The Penn Friends Series Books 1-4: Penn Friends Boxset

by T H Paul

  Life was a steady routine for the Black’s, a simple existence, which wouldn’t have worked for many couples, but fitted them perfectly. For both of them, each for their reason, the quiet life was all they could have hoped. Slow and steady. No need to change anything. Just the two of them.

  Before Barbara got to choose her next film––a chick flick shown two nights later––everything would change.

  “We need to talk,” is all she’d said as she called Tom at work. “Let’s meet for lunch,” and with that, a chain of events set into motion that neither of them could ever undo.

  Lunch was a simple affair, in a local cafe not far from where Tom’s office was. Barbara, who didn’t work herself, had travelled up to London to catch him during his hour’s lunch break.

  “What is it?” he asked when they were sitting down. Barbara looked pale, not ill but far from comfortable.

  “I’m pregnant.” Tom went white.

  “What?” Rage was rising in him now. “How? I thought we said…”

  “I know what we said,” she boomed, cutting him off, already aware that he’d always stated that they weren’t going to have children. She got it. Her getting pregnant wasn’t what he’d agreed on.

  “You’re positive?”

  “Yes, the doctor confirmed it today.”

  Tom placed his glass back on the table––far louder than he needed to do––and stormed out. The argument they would have that night when he returned home late from work would be explosive. Their wall of marital bliss had suddenly come crashing down on their heads.

  2

  I never knew them as ever being truly happy. It's like being born into a conflict zone––all I knew growing up was war. I never knew my parents as a loving couple as they were back then, never saw the side of them, nor never once felt truly wanted myself. I broke in on their little paradise; I know that––my father told me enough times. I always wondered why they didn’t just abort me––I wasn’t wanted in life, so what had stopped them just getting rid of me pre-birth? I understand now. Looking back, it’s like I never knew them at all. Had I known all this back then, would it have made a difference? Maybe. It would indeed have made them both a little more understandable to me.

  But nothing ever got said, not until it was too late. Too late for them––too late for me.

  Tom and Barbara spoke very little over the following week––Tom got up early, work suddenly requiring him in before breakfast, and often only came home late. Barbara spent those evenings––no cinema, as Tom was too late home for them to make a showing––drinking a little, never too much but she was far from teetotal, despite the foetus growing inside of her.

  Not once had Tom raised the subject of abortion. She’d been anticipating the moment for days already. She couldn’t think of anyway right in which the conversation might work out in her favour, her secret intact.

  “Let’s walk to the cinema, and talk,” Tom finally said, a full week on from that lunchtime catastrophe and clear to Barbara that he’d finally worked through the connotations. She was sure the conversation would soon land on the subject of termination and was wary from the get-go. She would head him off before he ever got there, she decided as they turned the corner at the end of their street, crossing the road to walk through the park that was located there, a slightly longer way to the cinema, but it seemed time for talking was the priority that night. Neither of them had even checked what might be on that they could watch. It would never matter, anyway.

  “I know,” Tom said, finally, nearly an hour later. They’d been having a long discussion––it hadn’t verged into an argument, though skimmed that border often––the whole way, entering the cinema without buying a ticket, their pass allowing them access to the gallery area without the need for a particular film choice. They’d twice done that before, just eating there when nothing of interest had been available to see.

  It was while sitting down, the sofas comfortable if not known to be a little sticky at times––they always assumed popcorn––but it was clean and fresh that day, far from how their relationship felt anymore. Cracks were appearing that had never been there before. The last seven days had been horrendous.

  Sensing the conversation was finally going to land on the one subject Barbara knew she couldn’t handle––the abortion of her unborn baby––she had headed him off. Catching him off guard, being the one first to raise what she knew he was getting around to, she wanted to be on the front foot. Kill the idea before he could get moving. She knew he would demand an explanation. For that, she had no clue what she could say.

  Moments after he’d come back with a refilled coke and some more nachos, she’d hit him with it. She wasn’t having an abortion; it wasn’t something they could consider––she couldn’t do it.

  “I know,” he said.

  “You know?” It was far from the answer she expected, so far from anything she deemed a likely response, that she was at a total loss. “You know what?”

  “I know everything, Barb, I always have.”

  She choked on her drink, having taken a huge gulp just seconds before, thinking it would have calmed her a little. Tom was a million miles from knowing everything, and she knew that for certain, and yet the way he said it, the manner of his appearance at that moment didn’t fit with the way she knew this conversation would go. I know everything rebounded through her mind again as if an echo in a dark cave. Impossible, she decided.

  “You know everything?” Skepticism oozed out of every syllable. She had for too long guarded who she was that she wasn’t going to take anything for granted.

  “I know why you can’t have an abortion.”

  She eased back into her chair. For a moment she dared to believe Tom had known something about who she was, about the secret Barbara had kept hidden from him, the one man she had hoped she could have told, but it had never seemed right, never seemed sensible. What they had was too special to risk throwing away over some claim of supernatural powers. He’d never be able to live with her once he knew. Still, at that moment, the realisation that he didn’t, in fact, know everything was having an instant effect. She began to sink into the chair, taking her drink back in her hands, drawing it close to her face, as if she could hide behind the container as if it would once again block out any threat to her way of being.

