House of Straw

by Marc Scott

  Grabbing her jacket and handbag from the kitchen, Poppy made her way out of the rear entrance of Chez Blanc. Matt followed her and grabbed her arm. ‘What’s up?’ he asked.

  ‘Not now, Matt,’ she snapped, pulling her arm free. The caring Geordie reached out for her again but was brushed to one side as Poppy stormed out of the gate. As she exited through the back she heard Danny’s voice call out to her. He had clearly seen that the girl was in a state of distress. Poppy completely ignored him and marched down to the end of the road.

  The colours were appearing and disappearing inside her head. Poppy knew that if she had stayed in the restaurant it would have been worse, far worse, for her, for everybody. She had done the right thing. ‘Keep walking, Poppy, keep walking,’ she told herself. ‘That girl will be gone when you get back, keep walking, keep walking.’ When she was far enough away from the restaurant, she found herself behind some terraced houses, with just a dozen or so lock-up garages to witness her release her built-up anger. She aimed a kick at the first garage shutter door, denting it, somewhere near the bottom. Another kick followed and then another. ‘Bitch!’ she screamed. ‘Fucking bitch!’ Her temper tantrum lasted a full minute. The garage door now looked as if it had been hit with a battering ram. She slumped down onto the floor and sat with her back to the brick wall between the garages, closing her eyes for a few seconds until the soothing colours began to reappear in her head. Reaching inside her handbag she took out her cigarettes and lit one up to calm her nerves. Two or three drags later, she felt more at ease and by the time she finished the cigarette her head was no longer clouded with dark obstacles.

  In the restaurant Matt was busy cleaning the coffee stains from the wall while Danny was chatting with a trembling young girl. Bree was still in shock, she was lost for words, but still felt an urge to pursue her goal. Danny offered her a complimentary brandy, but she refused. She knew that she would only make matters worse if she was still there when Poppy arrived back. Bree reached inside her bag and found her small pocket diary. Ripping out a page she began to scribble her name and number on it. She handed it to Danny and gave him a very brief reason for her visit, as brief as, ‘She is my sister, we have the same dad, I just want to talk to her.’

  The restaurant owner assured her that he would give Poppy the number and made a valid excuse for her irrational behaviour. ‘She has been through a tough time lately.’ If only Bree knew how much of an understatement that really was, she would have probably asked for her number back there and then. Bree left Chez Blanc, looking over her shoulder as she exited, maybe in the hope that she could get a parting glimpse of her sister. But by that time Poppy was half a mile down the road and smoking her second cigarette, deciding whether or not to return to her duties later that day or simply to leave the job she enjoyed so much.

  As Matt switched his attention to cleaning the coffee-stained carpet, Danny sat at the table trying to work out what had just happened. The Geordie felt that this might be the time to ask his boss some questions, some things that he wanted to know about Poppy. ‘She is a real loose cannon, that lass, you never know what she is going to do next, do you?’

  Danny shook his head. ‘She has had a troubled past, Matt, she just wants to leave it all behind her.’

  Matt wanted to know more. He knew she had always confided in Danny. ‘Why did she spend so long in prison? What did she do that was so bad?’

  The restaurant owner did not feel it was his place to tell him. ‘You need to ask Poppy,’ he said.

  ‘Anyone would think that she had murdered someone or something,’ the strapping chef said, laughing. His laughter, however, soon stopped, when he saw the solemn expression on Danny’s face. Matt was shocked. ‘Oh my god! She did, she bloody killed someone, didn’t she?’

  Danny shook his head. ‘It is not my place to say, Matt, let’s just leave it.’

  ‘Shit!’ Matt said. ‘She really did, didn’t she? She really did kill someone.’

  The restaurant owner thought it might be better if he filled his chef in on the reason for Poppy’s incarceration. The last thing he wanted was Matt quizzing his waitress all day. That would not be good for her in the state that she was in. ‘It was about five years ago,’ Danny said. ‘She stabbed some drug dealer on the Marfield estate, you know, up in South Woolwich.’

