Artifact

by Bowes, K T

  Ed battled valiantly to get the cord over her head and snagged tendrils of tangled hair in his gallantry. Finally, the key was in his hand and slipped easily into the well-oiled lock. He stood back politely to allow Jayden to pass and that was when she saw the delicate bouquet resting on the bottom step. Ed must have stepped over them to get to the door. A bunch of white lilies poked closed heads from a florist’s wrapper, bobbing their creamy bonnets in the breeze from the street. They couldn’t have been there long. Otherwise someone would have stolen them for sure.

  Jayden stared down at them in terror, knowing instinctively what they meant, the high colour from the emotion and the walk leaving her face instantly. Ed looked at her curiously and bent to retrieve them for her, wondering if his errant brother had sent them. Jayden pushed him away from them, gasping as her elbow connected with the rock hard surface of the man’s chest and she kicked the delicate blooms out into the centre of the walkway. Ed stood poleaxed as Jayden moved painfully up the front steps to deactivate the burglar alarm at the keypad in the downstairs hallway, watching as she sat on the bottom step to remove her boots and rub at the painful soles of her feet with her right hand. Glancing over his shoulder at the broken bouquet littering the Lincoln street, Ed ventured slowly up the steps and over the threshold like a watchful bird which cautiously approaches the bread-laden hand, ever aware of the danger.

  Jayden swiped her hand across her eyes and then used the cuff of her coat to wipe her nose while Ed made his decision and entered the hallway more boldly, shutting the front door, locking it and kicking off his smart, black work shoes. He held the threaded key out to her, observing her in an eerie glow from a nightlight which was plugged into a socket at floor level, noting how she winced with pain as she reached up to take it from him.

  Wordlessly Ed helped the beautiful, dishevelled woman up from the step and pushed her in front of him. Lamps were already on upstairs casting a serene, romantic pall over the open space. It smelled of flowers from an air freshener on top of a kitchen cupboard, vanilla and jasmine, but not a hint of lily. In the light, he could see the grey, wet stain at the back of her long coat where she had fallen and Jayden dropped it from her shoulders and left it where it lay, rumpled and empty on the carpet. She gripped at her left elbow which looked swollen already through her blouse and her face was a mask of pain and other emotions, too complex for Ed to read.

  Inappropriate, inappropriate, inappropriate, the sensible mantra screamed inside his clerical head as he helped her off with her blouse, concentrating on the sickening bruise that surrounded her funny bone and had already begun to stretch down her arm. He found a packet of frozen peas in the room behind the kitchen, tied at the top with a little metal tag. He brought them back to her and fixed them around her elbow with a tea towel, wincing at the hiss of pain that escaped her lips at the icy contact, or was it at the touch of his fingers perhaps?

  Ed found the bottle of wine which she had drunk from days ago when they had shared dinner together, untouched since. The cupboards bore no other alcohol, but the pantry yielded a partially used bottle of cooking sherry. He poured a decent glug into a glass for Jayden and took it to her, amused by the face she pulled as she downed it like a child being given nasty cough medicine. “It might just take the edge off the pain.”

  Ed laid the glass on the dining table and reached out towards her. She looked so vulnerable and childlike, standing in the huge room in her pink bra and work skirt, her discarded blouse and coat at her feet. The grotesque scar just under her ribs contrasted starkly with the silk of her flesh, angry and livid in its six inch awfulness. Ed wanted to cover her up, to protect her, surprised at the strength of feeling in his heart for her. In the absence of anything close to hand, he put his arms around her and pulled her into his body, his black clerical shirt feeling too rough to be permitted to nestle against her creamy soft skin.

  It was inevitable that the proximity of two full blooded heterosexuals with a mutual attraction would lead to first one kiss and then another. Ed melted under the helpless naivety of Jayden’s tearful kisses, feeling the wetness of her cheeks as she responded to him with hesitation and then desire. Raff’s earlier kiss and subsequent accusation had released a beast within Jayden; a bound and restrained lover that did not want to be put back into its box and it both frightened and exhilarated her. In truth, she had thought it killed stone dead by the rapist’s hateful ministrations in exchange for her brother’s last fix and spent the intervening years peppering soil over its burial ground, unaware that it was not dead but dormant and very much alive.

