Scared Yet?

by Jaye Ford

  Jason slammed the boot. The thunk felt like a prompt. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Glad you’re still walking and talking,’ Daniel said and closed the door.

  He walked to the driver’s side and spoke briefly with Jason. She couldn’t hear the conversation and their faces were out of sight above the roof of the car so she watched Daniel’s hands where he rested them on his hips. There was no ring on his left one although that didn’t mean anything. Liv hoped he had a wife he adored and a tribe of fabulous, exceptionally tall children he’d never have to be separated from.

  ‘Does it hurt much?’ Jason asked as he drove.

  ‘A bit. It’ll be good to get the drugs on board.’

  They stopped at the traffic lights in Park Street and Liv looked across the road at the street entrance to the suite of offices she’d left only a few hours ago. Then up, over the roof to the car park behind. Bright spots of fluorescent lighting hung like evenly spaced stars above the top storey. The floor underneath it, where she’d laid on the concrete, was black. Was that bastard nursing a bruised face or still thinking of violence?

  Jason reached across the space between them, patted her leg. She glanced down at his long, fine fingers on the rumpled hospital gown and put her uninjured hand over his.

  ‘I’m going for a record,’ she said. ‘Thought I’d see how many traumatic experiences I could string together in a year.’ She tried a laugh, turned her face away as fresh tears filled her eyes.

  He curled his hand around hers and held it as he drove. He was the closest thing to a brother she’d ever had. He and Kelly were her family. Maybe that made it okay to dump on them again.

  Kelly must have heard the car in the quiet street and hit the button for the roller door inside the garage. It started up as Jason pulled into the driveway, doing a slow reveal of Kelly in purple pyjamas then the long, dark hair that fell in waves over her shoulders as she craned her neck to get a look into the car. With a stream of soothing, encouraging words, she helped Liv out of the car and guided her into the house but in the brighter light of the hallway, her monologue was cut short by shock. ‘Oh my God.’ She looked Liv over with a horrified expression. ‘What’s the gown for? Were they going to admit you?’

  Liv opened the front panels, showing her the tattered remains of her skirt and blouse.

  ‘Oh God, Liv.’ The shock and tenderness in her best friend’s face slipped under the fragile hold Liv had on her tears and as Kelly folded the gown back in place, smoothed hair away from her face, gently touched the sling on her arm, Liv let go and sobbed.

  *

  ‘Oh my God,’ Kelly said it for the fourth time that night and Liv managed to laugh a little. She was sandwiched between Kelly and Jason on the sofa in their family room, her hands around a mug of tea, a half-eaten slice of toast and a strip of foil from her drug prescription on the coffee table.

  Kelly had helped her out of the torn clothes and into a pair of pyjamas, pulling pained faces every time she found another darkening mark on Liv’s body. Jason had parked her on the sofa and made her eat and drink before she talked.

  It was after eleven now, their two little girls were asleep in bed, Liv had stopped crying and told them everything.

  ‘You hit him?’ Kelly asked.

  ‘Yes.’ She’d been over this bit and they’d come back to it.

  ‘What, you mean a slap or like . . . ?’ Jason mimed a punch. Liv hoped he’d never have to throw one. That fist was pathetic.

  ‘A punch, yes. I felt my knuckle snap on his cheekbone.’

  Kelly turned Liv’s hand over like it was proof. The tip of her middle finger was starting to show blue above the edge of the taping.

  ‘I should have tried to run,’ Liv said. She remembered the red-hot fury that had burned behind her eyes – and the hands on her breasts as she’d struggled against the car.

  ‘Daniel Beck reckoned screaming like a psycho probably saved your life,’ Jason said.

  ‘Daniel said I screamed like a psycho?’

  ‘No, I’m surmising because you always scream like a psycho.’

  She frowned for a second then her mouth curled into a smile. ‘I do not. And when was the last time you heard me scream?’

  ‘You screamed when I lit the barbecue last week.’

  ‘You were screaming. I was laughing.’

