Imperfect Strangers

by David Staniforth

  “Let her go,” Steve demands, his voice firm but remarkably calm, considering.

  I feel Keith alternate between holding me firmly and loosening his grip, as if considering releasing me and grasping for the cat.

  “Put her down,” Keith says. “You’re... Y-You’re hurting her. She doesn’t like it.”

  “Hurting it? I’ll fucking kill it if you don’t let Sally go.”

  “Put her down. She doesn’t like being held tight.”

  “Keith, let the young lady go. Then he’ll give Mrs Seaton to you.”

  “I didn’t mean to hurt her Mum. She told me I could touch. I didn’t like the cardboard. I didn’t want to go under. She made me... This way up. This way up. Ya... Ya, tie him in yonder tree. I didn’t make her. I didn’t. You won’t bleach me will you? Not the soap, please. I didn’t lie. Not the soap.”

  “No, dear, I won’t do any of those things.” Mrs Sewell turns back to face Pete. “I’m not his mum.”

  Pete shrugs his shoulders. “He thinks you are,” Pete whispers. Pete could have shouted it for all the difference it would have made. Keith seems oblivious to all that is happening in the room. “Maybe you ought to let him carry on thinking so,” Pete suggests.

  “She said you could touch, didn’t she little Keith? Heather said so, led us down the garden path. Under the card sheeting, she said. This way up. Knickers. Knees. And torn cabbage leaves. We didn’t lie and we didn’t spy. Spy-ers are next to liars. She only started screaming when her mum came down the garden. Her mum came, calling her for tea. My mum’ll go mad, she said, and started screaming. She told me to do it. Knickers. Knees. And torn cabbage leaves. Hang him in yonder tree. Heather said I had to do it. She didn’t want a baby. Little Keith didn’t want to. I didn’t. Don’t tie my wrists.”

  “Let her go, you crazy fuck.”

  Shut up, Steve, I silently scream. That isn’t going to help. He isn’t here right now, can’t you tell. He’s a young boy of his own past, pleading for his cruel mother not to punish him too harshly. He’s not listening to you at the moment. You don’t even exist, not at present. Maybe I don’t either; maybe, in his mind, I’m Heather.

  “Keith, do as Mummy says. Let go of the little girl. You’re frightening her.”

  The shift in his posture, the grip on my throat, lets me know that the persona of the adult Keith is back. “Go to bed Mother.”

  The forceful command, while showing that the adult Keith is back, also demonstrates that he is not fully rational. He thinks Mrs Sewell is his mum, so how can he be. The panic in his voice that came when Steve snatched Mrs Seaton is no longer present. I realise then that this is a third Keith, one I have not seen before. This is the Keith that decided he was no longer going to take any crap from his mother.

  “And you, you put Mrs Seaton down,” this commanding Keith shouts. “Put her down now, or I’ll slice this bitch’s face right off the bone.”

  Put her down Steve, I plead with my eyes, and look on as Steve raises the cat aloft, his hand under its chest, his free hand hovering over its head, making out as if to twist its neck.

  “I’ll kill it, if you don’t let her go.”

  Keith’s grip tightens on my neck. I fix my eyes on Steve’s; open them wide with pleading. The glass feels cold as it slides from my cheek to the vulnerable flesh under my jaw. Heat blooms in its wake, as a drop of blood trickles and splashes onto my shoulder. Another drop soon follows. This time I’ve been cut deeper. I imagined a deep gash, a scar if I survive, which will forever remind me how close I came to death.

  The cat squeals and draws my focus back into the room. I see Steve’s hand closing, turning. Its legs claw at his arms leaving angry red tracks. Keith slackens his grip slightly. Steve has his best poker face on, and I’m the stake. It’s my best chance yet, while Keith’s distracted, before he raises his bet. Squirming without trying to make it too obvious, I half escape his grasp, but it isn’t enough. He pulls me back into his chest.

  “Let her go!” Steve snarls. “I’ll break the fucker’s neck.”

  “No.”