  Jayden’s suppressed feelings for Ed blossomed as dynamic and hopeful as a schoolgirl crush and the Lily part of her bloomed like her discarded bouquet on the street, currently being rescued by a delighted pedestrian.

  Chapter 13

  Ed had started it and so it was right that he should end it. Reluctantly and long after he had known that he should, he pulled away from Jayden’s welcoming lips and with a sigh of regret, turned away from her to collect himself. Jayden faltered helplessly, realisation dawning as she stood vulnerable and naked in her bra and skirt by the dining table. The ugly spectre of Abandonment laughed at her from the corner of the room, opening its filthy maw and leaking her destruction for the second time in her life. “This is wrong on so many counts,” Ed struggled to meet her clear, sparkling eyes.

  Jayden’s face, which only moments ago had been tender, yielding and responsive, closed with a snap in front of him, locking him out with shades of rejection and hatred. It seared his desire with a jagged, defender’s blade and left him feeling breathless and empty even though she had said nothing.

  Ed strode over to the stairwell feeling a mixture of clown and torturer. He shut the front door gently after him, worrying about whether Jayden would come to lock it, but hearing the snap of the lock and the drawing of bolts as she must have followed him down the long staircase.

  Jayden ran back upstairs, jolting her elbow with each step taken, forcing her up the next staircase to vomit spectacularly in the toilet of her ensuite. The sickness stayed with her for most of the night, releasing her only to lie on the bathroom floor in a painful ball for a few hours. The pain was physical, manifested in dry retching and stomach tearing heaves but it was also emotional. The awakened seventeen year old Lily did not like the severe, guarded woman she had become and was desperately trying to break free from Jayden’s enforced imprisonment of her. But out with her leaked a whole world of trouble, formerly dealt with and locked safely away. With Lily came the memory of Wes’ dirty hands on her young body, his ruthless enjoyment of her against her will and the muffled screams which bounced off his sweaty collar bone. And the face of her daddy as he had burst in to save her, his final look of compassion and dismay for his daughter only, as Wes’ blade slid into the generous, loving man who had named her, mentored her and died for her.

  At five in the morning when the retching finally stopped and she felt safe enough to leave the bathroom, Jayden sat in her lounge with a cream woollen throw wrapped around her bare shoulders. A notepad rested on the sofa cushion next to her and her shaking right hand gripped a blue biro. The grinding of the bones in her left arm had long since told her that it was broken and the blue and purple hues had leaked through onto both sides of the joint. She knew that she needed to get it fixed, but she had to do this first.

  Treating herself as she would any other client seeking to recover from a trauma such as rape and the cruel betrayal of a cherished sibling, she made notes, asked rational questions and dealt with the tears. None of this was new. Jayden had been over this ground enough to know it intimately, but she pushed herself anyway, looking for that elusive key which would unlock the final door to her release. The last time she had done this had been recently with Rita in attendance, congratulating herself that she was a finished work of art, a success story in the making, the perfect example of recovery. She had slammed the trunk lid even harder on Lily’s memory, bisecting herself deliberately
because deep down; Jayden had known that it wasn’t over, it wasn’t finished and she wasn’t recovered. On top of Lily’s grave, deep within her soul Jayden had piled the lies, versing them until she was sure that they had become a part of her original plan, I do not want a relationship, I do not need a partner, I am better off alone. The only success was that she had begun to believe her own lies which fed the excitement of the demons who rode her mercilessly into splendid isolation.

  It was perhaps ironic that the kiss of a gay friend; himself confused about his sexuality and life path, had caused the trunk lock to pop. But it was Ed, his deep, aroused need for her which had burst open the lid, shifted the soil and left this awful gaping void. Jayden knew that she had two choices; she either stuffed it all back inside and returned to the comfortable, safe, empty life that she had forged for herself or she looked deeper into the chasm and finally faced what was there.

