The Prodigal: Valley Park Series 1

by Nicky Black

  ‘Shut up about Mark,’ Kim had said. Why should she pull herself together? What the hell for, eh? Nicola could hear the baby crying in the bedroom, but Kim blocked her attempts to get up the stairs, her eyes trying to be bitter, but failing to register any emotion at all.

  ‘Kim, we need to talk,’ said Nicola desperately.

  ‘There’s nothing to talk about. Go home to your husband.’

  Now, as the TV lights flickered around the room, Nicola pulled the blanket tighter and considered her options. Social services would be such a betrayal, she just couldn’t do it. Kim and the baby would just have to come and live with them, and they’d all get through it together, like a family. Safety in numbers. She liked her plan, and as the worry eased its way out of her muscles she felt her body relax a little. She rested her head on the chair and watched the film credits roll up the screen. She’d missed the end, but she was certain it was a happy one.

  An hour later, she awoke to Rufus whining and scratching at the living room door. She thought she heard running water and wondered if she’d left a tap running upstairs. She pulled herself off the chair and checked the time on her watch. Ten p.m. When she opened the living room door the stench caught her throat and she coughed as the fumes burned her nose and windpipe.

  Petrol.

  Like slow motion, she turned, ran back into the living room, grabbed the phone from the chair and reached the bottom of the stairs just as a gloved hand dropped a lit match through the letterbox. She lunged for the bannister as blue tongues of fire clambered up the walls and licked at the back of her heels as she hurled herself upstairs two steps at a time.

  In the boys’ bedroom she shut the door and tried with trembling fingers to unlock the phone, but the buttons seemed tiny and her fingers fat and swollen. Come on, come on! Smoke inched in under the door. ‘MICHAEL! LIAM!’ A window exploded downstairs and she held the phone as steady as she could. She swore through frightened tears and tried dialling 999 without unlocking the phone. With relief she heard the connection and the ringing on the other end. The two sets of rings felt like hours, as she hauled Liam out of bed by his arm, not caring if she hurt him, screaming at Michael Jnr to get up. The line connected and before anyone could speak she was screeching, Fire! There’s a fire! She panicked, her mind blank: she couldn’t remember the number of the house. They asked her to stay calm. What street was it? Oak Grove, Valley Park, she cried.

  She threw the phone onto the floor. Liam was crying, the room was filling with smoke, and she could feel the heat of the fire on the other side of the flimsy door already, the paint bubbling and melting. She took the panic alarm from her back pocket and pushed the red button, twice, three times, she didn’t care how many, then pulled the quilt from Liam’s bed and shoved it against the wide gap at the bottom of the door, but it seemed as if twice as much smoke came in over the top. She racked her brains. If she opened a window would that feed the flames? She sat under the window and pulled the screaming Liam and whimpering Michael to her, hanging onto them for dear life. She’d never prayed before in her life, but she prayed now. She held her hands over the mouths of her babies, not knowing if it would kill them or save them. As the room began to spin, she heard the sirens. She could see yellow creeping over the door, it crackled, it roared like the Devil coming for his dues. She felt Liam going limp in her arms. She gasped for air. She could just stay where she was, let it take them all, then it would be all over. She almost succumbed to the temptation but one last drop of survival instinct took over. She stood up and opened the window. She heard the roar and turned to see yellow fingers hooked violently round the edge of the door and the quilt went up in flames. She tried to scream but there was no air. All she felt was her own heart thudding in her belly, her ears, her bones. She could see lights, blue, yellow, red.

  Then she saw his face at the window, an angel in a yellow helmet. He gestured to her to come to him. She took what little life she had in her, picked up Liam and passed him into open arms. She wondered if she was giving him up to Heaven as she heaved Michael off the floor and, just as her eyes were about to burst like balloons, she fell into a blazing blackness.

  Lee’s taxi screeched to a halt outside the burning house as the stretcher was wheeled into the back of the ambulance, the paramedics ducking the missiles being thrown by a handful of laughing, scruffy kids. There were no other people out on the street. Neighbours had quietly shut themselves in their houses, waiting for the police to leave so they could get a gander at the damage and gossip about the Kellys. Micky was a good lad, kept the real criminals out, didn’t deserve to lose his family.

