The Surrogate

by Louise Jensen

  ‘There are things I need to tell you, Kat.’ Nick grips my hands so hard it hurts.

  ‘Not now—’

  ‘Yes. Now.’ Nick’s tone is as sharp as broken glass, and I flinch. ‘It has to be now.’

  ‘We can’t talk with a body on the floor. He needs help. I’m going to call—’ I pull myself free and start to stand.

  ‘No!’ Nick grabs my wrist with one hand, twisting the skin, yanking me back to the floor, and a bolt of pain shoots up my arm. ‘Listen first.’ The fingers on Nick’s other hand flutter to his scar as he begins to speak.

  At first his words are stilted, forced, his tongue not used to forming the truth. My head shakes ‘no!’ as the weight of Nick’s past crushes down on me, as black and heavy as the swollen clouds that scud outside the kitchen window. He is crying as he speaks, the shoulders I thought were broad enough to carry us both seem to shrink before my eyes. His words trip over each other, desperate to be heard. I don’t want to listen to what he has to say, and yet, at the same time, I know I have to. And unbidden my voice cuts through his and, sitting here, on the wet floor in our immaculate kitchen, we reveal ourselves to be the people we really are. I have never felt more vulnerable and exposed. I’m sharing me, all of me, and he is doing the same, and I’m utterly stricken as I realise the threads of our lives have been woven together in ways I could not possibly have imagined. Is it us? Was it always going to be us that were destined to be? Not Jake? Never Jake?

  I try to pull my hand away, but he won’t let me go until he reaches the end of his story, and I have told him mine. Once we are battered into silence by the truth I wrench my hand from his grasp. I don’t want him to touch me. I don’t want him to touch me ever again.

  43

  Then

  Nick hunkered down in the shop doorway, head dipped against the biting wind, freezing hands stuffed into his pockets. Richard was late, and Nick longed for the days he used to be able to call for his best friend and be invited into his home. That was in the days before he was arrested. Before he received a suspended sentence for ABH, for what happened with his dad. Richard said it didn’t matter: his parents didn’t judge him. He’d explained to them there were extenuating circumstances. At nineteen, Richard sounded like the solicitor he was determined to be. Still, Nick had felt the frosty disapproval of Richard’s dad. He had noticed the way Richard’s mum didn’t quite make eye contact with him any more, and he’d wondered whether he would always be judged on that night. It hardly seemed fair. He’d told his boss at the supermarket about his conviction, and the very next day he’d been ‘let go’. It was coincidental, apparently. Due to cutbacks, he said, but Nick didn’t believe that. He didn’t know how he’d ever be anything now except sad and angry. From the chip shop next door a whiff of vinegar drifted towards Nick, mingling with the smell of hot fat, and his stomach grumbled. He wished he could bite on crunchy batter, taste the soft white fish inside, the chip paper warming his lap, but he was skint.

  The purr of an engine caused Nick to twist his neck and peer down the road but it wasn’t Richard in the BMW he’d got for his birthday. Nick huffed out white air. His fingertips would be too cold to grip the steering wheel when Richard gave him another driving lesson around the old industrial estate. He could do three-point turns now and almost parallel park. Richard said he’d be ready for his test soon and that would be another step towards freedom. The atmosphere at home was thick with the things that were never talked about. Nick’s dad’s face had healed and his mum, thinner than ever, glided through the house like a ghost. You’d almost think that night had never happened if it weren’t for the way Dad never quite looked him in the eye any more. It was a small victory.

  At last headlights cut through the fog and Richard slowed to a halt in front of Nick. His car vibrated with the pounding bass from the dance music blasting out of the top-of-the-range speakers.

  ‘Took your time.’ Nick slid into the passenger seat and blew on his hands to warm them.

  ‘Where’s my jacket?’ Richard asked.

  ‘Shit. Sorry.’ Nick had meant to bring back the jacket he’d borrowed for yet another interview for a job he’d never get once he declared he had a criminal record. He knew Richard needed it for a posh event he was going to that evening with his father. ‘Networking,’ he’d said. It sounded poncey. As Nick had been getting ready to leave the house his dad had come home and then he’d been in such a rush to get away he’d forgotten.