  Matt stopped his cleaning. He was all ears now. ‘She stabbed him?’

  ‘Twenty-odd times, or so the papers said,’ Danny replied. ‘Took four people to drag her off him apparently.’

  Matt was truly stunned. ‘Shit!’

  ‘He was a scumbag, dealing to kids, thought he was a big shot. Billy Keyes, that was his name, that was him, Billy Keyes.’

  ‘Why did she do it?’ Matt asked. ‘I know she had a problem with drugs in the past, she told me that.’

  Danny felt bad recalling the event, but he thought it might be best to fill Matt in on all the details now. ‘One of her friends overdosed. I think she said that the Social Services had taken the girl’s little kid into care.’

  Matt suddenly remembered the conversation after the trip to Bournemouth. ‘She told me about that girl, she told me that they were close, that she had overdosed on heroin. I knew she was upset about it, but I never knew she had stabbed the dealer.’

  ‘I don’t know all the details,’ Danny said. ‘I just know that she got seven years for manslaughter and served her time in Bronzefield prison. The newspapers went mad when they only found her guilty of manslaughter. The jury had all agreed it was diminished responsibility or something like that.’

  The chef began to piece things together in his head. ‘That’s why she did all them tests and stuff, that’s why she has to go to Probation every week.’

  Danny continued. ‘The newspapers hated her, they painted a picture of this lowlife Billy Keyes as being some sort of angelic do-gooder. They said that he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. One of the papers started a campaign to have her case reheard. They wanted her locked up for murder, locked away for life.’

  The Geordie lad felt slightly uncomfortable now, realising he had become so close to someone so volatile, somebody capable of murder. ‘I do feel for her, Danny, I know she has had a shit life.’

  ‘You don’t know the half of what that girl has been through, Matt, trust me.’

  ‘What I don’t understand is why she stays with that bloke. You know he hits her, don’t you?’

  ‘Cameron Turner?’

  ‘That’s him. Do you know him?’

  ‘I know of him. He is really nasty bastard. She knew him before she got locked up, I think.’

  ‘I feel like going round there sometimes, you know, to sort him out, when I see her bruises and what he does to her.’

  ‘He protected her.’

  ‘What?!’

  ‘When she first came out of prison, he protected her. Billy Keyes’ brother Nathan and a couple of his cronies from the Marfield turned up at their flat to get revenge for what had happened. Cameron is a big fucker, he can look after himself. He gave the three of them a good hiding.’

  Matt was shocked again. ‘Shit! I never knew all this was going on.’

  ‘So she stays with him. I suppose she sort of feels safe there.’

  ‘Just another big bloody bad wolf waiting to happen,’ Matt said shaking his head. ‘Poor bloody Poppy!’

  Danny didn’t understand Matt’s remark. He wanted him to fully appreciate how vulnerable he felt his waitress could be. ‘This girl, the posh one who came in today, she is apparently her sister. It’s not good, Matt, she loathed her dad, she is going to hate him even more now.’

  ‘I wondered why it all kicked off.’

  ‘I ripped up the girl’s phone number, Matt. Don’t tell Poppy but I just binned it. If that girl comes back, just tell her that Poppy is on holiday or has left the job or something. She really doesn’t need any more str
ess in her life.’

  * * *

  Halfway through the lunchtime shift Poppy came back to Chez Blanc. She said very little to either Danny or Matt, who had covered the duties for their missing waitress. Fortunately for them the restaurant had not been over busy that day and they coped well. She accepted Matt’s offer to have a coffee at his flat during their break before their evening shift. The coffee was steaming hot at the flat that afternoon, but their sex had been lukewarm to say the least. Poppy had changed her mind and stopped Matt halfway through the act. She couldn’t get the images and words of her unwanted visitor out of her head, however hard she tried. As usual the big Geordie lad accepted her mood swing and did his best to offer her some comfort, not that Poppy really appreciated his efforts.

