by K. L. Slater
I feel a sharp twist inside, as if a thin serrated blade has lodged itself underneath my ribcage. It’s twisting and turning, hollowing out my innards.
I wish I had the courage to leave home and get my own place.
A column of blazing heat tunnels its way up through the middle of my torso. But this time it’s not because Brian is moving in.
I spend a lot of hours lying on this bed, dreaming of a future I’m sure I’ll never touch.
I often imagine myself on some sort of adventure. Walking the Great Wall of China with like-minded people, or perhaps taking photographs of New York from the very top of the Empire State Building. Maybe the odd selfie or two with someone special.
Of course they are just dreams, and afterwards they always seem too adventurous and completely out of my grasp. Yet these are not fantasy worlds; they are places that ordinary people successfully visit all the time. That tells me it can be done.
Other times, I think about getting a different job. Perhaps in a busy office in Nottingham city centre. I enjoy my current part-time job, but this would make more use of my organisational skills and my natural aptitude with numbers.
I’d spend my lunch hour chatting with colleagues or taking a brisk walk around Market Square for the fresh air. Then, at the end of the working day, I’d make my way home on the tram to my nice neat little flat in a leafy suburb. My very own calm oasis, just outside the city.
Lots of people have this kind of life. They’re always complaining about it, too; I’ve heard customers at the shop, people on the bus… nobody seems happy with their lot.
Brian moving in wouldn’t matter if I had my own place.
I know only too well that if I was to seriously formulate any real plans, well, that’s when my heart would start up like a frenzied jackhammer, and before long I’d get that awful feeling… like I’m about to throw up at any second.
I’m a prisoner in my own head. Worse still, on days like today, it feels like nothing will ever change and I’ll be trapped here forever.
The heat inside is for myself. Sometimes I wish I could just self-combust.
Chapter Three
David
Mother shakes me out of my melancholy.
‘Fancy a cup of tea and a biscuit, love?’ Her voice floats upstairs.
I don’t answer. If I stay quiet, she’ll go away; she always does.
At that moment, I hear a scraping noise outside. I move over to the window and press my face close to the glass to get the right angle.
I can see a young woman down there. In Mrs Barrett’s yard.
She potters around, staying close to the back door, which makes it quite difficult to see her from my current position. I twist the handle and push the side window slightly ajar.
I take a step back, in case she suddenly looks up at the glass, but then relax a little when I see she seems fully absorbed in her task. She’s stuffing clothes, or something similar, into a large black garbage bag.
Mother and I have lived adjacent to Mrs Barrett for more years than I care to mention. To my knowledge, she doesn’t have any adult children, and in all the years I’ve known her, she has never so much as had guests to stay over for a night or two.
Keeping slightly back from the glass, I focus in on the visitor. I am pleasantly surprised.
It is unusual, these days, to find a young woman with a preference for plain, modest clothing and minimal make-up. She is of slim build, with shoulder-length brown hair, and seems purposeful, with a pleasing economy of movement. I can’t help noticing she has dainty hands, which appear to like keeping busy.
At least that’s the impression she gives as I watch her through my binoculars.
So far, I’ve only seen her from behind and in profile. It proves difficult to study all her features in detail when her hair keeps falling over her face like a dark caramel-coloured curtain.
Something about her reminds me of someone.
Quite unexpectedly, she straightens up, pushes flat palms into the bottom of her back and shakes the hair from her face. A pert nose, full lips and astonishingly dark eyes and brows reveal themselves.
Using the back of her hand, she briskly wipes her forehead and looks down the long, narrow yard. She sighs, her small breasts rising and falling beneath a silky biscuit-coloured blouse.
I swallow hard and lower the binoculars, stepping back into the room until I’m well away from the window.
I take a couple of deep breaths and close my eyes.
I don’t have to feel bad about this, I tell myself calmly. I’m doing absolutely nothing wrong.
I lay down the binoculars and walk slowly downstairs.
Strains of a televised football match emanate from the lounge as I enter the kitchen. Mother stands washing dishes at the sink.
‘Ah, there you are, David.’ She lifts out her sud-covered fingers for a moment or two and looks at me, her sharp, avian eyes narrowing at my expression. ‘Are you feeling all right?’
‘Yes, I’m fine,’ I say faintly.
‘I called up earlier and asked if you’d like a cup of tea. I’ve bought your favourite arrowroot biscuits from—’
‘Have you spoken to Mrs Barrett lately?’ I cut in.
‘Mrs Barrett? I’m afraid not.’ She turns back to the sink. ‘I really ought to pop round there at some point. Perhaps you might come with me, David.’ And then her hands stop moving in the sink and she turns round again to face me. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘It looks like she might have a visitor. She hasn’t got any grown-up children, has she?’
To avoid Mother’s incisive glare I pick up Brian’s tabloid newspaper from the counter and stare blindly at the front page.
Mother coughs.
‘No. No, she hasn’t got any family, though I don’t think it was through choice. She once told me it was a regret of hers but something she had just learned to accept.’
