House of Straw

by Marc Scott

  Krista felt herself slump back in her chair. Those words echoed around in her head for several seconds before she found a voice, a tiny shaky voice. ‘What?’ she asked, desperately hoping that she had misheard him. But Dean’s next sentence told her that there was nothing wrong with her hearing.

  ‘I came here tonight to tell you that I think it best that we call it a day. We need to end it.’

  Dean could see her bottom lip start to tremble and her facial expression change to one of despair. He moved his hand across hers in a bid to comfort her, but she pushed it away. He looked around the bar and then down at those glasses on the table. He couldn’t look her in the face anymore, but he needed to say more. ‘I want to give it another try with Hannah,’ he said. ‘We both owe it to Poppy to be together, as a proper family.’

  Krista wiped a tear or two away from the corner of her eye. Everything around her seemed to grind to a halt, as if the world had suddenly stopped turning and she was about to fall off. It was only not that long ago that he said that he loved her, that he told her he could not be without her. Something inside her wanted to scream out very loudly and not stop, not until he told her that he was lying, that he had made up wanting to be with Hannah, that she was the one he wanted to be with.

  She felt so foolish now. Her plan had been ripped to shreds before she had even had a chance to show him the scan picture of his twins, yes, his twins, resting in her womb. She was so sure that those shadowy little figures on that dark background would have sent him into a state of uncontrollable euphoria. She had got carried away with her fantasy, even researching several books and finding some suitable names from his crazy world of mythology. She was going to tell him that she wanted to call their twins Apollo and Artemis, their own little god and goddess. They could have both laughed about that. But she didn’t feel like laughing now, she just felt numb. Her whole world felt like it had just ended.

  When he tried again, to put his hand on hers, she rose swiftly from the table and headed for the door. Krista knew that she was going to break down and cry, she knew that there was a flood of tears sitting behind her eyeballs. She didn’t want him to see them, that would only make things worse. As the fresh air hit her, so did a sharp intake of reality, that terrible feeling of emptiness in the pit of her stomach. She was so torn up inside with both grief and anger, that she did not notice the cars flashing backwards and forwards around her as she crossed the busy road. Dean had left half of his drink, something most uncommon for him, and made his way out of the bar to find her. He received a few nasty glares from the patrons of the Castle Moat, who had clearly seen the look of distress on his companion’s face. He followed Krista across the road to the tube station. Catching up with her he tried to grab her arm, but she pushed his hand away. Although he felt he had made things clear to her, Dean seemed to be concerned, but it was not about her welfare or how she might be feeling. All that was worrying him was whether or not she would revisit his house to reveal the truth to Hannah. He knew that would break his wife and send her reeling straight back to the bottles of cheap vodka from the supermarket. Krista may not have believed him, but his wife’s condition had not been exaggerated. She was only ever one stressful moment away from returning to her former life in the gutter of alcoholism.

  He tried speaking to Krista, but she wasn’t really listening, she was still trying desperately to hold herself together. Pushing past an elderly couple, he caught up with her again on the escalator, standing in her path as it reached the bottom. Dean didn’t know it at that moment, but it would be the last time he would ever see her face. They stood in silence for a few seconds, as commuters brushed past them on their way home. He could see that her eyes were red, they were no longer shining. Those dancing flames had been replaced with fading embers. ‘Please, Nylund, just stop, just stop and talk to me,’ he said.

  Through her tear-filled eyes Krista answered him. Even her voice sounded different, like that of a helpless child. ‘I gave up everything for you, Dean, I gave up everything. But I know now, I know that it is time for me to grow up, to stop kidding myself that this is anything more than a crazy fantasy. You and I will never be together, I have to accept that now.’

  Dean moved forward in an attempt to put his arms around her, but she pushed him away. A passer-by on his way to the platform seemed to be concerned. He asked her if she was OK. She nodded, but she knew that inside her shredded heart she was far from OK. Krista looked up at the man that had captured her heart and broken it. ‘So let’s just leave it now, you have taken everything that I have, Dean. I don’t want to do this anymore, it is killing me inside.’ Dean went to speak but she cut him short, raising her fingers and pressing them against his open lips. Shaking her head, she smiled her beautiful smile at him for one last time. ‘Sometimes it is better just to say nothing,’ she said and turned away.

