House of Straw

by Marc Scott

  ‘Yeah, the Ardennes, wow that was amazing!’

  ‘She only did it because Jamie was home on his school break. She only did it to keep us apart.’

  ‘Shit, babe, I don’t know what to say.’

  ‘She did anything, anything to keep us apart from each other.’

  ‘But you still saw him, Bree, we all used to go out together.’

  ‘No, Kayleigh, it was never the same. We were never allowed to be alone together, to share anything together, she would always be there, right in the middle of us.’

  ‘I never had a clue this was going on, babe, not a clue.’

  ‘That’s why he was going to Australia, it was her idea. She gave him the money, told him to go travelling, she even booked his flight.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Yeah, she gave him five grand, enough to keep him away for a year. He would never have come back.’

  ‘I thought that was the money he got for his twenty-first birthday. You got the same amount, babe. You both got five grand, you told me. That’s how you paid the deposit on the Audi convertible.’

  ‘You really are thick, Kayleigh, you are still not listening to me. You know that she is selling this house now, don’t you? Getting rid of the scene of the crime. He would have had nowhere to come back to.’

  ‘But she is your mother, Bree, she will always be your mother.’

  ‘Not anymore, that bitch has been dead to me for a long time. And now he is gone, now Jamie is dead, she can get on with the rest of her life. I bet she is pleased he is dead, no more dark skeletons left in the family cupboard.’

  It upset Kayleigh to hear her friend talking this way. ‘Have you ever told her how you feel, babe, have you ever sat down with your mum and explained your true feelings?’

  ‘I don’t want to, I am finished with her. I hope she rots in Finland, I hope she never comes back.’

  Kayleigh sat next to her friend and tried to put a comforting arm around her, but Bree pushed her away. ‘The photos!’ she shouted. ‘The photos will show you everything.’ With that Bree threw off her makeshift sleeping bag, rose to her feet and headed towards the drawers in the glass cabinet. She rummaged through them, throwing much of the contents onto the living room floor. ‘Not here!’ she said and quickly moved to the kitchen.

  ‘The photos will prove what I am saying, you will see,’ she yelled, throwing open the cupboard doors and drawers. Kayleigh stood at the door to the kitchen, worried that her friend might really be losing her mind. ‘Where are those fucking pictures?’ Bree shouted, emptying every cupboard in sight. ‘I know, the wardrobe in her old room.’ She pushed past her friend and made her way up the stairs. ‘I will show you, I will show you just what a bitch my mother really is!’

  Kayleigh followed her friend upstairs, half hoping that she wouldn’t find these pictures that might be so damning. Bree’s earlier revelations were still reeling in her head. She had already had enough shocks for one day.

  ‘Got them!’ Bree announced dragging down a large red box from the wardrobe next to her parents’ bed. ‘Now you will see.’ Kayleigh sat on the uncovered mattress at the side of the bed and watched Bree as she opened the box and pulled out a handful of assorted photographs. ‘That’s one of Jamie at Beth’s birthday party.’ She showed her friend the picture and then tossed it across the floor. The next half dozen or so pictures ended up in the same corner of the room. ‘Me and Dad at a barbecue, me at the prom, Jamie and Preston, Jamie with Lewis at a Halloween party, me with my bitch of a mother at Millie’s birthday do, Jamie at Bristol Uni. One here of me and you at that summer fete.’

  Kayleigh picked that photo up from the floor to have a closer look. ‘God, I look rough in that one,’ she said. ‘I remember that day.’

  Bree suddenly threw the box of memorabilia onto the bed. ‘You still don’t get it, Kayleigh! How fucking stupid are you?’ Her friend looked puzzled. ‘There are none of us together!’ Bree bawled at her friend, as though she was telling off a young child. ‘There are none of me and Jamie together.’ Kayleigh began to sift through the rest of the photographs as Bree continued her rant. ‘She never saw us as a two anymore, not after that night, it was always just him or me.’

  Kayleigh continued to look through the box, turning over the pictures one at a time before showing one of them to her friend. ‘Look, there is one here of Jamie with poor Jess,’ she said. ‘God, it was so sad what happened to her.’