‘It might be her niece, then,’ I offer.
‘The visitor is a girl?’
‘A young woman.’ I nod. ‘Quite a bit younger than me by the looks of it.’
‘I see.’ Mother swallows hard. ‘There’s… not going to be a problem, is there, David?’
I feel a rush of heat in my face but I say nothing.
‘It wouldn’t do for her to think you’ve been…’
‘I was looking out of my window and she came outside, into the yard,’ I say quickly. ‘I was already looking. I didn’t…’
‘That’s all right, then.’ Mother is relieved. She pulls her hands out of the sink and flicks off the soapy bubbles. ‘Well, perhaps Mrs Barrett’s taken in a lodger. That house is far too much for her to manage now.’
‘Yes. Perhaps that’s it.’ I step back into the gloom of the hallway. ‘I thought I might go round there now and ask Mrs Barrett if she needs any help… ask her if there are any odd jobs that need doing. It’s been a while.’
Mother opens her mouth as if to comment, but then closes it again.
* * *
In the event, I don’t go to Mrs Barrett’s house. Instead, I go back up to my bedroom and stand at the edge of the window.
It’s important to consider the situation logically.
I don’t know who this person, this visitor of Mrs Barrett’s, might be. I can hardly go blustering round there offering my help. I don’t want to make a fool of myself.
Besides, I’m wearing my old checked slippers and my comfy cardie with the worn cuffs and missing buttons.
First impressions are very important; everyone knows that.
The young woman is no longer in the yard, but the bag full of clothing is still out there, gaping open like an abandoned coal sack. I hope this means she’ll be coming outside again before too long. Wind and rain are forecast for this evening, so if she leaves it there, the contents will doubtless get wet and scattered all over the yard.
While I wait for her to reappear, I pluck out a blank card from the Rolodex and fiddle with the settings on my camera.
About ten minutes later, my patience is rewarded when the young woman appears and proceeds to tie up the bag, before walking halfway down the yard to the bin and dumping it in there.
She’s wearing a brown wool cardigan now, which she pulls closed across her body as she returns to the house. She doesn’t pause, doesn’t look around, and within seconds, she is back inside. I hear the door close behind her.
Although I’m a little disappointed, it doesn’t matter. I have what I wanted.
Using my powerful zoom lens, I’ve managed to get some nicely detailed images with the camera.
I flip out the small memory card and pop it into the side of my laptop. While it loads, I pull out the old grey suitcase from under my bed and begin to search through the photographs.
Chapter Four
Holly
Holly Newman stood at the window of Mrs Barrett’s kitchen and filled the kettle for the umpteenth time since she’d arrived.
It felt so strange, being in the area again. Especially since nothing seemed to have changed around here at all in over ten years.
Take this very crescent, for instance. The mostly detached houses, built in the sixties, stood proudly on their modest plots. Small front gardens led to longer, narrow yards at the back.
Aside from the odd neat porch, and the ostentatious white Grecian pillars that the people at the end had added, the facades were unchanged.
Holly used to pass by here on her way home from school when she travelled to college each day. The third house in still had a front garden full of gaudy and, Holly had always thought, rather sinister-looking gnomes.
National newspaper headlines constantly screamed of local corner shops shutting down in favour of the sprawling superstores that seemed to be springing up everywhere, but here, at the top of Baker Crescent, it was a different story.
Fred Crawley the butcher, Mr Timpson the greengrocer, and Mr and Mrs Khan’s general store, complete with its small integral post office, all stood in a line. Immovable as ever.
Holly had been just eighteen years old when she’d left the area for the bright lights of Manchester and the ‘amazing opportunity’ she’d been persuaded to chase. What she’d give now to rewind that decision.
She sighed and flicked the switch on the kettle, listening to the faint hiss of the element.
In effect, she was right back where she’d started. But she refused to think of it like that. Being back here now signified something else: that she’d drawn a line under everything that had gone before. Everything she had endured.
Holly had left behind the people she prayed she’d never have to see face to face again… all but one, anyway. She yearned to see him, the love of her life, more than anyone, but she had no choice but to bide her time.
She had emerged from hell itself and was ready to start again. And this time, she would make it work.
There was no definite plan as yet, but she could feel the determination drumming at her very core.
She cast her mind back to twelve years earlier, when she’d left school. Wollaton Secondary Modern – they’d changed the name now – was only about half a mile away from here. She had achieved moderate grades, which was a wonder, considering.
The thing that loomed largest in her memory was the enormous relief she’d felt as she’d walked out of those crummy peeling iron gates for the last time. It had been a welcome change from the crushing sense of dread she’d suffered every single morning of her schooldays. The prospect of the long, miserable day that stretched ahead of her.
On her last day, she’d watched with amusement as the squealing knots of girls in her year cried, hugging each other, lamenting the end of their time together.
Strains of their shallow promises had reached her ears as she drew closer. How they were all going to stay in touch, how they would always be friends no matter where in the world they ended up. And of course, they’d already planned to meet soon to catch up.
Life wasn’t like that. Holly knew.