  He’s more distracted this time. I sink my teeth into Keith’s hand. As I planned to earlier, I roll off the bed. Slipping over the edge, thinking I’ve got away, I feel his grip on my ankle. The first thought in my mind: not death, not injury, but how exposed I am. The wispy dress is as useless as damp tissue. How can I worry about such a thing in this situation, and yet all I can think is cover your self up woman. I glance at Pete. He’s averted his eyes. I twist trying to get my leg free from Keith’s grasp.

  Steve steps forward, the cat in his hand, but Keith swipes the broken glass like a sword. Steve then throws the cat at Keith. It screeches as it twists in mid air. In panic the cat lashes wildly with its claws. Finally I break free as Keith lets go to protect himself from the cat’s fury. I dart behind Steve, as he rushes forward and kicks Keith’s forearm, dislodging the glass weapon from his hand.

  CHAPTER

  39

  Unsteadily, I cross the floor, heading for the bathroom, brushing down the useless garment I’m wearing. I turn to see Keith roll into a ball, his thumb deep in his mouth being sucked like a baby’s. Pete hands me my clothes. Without looking down I take them, hold the jeans and top in a ball against my abdomen. Steve steps forward, his fist already raised. He grabs Keith’s hair, lifting up his head. Keith’s thumb drops from his mouth, dragging with it a string of saliva. His eyes, gushing with tears, look at me with longing.

  “Sally, come back,” he manages between sobs, saliva dribbling down his chin. “Mummy,” he pleads, turning his eyes on Mrs Sewell. “Mummy, he took my Sally.”

  The commanding, dominant Keith has gone. His voice is a mix of the Keith I know and the child of his tormented past. Part of me wants Steve to smash Keith’s face in, but away from the false safety of the ledge, fighting now, climbing with Steve’s supporting strength, a sense of pity overwhelms me.

  “Don’t Steve,” I say.

  Steve turns to look at me. He doesn’t answer. He doesn’t nod. I see acknowledgement in his eyes.

  “He’s sick,” I say “Don’t hit him.” I have a feeling that Steve wasn’t going to, even before I asked him not to.

  Steve lets go of Keith and looks around the room with an expression of puzzlement, as if he has only just noticed its similarity to the one he once shared with me. The one I have already determined he will share again, if he wants to.

  When I return from the bathroom Steve and Pete are waiting like two sentries at either side of the bedroom door. Mrs Sewell is sitting on the bed. Keith is curled up beside her. She strokes his hair and hums a melody of comfort, as a mother would to an upset child. Keith shudders with the occasional sob.

  “It’s alright, Mrs Sewell’s here. Mrs Sewell will make it all better.”

  Mrs Seaton hops onto the bed, steps into the centre of Keith’s foetal arc, and coils herself into a comfortable position. The situation looks too natural to have not occurred before. I feel Mrs Sewell has been here before, perhaps the circumstances were less violent, but Keith would have been in equal need of comfort. Many years ago, when Keith was a young boy, Mrs Sewell must have comforted him in this way. Rather than feel anger towards Keith, I find myself feeling anger at the mother that caused him to be this way. But then she must have been sick too. Every one needs a supporting wall. I determine that I’m going to keep mine.

  “Mrs Seaton’s come to see you look.” Mrs Sewell continues to brush Keith’s hair with the flat of her hand as she looks up at us. “I think it’d be best if you all went now.”

  “We ought to call the police, mate.”

  Before Steve can answer Pete’s suggestion, I say, “Just take me home, Steve.”

  I look at Keith. I look at the blood on the sheet, most of it Keith’s. The cuts on my legs, I discovered in the bathroom, turned out to be mere scratches from his toenails. The glass must have dislodged in the struggle, making him bleed more profusely. Getting the police involved only means
more pain.

  Finally I turn my eyes to Mrs Sewell. “Will you be alright with him?”

  “I’ll look after Keith.” She nods, looks down at the pathetic figure, and then turns her large eyes back to me. “This is just like when his mum died. I’ll get the doctor round in the morning, put him back on the tablets.”

  “The police need to be told,” Pete says, to me, not Steve. “Not for him to get into bother, but to make sure he gets the help he needs. So this doesn’t happen to anybody else.”

  I nod.

  “I’ll stay here,” Pete says, to Steve this time. “You take Sally home. The police can go and see her there if they want. Besides, you can tell her about the other stuff on the way.”

