A Part of Me

by Anouska Knight

I climbed out from beneath the table and flipped the bedroom lights on. Somebody in heavy boots and padded clothing was already bustling up the stairs. A female police officer with a short red ponytail and a fringe over her eyes stuck her head around the bedroom door.

  ‘Everyone all right?’ she asked, stepping into the room.

  ‘That was quick,’ I said, voice thick with relief.

  ‘Are you all right?’ she said, looking me over.

  ‘Yeah, I’m fine. I don’t think they knew I was up here.’

  ‘Well, you did the right thing staying out of sight. Even kids can up the stakes when they’re cornered.’

  ‘I thought it might just be kids, messing around, but I didn’t really know what to do about them, so …’

  ‘They were more than messing, I’m afraid, miss. We’ve got one of them downstairs. The other lad hightailed it over the hill, unfortunately. I’m afraid they’ve caused some damage to your property.’

  She led me onto the gallery. The lounge below was lit now, the artistic talent of the uninvited visitors daubed across the pale canvas of new plaster.

  ‘They did all this?’ I gasped. ‘In less than ten minutes?’

  ‘Resourceful when they want to be, aren’t they? Luckily you’re in the process of decorating.’

  It was hard not to look at the bright initials dominating the lounge wall as I was led into the kitchen. Two more officers stood beside a young boy, swamped by his oversized hoody. He peered up at me briefly through long scruffy layers of auburn hair. He looked as defiant as he did frightened.

  He still had the same pudginess to his face that little Samuel did, it probably hadn’t been that long since he was pushing Tic Tacs up his nose too. I was trying to figure out why a kid of ten or so wasn’t tucked up at home at this time when the WPC turned gravely to me. ‘As you can see, there’s been significant criminal damage. We’re going to take him in, get hold of his parents—’

  ‘Actually, this isn’t my home,’ I interrupted.

  ‘No, it’s mine,’ a stern voice behind me said. Rohan walked in through the kitchen doors. The severity of his piercing eyes made it difficult to look directly at them. He pushed storm-grey sweater sleeves back over his forearms, planting his hands at his waist while the redhead cleared her throat.

  ‘Mr …?’

  ‘Bywater,’ Rohan said firmly. Eyes fixed on the young lad.

  ‘Mr Bywater, we’ve just responded to an emergency call—’

  ‘Made by who?’ The question surprised me and the WPC.

  I cleared my throat. ‘I called them. I was working upstairs when they broke in.’

  Rohan looked the full weight of those eyes at me. Actually, this was like somebody pouring cold pond scum down my back.

  ‘And how long were you up here, alone with them?’ he asked.

  Everyone looked at me for the answer. ‘Not that long,’ I said in a small voice, not sure why I felt like I was being told off. There had been a hardness to the edge of his words.

  ‘Why didn’t you call me? I could’ve been up here in seconds.’

  I shifted uneasily. ‘I … I didn’t—’

  ‘She did the right thing, Mr Bywater,’ the redhead said, detaching a notebook from her padded jacket. ‘You have a disabled man at the property, is that correct?’ she asked, flipping through her notes.

  Rohan’s glare came sharply back from the boy to the police woman. I watched him stiffen, as if the WPC’s words had some medusa-like quality to them. She waited patiently for his answer as I began to break out in a cold sweat. I probably looked guiltier than the kid. I suspected I might actually be in more trouble than he was, too.

  ‘Disabled?’ Rohan asked sternly. I expected him to look an accusation at me, but he didn’t. He didn’t look anywhere near me. ‘I guess that would be me,’ he said, a sudden calmness in his voice. ‘And as you can see, I’m perfectly well.’

  The WPC looked uncertainly at me. I was beginning to wish I’d never called them, particularly as I could have probably tackled the intruders myself, scared them off with my debilitating gift of offending people. It was probably my most well-developed muscle.

  The officer frowned a little, then scribbled something down.

  Rohan looked directly at the boy, petite hands cuffed in front of his NO FEAR hoodie. Rohan’s features were calm, but serious. ‘So, you’ve been tagging my house?’ he said, fixing hard eyes on the boy’s face. If the kid understood him, he wasn’t letting on, choosing instead to glare at the floor. ‘I can smell it, my man, you’ve been spraying something. I hope it’s good,’ Rohan said, moving towards the lounge. He disappeared into the hallway, the house falling into silence again for a few moments before he called back through.