  Only two uniformed officers stood at their car. Without any protective gear against the bricks and stones, they were useless. Lee got out of his car, raging, picked up some of the half-bricks lying in the road and hurled them back at the baying youths. He kept on, one after the other, defending himself with his arm, throwing whatever he could find powerfully towards them. As they started to get hit themselves, the kids ran off laughing and giving him the finger.

  The two officers looked at each other in astonishment as Lee approached them hastily, held out his badge and asked them what happened. The heat was immense and the roar of the fire meant he had to strain to hear what they were saying. They gaped at him.

  ‘Well, there’s been a fire, Sarge,’ one of them said, sarcastically.

  Lee turned away from them angrily, marched to one of the ambulances and jumped into the back. He leant over two small, blackened faces, their eyes blurred and bewildered.

  ‘Where’s the mother?’ he asked. The paramedic indicated the other ambulance. He bounded down the steps and over to the other vehicle just as they were closing the doors.

  ‘Wait!’ he called.

  He showed his badge and they bundled him in before locking the doors, jumping into the front seat and sounding the siren. As the ambulance pulled off, Lee sat by Nicola’s lifeless side while a paramedic held oxygen over her face. He willed her to breathe. He stroked her hair, his face next to hers. She didn’t open her eyes but a tear slid down her temple, leaving a gulley of white along her charred skin. He leant closer, kissed her singed hair and reached for her hand as the ambulance sped its way off the estate. She tried to clasp it, to give him some sign that she didn’t want him to leave, but there was no consciousness of the world around her. Just the muffled and distant sound of her choking babies ringing in her ears.

  TEN

  As the taxi pulled off, the refuge loomed large before the three of them once again in the fading light of the day. They had nothing with them but wheezy chests and the borrowed clothes Lee had brought to the hospital from the refuge’s basement wardrobe. The clothes smelt damp and stale, and Nicola felt like an orphan once again, without home or possessions. It wasn’t a new feeling to her. Passed from pillar to post, Mark trailing behind her, his swollen eyes in his pale skin making him look like something out of Oliver Twist. From family to family they’d travelled. Up to Northumberland, down to Yorkshire. Each time she’d hoped this would be it. They could finally get a mam and dad to love, a room of their own, toys, clothes, a cup of hot chocolate and a cuddle before bed. She’d yearned for it, the warmth of a bosom to lie against, the smell of toast in the morning. Fresh towels and a hand to hold as she crossed the road. But Mark’s hatred of the world would end it all after a few weeks, months or days. We’d love to keep Nicola, they’d say, so much potential, but him? He’s out of control. She’d cry, the temporary mother, as she held her husband’s hand and watched them walk back down the path with their bags and into the social worker’s car once again, the guilt of their failure tinged with relief as calmness entered their home once again.

  At the hospital, Lee had been precious, stayed with her all that terrible night, and spent as much time as he could with her in the days after that. He’d sat by her bed after dark and talked when she couldn’t, her throat closed up and her breath rasping. He’d stroked her head, told her about Louise, about Debbie, about hi
s father and mother and cat-mad grandfather who’d given him three hundred quid in cash from a tin under his bed to get him started down in London. How the bus journey south had made him sick and he’d puked all over the stinking egg and salad cream sandwiches of some old fishwife sitting next to him.

  Nicola listened, finding some peace as his smooth voice washed over her and filled her head with silk. She cuddled into Liam, her chin on his head, lapping up Lee’s stories about life on Hackney construction sites, the squats, the navvies and the loneliness.

  He’d turned off the light as she drifted off, stretched his arm around the back of her head and laid his own head down, his nose only a finger width from hers, and he told her of the murder in the corner shop that changed his life. An Asian man, beaten about his stubborn head with the butt of a gun for the hundred quid that lay in the till in tens and fives. The man’s wife and child watching helplessly as he died on the floor behind the counter. Lee had done nothing to help. He didn’t know how to, and six months later he was sitting the police exam.

