, son,” said the guard as he took my arm. “The police have been called. Why don’t you leave before they get here?”
I looked towards Gina’s mother. “Don’t I get any say in this? This is my baby too, you know. Why didn’t she talk to me? I had it all sorted.”
“Sorted? You can’t look after her. You’re a cripple!”
I raised my hand to hit her, but the guard grabbed hold of it and wrenched my arm behind my back. Another guard had appeared and he held on to my other arm, and together they dragged me towards the door.
“You bitch!” I yelled at her. The guards continued to push me towards the entrance, getting me outside the building in spite of my attempts to get back inside. Once outside, I yanked my arms out of their grip and rearranged my tangled clothes.
“Ok, I’m going,” I said as I started to walk towards my car.
They relaxed, and, before they could react, I dodged away, down the side of the building where little square windows were set up high in the wall. I figured that this was where the treatment rooms were.
“Gina, Gina!” I called as I ran alongside the wall. “Gina, please don’t do this. I love you. Please don’t do this!”
The cop had arrived without sirens, and I didn’t know he was there until he rugby tackled me and I hit the ground. I tried to get up but the guard held
me down with a knee in my back.
“Easy now, just take it easy,” the cop said. I heard the click of metal and felt steel embrace my wrists. “Roll over.”
Awkwardly I rolled over.
“Name?” the cop asked.
“Bevan Campbell.”
“You’re disturbing the peace.”
“My girlfriend’s in there.”
“That doesn’t give you the right to cause a disturbance. Just wait here, Bevan, I’m going to speak to the people inside. This man here will watch you while I’m gone. Just sit tight and I’ll be right back.”
I sat on the ground and fumed, but there wasn’t much I could do. It was difficult to get up at the best of times with my prosthetic leg, and even more difficult with my hands handcuffed behind my back.
While I waited, the sun sank and it started to get cool. I shivered with pent-up anger and cold. I realized now that I was too late. I had done all I could but it hadn’t been enough. Not only was I a cripple, I was a failure as well.
The cop came back out.
“They’re not going to press charges as long as you get back into your car and leave immediately. If you refuse, I’ll arrest you and take you back to the station where you will be charged with disturbing the peace. There’s a woman in there who says she’ll also lay attempted assault charges if you remain on site. So what will it be, son?”
I had been defeated. “Get these cuffs off me and I’ll go,” I said.
So he did and I left, my tyres screeching as I exited the car park. I wondered if he was going to nab me for loss of traction but didn’t come after me. Perhaps he should have, and then everything that happened afterwards wouldn’t have taken place at all.
Chapter 26
I cruised around for a while, aimless, just going wherever the traffic took me, playing my music loud and trying not to think, but it was impossible to turn off my brain. The sun set and the rain came down and the car lights dazzled me as I drove. I needed dope and plenty of booze so I could get totally wasted. I pulled up at Mitch’s house and phoned him from my mobile while I sat in the car, watching the windscreen wipers arc back and forth.
“Bevan, what’s up?”
“You got any dope?”
“Not here, but I know where to get some.”
“I’m sitting outside, in my car, let’s go cruising.”
Five minutes later we’d picked up Scott and were on our way to Mitch’s connection for the dope. I bought as much as I could afford with the cash I had in my wallet, then we headed for the liquor store. We were the only ones in the car park.
Mitch leaned forward from the back seat as I stopped. “Give us the cash,” he said, holding out his hand.
“Sorry, mate, but I spent all my money on the dope,” I said. “You’re gonna have to pay for the booze.”
“Not sure that I’ve got enough - what about you, Scott?”
“Nuh, I got nothing,” Scott said as he got out of the car. “Bevan, can you open the boot?”
I reached down and pulled on the boot lever, hearing the boot spring open behind me.
“Get some spirits,” I shouted through the open passenger window as they went past.
“Sure thing,” Scott said. “We’ll get as much of the hard stuff as we can grab.”
People asked me afterwards how I could have missed the fact that Mitch had taken the wheel spanner from the boot. Or how I had misunderstood what Scott had said to me. It’s because I wasn’t really listening, wasn’t paying much attention to what they were doing or saying. As soon as they got out of the car, I sank into misery, my eyes filling up with tears that I didn’t want them to see. Their bodies were a blur as they went past the car and into the shop. I leaned my forehead against the steering wheel, trying to pull myself together before they came out, longing for the moment we could get to a quiet spot where I could bomb out on the dope and the booze. I didn’t much care what happened after that. I just wanted oblivion, and I wanted it fast.
I still didn’t figure it out when they came running out of the store, their arms filled with bottles of booze. Mitch got to the car first and struggled to open the door because he was carrying so much. Scott was close behind him. He didn’t bother opening the door, just dived into the car through the open window, scattering bottles into the footwell.
“What the hell?” I said as Mitch finally got the door open.