  He was obviously about to play the women’s rights’ card, that a woman now had the right to protect her unborn child. A couple of seconds had elapsed since Tom last spoke, everything analysed as he watched his wife recline at the table, drink in hand.

  “As I said, I know why you can’t have an abortion.” He raised his hand as she attempted to speak, knowing she had no doubt been waiting for this moment, her responses and replies ready, her visible defences already firmly in place. “I know what it might do to you if you tried.” Barbara had been trying to speak, her mouth had been open with the words on her lips, but that last phrase had cut her short. What it might do to you if you tried. She hadn’t expected him to word it like that. Did he really know, therefore?

  “I know about your gift.” Finally, he’d said it. It felt both releasing and terrifying, the fact he was admitting to her after all these years something he knew about, though also something neither of them had deemed the other person qualified enough to handle.

  Barbara went pale.

  “You know?” she said after a moment’s pause, as she fought for air, her brain demanding oxygen, space, time, anything. “What do you mean you know?”

  “I know, Barbara, okay, I know. I know what you can do. I know who you are, and I know therefore why you can’t abort this baby. It’s why I never wanted children in the first place. I knew what it might do to you, what risk it would put you in. I’ve always known, okay!”

  There was absolute silence for five minutes, neither knowing what to say to the other, both of them occasionally looking at the other but eye contact was impossible to keep, one looking away when the other was glancing up and vice-versa.
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  He knew. The realisation was flooding through Barbara's already aching soul. He knew, yet he had never mentioned it. How did he know? Why had they never talked? Thoughts raced through her mind like cars at a busy junction.

  Tom had always wondered how this conversation would go, though he’d hoped it would never happen. Barb had chosen to keep it from him despite the fact he’d known from the moment they met, something that had always been at the back of his mind, a nagging doubt as to why she had never trusted him enough to have confided in him about something so personal. He understood, however, that it was an almost impossible thing to share. How do you tell anyone, let alone someone you want to spend the rest of your life with, that you have special powers? How does that conversation go? His mother had always warned him to stay away. It was the last thing she’d said to him before the wedding when she walked out of his life for good. Not before giving Tom the ability to be unaffected by anything Barbara might try and do to him. His mother had insisted that if they were to be together, it would have to be a purely natural marriage.

  He’d had no choice in that regard. His mother had never told him she was going to give him such ability; she just gave it. As angry as he was with her, he’d never actually resented that fact, however. He’d come to appreciate all he now shared with Barbara, the simple life they both lived. A safe world, even if life was hard at times. Money was always short, but with just the two of them, they could make it work. They had made it work.

  Now her very life was at risk. If the baby would turn out to be a girl––the gift only passed from mother to daughter or father to son––their days of marital bliss were over. Even as a foetus, assuming the child had inherited the gift––the probability was high––every previous attempt to ever destroy the child, even while still in the womb, had always also taken the life of the mother. Even if an abortion wasn’t carried out, in many ways, it only delayed the inevitable. The gift passed from mother to daughter––there was no keeping the gift after pregnancy––and the child always, sooner or later, turned on the parent. It was a part of the chemical makeup of the anomaly. Most Enchanti––the collective name for those who possessed the gift of enchantment––never had children for this reason. Some, however, to keep the line alive, had them despite the risk. Besides, if a mother would have a boy, or a father a daughter, the gift would pass on, but was dormant, unknown. When that child would then children of their own, only then might it be activated again, assuming the person carrying the gene was to produce a same-sex offspring. In this way the gift had often been passed on for generations without knowing it, the danger therefore unknown, the secret unspoken, until some poor soul would bear a child, and upon puberty, that child would be able to do unexplained things. In the age before the internet, when such manifestations would appear, few parents knew what to do with it, knew not that it was in fact in their family bloodline and were often killed by their child before they ever learned of the risks.

  Barbara swore aloud, though it was only the two of them in the room at that moment, the other guests who had been present earlier already left and gone through to the screens, their films no doubt well underway. Tom took her hand.

  “It’s okay,’ he said, trying to comfort her, though there was something in her eyes. It was a cross between deep relief that he finally knew––or that she realised he now knew––and betrayal, the fact that he’d never told her, never mentioned he was aware, never let her off the hook for not being able to mention it herself.

  “How?” Her mind was going over old memories, times she’d used her skills on him––they’d never been successful, or so she’d thought. Times she’d used them on other people, people he had never been in contact with, people he’d never been around. How could he know? What had given her away?

  “My mother.”

  “Sue?” She couldn’t see the connection until sudden realisation dawned on her like a heavy weight tied to her ankles in a dark ocean. She was sinking fast.

  “It’s okay; we’ll be fine.”

  “How can you say that! Why did you never tell me?” She was angry more than anything else.

  “You never told me,” he said, calmly. “What was I meant to think?”