  The evening was busy at Chez Blanc. Poppy worked hard to make up for her absence during lunchtime while the clumsy teen Chantelle was at it again, dropping two main courses into the lap of one of the regulars at the restaurant, costing Danny two free meals and a dry-cleaning bill. He threatened to deduct the money from the infantile girl’s wages, but never did, he was too much of a soft touch to do that. Danny thought that Poppy might like to share one of their ‘chats’ that evening, after the restaurant closed. He cancelled a late-night meeting with a couple of his friends, but Poppy seemed content just to go back to her flat. She didn’t seem to want to discuss the earlier incident with anybody, although she did thank Danny for his kind consideration of her feelings.

  The day was about to get worse for Poppy. When she arrived back at Stonely Parade, her head still spinning like reels on a broken fruit machine, she saw a sight that swiftly took her mind away from her earlier confrontation. As she was parking her car she noticed the tall and imposing figure of Neddy, a well-known dealer from the Marfield estate and an original member of the Keyes brothers crew. What made matters worse was that he was coming out of the back entrance to the flats where she lived. She knew that it was too much of a coincidence to be true. He had to have been visiting Cameron. She hoped that she was mistaken. Her boyfriend knew how she felt about him. He had promised that he would never buy his gear from that source. She ducked down in her car, so that he could not see her as he passed. She peeped up as the footsteps moved further away, spotting his purple dreadlocks hanging down his neck and realising that she had not been mistaken at all. Poppy was clearly not happy, in fact by the time she arrived at her flat she was seething about his visit. She was in the right mood for confrontation this night and an argument ensued within minutes of her entering the flat. Their voices grew louder. The pair of them hurled insults and profanities at each other for ages. Finally, Cameron did what he did best. Slamming shut the bedroom door behind him, he retreated to his cave.

  In the street below, lurking in the shadows, a pair of eyes had been watching, studying the reflections of the sparring shapes on their curtains in the front room. Their argument must have seemed like a modern-day Punch and Judy show to any voyeurs below. The small figure had been watching closely and listening intently to every word that had been said during their row. The stalker hiding in the shadows seemed to be fascinated by the couple’s turbulent encounter, staring up at the window for almost an hour before leaving.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Something was bothering Kayleigh, it had been playing on her mind for some time. She had spent the best part of an hour on the telephone with Krista the previous night, a conversation that had given her even more cause to worry about Bree’s erratic behaviour. Some of her concerns were beginning to look as though they were more than just crazy notions rolling around in her head. She was becoming genuinely worried about her best friend’s state of mind.

  Earlier that morning, an overexcited Bree had called her to invite herself around to her flat. She seemed desperate to fill her in on how her first meeting with ‘her sister’ had gone and needed Kayleigh’s full and undivided attention. Although the girls had been the best of friends for most of their lives, Kayleigh still found it difficult to ask Bree any sensitive questions. They would have ‘girlie chats’ but there were subjects that could never be placed on the table for fear of upsetting the girl she thought she knew so well.

  They had first met when they both attended Oaklands junior school after Krista and Per had bought the beautiful four-bedroom semi-detached house on the upmarket side of Oxley. Kayleigh’s parents had just separated, her father moving in with a fellow teacher from the college where he worked, leaving her and her mother sharing a modest abode on the outskirts of the village. The girls seemed to hit it off almost immediately, both sharing their love of the same boy bands and their hatred for certain teachers. They had been ‘besties’ ever since.

  When they started secondary school, the two girls and Jamie became something of a mini-clique. Nobody was allowed into their ‘inner circle’, especially those that dared to call Bree by her full Christian name, she really hated that. Bree would constantly be trying to keep Jamie out of trouble and stop him from mixing with the small gangs of boys that tried to lead him astray. She had taken an elderly sister role, even back then, despite the fact that she was only a dozen minutes older than her twin. Her and Kayleigh had become so close by the time they were fifteen that many pupils began to think they might be in some sort of relationship. Bree always denied it emphatically, but a mischievous Kayleigh chose to tease her fellow students by suggesting that she might be bi-curious. This of course was nonsense. Kayleigh Hardy was the first girl in her year to lose her virginity and by the end of year eleven she had slept with three different boys, all much older than her, two of them from the same local football team. Bree found her friend’s behaviour somewhat embarrassing but chose not to disown her. By the time they had finished their GCSEs, Kayleigh had earned herself a somewhat tarnished reputation. After all, at their small village school in Oxley, secrets like hers did not stay secret for long.