  ‘These walls are paint-eaters, buddy. Fresh plaster will suck the colour straight in. It’s too bad we hadn’t painted them a few times for you first, or your lines would’ve been sharper.’ The kid let his surprise show only for moment before disappearing again behind his scowl. The police officers looked at each other. ‘So where are your friends at?’ Rohan said, walking leisurely back into the kitchen, ‘They’re older, right? Faster on their feet than you, huh?’

  ‘The other kid made a run for it,’ the taller of the two male officers said. ‘This one’s bike is still outside, though, so his mate’s probably back in Earleswicke by now if he’s on wheels too.’

  Rohan looked at the two male offers. ‘There are three tags in there; three kids’ trademark graffiti. So that’s two kids who managed to give you the slip,’ he said, appraising the more portly police officer. The kid smiled at that until Rohan shot him another look. ‘I’ve seen your work on the back of my ramps out there,’ Rohan said, pointing his thumb at the kitchen windows. ‘You were hanging around here a few weeks back with a couple of bigger lads. They’re your crew, I take it?’

  It was like we’d all just slipped into the Twilight Zone. The kid looked at Rohan and gave a feeble shrug.

  ‘Now would be a good time to name names, my little friend,’ the tubbier policeman contributed.

  Rohan moved to stand in front of the boy. ‘You gonna turn your friends in, buddy?’ Rohan asked him. The kid said absolutely nothing.

  ‘Sure he will, when we start talking charges of breaking and entering, and criminal damage over with his parents,’ the taller officer added.

  Rohan’s eyes didn’t leave the boy. ‘No he won’t,’ Rohan said to himself. The boy looked straight at him then.

  A clattering from the front door knocker ricocheted through the mill. No one said a word at first, just waiting for either Rohan or the boy to break their stare-off.

  Rohan shook his head, almost imperceptibly, then straightened up from the kid. ‘Would you excuse me a minute?’ he asked to nobody in particular before heading back out of the room.

  ‘That’ll be my taxi,’ I said quietly to the officers, following Rohan off into the darkened hallway. I was a few paces behind him when he stopped suddenly and planted his arm across the hallway in front of me.

  His voice was low and unyielding. ‘Disabled?’ I’d never heard one word hold so much, like a storm cloud about to burst with thunder.

  ‘Rohan, I—’

  ‘Good to know how you regard me.’

  His comment, though justified, took me aback. ‘That’s not what I meant, I was struggling to speak coherently at the time.’

  ‘Why didn’t you call me, then? Instead of the police?’ he whispered heatedly.

  ‘I didn’t know they were kids! I was … frightened.’

  ‘And you didn’t think the disabled man would be any use? Incapable of keeping you safe?’

  ‘That’s not what I thought at all.’ Actually, his safety had been the snag.

  ‘Then what did you think exactly?’

  The door knocker rapped again.

  ‘It was a quick decision, Rohan. No offence intended.’

  ‘This is my house, mine to defend. I was in the workshop and you didn’t call me?’ The light
from the newly graffitied lounge filtered through the darkness of the corridor towards us. I watched it pick out the edges of his features as he spoke, reaching like a new dawn across his jawline. He’d shaved. The hard line of his mouth unobscured. ‘I don’t need anyone to make my decisions for me,’ he said bitingly.

  That caught me off guard too. ‘Are you kidding me?’ I snipped, trying to hold ground. ‘I didn’t decide anything for you!’ It was tiring constantly being on the back foot with this guy.

  ‘I’m not some invalid who can’t take care of his own home.’

  ‘What? That’s not how I look at you, at all!’

  ‘No? How about yesterday? Out back with Carter, it was how you looked at me then.’

  The door knocked aggressively. Rohan turned and yanked it open to a short balding man in a denim jacket, ‘One minute, mate,’ he demanded.

  I felt my eyes narrow. ‘You think that was pity?’ I said, steeling myself.

  ‘Wasn’t it?’

