by K. L. Slater
Someone rapped sharply on the door. Josh rose, but it opened before he could take a step towards it, and a figure appeared in the doorway.
Holly swallowed and closed her eyes.
‘Emily! What are you doing here?’ Josh said with a start.
Holly opened her eyes and looked wildly at the two men. They said nothing.
Emily wore jeans, boots and a black fleece hoody. With minimal make-up and her hair pulled back into a messy knot, she looked so different. As if all her power had evaporated.
But when she began to speak, Holly realised she’d be a fool to underestimate her.
‘I might not work here now, but it doesn’t mean I’ve been idle. On the contrary, I’ve been very busy since I resigned.’ She smiled and closed the door behind her.
Without invitation, she sat on the chair opposite Holly.
Mr Kellington pressed his lips together. He didn’t look happy with the situation, but he didn’t tell Emily to leave either.
‘Why are you here, Emily?’ he asked calmly.
Emily slowly folded her hands in her lap, seemingly intent on enjoying every second of whatever she was about to say.
‘I decided to look into your life before Kellington’s, Holly,’ she said. ‘Your life in Manchester, to be specific.’
Holly gasped, the air locking in her throat.
‘Yes, I thought you might be surprised,’ Emily told her. ‘It didn’t take me very long, actually, to uncover what went on there. Once I found out you’d been hired by Brendan Godson.’
Holly felt a trickle of sweat edge its way down her spine.
‘How did you…’
‘I lived in Manchester myself for five years. Worked in the clubs there as a student and knew the scene very well. In fact, I knew a lot of people back then, some of who I’m still in touch with online.’ She tapped her lacquered nails on her thigh. ‘I drew a blank until I bumped into a guy called Jay, an old acquaintance of Brendan Godson. He told me the awful news… that Brendan had died under a truck. A terrible accident, apparently. Must’ve just stepped out into the road, they said at the time.’
Holly felt the blood draining from her face.
‘That didn’t really mean anything to me until Jay got into his stride and asked whether I wanted to hear the rest of the story about Brendan and his family… it featured, he said, a psycho woman they’d employed, called Holly. He couldn’t remember her surname but he thought I might be interested as she too was from Nottingham.’
Holly closed her eyes. She’d retained her first name but changed her surname when she returned to Nottingham. She’d paid a lot of money for new documentation and ID.
‘How is this relevant to us?’ Mr Kellington said curtly.
‘Because she isn’t who she says she is,’ Emily snapped at him. ‘She has a very chequered past that I think will interest you. She’s the one who damaged that vase and set me up very cleverly. When I tell you the story, you’ll understand what she’s capable of.’
Holly stood up, trancelike.
‘I have to go,’ she said in a vague manner. ‘I have things to do at home.’
Josh stood and placed his hand gently on her shoulder. ‘I could ring your landlady if you like…’
She shrugged him off.
‘I’m not a lodger. I’m a visitor there.’ She paused and spoke softly. ‘I’m always just a visitor in everyone’s life… I come and go, but nothing ever changes.’
Chapter Seventy-One
Holly
Holly rushed past David in the kiosk. He called out to her, but she didn’t look back.
She couldn’t face the bus but managed to hail a cab on Huntingdon Street. She sat slumped in the back, staring sightlessly out of the window, her head full of unwanted images.
Markus… Emily… There wasn’t much time. She had to put her plan in place now. She had to get back to Manchester to find Evan.
‘You OK, love?’ the driver asked, looking at her in his rear-view mirror.
She said nothing but knew she looked a state. Unbrushed hair, pale, drawn face… but what did it matter? What did anyone understand about it all?
When she got home, Cora was out. She felt like crying with gratitude.
She dropped her handbag at the bottom of the stairs and rushed upstairs. In Cora’s bedroom, she pulled off the quilt and pillows and heaved the mattress half off the bed, then began piling the cash on the floor.
When that half was empty, she hauled the mattress the other way and began doing the same on that side.
‘Holly? Are you feeling quite well?’
She let out a small scream at the voice behind her. Cora stood in the doorway with a strange, calm look on her face.
‘David rang me to tell me what happened at work. He’s on his way over here now.’
‘You won the lottery,’ Holly said accusingly. ‘I found the letter.’
‘If you’d just asked me, I would have helped you, you know,’ Cora said, stepping towards her. ‘I could have given you some money.’
‘I need all of it!’ Holly spat. ‘Your life is virtually finished; you’ve no need for all this cash. My child’s life is at stake. I have to find him.’
She turned back to the bed and carried on taking out wads of cash, stuffing them into a black bin bag she’d grabbed from the stairs.
Cora stood, watching her, saying nothing. Holly was unnerved.
‘Why are you staring at me like that?’ she snapped at the older woman. ‘Just go – leave me alone.’
‘You know, when I was a young woman of your age,’ Cora began, ‘I too thought that—’
‘I don’t want to hear any more of your stupid stories!’ Holly glared up at her, wide-eyed. ‘You talk too much, that’s how I found you in the first place.’
‘Found me?’ Cora’s voice faltered. ‘But I met you in the post office. I found you.’