  Dean stood and watched as his beautiful goddess walked towards the platform. He felt somewhat confused but also strangely relieved at that moment. His brain was finding it hard to separate his emotions. Deep down inside he knew that this was the right thing to do, never realising for one moment that the pain that would follow would stay with him for a lifetime.

  Krista didn’t turn back, she knew if she did that the fountain of tears she was holding on to would explode from her eyes. Her head told her to keep walking, she had to ignore what her heart might be saying. Dean watched her disappear from his view and turned back towards the escalator, dragging his feet slowly as if he had been wounded in battle. As soon as he stepped onto the escalator he noticed the first advertisement board to his left. He saw her face on the shoulders of a model advertising skin cream. He felt a sense of guilt, and then on the next one, her smile was beaming back at him from the face of a woman promoting a temping agency. His guilt turned to shame. By the time he had neared the top, she had appeared in almost every frame. His head began to spin, he panicked, he suddenly felt as if he was in a dark alleyway with no side doors, his mind was in turmoil. He gritted his teeth together as he heard the screeching of the brakes of the tube train as it arrived at the platform beneath him, the train that would be taking her away, taking his Persephone away, for good. The sound sent an ache ripping all the way through his body. Suddenly, Dean spun around and began to make his way back down the escalator, fighting the forces of nature and pushing past several irate passengers in his path. He jumped as soon as he neared the bottom and sprinted as fast as his legs could carry him. ‘Krista!’ he screamed. ‘Krista, wait, please wait.’ But it was too late, he arrived on the platform just as the train began to pull away. He suddenly felt sick, not from the running, not from drinking on an empty stomach, no this was a real sickness that he could never remember feeling before. He could feel it swelling up in the pit of his stomach. He looked dejected as his feet shuffled back towards the escalator, swinging out a leg and taking a hefty kick at a litter bin en route in a bid to vent some of his frustration. When he stood back on the escalator he covered his eyes. It might have been that he didn’t want to see those pictures on the wall again or maybe he was trying to hide the tears that were desperately trying to escape from beneath his eyelids.

  But if Dean Jarvis had looked back down at that precise second, a life-changing moment may have occurred. A moment that could have altered his destiny and that of all those around him. A split-second decision which may have saved him from the torturous turmoil that would rule his life from that day forward. Krista had appeared from the place she had been hiding, behind one of the side tunnels of the station. She watched him through her misty eyes as the escalator carried him slowly away, leaving her behind, leaving her life for good. Her heart told her to scream out his name at the top of her voice, but the sanity inside her head persuaded her not to. This was it, the fantasy was finally over. Looking down at the small bump beneath her coat, she made a promise to herself as she dragged her feet back to the platform. She promised that she would sacrifice everything in the world,
even the man she truly loved, to protect those two beautiful babies that were growing inside her.

  * * *

  Back at the window of the hospital room Dean began to reflect on that night, the night he lost her. He suddenly felt alone, more alone than he had ever felt before. ‘She blocked my number you know,’ he said, to an audience that clearly had no sympathy for his plight. ‘Changed her job and moved out of her flat before I ever got the chance to tell her how I really felt.’ He never realised that without his ‘chosen goddess’, everything that he lived for would be lost. Dean would tread the waters of regret for most of his life, totally unaware that resentment can be such a heavy load to carry.

  The drowning man felt isolated now. He realised that the figure in the bed behind him would offer no words of comfort. He was a castaway, stranded somewhere in his sea of bitterness. He knew that the time was approaching. The currents in those dark and murky waters of his past were finally dragging him down to a place of no return.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Staring at her bathroom mirror Poppy flicked several strands of greasy hair away from her face. She was relieved to see that no noticeable marks had been left by Cameron’s brutal backhander. She applied a thick layer of concealer and some makeup to her drab features, feeling a sharp pain in her side each time she bent her arm. Holding her hair back behind her ears, she swivelled her head to see if there might be any signs of the beating she had received the previous night. In truth it was hard to tell if the red swelling on her neck was from the day before or the remains of the scalding she had received previously. Whichever it was, it still ached. She felt slightly sick inside to think that she had let him do that to her again.