  Nicola touched his cheek, and, as her sleepy eyes searched his face, he felt all the barriers between them wash away. He smiled at her, kissed her parched lips and told her to sleep. She nodded, a calm slumber overtaking her. Their breathing synchronised and they’d both slept, hands entwined.

  Inside the refuge there were familiar faces and some new ones. Tracey and Lisa were gone – rehoused – though Brenda curled her lip as she told Nicola under her breath that Tracey, the stupid bitch, had let the fucking twat back into the house. He was practically living there under the pretence of finding God and becoming a better person. She flicked her nearly white hair from her eyes and snarled at Tracey’s weakness. She’d get nowt more off her. If she wanted to put herself in the battering line again, that was her problem. She was done with her. She should have been stronger, put an end to it like she did with her man. It’s not as hard as you think.

  Not if he’s behind bars for life, thought Nicola. Brenda’s hypocrisy and unforgiving charm made Nicola miss Margy more than ever. She felt like she’d lost a vital organ. As Brenda’s bare feet slapped out of the kitchen in search of someone more willing to talk to about the failures of other people, Nicola gave the boys milk and biscuits and remembered her girlfriends from her teenage days, before Valley Park, before Micky.

  There were four of them who used to hang out together all the time, Sharon, Catherine and Mary. She’d lost touch with them all. Micky had become her everything and she’d stopped going out, stopped messing around with them in town and nicking stuff from Boots. She’d moved into his flat – played house, kept it clean and tidy, did his washing, cooked meals, made cushions and curtains. The perfect wife, the perfect mother to a grown man. And she’d loved it, loved taking care of him, running his bath, lighting candles, massaging his shoulders, putting on the underwear he bought her, dancing for him, satisfying him. She’d needed no one but him and slowly her friends stopped calling round, stopped phoning, and grew up into their own lives. She hadn’t missed them at all. She had everything she needed, and when Micky Kelly asked her to marry him she felt like her heart would burst.

  The wedding was a riot. Micky was boxing then and had stacks of muscle-clad friends with rough wives. The Dolphin in Benwell had jumped to Flipper’s Disco. She’d made her own dress, full, flouncy and frilly, her permed hair topped with a great structure made of white satin and lace. She’d lifted her skirts and danced to Vic Reeves. She spun round with the women, Dizzy! until she fell over, howling, and had to be hauled back to her feet. She was smashed – everyone was smashed – singing, swaying, spilling beer and hanging onto each other while they laughed their faces scarlet. Even the fight didn’t last long – with a room full of boxers and bouncers, it was swiftly taken outside and a few arses kicked for good measure.

  They didn’t have the money for a hotel or a honeymoon, but Nicola Kelly was happy as Larry. She’d sprinkled confetti on their bed when they got in at three a.m., and, even though they both passed out immediately, they made up for it the next morning – and for the next six months until she fell pregnant with Michael. It was then that she felt like she’d arrived. Wherever it was she was going with her life, she’d got there the minute the doctor told her she was having a baby.

  With a child on the way, they’d got their house on Valley Park. She knew it was rough, she’d lived there till she and Mark had been plucked from their musty house into the loving arms of the state. But no one messed with Micky Kelly, so she feared nothing for herself or her house. Kim and Mark quickly followed when Mark was released from Deerbolt with a supported housing package. They, too, enjoyed the protection Micky had to offer. He was hard as nails, well respected and knew the right people in the right places. There was violence, there were guns, she knew this, it was part of the package, and she liked it that people were frightened of her husband, little realising that she’d end up the one living in fear. But it was only when she held Michael Jnr in her arms for the first time, kissed his hot, downy head and smelt his baby sweat, that she started to question the influence Micky would have on her tiny, innocent one.