  “So you knew all the time. Did Sue tell you? But how did she…” but Barbara cut off mid-sentence, the penny finally dropping. His mother was an Enchanti herself; it made perfect sense. She had never wanted her son to marry her; Barbara felt more unwanted by Sue than by anything or anyone before. She hadn’t even come to her own child’s wedding. “Your mother had powers?”

  “Yes,” Tom said, more sombre than the mood permitted, as if the fact they’d finally been able to share this deepest of secrets with each other––to finally be free of all the lies––was anything but releasing, anything but freedom.

  “That means you carry the gene too?” The realisation was fully dawning on Barbara. If she was pregnant with a girl, her own life was at risk. If it were a boy, then Tom would be the target. Either way, their child would most probably possess the gift––boy or girl it didn’t now seem to matter; everything was about to change.

  She swore heavily again. She understood more fully than ever why Tom had always insisted they never have children. While the risk was fifty-fifty for her, she’d gone along with that wish until her internal clock had got the better of her, and the desire for motherhood––with the chance she would produce a boy and therefore keep their little world mostly unaffected––became too intense to deny. Now she’d put one of their lives in danger, though did not know that would have been the case, nor who was now at risk.

  “I’m so sorry, Tom, I never knew.”

  3

  Can you imagine your arrival being like a death sentence to someone? Whatever I was to be––my parents told me they had never found out before birth whether I was to be a boy or a girl––it would mean almost certain difficulty for one of my parents, all because some stupid gene got given to me. A gene that would leave me parentless, friendless and hopeless before my eighteenth birthday.

  A curse of a gift in whatever way you otherwise look at it.

  Life changed dramatically for Tom and Barbara over the next decade, their little girl born to them one cold and wet night, the news bringing with it a sense of foreboding finality. It was a girl.

  The first few years, seeing little Penny tottering around, were just like any young family’s would have been. There were moments of laughter, moments of bonding, but always an ever constant niggle at the complexity of what might be living inside Penny.

  Barbara no longer had powers and needed to find work to help cover the bills. That made her life far more complicated, for the first time as an adult, she had no inside gift to help her carve her passage through life, no way of being able to influence, change or control any situation she wanted fixing. She became depressed, at times, her mood hitting rock bottom, it seemed, for months on end, the cycles of depression getting longer and more severe as those early years passed.

  By the time Penny was five, her mother was already an alcoholic, and her parents were sleeping in separate bedrooms. Tom was into his first of many affairs, as the once close couple fell apart at the seams, the forever drawing closer reality of what their little Penny might become was like a foreboding and oppressive black cloud on the horizon.

  One thing Tom had managed to research was the impact that high levels of physical activity had on Enchanti during childhood, which was found to limit, or sometimes eliminate the gift. It had happened that, in rare cases, the manifestation of the gift during teenage years had been significantly reduced, and in one instance minimal powers at all, so that there had been no risk to the parents in those reported situations. Information was, however, tough to come across, and even harder to verify.

  Penny was nonetheless signed up to dance classes shortly after her fifth birthday, a girl who had loved to move to music at home, the class deemed a natural fit. Barbara would take her daughter there herself, her one hope of re
ducing or eliminating any risk there might be to her in the future, not having any idea if, or when, the effects of being an Enchanti might otherwise materialise, and resenting the fact she’d now lost her powers.

  Mr Jenkins had been there from the first day, greeting Barbara at the door as he ushered Penny into the gym they were to spend that first year dancing in. Mirrors covered one wall, and Penny glanced at all the other girls who made up the group. She felt immediately at home.

  “I think she shows incredible promise,” said Mr Jenkins, the dance teacher, to Barbara at the end of that first lesson, in front of Penny, who beamed up at them both, delighted to have been given such praise. She was already a fan of a man who would spend the next ten years closely working with her, passing on all he knew, drawing her into his inner group, to one day become his star.

  It was while leaving the dance studio that day, her first lesson behind her, when young Penny called out from the back seat of the car as her mum drove them home, asking who the lady was that was with daddy. It was the first evidence to Barbara that her husband was having an affair. And there was nothing in her power to now do anything about it.

  “She’s probably someone he works with,” Barbara said, not taking her eyes off the couple for the entire time they were in sight. She only pulled out of the carpark once she’d seen them enter an apartment building, no doubt where the woman lived, as there was no sign of any offices located in that otherwise residential area. Barbara bit down the revulsion and anger that was eating her alive inside cursed the fact she couldn’t turn that woman into a giant pig or cause her to breathe fire. There was nothing she could now do, because the child in the back of her car had taken it all from her, and for all she knew, would one day use that same gift against her. She started to despise her daughter from that day onwards, ultimately withholding the same love and protection that she’d had withdrawn from her by her husband. Barbara would stop at the off-licence on the way home, and Penny was left in the car with the window open a jar while she popped into the shop for some mummy things. Despite the protests from the back seat that Penny wanted to come as well, Barbara was out of the car and locking it before Penny had had a chance to move.