  She was no longer worried about the missing money or indeed the fact that Rahwaz would now carry out his threat and have her and Cameron evicted from the flat. It didn’t feel like a real home to her this morning, it didn’t feel like a safe place to be anymore. But this time it wasn’t so much the big bad wolf that might come knocking at the door that concerned her, it was the one that she had been sharing a bed with. Poppy had lost count now of the times that Cameron had hit her over the past twelve months, but she knew in her heart that last night’s violent assault on her would be the last.

  She had managed to leave her flat without disturbing her brute of a boyfriend. The last thing that she needed this morning was him getting physical with her again. She had not managed to pack many clothes. Most of them were in the wardrobe in the bedroom where Cameron was sleeping. She did pack some underwear which had been drying on the bathroom radiator, as well as her new T-shirt and some toiletries. She pulled on her new boots, maybe wishing she had been wearing them when she aimed those kicks at her boyfriend the previous night.

  There were more than two hours before her and Matt were due to start their shift, two full hours for her to show Matt what he could enjoy on a more regular basis now, providing of course he was willing to put a roof over her head and if he agreed to stop grinning like a Cheshire cat. She planned to visit him before the start of her shift and give him what he was hungry for, what he was always hungry for. And if she could drag herself away from the hot and steamy sex session during those couple of hours, she could wash her mangy hair with his expensive shampoo. It would be a ‘win-win’ situation for each of them. God, she thought, I am even using some of his expressions now. Maybe she really did like Matt, more than she realised.

  After parking her car in the Chez Blanc car park, Poppy applied some further makeup to her pale features. A planned seduction rarely works without a bit of effort. She made the best job she could with her tatty hair and left her vehicle to make the short walk to Matt’s flat. She called in at the coffee shop in the high street, ordering a black coffee for herself and a cappuccino with four sugars for Matt. As she waited for the drinks to be served she thought of one or two clever one-liners to open the conversation. Maybe when he opened his door she should simply click her fingers and say to him, ‘OK, big boy, I want you now.’ He would find that funny, mind you Matt usually found most things funny. Almost as soon as she had started the walk to Matt’s home her mobile rang. It was Rahwaz. She ignored the call. She certainly wouldn’t be thinking about him and his overdue rent for the next two hours. By the time she arrived at his flat she had changed her mind about her opening line and decide to settle for something less direct. He may have not been impressed with her put-down the previous day, he was, after all, a sensitive sort of guy.

  She managed to slip in through the security door at the front of the flats as one of the other occupants was making their way out of the building. Poppy practised a smile as she approached his door, a ‘Yes, I am bitch but you can still like me’ sort of smile. She rang his doorbell, no response. She had to ring again and then a third time before she achieved a reaction. ‘Alright! I am coming,’ she heard, as Matt made his way to answer his door.

  ‘You took your time,’ Poppy said as the door opened, completely forgetting the funny one-liner that she had intended. ‘You wasn’t sleeping, was you?’ Matt stood in front of her, bare-chested. Nothing but a pair of dark green Calvin Klein briefs stood between him and her sexual desire. His face was bright red, as if he had been working out or running. Poppy offered him the drink she had just purchased. ‘Cappuccino, with four sugars. Trust me, Matt, you are gonna need all the energy you can get today!’

  But as Poppy went to push past him and make her way inside, something stopped her in her tracks. It was a small voice from inside the flat, a squeaky irritating voice, one that she recognised instantly, one that she did not care much for. ‘If that’s the taxi,’ the scratchy voice declared, ‘I am not ready yet, Matt, I can’t find my knickers.’ Poppy took a step back. Her reaction was partly in disbelief, partly in anger. Her face told its own story.

  ‘It’s not what it looks like,’ Matt said, his shaky voice telling Poppy that it clearly was exactly what it looked like.