  Bree snatched the photograph and ripped it into small pieces, showering her friend’s head with the tiny fragments. ‘For fuck’s sake, Kayleigh, you are still not listening. My mother has spent all these years keeping me and Jamie apart. She is evil, pure fucking evil. Now can you see why I hate her?’

  Kayleigh shook her head, refusing to accept that her best friend’s mother would be so cruel. ‘There must be some here, somewhere, you can’t be right. She wouldn’t just throw all those old photographs away.’

  Bree snarled at her friend’s continuing defence of her mother. ‘Burned them, on the bonfire, I swear she burned all of them.’

  Kayleigh continued sifting through the box, hoping to prove her friend wrong, but she wasn’t having much success. The sudden rush of mixed emotions had made Bree tired all of a sudden and she sat down at her mother’s dressing table. Turning her head to catch a glimpse of herself in the mirror, a sense of sharp reality hit her as she looked closer at her reflection to discover what the strains of the past three months had done to her once beautiful features. ‘Fuck, I look terrible!’ she said. Kayleigh could not disagree. Bree reached in the drawer and found a thick hairband which she used to tie back the mangy mop of greasy blonde hair dangling across the top of her head.

  ‘Who is that?’ Kayleigh asked suddenly, producing a photograph of Bree’s mother at an upmarket dinner evening.

  ‘Who?’ Bree replied, still angry that her friend was refusing to entertain her conspiracy theory.

  ‘The man sitting next to your mother.’

  Bree snatched the picture and looked more closely. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘It looks like one of her charity events.’

  ‘They are holding hands,’ Kayleigh pointed out. ‘Look, there, under the table.’

  Bree studied the photograph much more closely. ‘The bitch was probably cheating on my dad. I wouldn’t put anything past her.’

  Suddenly the doorbell rang, making both girls jump. ‘Shit!’ Bree said and then quickly lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘I bet it’s them nosy neighbours, the new ones. They keep calling round to see if I need anything.’ Kayleigh stood up and began to head for the door. ‘Don’t worry, babe,’ she said. ‘I will get rid of them.’ She left the room with Bree still scrutinising the strange photograph of her mother.

  When Kayleigh opened the front door, the visitor was halfway down the path and walking away, but on hearing the door open, slowly turned and walked back. She was a large lady, tall and wide. She was wearing a long black coat, as if she had just come from a funeral. The expression on her face was very solemn and she seemed quite nervous. ‘Bree is having a nap,’ Kayleigh said. ‘I have popped round to get her shopping for her, so I think she will be OK.’

  The woman nodded but said nothing. Her face was very pale. Suddenly her chin began to tremble, she looked as if she were about to burst into tears. ‘Are you alright?’ Kayleigh asked. ‘You don’t look very well.’ The large lady was finding it difficult to speak. ‘I wanted to, I came to see if, I am sorry, you know…’

  As Kayleigh stood trying to understand what the poor woman was trying to say, Bree moved to the window upstairs and looked down to see what was happening. She didn’t know the woman, she didn’t know why she would be there, but as her eyes moved towards the end of the path, to the street beyond her front gate, she recognised something that sent an ice-cold shiver racing down her spine. It was a sight that would be embedded in her brain until t
he day she died. It was the Shogun, it was that car. She dropped the picture as she felt a surge of boiling blood rush up through her body to her head. Hurtling down the stairs, she began screaming hysterically, as if she was trying to escape a fire. She thrust open the front door and headed straight for her target, knocking poor Kayleigh sideways and onto the ground in the process. Her clenched fist caught the woman full on the side of her head. It was followed by another. She continued pounding the startled lady who covered her face with her arms. Kayleigh rose swiftly to her feet and grabbed her friend from behind, one hand around her neck and the other catching her waist. ‘Let me go!’ Bree screamed at the top of her voice. ‘Let me go.’ Kayleigh held her friend tighter, but Bree was now lashing out at her too, kicking her legs and twisting her body as she tried to break free. ‘She killed my brother, I will murder her!’ she screamed at the poor woman, who was desperately trying to defend herself from the onslaught.

  ‘Just go!’ Kayleigh shouted at the large lady. ‘For God’s sake, just go! I can’t hold her for much longer.’