  Jayden believed in God. She knew that he was there with her now and that he had been with her on that awful day. She understood none of it and reasoning and pleading the ‘why’ question had got her nowhere, but she trusted him now to take her out of the despairing pit of desolation because he always had before. The demons of her making could sit on her shoulder and knead at her head with their knotty fists, but they could not possess her. Because of God she was free from that threat, but boy, they could make her life a living hell if she let them continue to ride her shoulders like a fairground attraction.

  With a deep, ragged breath, she drew the five decreasing circles, one inside the other like Russian dolls and began right back in the beginning. It was a bit like making a jigsaw, fitting together the pre-cut shapes blindly without knowing what the final scene was meant to be. Jayden forged her way through them all, her physical circle, her emotional circle, her volitional circle which contained her will, her drive and the force of her being. She halted for a while there, trying to work out how her life goals may have skewed themselves, reassigning other, more realistic ones and putting a line through those she no longer wished to pursue. She scrubbed out the sentence to stay safe yet again, deciding once and for all to leave that to a higher power altogether, having failed miserably on her own account. It was where she usually stopped, knowing that she would fail and be back chanting the wrong tape again soon but for once she pressed on further, trespassing deeper into the locked cellar of her heart.

  Her rational circle gave her the most trouble, a myriad of conflicting mental tapes and sentences playing on repeat in her brain, worthless and contradictory under examination. She crossed them out and replaced them with only one in their place; I am loved, adding underneath it, a list which comprised of her mother’s name, her aunt’s and her God’s. Her spiritual circle came last, trisected by the need for every human being to feel significance, self-worth and security. And there she found the key.

  She had probably always stopped short because she had inwardly known exactly where it would be, nestling under the ashes of her childhood, waiting to be collected.

  In her mind’s eye, she reached out for the glittering gold of its smooth surface even as her fingers twitched in the real world above. It was comfortingly old and worn, drawing respect for the great and cumbersome lock which it could bend to its will. It would never have been effective held there along with the detritus of broken dreams, disappointment and dented pride. It was not possible to create any of those three fundamental human requirements for oneself. Significance, self-worth and security were God-given and Jayden had been on a hiding to nothing right from the start. She had helped hundreds of people find their own keys over five years of counselling, celebrating with each one with generosity and excitement as they unlocked their dungeons and went on to live without her. She had always dropped them off at the door, unwilling to share the last part of their journey because she couldn’t go where she had never been herself. Wholeness.

  Chapter 14

  It was not easy to shower one-handed or get dressed again either, but somehow Jayden managed it. Her handbag at Raff’s house contained her mobile phone and she was forced to use the old one with hardly any credit to call a taxi.

  With damp hair shoved messily into a ponytail and no makeup on her face, Jayden went to sit at the Lincoln County Hospital Accident and Emergency Department for a few hours. It was early enough not to be too crowded and she was eventually seen, triaged, x-rayed and encased in plaster. The result was a small fracture of the bone at the end of her forearm, apparently called the olecranon. The fracture appeared to have stayed in line and Jayden was relieved that it would not require surgery. She calmly accepted the pain killers offered to her and dialled another taxi from the hospital lobby.

  The time in the waiting room had been productive. Undisturbed by the other patients around her, the room had dulled to a low hum of activity and Jayden had done some more much-needed processing of herself and her feelings. She recognised that part of her reluctance to fully deal with her inner circle had been because unforgiveness stained the walls of it like a submerged cave continually attacked by the ocean. She simply hadn’t wanted to see. Unsure at that moment quite what she could do about its presence, Jayden took it one step at a time and felt content that at least now, she had been reminded yet again that it was there and its hold on her psyche would be short lived at best. She was finally going to do something about it.