“Drive! Drive!” Scott yelled out.
Mitch hadn’t managed to close his door but I threw the car into reverse and skidded away from the store. As I put the car into forward gear, his door slammed shut on its own and then we were out of there, fast. I raced down the road and drifted around the first corner. I quickly corrected and lined the car up to head down the road at speed. I had no idea where we were going.
“What the hell happened?” I asked.
“We ripped the place off!” Mitch said from the back, his voice high with excitement. “Man, you should have seen his face.”
“Oh yeah, man, I think he pissed himself,” Scott said excitedly
“You robbed the store?” I asked.
“Look at all the stuff we got. Did you get the whisky, Scott?”
“Right here, man, we’re going to get so wasted tonight.”
In the distance, I heard sirens; my mind, so keen to embrace oblivion, kicked up a gear.
“Wait, you robbed the place? When were you going to tell me this?”
“We just did, man. Chill out. We’ve got the booze you wanted, what more do you want?”
I remembered that they had gone into my boot before going into the shop.
“What did you take out of my car?”
“The wheel spanner.”
“Did you threaten him with it?”
Mitch giggled, I mean, he really giggled, just like a girl. “We beat him with it.”
I tightened my grip on the steering wheel, feeling my temper rise for the second time that day. I realized that these guys had bombed out on harder stuff before I had picked them up.
“You beat him?”
“He wouldn’t hand over the cash from the till, so we hit him about a bit.”
“Where is the spanner now?”
“I dropped it,” Mitch said. “I dropped it in the store so I could get more bottles. I couldn’t carry it all.”
I slammed my foot on the brake so hard that Mitch hit the back of the seat behind me and Scott smashed into the dashboard.
“You fucking wankers!” I screamed at them. “Get out of my fucking car!”
“What?” Mitch said.
“I never asked you to rip off the fucking store, did I? I just wanted some hard stuff. I just wanted to forget, that’s all, and now you’ve gone and fucked it all up. Get the hell out of my car.”
“Can we take the booze?”
“I don’t give a shit. Just get out and fuck off.”
Both of them tumbled out of the car, grabbing as many of the bottles as they could. The sirens were getting closer. When they slammed the doors, I took off, tyres throwing up clouds of smoke as they fought for traction. I needed to get out of there and I needed to get out of there fast. As I drove, I knew I had to get as far away from the store as I could. Had someone taken my number plate? Could they trace my car from the wheel spanner? Were there CCTV cameras inside the store? Outside? Was there a helicopter above me? Were the cops behind me?
I drove from street to street, aimless, scared, and mad. Everything had turned to perfect shit in a very short space of time. If I stayed here, the cops would catch me for sure. I guessed they had a description of the car by now, even a number plate, and if I didn’t get away, they’d pick me up and throw me in jail. Escape, I had to escape.
I realized that I was on the road that would take me to the motorway. I looked at the overhead sign – SH1 South; Hamilton. When I reached the intersection, I turned onto the glide-on, joining the traffic on the motorway heading south.
Chapter 27
I didn’t know where I was h
eading, just took the car onto the motorway and put my foot to the floor.
My phone rang. It was Gina. I let it ring. When it stopped, it was followed soon after by a text message. I ignored it. The phone rang five times between the on-ramp and the Bombays. When it rang for the sixth time, I picked the phone out of its cradle on the dash, wound down my window and threw it out, hearing it smash to pieces on the road behind me.
I wound the window up, brushed the remains of the tears from my eyes and concentrated on the road, wondering where I could run to, where I could hide.
As I reached the top of the Bombay Hills and saw the Waikato spread out in front of me, I knew where I had to go. I looked at the petrol gauge – plenty. I’d make it there easy. I put the destination into the satnav and settled in for the ride. When the radio gave out at Pokeno I slipped in a CD and let the music envelop me. The road ahead was dark and traffic was light as I drove off into the night. I couldn’t see any cop cars – maybe they were all at the liquor store.
Once I hit Hamilton, I took the ring road as I figured there’d be fewer cops there than in the town centre. I had a scary moment when I cop car came towards me but he passed me by and continued on without stopping. I watched his lights disappear behind me, relieved.
On the other side of Hamilton, I hit SH1 again to head towards Cambridge. The town came up on me fast in the dark, and I turned to the right to head through the centre of the town and over the bridge. It was quiet, hardly anyone about at that time of the night, which suited me fine; the fewer people who saw me, the better. Once out of Cambridge I encountered the farmlands, and darkness descended once more, broken only by the lights of the farmhouses and the headlights of cars coming towards me.
From the satnav I saw that I was getting close, so I slowed as I rounded a bend. A road appeared on my left and the satnav told me to head that way, so I did. I drove slowly past a farmhouse, then a stretch of farmland, before I topped a rise in the road and the church appeared before me.