  ‘She’s right, Jase,’ Kelly weighed in. ‘We were both laughing at you. But you do scream like a psycho, Liv.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’ Liv said, feigning offence. She was grateful for the teasing. It made her feel slightly less off-kilter. Reminded her of better times, when the three of them had shared a house as uni students.

  Jason had answered Liv and Kelly’s campus noticeboard ad for a flatmate and they’d moved into a cheap dump of a house and spent three years passing and failing, freezing through winter, drinking too much and laughing more than Liv thought possible. Kelly and Jason getting together that last year had changed the sleeping arrangements but not the dynamics. It was never Kelly-and-Jason. It was Kelly, the friend she found on the first day of infants school, and Jason, her surrogate brother.

  ‘So what are the police doing about it?’ Jason took her empty mug and put it on the coffee table.

  ‘I don’t know. I didn’t think to ask that. The cop thought it might be someone I know.’

  ‘What? No,’ Kelly said.

  ‘He asked if I knew anyone who’d want to hurt me.’ She remembered the look on Thomas’s face tonight and his anger on other occasions they’d fought. ‘He asked if it could be Thomas.’

  There was a second of silence as Kelly and Jason exchanged glances.

  ‘Did it look like Thomas?’ Kelly asked.

  ‘I don’t know. All I saw was a man in black. He was too close and it happened so fast.’

  ‘He was at the hospital, though,’ Kelly said.

  Liv had thought about that, too. ‘A couple of hours later. The car park is only fifteen minutes from the hospital.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Liv,’ Jason said. ‘Thomas is a fucking dickhead but he wouldn’t pull on a balaclava and jump you in a car park.’

  ‘Yes, I know. You’re right.’ Thomas had cut her out of his life but he wouldn’t beat her up. It was good to hear Jason say it, though.

  ‘It was just bad luck you were there,’ he said.

  She pulled a face, a cynical that’d-be-right gesture.

  ‘It’s going to be okay, Liv.’ Kelly laid a comforting hand on her back.

  ‘When do you think it’ll be okay? It would be great to have a date for that.’

  Kelly’s hand moved gently up and down. ‘I don’t know but it will. You just have to hang in there.’

  She was so damn sick of hanging in. ‘Yeah, I know.’

  Kelly found her a toothbrush and Jason waited in their front sitting room to help her slide awkwardly between the sheets with her sling.

  ‘Let me know if you need anything,’ he said from the hall doorway.

  ‘Thanks, Pops.’

  ‘Mr Weeks to you, young lady.’ She’d never seen him in his classroom but when he used that voice, she could imagine it – To Sir, With Love meets Principal Skinner. He flicked the light off and stood silhouetted by the glow from the hallway.

  ‘Thanks for coming to get me tonight. I’ll have to start paying rent soon.’ She hadn’t ever slept on their sofa until the night Thomas left. Cameron had stayed on a mattress in their daughters’ room and Kelly had curled up beside her while she’d stared at the ceiling wondering what the hell had gone wrong. There’d been too many other nights since then – when she’d drunk too much to drive, when Cameron was with his father and Liv couldn’t stand being on her own.

  ‘You could just move in,’ Jason said.

  ‘There’s an idea.’

  ‘Hmm.�
�� With the light at his back, Liv couldn’t see his face. She hoped he was smiling.

  She listened as Kelly and Jason moved about at the other end of the house. They murmured to each other as they opened and closed doors and drawers, as the hall light went out, as their bedroom went from bright to subdued. A moment later, the house was enveloped in blackness.

  Liv hadn’t been frightened of the dark as a kid. Her dad had been big and strong enough that there was no need to be afraid when he turned off the lights. He’d made sure she knew how to defend herself, so when she was all grown up, when she’d inherited his height and build, she’d never felt more than a little creeped out by darkness.

  Until now.

  A scrabbling, panicking sensation rushed up her spine. She opened her eyes wide as the moment from the car park replayed in her head. Not the whole thing – just the movement in the window, the hand, the arm, the voice in her ear.

  You’re mine, slut.

  No, she wasn’t. She was fine. It was over.

  5

  Kelly stood at the hallway door, wrapped in a cotton robe, long hair in a slightly damp topknot, a hand cupped to her cheek. ‘Oh wow.’