  The woman scurried down the path and headed directly to her parked vehicle, starting the engine before she had even closed her car door. Bree was still swinging her arms around and screaming at the top of her voice. ‘She killed Jamie, it was her fault.’ Just as the Shogun began to pull away Bree managed to break free from Kayleigh’s grip. She chased the Shogun for a hundred yards or so before catching up and aiming several blows at the driver’s window. ‘I will kill you! I will find you and I will fucking kill you!’ she yelled, as the car gathered speed and disappeared.

  This quiet suburban road was not used to this type of commotion. Several of the neighbours’ curtains had opened and a few bystanders in the street, who witnessed the event, stood together in total shock. ‘What are you all looking at?’ Bree screamed at them. ‘What are you all fucking looking at?’

  Kayleigh caught up with her friend and reached out to her, putting an arm around her waist and guiding her back to the house. The nosy residents of the usually peaceful close were still dumbstruck by the sudden outburst of their neighbour. Bree was ushered back into the dark and gloomy front room where Kayleigh sat her down amongst the scattered pillows and makeshift bedding. ‘It is OK, babe,’ she said wrapping her arms around her tightly. ‘It is OK now.’

  ‘No, Kayleigh, it will never be OK,’ Bree replied. ‘It will never ever be OK again.’

  Bree pulled the duvet back around her shoulders and retreated to the position she had been in when her friend had found her earlier. Kayleigh held her hand tightly and looked at her, so fragile, so helpless, yet so angry, so full of venom. It was clear that she wanted to find someone to blame for the loss of her brother, but rationale had clearly deserted her. She seemed ready to lash out at anyone, including her mother. Kayleigh was beginning, with good reason, to be concerned about the sanity of her best friend.

  ‘I will make us another drink, babe,’ she said, straightening the pillows behind her friend’s back to make her feel more comfortable. ‘And how about I run a nice bath for you and do something about your hair?’

  Bree nodded. ‘Thank you, Kayleigh, thank you for being there for me.’

  Washing the rest of the dirty dishes, thoughts begun to run through Kayleigh’s mind, some of which had been with her for some time. That photograph, the one with Bree’s mother sitting hand in hand with that unknown man – they looked so happy together, they really looked like they belonged together. She wondered if Jamie’s theory had been right all along. He had confided in her several times to say that he believed that Per was not his real father, a fact he said he felt sure he could prove. He did not believe that, simply because Per’s name was on their birth certificates, it meant that he was his and his sister’s natural father. Kayleigh always thought that he had a point. None of their features were similar at all. Jamie had confronted his mother, looking for answers, a few months before his death, but she denied it, laughing it off as just another one of his ‘crazy fantasies’. She would say to those people closest to her that his mind had been scrambled by an incident involving a girl that he had liked, and that he was in a state of delayed shock.

  Per had been away for much of the past six months, working on the new house that he and Jamie’s mother had bought in Finland, so there had been little chance to voice his concerns to the man he had known as his father for most of his life. He believed that Per would only side with his mother anyway, he always did, he never seemed to disagree with anything she said. Jamie had even considered buying a private DNA kit from a medical company on the internet and taking samples from Per’s toothbrush the next time he returned to England. He had never told Kayleigh what prompted him to believe that his parents had been deceiving him for most of his life, but he seemed totally sure that his theory was right. When Kayleigh learned from Preston that a strange man had come looking for Jamie at the gym where he worked, the rumour started to gather pace.

  Bree had told her that she did not share her brother’s beliefs. She had always been a bit of a ‘daddy’s girl’ and she idolised Per. She had even chosen to sit next to him rather than her mother at Jamie’s funeral, saying that she found him a real source of comfort on that heart-wrenching day. One of Jamie’s close friends had told Kayleigh that Bree had become very angry with Jamie recently, when he told her that he had discovered who their real father was and was arranging to meet him. But Bree made it very clear to him that the only father she ever wanted in her life was Per. The siblings rarely argued, especially in public, but the appearance of the unknown man who was looking for Jamie at the gym had created a massive rift between the two of them.