  Brenda dragged herself back into the kitchen, sighing, bored as hell. She looked grimy, her pink T-shirt stained with slobbered food, dirt collecting between her toes. She seemed to be even bigger, and walking just a few steps was a huge effort. She sat at the table, spilling out over the chair. Her keys were coming, she said. This week. A nice, little two-bedroom flat for her and Damon out in Westerhope. She’d done well to hold out for nine months to get what she wanted. See what you can do when you put your mind to it? No need to be letting bastards back into your house. She looked at Nicola with what seemed like a warning. Nicola gave Brenda a congratulating smile, and croaked that she’d better get the kids bathed and into bed. Brenda followed Nicola with her eyes as she left the kitchen and headed up the stairs with Liam and Michael. She’d seen girls like her in and out of this place three or four times over the last nine months. Didn’t stand a chance in hell unless she had him put away – or killed him.

  Their room was right at the top of the house, in the attic this time. It was lovely, brightly coloured, with skylight windows that pulled in the star-carpeted sky when the lights were off. Like before, on one of the single beds was a welcome box containing toothbrushes, toothpaste, soap, flannels and towels. It was a lovely gesture and it made her feel cared for in a small way. She stripped the children of their smelly clothes, and sat on the small stool by the bath while they played in the water, Liam giggling uncontrollably at a wind-up turtle that wagged its flippers in the water but didn’t move anywhere. As she washed their faces with the flannel, Michael coughed, and the grinding sound filled Nicola with a horrible guilt. Michael had suffered the most. He’d vomited for two days in the hospital and had just come off the oxygen forty-eight hours ago.

  Michael and Liam were asleep by nine o’clock, their bellies full of cornflakes and their heads full of The Cat in the Hat. Nicola lay in her bed and thought about Lee. She felt like she had when she first met Micky – the whole relationship an unknown, all of it in the future rather than the past. And yet, the last few days they’d spent together seemed to spread back down her entire lifetime. But it was different this time. There was less need involved. Lee seemed to care for her. Why, she had yet to fathom, but it was almost impossible for her to resist, impossible to rein in the impulse to reach out her arms to him when he walked in the room in the hope that it would get him to her side quicker.

  Blenheim Street, Lee had told her. That’s where the petrol had come from. A garage on Blenheim Street. The dread stuck in her voiceless throat. Tiger’s gym sat like a sweating slab of peeling white steel on Blenheim Street. Her eyes closed and Lee’s face faded from view. If Micky couldn’t have her, nobody could. He’d destroy all of them before he let her go. She hugged herself and drew her knees to her chest, lying on her side and burying her head in the pillow. Her life felt void. Great holes had appeared where once there
were people she loved. Kim, Margy, Mark, her darling Mark. She missed Lee now, too, but she could never have him. Not while Micky confined her in his life like a vice.

  At least she was safe here for tonight. At least he wouldn’t find her here.

  ELEVEN

  ‘You shouldn’t have,’ Nicola croaked, grinning from ear to ear at the beautiful bouquet of flowers in Lee’s hand.

  ‘Who said they’re for you?’ he replied as he pushed past her into the hallway.

  ‘Hey! Wait!’ she shouted, ‘no men, remember?’

  He stopped, turned and headed back contritely, handing her the flowers as he passed her and stood again on the tall step leading up to the huge green front door. He held out his other hand containing a bag full of new clothes.

  ‘Oh, it’s like Christmas!’ she said, holding her hands to her mouth then taking the bags gratefully.

  Lee leant against the door frame casually. ‘Come out with me. Let’s go for something to eat,’ he said.

  ‘I can’t, the kids are off school....’

  Lee couldn’t hide his disappointment. ‘When will I see you?’ he asked, taking her fingers in his hand.

  ‘I need to think,’ she replied. ‘It’s just too dangerous.’

  He nodded. Micky Kelly knew everyone, and everyone knew Micky Kelly. He took a pen from his pocket and lifted up her hand. On her palm he wrote: Flat 8, Wallace Building, Coast Road. ‘My address for the last twenty-four hours,’ he said, ‘I’ll be in all night. Billy No Mates.’

  Nicola looked behind her down the hall, the laughter of some of the women seeping from the TV room. Maybe she could leave the kids for a couple of hours after they’d gone to sleep, just this once. The others did it all the time after all, out at bingo or down the karaoke on a Friday night, babysitting for each other so they could get pissed and have a laugh before the drudge of refuge life kicked in again on a Saturday morning.