  Liv copied her pose. ‘It feels huge.’

  ‘It is huge.’ Kelly aimed her next words down the corridor. ‘Get a move on, girls. You’re not even dressed yet.’ She waited while little feet scrambled on the timber floor then made a face at the cartoons playing on the flat screen opposite the sofa bed. ‘Sorry if they woke you. They’re not supposed to watch TV before school.’

  ‘They didn’t put it on. I couldn’t sleep.’ Liv had flicked it on in the early hours to try to break the cycle of nightmares that had kept circling in her brain – the movement, hand, arm, voice.

  ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘Like someone put me through a tumble dryer during the night.’

  Kelly sat on the edge of the sofa bed, the familiar floral fragrance of her soap and deodorant drifting around both of them. ‘I’ve got some work I can do here. Why don’t you sleep a while longer and I can drop you home on my way into the office later?’

  ‘I don’t want to go to the townhouse.’

  ‘Then stay here today. You’ll have the house to yourself. I can manage the office.’ She smiled gently.

  Liv didn’t like how close it came to pity. And she didn’t want to sit around with that moment from the car park on a continuous loop in her head. She needed to do something and it wasn’t fair to leave Kelly to deal with everything at the office. Not when the problems they had were Liv’s fault. ‘I want to go into work. I’ll feel better if I can be useful. Can you lend me some clothes?’ She sat up and winced at the throbbing in her cheek.

  ‘There’s no hurry. It can wait a couple of hours. You should try to take it easy.’

  Liv rolled her head from side to side, testing her neck. ‘It’s mostly swelling. I’ll take some painkillers. It’ll be fine.’

  Kelly looked doubtful. ‘Well, see how you feel once you’re up and around.’

  When she was gone, Liv stood – and waited. Okay, no spinning head, no tears and the off-kilter feeling from last night had disappeared. Mostly. She’d be fine.

  She heard Jason talking to the girls in the kitchen as she made her way to the bathroom, kept her eyes down until she was standing in front of the mirror. She knew it would be black and swollen and ugly, so she took a breath in preparation. It didn’t stop the ripple of shock.

  Her eye looked like one of Kelly’s girls had found a black felt-tipped pen and drawn a pirate patch. The swelling in the lid wasn’t too bad but the internal bleeding had spread far and wide across the temple and cheek, causing a hard lump of blue-green bruising down one side of her face.

  Someone did that to her, she thought. A man had pummelled her face with his fists.

  She slipped her right hand from its sling, flexed her palm, her wrist, her whole arm. Her muscles were sore but it was only her finger that was damaged.

  She’d broken it hitting him.

  For a year, she’d done nothing but accept what was thrown at her. Striking back had hurt but it felt good. Damn good.

  She studied the crazy colouring again, the lopsided bulging of her face, the bloodied cut on her lip. What do you look like this morning, you bastard?

  Under the shower she took a cautious inventory of her body. She had strained muscles all over and the scratching and bruises were worst on her shins. On her upper thigh and hip there were large, tender green patches, maybe where she’d hit the car and the concrete, and on the insides of her upper arms there were matching rows of small, dark circles.

  By the time she walked into the kitchen wearing a pair of Jason’s jeans, Kelly’s shirt and with her hair still damp on her shoulders, her hand and face were throbbing. She needed painkillers and strong coffee, in that order.

  ‘Good grief.’ Jason stopped halfway through making a ham sandwich.

  ‘A little powder, a touch of blush, no one will notice a thing,’ Liv said.

  ‘I don’t think you can buy that much make-up.’ He was a teacher at his daughters’ school and was wearing nice trousers, a collared T-shirt and sport shoes – ready to greet parents or run across a playground.

  ‘I got some make-up for my birthday,’ ten-year-old Bess said.

  She was sitting next to her seven-year-old sister Emma and the sight of them side by side in their blue-checked school dresses gave Liv a hit of nostalgia. She and Kelly had worn the same uniform and Liv had spent plenty of nights sleeping on Kelly’s bedroom floor followed by breakfast in the Burke kitchen. ‘It’s mini-Kell and mini-Liv this morning.’