  Bree had always had her fair share of attention in those years. Much prettier than Kayleigh, some would say ‘a bit of a stunner’, she was by far the best-dressed girl outside the school gates. A wardrobe full of designer-labelled clothes and always immaculately presented, she attracted the attention of many admirers. Her mother thought nothing of spending several hundred pounds on a new coat or shoes for Bree, to make her daughter stand out in the crowd. On her sixteenth birthday, Bree received a pair of Jimmy Choo shoes costing over £1200. Kayleigh told her best friend at the time that she thought the purchase was a waste of money and had a better idea for the expensive footwear. She advised her ‘bestie’ to ‘sell those bad boys on eBay and we can go wild in Ibiza for a week’. The excursion to the exotic party island never happened, but Kayleigh was right about the overpriced shoes. Bree only wore them two or three times before they stayed hidden at the back of her wardrobe.

  The girls went to different colleges. Bree was far more academically advanced than her friend, as a result of private tuition lessons paid for by her parents. She attended a renowned college in South London, thanks mainly to her superlative exam results and Krista’s friendship with one of their board of governors. Kayleigh stayed on for two years at Oxley sixth form, dropping out in the final term and only completing half of her exams. By that time Jamie was at the opposite end of the country at Holme Vale boarding school. The one-time inseparable clique had been well and truly broken.

  Despite the fact that Bree and Kayleigh were mixing in different circles, Bree would insist that Kayleigh come to her house, almost every night, so they could chat about the events of the day. It was at this time that Kayleigh noticed big changes in her best friend. She had started dressing in weird dark clothes, she had grown a complex about her mother and every other word out of her mouth was a swearword. She no longer ‘didn’t like the new toothpaste’, instead she ‘hated the new fucking toothpaste’. So much for the theory that a well-heeled London college makes you a better person than anyone else, Kayleigh thought, but never shared with Bree, in fear of retribution from h
er childhood friend. They fell out for a while when Kayleigh started dating a lad working at the Green Dragon Bar and Grill, the only place that college students ever got served without ID. The relationship did not last long, however, so their fall-out was short-lived.

  It was during the time that Bree attended her college that Kayleigh noticed major changes in her attitude. Kayleigh found it strange that Bree would often swear about her mother and the hatred she had for her, but never to her mother’s face. Maybe she still remembered the time, several years earlier, when the girls where having a sleepover at Bree’s house and Krista had dragged her screaming ten-year-old brother into the bathroom and washed his mouth out with soap for using foul language. Kayleigh herself rarely swore anywhere outside of her comfort zone, which was usually in a horizontal position, with somebody lying on top of her.

  As they reached their twenties, Kayleigh had become something of a ‘party girl’. She became sexually active, extremely sexually active. There were many drunken one-night stands and holiday flings, none of which ended up leading to relationships. Bree used to tease her that she must be riddled with STDs, having slept with over one hundred men. Kayleigh knew that this figure was not accurate, but in truth, by now she had lost count of the actual number of sexual partners she had really had.

  During those years Bree seemed to shun the attention of male company. Kayleigh had set her up with at least three or four possible suitors, but her ‘bestie’ would always find something she did not like about them. Kayleigh remembered that the longest her friend was seeing anyone for was around six weeks. The man was a young squaddie from Aldershot barracks. He was good looking, athletic and very witty. Jamie really enjoyed his banter when he met him and told Bree that he hoped that his sister would stay with him. Surprisingly, Krista seemed over the moon that her daughter had found a possible soulmate, often leaving the two of them alone in the house, as though she might be encouraging them to have sex. But, as with the other men in Bree’s life, it all ended without any explanation being given. It was just Bree, being, well, Bree!