  But somehow Jamie’s theory had always made a lot of sense to Kayleigh and now the discovery of that photograph began to play on her mind. Bree’s mother was much younger in that picture, at least twenty to twenty-five years younger. Kayleigh thought her mother looked stunning in the picture. She also realised how much Bree’s mother looked like her daughter when she was younger. But she would never tell her friend that, knowing that her ‘bestie’ was desperate not to be associated with the woman she had recently been referring to as ‘the bitch’.

  Bree’s mother had always maintained that her and Per had been together since their teens. It had been a college fling in their home town of Tampere that had blossomed into a fairytale romance. He even moved to England to be with her when she finished her studies at university. Maybe her mother had been lying, maybe she had met Per after they were born. Or maybe she had been having an affair behind Per’s back. Now that really would give her friend more ammunition to fuel the growing hatred she seemed to have for her mother.

  Whatever it was, Kayleigh thought it best to say nothing about that picture again. Maybe, when Bree was relaxing in her bath, she should find the photograph and hide it, better still destroy it. She promised herself to put today’s discovery behind them and never mention it again. But as she placed the coffee cups on the table in her dining room, watching her broken friend sobbing as she stared out into oblivion from beneath the duvet cover, she was about to learn that she would never be able to keep that promise.

  ‘Do you think,’ Bree asked in a slightly croaky voice, ‘do you think that the man in that photograph could be my real father?’

  Chapter Nine

  It had been two days since Poppy had ventured out of her flat. Her neck was still sore from the burning kettle water, her limbs still aching from the beating she had endured. The previous day she had rubbed after-sun lotion into the back of her head. The cream had soothed the throbbing in her skull, but now her hair felt as if it was glued to her scalp. Poppy was desperate to wash the makeshift healing solution out of her hair, but there was no hot water, the gas had run out, and Cameron had not felt obliged to put money on the key for the meter. So Poppy had to make do with several bowls of freezing cold water to wash out the shampoo she put in, her face twisted in pain each time she had to turn her head.
She did her best to hide the scars left by the altercation, by brushing her hair down over her neck to cover the bright red marks. When she looked in the bathroom mirror she did not like the look of the girl staring back at her. She looked broken and dejected, she looked beaten. She took a deep breath and whispered under her breath, ‘He will pay for doing that, Poppy, that bastard will pay for doing that!’

  Having little credit left on her phone, Poppy had to text Danny to let him know why she had failed to turn up for her missing shifts. She told him that she had ‘slipped’ on the stairs outside her flat and had a sore back and behind. Danny did not believe her. He knew full well what was likely to have happened. He called her to assure her that he would pay her for the missing days but asked her to try her best to make it into work for that day. The restaurant was going to be extremely busy. He had a crowd celebrating a fortieth birthday due at Chez Blanc that lunchtime, as well as a number of regular bookings. She promised Danny that she would be there, she had to, she was desperate to get some cash for some tobacco. She had not had a cigarette for twenty-four hours and it was killing her inside.

  Poppy had not eaten properly for two days. Cameron had spent her hard-earned tips on his own guilty pleasures. At least at the restaurant she knew that she could have a proper meal. She knew that her life could not get much worse at that point, but as she checked the text messages on her mobile she could see that Rahwaz was back on the warpath for his overdue rent. It was the first time he had ever mentioned ‘eviction proceedings’. Poppy shook her head. She felt like giving up, but she never did, it wasn’t in her DNA.

  Cameron had, as he always had, apologised for his brutal outburst, blaming everything on the ‘dodgy weed’ that his friendly neighbourhood dealer had supplied him on that night. He did admit that he needed to find a solution to combat both his drug and anger problems. He knew that the two were related and even admitted that he could not control his jealous paranoia. But these were words, they were just words, hollow promises that she knew he would never keep. She often wondered why she never had the willpower just to get up and leave their flat. They were hardly a ‘loving couple’ these days, she struggled to remember the last time they had enjoyed sex together. But she felt a crazy sort of obligation towards him. He had been a constant in her life for more than ten years, even if one or the other of them had been serving time in prison for most of that period. He had been loyal to her, having defended her against the bully boys from the Marfield estate, risking an almighty beating in the process. But was that really a good enough reason to stay with someone?