  I shook my head and smiled coolly. ‘That wasn’t pity, Rohan. I was about to tell you it was your own stupid fault that you’d been stuck out there on your own in a field all afternoon. You’re the one who likes to play games! So don’t sound off at me when they backfire.’ Rohan seemed taken aback by my tone. I was too but it seemed to give me a second wind. ‘And while we’re on it, you’re missing far more integral parts than your bloody leg, and I DO pity you for that!’

  The look on the cabbie’s face said it. He was in the presence of a madwoman, one he probably didn’t want in his cab. I’d be on the dole by Wednesday.

  I stood there like an idiot, not really sure what to say next. I hadn’t flounced out immediately after my rant, and so that ship had sailed. Now where was I? Marooned, that’s where, standing uselessly on my metaphorical pier with bugger all else to say.

  I caught the cabbie trying to glance down at Rohan’s legs. Rohan was too choked with surprise at me to notice. Then, in the dimness of the mill’s entrance, he dared to start to smile. ‘Like what?’ he asked, his tone buoyed with amusement.

  I tried to muster more annoyance, but it was already running out on me. ‘Like whatever it was that left that big chip on your shoulder,’ I said, trying to sound as mad as before. I saw another chance at a big exit, so I launched myself out of the door, storming straight past the cabbie, stopping for nothing until I got into his car.

  I waited there, seething a little, for the driver to hurry up. He got in apprehensively after me, the car instantly filling with the smell of someone else’s home. ‘Lovers’ tiff?’ he croaked drily. He was watching me in his mirror. ‘If looks could kill, eh? No wonder the coppers have turned up,’ he chortled.

  We drove away from the mill, a pulsing of blue light throbbing behind us, until finally we were out onto the road. I slunk into the seat, angling myself so that the driver couldn’t see my face, and spent the remainder of the journey trying to decide what it was exactly that was making me cry.

  CHAPTER 18

  I WASN’T BEING a coward, not with a temperature of 39 and a head like a bag of spanners. Okay, so the Lemsip was precautionary, but I knew the onset of something flu-like when it leaked out of my nose.

  Mum had left me this morning with two pearls of wisdom. The first, that a third of all sickies are thrown on a Monday, and the second, there wasn’t an influenza virus known to man that could stand up to Granny Sylvia’s chicken broth. She was detouring to the supermarket on the way home from school. She’d also said that despite my minor concerns regarding a potential brush with bird flu, she thought I was probably just run down, all things considered. I’d told James I didn’t want him to catch my bug, which had bought me a little more time here at Mum’s.

  Phil had decided to bypass the statistical trivia, medicinal recipes and sympathy, and dive straight in with the accusation that actually I was being a coward, avoiding this afternoon’s office meeting alongside Sadie et al. She was half right, but the office had slipped to number two in this week’s chart of places-to-avoid-at-all-costs.

  After a long soak in the tub, and an hour of brain-zapping daytime TV, I found myself flopping downstairs sulkily, shuffling straight to Mum’s biscuit jar. The green tyrannosaurus-feet slippers Sam had given her for her birthday were the only things that had taken the chill off my feet. I’d commandeered them for the day, shuffling back into the lounge with the free paper and a steady supply of Maryland cookies. If I was going down for a sick spell in the foreseeable, I was going down with double chocolate-chip.

  I snuggled into the sofa and began flicking through the paper. The jobs pages were looking abysmally fruitless as predicted. There were a few part-time positions, and a handful of vacancies doing the ghost shift in a haulage depot. An ad asking for reliable and enthusiastic teenagers for paper-rounds. I wondered how many would apply for that. I couldn’t remember being very reliable, or enthusiastic, for most of my teens. I’d better hold off that letter of resignation. I flicked through to the property pages, drawing first blood on the Marylands. I popped a whole cookie straight in, which wasn’t very intelligent with a blocked nose. Even around the gasping I couldn’t taste it much, but it was still laden with calories so its comfort value hadn’t been negated.

  I flicked a crumb off the paper in my lap and motioned straight past the modest two and three-bed semis to the killer properties at the back of the section. Property porn, James called it, but nosing through pictures of indoor swimming pools and stable blocks was both gratifying and depressing, so I scanned back through the pages to some of the more realistic entries. I nearly lost the half chewed biscuit in my mouth when I saw the photo of the imposing Victorian town house. Stunned, I ran through the particulars beneath the Park Lane property. James had given our details to the local estate agents, stating our interest in the address. It needed work, but it would never have been in our price range otherwise.