  The other stuff, I think. What other stuff? I curl an arm around Steve’s middle and draw myself into him. “I’ve been a fool Steve,” I say, looking up into his eyes as he pulls me closer, his hand firm on my shoulder.

  “It really was just a kiss,” he says, easing me away slightly, turning me to face him head on. “And she initiated it, not me. And them photos of me with the woman, they’re fakes.”

  “I know; I’ve already gathered that much. Look.” I point to the walls, at the framed prints. “That’s from our holiday in Florence. Keith did them, didn’t he?”

  “No, he didn’t. I’ll tell you on the way home.” Steve smiles as he nods at the Florence picture. “We should, perhaps go back there?” The smile I return broadens as he winks. “See if we can’t make a more permanent memory?”

  “Yes. But just take me home for now.”

  Pete is circling the room, gathering the pictures of me, pictures where Keith’s head is sitting upon Steve’s shoulders. He follows as we descend the stairs in silence. I hear Keith say to Mrs Sewell, “She will be back Mum, won’t she?”

  “Course she will, love. Who wouldn’t want a pretty room like this?”

  Me for one, I think, as we pass through the broken door, out into the cold morning air. The replica to that room, the one back at my own house, was not decorated for sharing. It was all me; it was all my own taste. In decorating it the way I did, I now realise, I had already been pushing Steve away. Out on the street, I glance over my shoulder, at the pink blush of light radiating from the window, the one lit window in a street-full of old terraced housing. The curtain is slightly drawn and a silhouette looks out.

  “I want to re-decorate,” I say.

  “Okay,” Steve agrees as we cross the street.

  “So, where did the photos of you come from, if not Keith?”

  “Pete’s boss did them.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Kerry was blackmailing him. Pete realised he was the only person who could have done it, and when Pete confronted him over the phone, he confessed. She came across him in a gay bar, apparently, threatened to tell his wife. She told me and Pete she only did it to protect you.”

  I wrap my arm tight around Steve’s waist. A thin ribbon of crimson on the far horizon marks the start of a new day. “I love you, Steve,” I say, for the first time in my life truly feeling the emotion behind the words.

  “I love you too,” he says. “I always have.”

  It’s the first time he’s actually said it and I know it’s true. I always have.

  “Oh! Kerry says to tell you that she’s sorry about the other thing as well.”

  I squeeze Steve’s hand, look up at him and can’t help but smile. “You don’t mind if she lives with us for a while do you? Until she gets herself sorted.”

  “Guess not, if that’s what you want. What’s she sorry for, anyway?”

  “For not being perfect.”

  Thank you for reading this novel. I hope you found it an enjoyable read. It would be great if you could spare a moment to give a rating on Amazon or Goodreads, or both. If you have a little extra time to spare, and feel inclined to do so, a review to let other readers know what you thought would be fantastic.

  Other titles by this author:

  Alloria

  Links:

  http://authl.it/180

  Fuel to the Fire Trilogy:

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  http://authl.it/B00AGJR4VI

  Links:

  http://authl.it/B00AU50S66

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  Table of Contents

  Other titles

  CHAPTER1

  CHAPTER2W

  CHAPTER3

  CHAPTER4

  CHAPTER5

  CHAPTER6

  CHAPTER7

  CHAPTER8

  CHAPTER9

  CHAPTER10

  CHAPTER11

  CHAPTER12

  CHAPTER13

  CHAPTER14

  CHAPTER15

  CHAPTER16

  CHAPTER17

  CHAPTER18

  CHAPTER19

  CHAPTER20

  CHAPTER21

  CHAPTER22

  CHAPTER23

  CHAPTER24

  CHAPTER25

  CHAPTER26

  CHAPTER27

  CHAPTER28

  CHAPTER29I

  CHAPTER30

  CHAPTER31

  CHAPTER32

  CHAPTER33

  CHAPTER34

  CHAPTER35

  CHAPTER36

  CHAPTER37

  CHAPTER38

  CHAPTER39Unsteadily

  Thank you for reading this novel. I hope you found it an enjoyable read. It would be great if you cou...

  Other titles by this author:AlloriaLinks:

  Fuel to the Fire Trilogy:Links: