She hadn’t really meant to damage it, but when it hit the pavement the screen smashed, and Jay grabbed her. ‘What the fuck did you do that for?’
‘You were… you were showing him our special pictures!’ she looked at Mark, who didn’t meet her eyes. She felt ridiculous calling them that in front of him, but that was what she and Jay had always called them to each other. In fact, it was Jay who had first used the name for them, saying that they were special, and nothing to be ashamed of or worried about because they were only for him, and no one else would ever know.
‘You broke my fucking phone!’ Jay said.
‘Good!’ Sammie snapped back.
For a moment Jay just stared at her, then he bent down and picked it up.
‘You’re going to pay for this,’ he said.
Sammie ignored him and started walking towards the woods, which were a shortcut to her house. She was aware that Mark and Jay were following her, but she walked fast and didn’t look back at them.
‘Fucking little bitch,’ she heard Jay say to Mark.
‘Jay, just leave her,’ Mark said, ‘she’s not worth it.’
She heard footsteps close behind her, and before she knew it Jay had caught hold of her and called to Mark to help him.
‘Jay, no!’ Sammie cried, ‘get off me.’
She realised he was pulling her away from the main path and into the trees. Mark was standing nearby, watching the two of them with a frown.
‘Mark, for fuck’s sake,’ Jay said.
Sammie struggled, and almost managed to get away. She’d taken two steps, when she found herself in Mark’s arms. He held her awkwardly, but she couldn’t break free, and the two boys pulled her off the path and deeper into the woods.
They didn’t take her far. Once they were out of sight of the path Jay stopped and shoved Sammie against a tree.
‘I have copies,’ he said, ‘of the pictures. So don’t think you’ve got rid of them. They’re all on my computer.’
‘Jay, I’m sorry,’ Sammie pleaded. ‘I only sent that one picture to Mark. It was a mistake. It was an accident, a stupid accident, and it wasn’t like he saw anything in it, not really—’
‘So,’ Jay said, ignoring her, ‘you like guys looking at you, do you?’
‘No!’ Sammie said, ‘not at all—’
‘Why don’t you show Mark the rest of you? For real, that is, because he’s already seen it all anyway.’
‘I don’t want to,’ she said, ‘let me go, Jay.’
Jay leaned in close to her ear. ‘Take your clothes off,’ he said.
‘No,’ Sammie moaned.
‘Take them off, Sammie. What are you worried about? He thinks you’re hot, don’t you Mark?’
Sammie looked up at Mark, who shrugged.
‘Jay,’ Sammie said, forcing herself to sound calm, ‘let me go.’
Jay had one arm round her waist, and with his free hand he started pulling at her school shirt. ‘No!’ Sammie screamed at him. ‘Let go of me. Let go of me!’
He wouldn’t stop, and he managed to pull her shirt open and yank her skirt and her underwear down over her thighs.
‘Stop it!’ she said, ‘please, stop.’
‘Come on, Mark,’ Jay said, gesturing at her exposed private parts. ‘She’s ready now. I’ll hold her, you touch her.’
‘No!’ Sammie screamed as Mark came towards her. ‘No, Jay, no!’
Jay clapped his hand over her mouth. ‘Shut up,’ he said. ‘I’m teaching you a lesson, Sammie. If you show guys pictures of yourself, they’ll expect to be able to touch you. That’s how it works. And once you’ve learnt that, you’ll know not to do it again.’
He released his hand from her mouth and she started to cry. ‘No,’ she said, ‘Jay, please.’
Mark was in front of her now, and he spoke quietly to Jay. ‘I’m not going to touch her,’ he said.
Sammie began to sob in relief, but Jay threw her to the ground. ‘You hear that?’ he said, ‘he doesn’t even want to touch you.’
For a while the two boys looked down at her as she struggled to pull her skirt back up, and she thought perhaps they were shocked by what they’d done. But then Jay turned to Mark. ‘Leave me alone with her,’ he said.
Mark looked a little scared and Sammie felt his eyes on her.
‘Wh… why?’ he asked, ‘what are you going to—’
‘It’s between me and Sammie,’ Jay said.