  ‘Let’s whizz over to yours and pick it up. I’ll still have time to give you a driving lesson after, just a shorter one.’

  Nick gnawed on the edge of his thumb as Richard eased the car forward.

  Outside Nick’s house he kept the engine running, the stereo blaring.

  ‘Don’t be long.’ Richard pulled out his mobile and started tapping away at the screen as Nick jumped out the car and ran up the path, pushed open the front door.

  Something was wrong.

  He sensed it before he’d even stepped onto the doormat, and he paused, muscles tense, heart racing, as he tried to discern why the air was so thick. So heavy. It was laden with the smell of smoked haddock they’d eaten earlier, but that wasn’t it.

  Something wasn’t right.

  Nick didn’t call out to his mum, as he usually would, as if he instinctively knew she wouldn’t be able to answer him. He didn’t switch on the lights.

  Something bad had happened.

  Nick was as certain of that as he was of his own name. He crept down the hallway, pushing open the door to the kitchen, blinking in the gloom. Nothing was where it should be. The table was upended. The chairs on their sides. He stepped forward. His feet splintered already broken crockery. There was a bang outside. The gate?

  Fear.

  Nick was scared. He stretched out his hand and fumbled for the light switch. The kitchen was awash with light but it wasn’t warm or comforting as it shone a spotlight on the mess. The biscuit tin where mum kept her escape fund was lidless and empty, resting against the hob. On the floor was the large knife used to carve the Sunday meat, its stainless steel blade sharp and jagged. Nick’s eyes trailed over the floor. He stopped as he spotted it. Breathed in sharply. Hand on chest as though in pain.

  Blood.

  Dark and dried on the grubby grey lino.

  Blood.

  It was then that the panic set in.

  44

  Then

  ‘Is Lisa there?’ I asked Nancy. I’d already tried her mobile but it was switched off again.

  There was a beat. A muffled voice, as though someone was talking with their hand over the receiver. ‘Sorry, Kat. You’ve just missed her,’ Nancy said a little too brightly, and I knew she was lying.

  That night, at the park, after Lisa had dragged me away from Aaron, I’d clung to her as we walked home, my legs shaking with shock. At my front door I’d started to say again: ‘If you hadn’t come…’ but Lisa had held her hand up and taken a step back.

  ‘You shouldn’t have told Mr Lemmington, Kat.’

  I was stunned. How was this my fault? ‘I had to. Someone could have got hurt. Died even. What if you’d had a bad reaction? He needs stopping. Besides, did you see the look in his eyes? God knows what he’s capable of. He’ll try and get his own back. I know he will.’ I was babbling. Fear pushing my words out in one gibbering rush.

  ‘Stop thinking about yourself. What if he tells the police he was selling to me? Did you think of that?’ She was shouting.

  ‘He won’t. Why would he? Don’t worry,’ I’d told her but she had walked away without answering.

  I hadn’t left the house in two days for fear of reprisals and now Lisa wouldn’t return my calls. Still, I didn’t think my dread of Aaron was the only thing making me feel sick.

  I swung my legs out of bed and pulled on yesterday’s sundress before sliding my drawer open. From underneath the tangle of bras and pants I pulled out the Boots paper bag. My period was late, and I couldn’t keep pretending it was coincid
ental I never fancied breakfast any more and felt sick every day around dinner time. I had to find out for sure. I unfolded the paper that came in the box and read the words slowly and carefully, but despite my straight A grades at school, I had to read the instructions three times to try and make sense of them and I desperately wished Lisa was with me.

  I hesitated before carrying the kit into the bathroom. Apart from the first time in the woods we had always used a condom, and no one gets pregnant their first time, do they? But the little voice in my head mocked and you’re supposed to be the clever one and I knew if I wanted to find out, now was the time with the house to myself for the day. If I wanted to find out.