Holly stopped stuffing money in the bag and wiped her brow with her forearm and shook her head in irritation.
‘I’d been in a few shops you used. It was just lucky that day that things went wrong and you came to my rescue. But I watched you… before that. In the café, with Pat.’
Cora’s composure began to wobble.
‘You knew me before… but how… why were you—’
‘It was obvious you had money by the way you talked,’ Holly said. ‘Telling Pat you didn’t trust the banks and you’d got plans underway to draw it all out. I thought it was just savings and then I found the letter about your lottery winnings.’
They both started at the sound of footsteps bounding upstairs.
‘David!’ Cora gasped in relief.
He stood in the doorway, his expression incredulous as he took in the wads of cash scattered everywhere.
Holly looked from David to Cora. She felt trapped, like a rat in a cage. Her head swam with faces, past conversations. It drummed a beat of fear into her chest. She stood up, still, closed her eyes against it. She heard their voices far, far away.
Then Cora’s hand touched her shoulder. Holly swung around and pushed with all her might. She watched as the old woman staggered back, slipping on the cash underfoot.
David cried out, tried to reach her, but he was too far away.
As Cora toppled backwards – it seemed like slow motion to Holly – her head hit the edge of the black iron fireplace with a dull thud.
Holly stood over her and watched the thick pool of red trace its way neatly around the edge of the stone hearth.
She stiffened as David grasped her arm.
‘What… have… you… done?’ His words sounded like an old record, slowed right down.
They both looked at Cora on the floor, her eyes wide and staring, her body bent at an unnatural angle.
‘Holly, what have you done?’ David repeated.
'I have to get some fresh air… I have to get out of here.’ Holly’s legs felt as if they didn’t belong to her. She took long strides out of the room.
Holly watched as
David bent over Cora’s body, feeling for a non-existent pulse.
‘Please.’ He looked at her as she left the room. ‘Call an ambulance.’
She ran downstairs, through the kitchen and burst out of the back door, gulping in air.
How did it get to this? What could she do now… she had to get the money and go. It was her only chance to find Evan again.
She made the call and stepped back inside. There wasn’t much time now.
Holly half-filled a glass with water from the tap and drank it. Then she took a deep breath and slowly climbed the stairs again.
David sat next to Cora’s body, his head bowed in sadness.
When he saw her he slowly rose to his feet.
She thought he looked queasy, as if he might be sick at any moment. He opened his mouth to speak but closed it again.
‘Just say what you want to say,’ she told him. ‘For once in your life have some bloody courage.’
‘It’s time,’ he said. ‘To tell me the truth about what happened back in Manchester.’
Chapter Seventy-Two
Holly
‘We’ll keep Evan at ours, look after him while you get your strength back,’ Geraldine had told her.
‘No!’ Holly had squared up to her. ‘I want him with me.’
‘You can’t live here any more, Holly, for obvious reasons. You had sex with my husband behind my back.’
‘I didn’t! He—’
‘Save it. I don’t want to hear it.’
‘But you said… I thought Brendan was leaving. You said we’d live together like sisters.’
‘Fortunately, Brendan and I have settled our differences. Take Evan if that’s what you want. If you have the money and experience to care for him then go.’
Holly had stared at her, an icy hopelessness sweeping up from her feet into her chest.
Geraldine had touched her arm.
‘Look, I’m just saying we all need some space, that’s all. You can visit every day, of course; he’s your baby. But you can’t live here.’
Holly couldn’t speak.
‘If you want to take me up on the offer, we’ll find you a nice apartment and give you an allowance. Just until you get back on your feet, and then you can take Evan back. I promise.’
What could she say? She had nothing, nothing without them. She was nothing. She knew Geraldine’s preferences better than she knew her own.
* * *
They had put her back in the apartment she’d shared with Markus for one night, overlooking the River Irwell.
‘Back where it all started,’ she’d whispered to herself as she pressed her forehead to the cool glass.
The once sparkling river looked flat and black now, and the animated people who walked by on the bank seemed stooped and broken, like Lowry figures.
Holly phoned Geraldine constantly, asking to visit Evan, but she was always either unavailable or busy or Brendan was home.
She used her allowance to buy alcohol. Bottles of cheap white wine, which she’d drink before staggering around the streets searching for her baby, unsure in her addled mind of his whereabouts.
Then the allowance ran out. Stopped.
Holly took to her bed. For days she didn’t eat, didn’t sleep.
She’d hear the door open and bags rustling. Then footsteps, and the door would close. When she went into the kitchen, there was food in the cupboards, the fridge.
The doctor visited her a couple of times, but then that stopped too. She wasn’t ill, he told her; she just needed to get out, get some fresh air.
‘You need to start living your life again.’ He’d said it like it would be an easy thing to do.
One day she’d heard someone in the kitchen, opening and closing cupboard doors. She’d crept out of her bedroom and peeked around the door.
‘Patricia!’
‘Missus says I shouldn’t talk to you.’ The housekeeper had emptied the carrier bags out hastily. ‘Go back to your bedroom.’