Mark hesitated a little longer, then he turned and left them without another word, and Jay knelt down beside her. ‘Aren’t you going to say anything?’
‘I told you,’ Sammie said, ‘it was an accident! I don’t send him pictures! He’s got it in for us, Jay, it was him who called your mum and made her walk in on us before, I know it was—’
‘I asked him about that,’ Jay said, ‘I asked him ages ago and he swore it wasn’t him. Why would he lie? Why would he lie about any of this?’
‘I don’t know,’ Sammie said, ‘but he hates me, Jay. He really hates me—’
Jay put his hand on her thigh, and started slipping it up her leg and under her skirt.
‘Jay, please, please believe me,’ she said. ‘I love you. You were going to ask me to marry you—’
‘I don’t want to marry a slut.’
Sammie started to cry again. ‘I’m not a slut,’ she said, ‘I’ve never even looked at anyone else. I promise you, Jay, I promise. What can I do to make you believe me?’
Jay tried to push her skirt up but Sammie managed to scramble away, though she’d barely got to her knees before Jay grabbed her from behind. With one arm he held her, and with the other he lifted her skirt and stuffed his hand down her underwear.
‘No,’ she said, ‘no, Jay. Not like this. We can… we can go somewhere, if you want to—’
He began to force his fingers inside her, and she struggled more violently, until he said, ‘Sammie, if you don’t let me fuck you, I’ll put all the pictures of you online.’
27
Afterwards, Jay barely even looked at her. He stood and did his trousers back up, and when she started to try to sit up herself he pushed her back down.
‘I don’t need to tell you what will happen if you breathe a word about this, do I?’ he said.
‘The pictures,’ Sammie whispered.
Jay nodded and finally met her eyes with his. ‘I reckon there would be a lot of guys who’d love to see you doing what you’re doing in some of those photos,’ he said.
‘No,’ Sammie said. ‘Please, Jay.’ She looked at him desperately, and his face changed.
‘Why are you looking at me like that?’ he said, ‘like I’ve done something wrong. You’re the one who’s cheated!’
Suddenly he lost it, and kicked her twice in her side and her stomach, until Sammie curled up, gasping and sobbing.
‘I loved you,’ he shouted at her, ‘I wanted to marry you, and all the time you were cheating on me. Cheating on me with my best friend.’
Sammie tried to speak, to explain that she’d never cheated; that Mark had lied, but she couldn’t get the words out.
‘I’m not mad at him,’ Jay said, ‘I wouldn’t even be mad at him if he’d had a go. Why shouldn’t he, when you make it so easy? But you. You should know better!’
He scooped up some dirt and leaf mould in his hand, bringing it down against her face and rubbing it over her cheek and across her nose and mouth, pushing so hard that some of it went up her nostrils and between her lips so she could taste and smell it.
Sammie was desperate to explain, but it was too difficult. ‘I… I never… I never….’ she spluttered uselessly.
Jay took hold of the sapphire necklace that he’d given her, and pulled it until the chain broke and it came away in his hand. ‘You never what?’ he asked
‘I never… cheated.’
Jay watched her silently. ‘You want to though,’ he said eventually. ‘Mark said you want to. He told me you’ve said you want to fuck him. It’s only because he
doesn’t want to that nothing’s happened.’
‘No,’ Sammie said through her tears, ‘no.’
Jay leaned towards her and she cowered against the ground expecting to be shouted at again, but then his attention was diverted by the sound of a twig snapping somewhere in the trees.
‘What was that?’ Jay said. He’d turned white, and he quickly stood up and brushed some mud from his clothes. Then, without a backwards glance at her he made off through the trees, and Sammie carried on lying on the ground, crying uselessly to the empty woods.
…
The next few months were some of the worst of Sammie’s life. Mark and Jay both ignored her, and on her sixteenth birthday she ended up at home with her mum, eating a takeaway in front of a stupid romantic comedy. At the end of the film Sammie started to cry, and her mum put her arm around her.
‘What is it?’ she asked, ‘are you still missing Jay?’