  My hand went automatically for my phone before the thought struck me – what would I say to James about it? Look! Our Happily Ever After! When can we get the keys? A heavy sinking feeling began to bed down. That property was like us, tired and unstable, its delicate potential to be cautiously managed. I lobbed the paper onto the floor and took my frustrations out on another biscuit.

  Other than my crunching, the house was utterly quiet. I sent another cookie to meet its maker when a buzzing against my stomach made me jump. In addition to the places-to-avoid-at-all-costs, I also had a list of people-to-avoid-at-all-costs, and numero uno on that list was flashing on my screen.

  It wasn’t like I hadn’t had forewarning.

  ‘Hey, Anna,’ I said stiffly.

  ‘Amy! Hi! How are you? It feels like I haven’t spoken to you for ages!’ I already felt clammy and I hadn’t even lied to her yet. ‘How was the holiday?’ she enthused.

  Sod! Had James given a destination? I hadn’t thought to ask him.

  ‘Good, thanks. Glad to be back into the swing of things, though,’ I said vaguely, trying to lead her away from the destination question.

  ‘You must be pooped! How was the party? Did you take lots of pics?’

  ‘Er … not really. We were mostly talking and …’

  I quickly ran through the minor deceptions we’d laid out in front of her. Holiday. Party. Happy solid relationship. Yup, I think that was it.

  ‘You don’t sound over-well, Amy. Are you under the weather?’ If only she knew, it was highly plausible that I had my very own personal black cloud hovering a foot or so above my fuggy head.

  ‘Not feeling brilliant, unfortunately, Anna. Nothing my mum’s home cooking shouldn’t sort out though.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. I won’t keep you then, but I think this will definitely lift your spirits. Now that you’ve got all your celebrating out of the way, I was calling to see if we can get together – I know you’re dying to hear about matching!’ she said, her elation pulling at something floating aimlessly inside my chest. ‘Could you both do the eleventh of May? It’s a week to
day?’ she asked chirpily.

  ‘A week today?’ I sniffed, trying not to sound like I had a coconut stuck up each nostril. ‘That sounds great. At your office?’ I asked, crossing my fingers.

  ‘No, I’ll come to you. You can show me what you’ve done with the nursery!’ she enthused. That thing that had been floating around inside me suddenly felt cast adrift again.

  I looked down at myself miserably, and felt my head begin to spin. It could still be bird flu. A pressure was building behind my eye-sockets. I brought my hand up to sooth it, rubbing big circles over them and the bridge of my nose.

  ‘That sounds great,’ I said, trying to blot out what the next week was going to entail. ‘I can’t wait.’

  ‘Great! Shall we say lunchtime again? Makes things a bit easier with your work schedule, yes?’

  ‘Yep. We’ll see you at twelve then!’ I said, mustering every drop of enthusiasm I had left in me. As if the cloud above me suddenly broke in my favour, Mum’s doorbell rang. ‘Oh, sorry Anna … I’ve been waiting for a delivery,’ I lied again, ‘that’s the doorbell now.’

  ‘That’s okay! More play equipment for the garden, I suppose?’ she laughed. ‘Don’t worry, I won’t tell James you’ve been spending again, it’ll be our secret.’

  I feigned a laugh. ‘Thanks, Anna. I’ll see you next week.’

  ‘Bye for now!’ she sang, hanging up the phone.

  The doorbell rang again. I got up slowly so my head didn’t spin and immediately my nose started running. ‘Just a second,’ I croaked, fishing for the last scrunched-up Kleenex I’d shoved into my pocket. I reached the door, considering for a second the state that was about to confront the poor postie, canvasser or feather-duster salesman I would open the door to, deciding quite quickly that I didn’t bloody care anyway.

  I turned the latch.

  He seemed taller in my mother’s doorway. Dark jeans sat over sturdy brown leather boots, a battered dark brown leather jacket gaping open over a snugly fitting black tee. It took a few seconds, but my fuggy brain confirmed that it was definitely Rohan Bywater standing there on my mother’s doorstep.