‘Do you know what they did to me that night?’ Holly had whimpered, her feet pressing into the cold laminate floor as she stepped closer. ‘They’ve taken my baby. Geraldine said I can see him any time, but there’s always some excuse. They’ve stolen him.’
‘I only know what missus tells me,’ Patricia had said firmly, placing the last two tins on the shelf. ‘If you go to police, I have to tell them you asked for baby to stay with them.’
‘Is that what they’ve told you to say?’ Holly raked at her arm, her crawling skin. ‘Have you heard of DNA?’ she had shrieked, picking up a bottle of orange juice and throwing it against the wall. ‘I can prove that Evan is mine!’
Patricia was unmoved by the act.
‘Mister and missus, they want a baby for long time. Your boy, he has good home now,’ Patricia had said calmly, squeezing past Holly to get to the door. She looked back at her with pity. ‘You cannot win, miss. Best to let things lie.’
‘Patricia, please don’t go,’ Holly had cried, and reached out to her, but the housekeeper hadn’t looked back and the door clicked shut behind her.
Holly had looked around the sparse, quiet apartment and realised that everything around her belonged to them. She had to take back control of her life, otherwise Evan would be a distant memory.
She started to eat a little, to take a few steps outside and breathe in fresh air.
She’d wrap up in layers of mismatched clothes and spend hours looking at the undulating black swell of the river. Slowly, over a few days, her health improved a little.
One day, she’d caught three separate buses and finally, after a ten-minute walk, reached the gates to Medlock Hall. When they had eventually opened to allow a delivery van through, she had walked up the driveway.
She looked up and saw the bedroom where she’d sat for all those weeks, unaware that she’d been little more than a prisoner from the moment she’d arrived.
She rang the bell. Patricia opened the door and called to Geraldine.
She came to the door with a small boy of about eight months on her hip. He had soft brown hair and he looked like Brendan, but his eyes… his eyes were mirror images of Holly’s own.
‘Evan,’ Holly had whispered.
‘You need to arrange a proper visit.’ Geraldine had looked pale and nervous. ‘You can’t just turn up like this.’
‘But it’s never a good time!’ Holly had shrieked. ‘He’s mine. Evan is mine!’
She’d reached to touch him and Geraldine had jumped back. Evan began to cry.
Geraldine had shouted at Patricia to close the door, but Holly had put her foot inside.
‘I want to see my baby,’ she’d screamed. ‘He’s mine!’
‘Look, Brendan got sole custody through the court as his biological father,’ Geraldine told her. ‘You’re an unfit mother.’
‘That’s impossible,’ Holly gasped. ‘I can prove I’m his mother. I’ll—’
‘It was proven, on doctor’s evidence, that you are a drug addict. We have witnesses, photographs of you passed out drunk on the street. Take it to court… see how far you get. The judge will laugh in your face. Brendan is Evan’s father and we’ll always fight for him. You’ll save yourself a lot of heartache if you just accept that.’
Holly had staggered back as the door slammed in her face.
She’d stood there on the step for a minute or two as reality hit.
The job that Brendan had offered her was never as a companion to his wife. It had one duty only: to produce a baby who’d possess Brendan’s own DNA.
After that, they’d engineered Holly’s demise in order for Brendan to win sole custody.
Evan lived with his millionaire father.
She’d never have the money to fight Brendan and win her son back.
But that was only so long as she played their game…
* * *
Two weeks later, Holly was evicted from the apartment.
One day she was lying in bed with a broken heart; the next, the baili
ffs were knocking on the door.
One of the thuggish-looking men had pointed to a pile of unopened mail on the carpet.
‘You’ll find numerous communications giving you notice in that lot. Then there’s this…’ He’d pointed to a notice stuck to the apartment door. ‘That says you were to be out of here yesterday.’
She’d gathered up a few meagre belongings and walked out onto the street. It was a drab day. The roads were busy but there weren’t many pedestrians around.
She’d walked into town. Her feet had recognised the vehicle before her brain caught up. It was a distinctive black G-Wagen.
Brendan had parked, just like that time outside Costa, half on the road, half on the pavement, on double yellow lines. She’d looked around but couldn’t see him anywhere, although there were lots of office buildings nearby.
She’d crouched down by the jeep, pretending to tie her shoelace. When there was a lull in the flow of traffic, she dumped her rucksack next to a large litter bin and lay flat, shuffling under the vehicle until she was directly underneath the driver’s side.
At least there was one benefit to being skeletal, she’d thought wryly.
You could get flattened… he could drive over you… you’ll get caught…
‘I don’t care,’ she’d told the voice in her head. ‘I don’t want to live.’
She’d lain there for just five or six minutes when she heard shoes scuffing on the asphalt. She heard Brendan talking on his phone and the beep as he unlocked the car. Next, she heard the heavy rumble of an approaching HGV.
Then suddenly, his boot-clad feet were next to her face, and as the rumble of the truck grew closer, she reached out and grabbed his ankles, pulling hard and sending him careering off balance and into the road.
The screech of brakes, Brendan’s scream… She didn’t wait to see the glorious result of her impulsive gamble.
She’d crawled to the edge of the chassis, squeezed out from under the jeep, picked up her rucksack and walked away.