Sammie nodded.
‘You really liked him, didn’t you?’
Sammie nodded again.
Her mum held her tight for a while. ‘Sammie, you shouldn’t get in such a state about it,’ she said. ‘You’re only young, before long you’ll have forgotten all about him.’
‘Have you forgotten all about dad?’
Sammie’s mum frowned. ‘Why would you say that?’
‘Because you’ve separated, haven’t you? That’s why he stays in London nearly all the time. Because that’s where he lives now, isn’t it?’
‘You… you knew?’
‘I overheard dad say it.’
‘Oh, Sammie. I’m sorry,’ her mum said, ‘we weren’t trying to deceive you, it’s just… with your exams and everything, I thought it would be better if we tried—’
‘Don’t you miss him?’ she asked.
‘Sammie, things haven’t been right between your dad and I for a long time.’
‘You mean, since Alfie.’
‘Yes,’ her mum said, with surprising honesty, ‘since Alfie.’
Sammie put her hand very briefly on her stomach, where she could feel the blossoming roundness of her pregnancy hidden away under her baggy cotton hoodie.
‘Look,’ her mum said, ‘do you mind if I just go to bed now, Sammie? I’ve got a lot on at the moment.’
Sammie shook her head. It had hardly been much of a birthday anyway, it didn’t really matter. ‘What will happen?’ she asked, as her mum got up from the sofa. ‘Will we stay living here, just the two of us?’
Her mum seemed to consider how to answer. ‘No,’ she said at length. ‘We’re going to stay here until after your exams. Then we’ll move back to Kent.’ She hesitated, then added, ‘that’s why I’m so busy right now. I’m trying to find us a house.’
‘Oh,’ Sammie said, and she frowned.
‘You don’t mind moving, do you sweetheart?’ her mum asked, ‘things haven’t exactly worked out here anyway.’
Sammie shrugged, too confused to explain how she felt about it, and her mum left her to go up to bed. Sammie put her hand on her stomach again. She had no idea what she was going to do, but one thing that was for sure was that she didn’t know how she’d ever be able to explain to her parents that she was going to have a baby because her ex-boyfriend had attacked her, and she didn’t want to move with her mum to Kent.
Felicity
28
After what he did to me on the night of the hen party, Jay watched me like a hawk. Wherever I was, he seemed to be. He stopped going running or to the gym in the evenings, and started fitting it in during the day instead. He took me to work in the morning and picked me up when I finished, and he even refused to let me talk to Mark for a while.
‘He’s getting worried,’ I said after a few days of texts and calls from Mark that I didn’t answer. In fact, I only knew Mark was contacting me at all because Jay told me. He’d confiscated my phone, and all my communication with the outside world now had to go through him.
‘What do you care?’ Jay asked.
‘I don’t… but… don’t you want to carry on with the plan?’
Jay considered it. ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘but what I find weird is the fact that you want to. You only ever did this for me. If you’ve spent months sleeping with someone you don’t even like, shouldn’t you want it to stop?’
‘Well, perhaps the fact I’ve spent months doing that means I don’t want it to be for nothing,’ I told him.
After about a week Jay relented and let me call Mark, but he sat next to me and the conversation was stilted and awkward.
‘He wants me to go round,’ I said afterwards.
To begin with I thought that Jay would refuse to let me go, but in the end he drove me round and dropped me off a few houses away.
‘I’ll be right outside,’ he said.
‘Jay… I… he’ll probably want me to stay…’
‘Then tell him you can’t.’
‘Jay—’
He reached across and kissed me, squeezing my thigh with his hand. ‘You’re a good girl, Flissie,’ he said. ‘I know you won’t let me down.’
…
When Mark opened the door to me he quickly pulled me inside, his face full of concern.
‘What’s been going on?’ he asked urgently, ‘why haven’t you been answering my calls?’
‘Mark,’ I said, ‘I—’
‘Has he found out about us?’
My mouth dropped open. ‘What?’ I said.
‘Your “flatmate”. Jason.’