  Perched on the toilet I scanned the instructions again just to make sure. My bladder was bursting, but I couldn’t wee. I had to run the taps for ages before I could. I put the cap back on the test and rested it on the side of the basin before checking the time and washing my hands. The box said results could show in anything between sixty seconds and five minutes. To make sure the test had worked I was determined to wait for the full five minutes before I checked, but there were only so many times I could pace the small room, nerves slithering around my stomach, before I snatched up the stick, staring in disbelief at the + in the results window. Although I knew it meant positive, I studied the picture on the front of the box again, just to make sure. My knees turned to jelly and I sat heavily on the side of the bath. I couldn’t be pregnant. I just couldn’t. I was too young, but I was old enough to know better. We were old enough to know better, I reminded myself. I wasn’t in this alone, but still we should have used a condom. My gaze darted between the box and the stick and the words ‘99% accurate’ leapt out at me. My shoulders sagged a little. Of course. There had to be a 1 per cent chance of failure.

  I took out our toothbrushes from the glass on the windowsill and rubbed dried toothpaste from the rim before filling it with lukewarm water from the tap and gulping it down. It took four glasses and twenty minutes before I could produce a small amount of wee for the second test but I put the cap on the stick, hoping it was enough. This time I couldn’t take my eyes off the small square box that would predict my future and as a cross began to appear, faintly at first but darkening with every passing second, bile bit the back of my throat. I shook the stick like a mercury thermometer and checked the window again, as though this may have altered the result, but it still showed positive. Positive. What an innocuous word but what implications it carried. My mind fast-forwarded to a time I’d be living in a grotty bedsit, fag hanging from the corner of my mouth – ridiculous as I’d never smoked – stirring a pan of beans at a one-ring hob, while a toddler in a stained T-shirt stamped his feet, screaming for attention. And yet there was another picture, nudging the first out of the way. Me crossing a kitchen, roast chicken browning in the oven, to kiss Jake hello as he came home from work and, as young as I was, I liked that picture. I’d always been drawn to babies. Always wanted to be a mum and it flitted across my mind that I might have done this subconsciously, found an escape from this house, my dad, but when I thought of my dad I felt sick. What was I going to tell him? What was I going to tell Jake?

  The front door slammed, startling me. No one should be home. Heavy footsteps pounded up the stairs. The door rattled.

  ‘Kat?’

  ‘Dad. Thought you’d gone to work?’

  ‘I forgot something. Need the loo now I’m here.’

  Hurriedly I looked around. If I came out carrying the box and tests he would see them, and there was nowhere under my dress to hide them. In the corner was a stack of towels and I stuffed everything underneath the top one. I would move them as soon as he was done.

  ‘Come on.’ His impatience radiated through the wood.

  I clicked open the lock and slipped through the door, not able to look him in the eye. In my bedroom I straightened my duvet and plumped up my pillows, waiting anxiously, listening for the flush of the chain, but it didn’t come. A shadow fell behind me and as I spun around I was met by my dad’s furious face. He raised his hand and slapped my cheek, hard. Falling back onto the bed I began to cry, but he yanked me to my feet and shook me like I was nothing. His eyes were wild, and I was scared. Really scared. As strict as he was, he had never laid a hand on me before.

  ‘Slut.’

  The word stuck like a spear. I opened my mouth but there was nothing I could say to make this better. ‘Couldn’t you keep your legs shut? We’ve time to get this sorted.’

  I could see him mentally working out timescales, and I say: ‘Sorted?’ although I know perfectly well what he meant.

  ‘You can’t possibly keep it,’ he said and, in that moment, I felt a burst of love for the baby. My baby. Jake’s baby.

  ‘I can.’

  ‘You will bloody well have an abortion.’

  ‘You can’t tell me what to do. You’re always telling me what to do!’ Nineteen years of built up resentment came spewing out.

  ‘While you’re under my roof—’

  ‘Then I won’t stay under your roof.’ I pushed past dad, knocking him with my shoulder, pulled open my drawer, flung clothes onto my bed.

  ‘Don’t be stupid,’ he said. ‘Where are you going to go?’

  ‘Anywhere but here.’

  ‘You’ll stay in your room until I get back from my meeting.’

  ‘I won’t.’ I was defiant.

  ‘You bloody well will and we’ll talk when your mum gets home.’