  At that precise second Chantelle’s adolescent frame appeared from Matt’s living room door, wearing nothing more than a look of shame and one of his smart T-shirts. Chantelle was completely unaware who was standing on the other side of the door until she caught Poppy’s stare full on. ‘Oh shit!’ the small girl shouted. Now recognising the visitor, she rapidly retreated to the safety of the lounge.

  Matt was looking more nervous now and repeated his statement. ‘It really isn’t what it looks like.’

  ‘So what is it then, Matt?’ Poppy asked. ‘Are you helping her with her homework or something?’ Matt was lost for words, but Poppy wasn’t. ‘She is fifteen, Matt, you do know that, she is just fifteen. They have words for people like you.’ Poppy took a step back, still clinging onto the drinks in her hand, an expression of calmness hiding her feelings of complete disgust. Her thumbs slowly loosened the tops of the plastic cups as Matt looked back into his flat to make sure Chantelle was in safe hiding. He knew what Poppy was capable of now. He wanted to get back inside himself and lock the door, but his feet seemed to be glued to the spot. Finally, Matt struggled to find the right words to explain his predicament, but Poppy wasn’t really listening. ‘It just happened,’ he said. ‘It was a mistake, it just happened.’ But before he could explain further, he noticed the lids of the cups fall to the floor and both vessels launched in his direction. His bare chest took the full force of one of the hot drinks, while his designer underwear offered little protection from the other. Matt let out a small shriek and doubled over in agony as the boiling hot coffee made direct contact with his genitals. Poppy stared at the wounded Geordie for a few seconds and shook her head.

  As she turned and walked away, back towards the direction of the high street, she left Matt with her own take on his choice of sexual conquest. ‘Paedophile!’ she declared loudly, as her feet gathered pace. ‘That’s the word they use for people like you, Matt, fucking paedophile!’

  Matt watched her walk away, making sure that she was out of view before sl
ipping back into his flat. He grabbed some towels and covered the area that his crazed colleague had just targeted. Chantelle was still in the lounge, sitting on his sofa. She was in tears. But she was not crying because of the assault on Matt, she did not seem too concerned by the large red marks glowing on his chest and thighs. No, she had other things she needed to worry about. ‘I hope she doesn’t tell Danny,’ she said. ‘I will lose my job if she does.’

  Poppy did not know where she was going as she walked through the bustling high street. Her head was scrambled. The hissing sounds had returned, the voices seemed to have woken from their slumber. Everyone she passed seemed to be speaking loudly, she was sure that they were talking about her. She almost knocked over a couple of women as she lost concentration for a few seconds. Her feet were moving, but she didn’t seem to be going anywhere. Her mind was working overtime. Why had she been so stupid, why should she be upset? It was just sex with Matt and the sex was rubbish, she told herself. But another voice told her that it wasn’t, the sex was amazing, the sex was always fucking amazing, the best she could ever remember. He made her feel so alive when they were having sex, he made her feel so wanted. She felt something she had never felt before. But now he is fucking Chantelle, a child. He is sick. She felt ashamed of herself now. She had been having sex with someone who was sick in the head. Maybe, she thought, Matt was actually more sick in the head than she was. It is him that needs help, not her.

  * * *

  Halfway down the high street, Poppy picked out a brick from a skip parked at the side of the road and launched it with great force. It found its target, leaving the sounds of shattering glass in her wake.

  The sun had started to go down before Poppy realised where she was. She didn’t know how long she had been sitting on that concrete floor in front of the lock-up garages. The scratches on the front of her new boots and the newly created dents in some of those shutter doors told their own story. She still felt the dull pains of her recent beating in the small of her back. Her head was hurting too, from the million and one thoughts that had been running through her brain. It seemed the whole day had just gone. The time on her phone told her that she had missed the lunchtime session and was already late for the start of her evening shift at the restaurant. She studied the missed calls and messages on her mobile. Danny and Rahwaz both featured heavily in her list. Part of her told her not to give a damn, but the other part told her that she needed to pull herself together, she needed her job, she needed Danny, she was homeless now, she had nowhere to live.