I was so shocked that I couldn’t speak, and I followed Mark down the hallway to the living room in stunned silence. ‘I…’ I said finally, ‘you… you knew?’
Mark sat down at the table and I plonked myself down next to him. ‘Fliss, I knew all along,’ he said. ‘I knew he wasn’t just your flatmate. You looked shifty when you spoke about him, you were always nervous if we were at your flat, and I’ve never met him. I’m not stupid. I know when I’m being lied to.’
‘Mark, I—’
He reached out and took my hand. ‘I don’t mind,’ he said, ‘I mean, I do mind… I’d rather it wasn’t like this, but… I don’t know. Sometimes people just have relationships with more than one person. If your relationship with him… overlaps… with your relationship with me, I can deal with that. I thought that I’d give you time to figure it out on your own. I thought you’d tell me when you were ready.’
‘Mark,’ I said, ‘all this time, I can’t believe…’
Suddenly, I realised he was looking at me closely.
‘What?’ I said.
He pointed at my forehead. ‘How did you get that?’ he asked, ‘that cut.’
I reached up and touched it. I thought about Jay waiting outside, and before I knew it I was crying, really crying, and I didn’t seem able to stop.
29
‘Felicity,’ Mark said gently, when I’d calmed down just a little. ‘Did… did Jason do that to you?’
My instinct was to deny it, but instead I simply nodded against Mark’s shoulder.
‘Has he done other things to you?’
I nodded again, and Mark stroked my back gently. ‘Leave him,’ he whispered.
‘What?’
‘Leave him, and move in here with me.’
I pulled away from him. ‘Are you… are you being serious?’
‘Yes. I… I love you, Felicity. I’ve wanted to tell you for so long, but because I knew you were with someone else I… I just…’ he gave up explaining. ‘Don’t even go back to him today,’ he said firmly. ‘Stay here with me.’
I stared at him. To begin with all I felt was relief, but then reality started flooding in and I realised it was crazy. Mark had no idea who Jason really was, and me staying in Coalton with Mark was impossible.
‘I can’t,’ I said.
‘Yes, you can.’
‘No,’ I said, ‘you… you don’t understand.’
‘Then tell me. You can tell me anything. There’s nothing to be scared of. It… it is okay for you to
be here at the moment, isn’t it?’ he asked, ‘is Jason out? Or have you made an excuse that he believes?’
I nodded, and thought again of Jay sitting outside in his van. I rubbed my eyes, scared when I went back out to him he’d notice I’d been crying.
‘Okay,’ Mark said, ‘why don’t you… why don’t you explain it from the beginning?’
‘The beginning?’
‘When did… when did all this,’ he gestured at my forehead, ‘start?’
‘He did it last weekend.’
‘After Grace’s hen night?’
I nodded.
‘And he’s been making things difficult for you since then?’ he asked, ‘that’s why you haven’t been speaking to me?’
‘I didn’t want to risk talking to you,’ I said. ‘He… he wants me to have a baby. He’s talking about taking me away from Coalton—’
Mark looked horrified. ‘Taking you away?’ he said, ‘when?’
‘After Grace’s wedding.’
‘In two weeks.’
‘Yes,’ I said quietly.
‘Fliss, I wish you’d told me—’
‘How could I?’ I said, ‘I… I don’t even know why I’m telling you now.’
Mark was silent for a time. ‘We’ll figure something out,’ he said, ‘we’ll make sure you’re safe before then.’
‘Mark, you can’t!’ I said, ‘you have no idea what you’re saying. I can’t stay in Coalton with you, we’d still have to leave. You’d have to leave everything behind because if he realises I’m with you he’ll try to find us.’
‘Fliss—’
‘I haven’t been honest with you about anything,’ I said. ‘Even my parents. They didn’t die in a car crash. My dad killed himself and my mum by setting fire to the house.’
Mark’s face went through several emotions, then he said, ‘Fliss, I’m so sorry. That’s—’
‘They were in debt,’ I said, not wanting to hear his sympathy, ‘massive debt. The house was going to be repossessed. I never even knew about it. Not until after.’
Anything for Him Page 13