  The taxi driver dropped her off on Saltergate, kindly getting out of the vehicle to help her out, with her cast and sling hindering progress greatly. “Thank you,” Jayden was grateful and walked down to her flat, stopping in the centre of the thronging mass of bustling city-goers in the mid-morning rush to observe the little knot of male figures at her front door hammering on the wood.

  I am not afraid, the tape played robustly in her head and she hastened over to the men, her face a look of worried expectance.

  They turned as one to look at her, two uniformed officers and two in smart suits. The policemen in uniform looked like schoolboys, their adult clothes, a mark of authority clanging awkwardly with their acne and the innocence in their faces. But the plain clothed cops were world weary, although polite. One was in his late fifties, married judging by the gold band on his ring finger, but the other was Jayden’s age, blonde and good looking. Unusual brown eyes smiled playfully out of a clear skinned face, eclipsing the other officers in his model’s gaze. He was hot and he knew it.

  The frown on Jayden’s face and her non-plussed look revealed instantly that she had no idea why they were there. “Is it my mother?” she asked the younger detective, walking up close to him even as she fidgeted with the irritating sling.

  He shook his head, no. “Jayden Mitchell?” he asked her, equally softly and as she looked up at his taller frame, she was close enough to see the light flecks in his hazel eyes. She nodded.

  The older detective flashed a warrant card, depicting a younger and much fitter man whilst indicating his head towards the door and Jayden retrieved the key on its leather thread from the right front pocket of her jeans. Unfortunately, the action caused her wallet to fall from her fleece pocket, spewing coins from the taxi fare all over the pavement. It was an old one that she had dug out from the bottom of a drawer, her proper one being stuck up in her handbag in Raff’s kitchen, another casualty of her unpremeditated flight.

  Passers-by stopped to watch the two uniformed officers grovel around on the wet concrete for money, while a burly detective opened a door that most of them had never noticed before. The motley crew proceeded into the flat and up the stairs, juggling around each other in the narrow hallway while Jayden re-locked the front door behind them. Eventually, she sent the policemen ahead of her to her living room while she removed her shoes and rued the fact that none of them gave her the same courtesy. Perhaps bare feet or holey socks were not conducive to successful interrogation.

  The uniformed officers milled around the room looking at things without touching, while the detectives stood and watched her. Jayden felt hot and wanted to get her fle
ece off, made difficult by the fact that the nurse had helpfully put the sling on over the top of her clothing. In the end, she walked to the kitchen and flicked the already full kettle on. Nobody said anything and irritation splashed Jayden’s pale cheeks with spots of pink. If it wasn’t her mother then she really had no other concerns. It wouldn’t have taken four cops to tell her that her brother was out of prison, which she already knew and they would have called her Lily and not Jayden, if that were their purpose.

  The reason that her wallet had fallen so easily from her pocket became obvious as Jayden reached in and pulled out a bottle of tiny white tablets and a large cream box of yet more drugs. She tried to undo the bottle, desperate for a hit of the codeine inside which promised to still the throbbing in her elbow and resorted to using her teeth.

  The blonde detective came over and held out his hand for it, reading the label before easily dislodging the smooth lid. “Is that recent?” he asked her, nodding towards the sling. Jayden’s smile held pain and exhaustion, a wretched, sleepless night followed by a morning of discomfort.

  “I was walking back from a friend’s house last night in the rain. I slipped over on the cobbles uphill. I kept ice on it last night, but it was such agony this morning that I got a taxi up to the hospital to get it checked out. It’s broken.” She sighed ruefully, “Now I’m too hot.”

  Jayden tugged at the sling and then gave up, surprised when the policeman ventured around the counter and lifted the knot up and over her head. The nurse had somehow left her cast out of the fleece, but then got it trapped under the sling at the neck. Jayden gratefully let the sling fall into the policeman’s hands and shrugged her fleece off, noticing with horror that her coat and blouse were still on the floor by the table, where Ed had left them the night before. A flush of embarrassment lit her face and she looked away, lest the astute detective read anything in her expression.