  Kelly was dressed for work now – lemon blouse, black skirt, ankle-strap pumps, her thick, wavy hair twisted into a silver clip – and tossing cubes of beef into a slow cooker on the other side of the kitchen. She glanced over her shoulder, joined Liv in a quick, silent laugh then switched to pursed lips. ‘Except we ate our cereal instead of playing with it, didn’t we, Aunty Liv?’

  ‘Oh, I always ate mine.’

  ‘But you’re not sisters.’ Emma pointed back and forth between her mother and Liv with a spoon.

  ‘And I’m older than Emma.’ Bess sat taller, as though that proved it.

  ‘We used to pretend we were sisters,’ Kelly told them. Although, with her Black Irish dark hair and green eyes and Liv’s generations-old Scandinavian heritage, no one ever believed them. ‘And Aunty Liv was ridiculously tall.’

  ‘That’s because I always ate my breakfast.’

  ‘Didn’t Mum eat hers?’ Bess asked in a tone that suggested she’d found an escape clause.

  ‘Well, she did but she was a runt and breakfast didn’t help much.’

  ‘She’s still a runt and you’re still ridiculously tall, so nothing much has changed really,’ Jason chipped in.

  He got disparaging expressions from two sides of the kitchen. He was right, though, except back then they used to wonder what they’d be like when they were grown up. Beaten up and alone had never crossed Liv’s mind.

  ‘Can your face be my class news today, Aunty Liv?’ Emma asked.

  ‘I’m sure you can think of something much nicer to tell your class. What about your dad’s ham sandwich? It looks great.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Aunty Liv. Sandwiches aren’t news,’ Bess explained wisely.

  ‘Then what about that funny thing on your face?’ Liv said to Emma. ‘Oh, it’s your nose.’

  Emma giggled.

  ‘Tell them about your nose,’ Bess sang.

  ‘I’ll tell them about your nose,’ Emma sang back.

  Their laughter made Liv wish Cameron was here. Being in this house reminded her of hanging out at Kelly’s as a kid. There were seven in the Burke family – two boys, three girls and her parents. It had seemed like a small village c
ompared to the flat she’d shared with her father. Liv had loved it and years later had built a house big enough for a village just like it. But a second baby had never happened then Thomas left and that was that. Noisy, laughing, dream family gone.

  She ruffled Bess’s hair, kissed the top of Emma’s head and eyed the phone on the kitchen wall. Should she tell Cameron about the assault? Was there anything positive to be gained from explaining to an eight-year-old that his mother had been bashed? He’d see the results eventually but he was with Thomas until next Monday and he’d had enough to upset him in the last year.

  Liv tipped her head back on the seat bolster as Kelly backed out of the driveway and hit speed dial for the office on the hands-free before they were in forward motion.

  ‘Prescott and Weeks Temp Staffing. This is Teagan.’

  Liv and Kelly had been Prescott and Weeks Temp Staffing for five years. It was the only part of Liv’s life that was still in place after the past twelve months and she was working hard to make sure it stayed that way. It was the reason she’d left late last night. Seventeen-year-old Teagan was Kelly’s niece and had replaced their previous office junior three months ago.

  ‘Yep . . . Uh-huh . . . Mmm,’ she responded while Kelly talked her through the reorganising of their day.

  ‘Any messages?’ Kelly finally asked.

  ‘A stack of people have rung to ask about Liv,’ Teagan said.

  Liv lifted her head. People knew already? ‘What are you telling them?’

  ‘Just what Kelly told me to say this morning. That you’re okay, thanks for calling and someone will get back to them later.’

  Liv raised her eyebrows at Kelly, impressed with her planning. ‘Great. Keep doing that.’

  ‘And a detective rang. She wants Liv to call her,’ Teagan said.

  Liv found pen and paper in the centre console of Kelly’s car but quickly gave up trying to write with taped fingers. ‘I’ll remember it. Detective Rachel Quest. If she rings again, tell her I’m on my way to see her.’