People soon forgot you. They often said good things would happen that never did.
There existed a parallel universe to the soaps and feel-good programmes on television. An everyday reality where bills didn’t get paid, electricity was cut off and kids went to bed hungry most nights, hoping against hope that nobody would come into their bedroom to hurt them.
Lots of the girls who had been breaking their hearts out in the school yard had come from indulgent homes. They had enjoyed being the apple of the eye of parents who were still married.
It had been a state school, so not many of them knew real wealth. But Holly recognised that those girls had been rich in other things. The belief of parents and teachers that they could and would do well in life. Food in the cupboards at home. A clean, fashionable uniform that wasn’t third-hand or frayed at the hem.
Those girls had been able to believe their own hype so completely because they’d been shielded from reality. They hadn’t known yet just how shitty life could be.
Holly had never seen any of them hanging around the small park across from the school. This was the place where she’d usually sit at the end of each day, after the library closed. Sometimes she’d stay there for hours, until it was impossible to delay going home.
But on that last day, the library had been closing early to mark the end of the summer term, and the park was flooded with rampaging, drunken students trying to prolong their student days.
She decided she’d just have to keep out of Uncle Keith’s way until her aunt got back from her cleaning job.
Nobody had asked Holly to sign their shirt or blouse as she shuffled slowly towards the exit, making her way alone through the excited throng of people. If they’d asked, she’d have refused anyway. It was all so two-faced. Half of the hugging girls she’d walked past had done nothing but bicker behind each other’s backs over the past year.
They thought they were sad to be leaving their friends and teachers, but Holly had known that really they were grieving the end of their little empires. They had been secretly gutted that they’d no longer be in a place where they were empowered to bully those they perceived to be different to them. Where they’d been able to make people’s lives – people like Holly – an utter misery.
She’d smiled to herself as she reached the gates and allowed herself a moment or two to look back at the building and the other leavers.
Good luck to them in their mind-numbing jobs, which were the only option they’d be able to secure without any qualifications. Hopefully they would find themselves at the other end of the scale. They’d be the ones who didn’t fit in and were at the mercy of the people in control.
Karma was a marvellous thing, Holly had thought.
‘Hey! Wait up.’
She’d turned at the sound of a voice calling behind her.
It had been Markus, of course. There was no one else.
‘You don’t want to wait for me? That is OK,’ he grinned as he pushed through the crowd towards her. ‘I will catch up with you anyway.’
Markus spoke excellent English but had still retained a discernible trace of his native German accent. He knew what it meant to be an outsider here too.
They had been in the same maths and history groups during the last two years of school and had gravitated to sitting together against the never-ending spit balls thrown from the back of the classroom.
Holly had suffered because she wasn’t with the in-crowd and Markus because he was German, gay and fostered. ‘I am what is commonly known as a triple threat,’ he’d joke.
Now he looked around the school yard.
‘You and I, we are the only ones alone here, it seems.’ He indicated the thick rope of celebrating students that snaked around the quadrangle without ever seeming to near the exit gates.
‘Oh, I’m used to it now.’ Holly shrugged.
‘Ah, but you see, now we are not so alone. We are together. Which is better, yes?’
She nodded and smiled at him. ‘Suppose so, yeah.
’
‘What exciting life awaits you, Holly, when you walk through these iron gates of hell one last time?’
‘Oh, you know,’ she said airily. ‘Film star, supermodel, brain surgeon… haven’t really decided yet.’
He nudged her. ‘Come on!’
‘I’ve honestly got no idea.’ She grinned. ‘I just want to get as far away from this place as I possibly can, and soon. But I have to find somewhere to go first. A new home, new start. Easier said than done, isn’t it? In the meantime, I’m going to college to get some secretarial skills under my belt.’
‘Well, I am going to make some money,’ he said, all at once serious. ‘Lots of money.’
‘Oh yeah, doing what?’
‘Hmm, this is just one small detail I’ve yet to decide.’ He shrugged. ‘See you around then, I guess?’
She’d left his question unanswered as together they walked out of the gates, finally leaving behind the all-consuming misery that had been secondary school.
Although Holly hadn’t known it then, far from escaping the torture of the classroom, she had just taken her first step on a journey that would lead her to a far worse fate.
Chapter Five
Holly
Holly was to sleep in the second bedroom of Mrs Barrett’s three-bedroomed house, but it was still a good size. There was a double divan bed in there, and a rather dated mahogany wardrobe and cumbersome chest of drawers, but still, there was plenty of room for one person. Mrs Barrett said that in all the years she and her late husband had lived in the house, the second bedroom had barely been slept in.
Upon her arrival, Holly had lugged up a couple of medium-sized packing boxes, a rucksack and a small, scuffed case containing all her worldly goods, but she hadn’t got round to unpacking any of it yet.
It wasn’t much to show for the ten years she’d been away, supposedly making a bright, sparkly future for herself. The mere thought of some of the stuff she’d had to face made her want to drown her sorrows in the litre bottle of wine currently buried under her meagre collection of mismatched underwear.