  ‘I’ll be gone by then.’ I almost goaded him but I was too angry to tread carefully. I knew I had gone too far when his fingers dug into my shoulder and his hand lay heavy on the small of my back, forcing me forward.

  ‘I’ll make sure you’re still here.’

  I tried to dig my heels in, stretching out my arms for something to grab hold of, but my fingertips closed around air. Before I could properly catch my breath he was forcing me down the stairs. At the sight of the hall cupboard, with its lock on the door, I knew what he was going to do.

  ‘Please.’ My voice was high and shrill. My skin slick with sweat. ‘Don’t do this. You don’t have to do this.’

  There was a grunt behind me, the sound of heavy breathing, and I did everything I could to make it harder for him. I stiffened my body and struggled, and there was a second when he released his grip, when I was free, and just as my mind was processing there were no longer hands on me he opened the cupboard door. I tried to run but instantaneously there was pressure on the top of my arms and I was shaken, hard. My brain rattled around my skull. I bit my tongue and swallowed down my fear and the metallic taste of blood.

  My vision grew hazy, the ground beneath my feet felt soft, as my body grew limp. I had the sensation of falling before I was yanked back and thrust forward, landing heavily on my hands and knees. My head banged against something hard and solid and slivers of pain shot through my arms and into my neck.

  Dazed, I almost didn’t hear the slam behind me. The click of a lock.

  ‘No! Wait! Dad!’ I leapt to my feet. Nausea rose as the world seemed to rock and I blindly reached out, trying to find the door. The blackness was all-consuming. Crushing. My hands shook as I slapped my palms over the walls, spinning around until at last I found it. I gripped the door handle but my hand was clammy and it took me three attempts to twist it, and when I did it confirmed what I already knew.

  I was trapped.

  45

  Then

  Something terrible had happened. Nick knew as he stared in horror at the trashed kitchen. He didn’t know whether to call the police or search the rest of the house. He had never felt the blood whooshing through his body before but now he felt everything. His pulse throbbing in his ears, the heat in his veins, the prickling in his scalp. He picked up the knife and held it in front of him as he left the room. The lounge was empty. On its side, a crumpled can of lager on the coffee table, sticky liquid on the glass. Something else for his mum to clear up. Mum. The word filled his head, bouncing around his mind. He
needed to find her, and yet he was almost scared to.

  Something terrible had taken place here tonight.

  There was a faint knocking noise and, at first, Nick thought it must be his mum, but it was only the fridge, and the house fell into an eerie silence once more. In the hallway, Nick switched on the light and his stomach contracted hard and fast as he noticed the blood trailing down the passage, up the stairs. He squeezed the knife handle. His palms were slippery now; his grip wasn’t as tight as he would have liked.

  Unbidden his feet began to climb the stairs. One, two, the third that creaked. His whole body tensed. As he reached the top he half expected a fist to slam into him, pushing him back down, but there was nothing there except the sense of foreboding sticking to him like a second skin. On the landing, Nick caught a whiff of the minty shower gel he had used before he went out. Which way? The bathroom to the left. His parent’s room to the right.

  His whole body was pulsing like it did in the car with Richard’s dance music, and at the thought of his friend Nick wondered whether he should ask him to come in. Safety in numbers. Coward whispered the voice in his head. And Nick forced his feet forward.

  Mum.

  He crept into his parent’s bedroom. Fearing the worst but hoping for the best.

  He turned on the light and gasped.

  46

  Then

  I had lost all concept of time as I sat, knees drawn to my chest, arms wrapped around my shins. My eyes had grown accustomed to the blackness and I could make out shapes. Sometimes when I blinked I thought they moved but I knew that was impossible. I was alone.

  To my shame I had peed in the corner like an animal, and the smell of ammonia stung almost as much as the humiliation I felt. Each time I swallowed my throat grew sorer. I had given up shouting. My face was streaked with dried tears, which made my skin dry and tight. I really needed a drink and I strained my eyes in the dark as though one might appear. I had long stopped believing in magic. But I still had hope. He couldn’t keep me here forever. Someone would miss me – wouldn’t they? Start asking questions soon.