by Lucy Wild
In a way it was lucky the shop assistant had appeared when she did. Otherwise I had no doubt I’d have gone too far, I’d have fallen for her, something that could only end in pain for both of us.
It was jarring enough to be experiencing emotions again for the first time in years. All I’d known for a very long time was aggression and emptiness. But she’d shown me what it felt like to be happy, a feeling I’d long forgotten.
When was I last happy? I remembered when Sarah told me she was pregnant. That was a perfect moment, one that allowed me to gloss over the warning signs that had so regularly flared during our relationship. When you’re a doorman for a dodgy bar, you should know that the women who come in aren’t going to be marriage material. She’d seemed different though. At first.
Watching her belly swell, I had become utterly entranced by the idea of becoming a father, a feeling I hadn’t expected, not after my own childhood experiences. But the baby came out without a hitch and I was suddenly the ultimate Dad, not even flinching at the birth, even as she cursed me with every name under the sun. She was beautiful too, the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.
I blamed myself for what happened. I had a hell of a long time in prison to mull over everything, long enough to decide I should have spotted it sooner. I should have questioned Sarah about the bruises that kept appearing on Abbey’s pudgy little legs, the way she seemed only to scream when she knew I was going out to work and leaving the two of them alone.
“She’s just a Daddy’s girl,” Sarah had said in that reassuring voice of hers, placating me so many times that I felt sure I was wrong. I was suspicious but she was cunning, far more cunning than me. I’ll never understand why she did it, what made her mind snap and take out all her anger on our perfect, angelic, little baby girl.
It wasn’t like I hadn’t been used to lies before. Years earlier, when I’d been growing up, I’d had a full education in the lies people tell, the darkness that lurks in the human mind.
I sat on the train with my eyes tightly shut as a memory came back to me, one that I’d kept buried for so long, I was surprised it was still there. Maybe it had always been there, just waiting for me to weaken long enough to come back and try and take over my psyche.
I was at school getting picked up for the state of my clothes. Smelly skin, smelly clothes. Not enough to warrant any of the teachers giving a toss but enough to warrant being the butt of the other kids my age. I was in the middle of a fight as I had been so many times before. I learned a lot about fighting in that school, not much else. I didn’t care if I got sent home. If I did, I’d get to try and protect my mother from my father’s drunken attacks.
I was sent home that day, the memory becoming clearer the longer my thoughts fixed on it. I was dragged away from four other boys and told that I’d started it, that I was out of control. I was a disgrace, a violent thug who would never amount to anything.
I remembered walking home with my ear still ringing from the punch that had landed so hard on it, the one that meant I had to teach a lesson to the shit who’d done it to me.
I walked into the house expecting to hear them shouting at each other but instead there was silence. My mother wasn’t there. My father was though, sat in his stained armchair, a half full glass in his hand. “What have you done now?” he asked, his voice slurred.
“Where’s mum?”
“She’s gone,” he said, leaning back and draining the glass. “That’s what women do, Jakey. It’s your fault, you know? Everything was fine until you came along.”
He continued to rant but I’d stopped listening. Mum had gone? It didn’t seem possible. I’d tried to persuade her to leave so many times, making her promise she’d take me with her when she went, telling her I’d protect her. And then she left without me.
He sat getting drunker while I went into my bedroom, the smell of damp and mould overpowering my nostrils. Even as an adult, I only had to smell damp to be back there, miserable and cold all over again. I found the note she’d left for me, the words seared into my soul. I could remember it perfectly. ‘I’m sorry for not taking you with me,’ she’d written. ‘But I don’t want you to see what I’m going to do. I love you, Jakey. I’m sorry.’
I jolted upright, opening my eyes to find Isabel smiling across at me. “You were asleep,” she said. “You were dreaming.”
I looked back at her with an overwhelming sadness passing through me. I had to let her go. Abbey had been hurt because of me, Sarah standing up in court and saying everything went wrong when the baby came along. My mother had been hurt because of me. I couldn’t let the same thing happen to Isabel, it would be too cruel.
I’d drop her off at Ben’s house then I’d work out what to do next. She was better off away from me, everyone was better off away from me. That’s why you don’t get involved, I told myself as she turned to look out of the window again. When you get involved, people get hurt.
TWENTY-SEVEN
ISABEL
Whatever the dream was, it was a bad one. It was the first time I’d seen him look scared, his face contorting even as his eyes remained tightly closed. I sat watching him, wondering what it was he was dreaming about.
The train journey seemed more and more pointless, the longer it went on. What was I going to say to Ben? I hadn’t seen him for years. A thought occurred to me as I sat there. What I needed wasn’t on the train. I could only get it once we got off.
He slept most of the way, only waking up once. I let him sleep, he clearly needed to. I sat thinking hard about my future. How long could I keep ahead of the men who were chasing after me? I’d almost been kidnapped twice, it was only Jake that had stopped them from succeeding.
How far was Tony willing to go to get me back? Did he really want someone to marry his son who might run away at the first opportunity? I could only guess that he thought he’d be able to persuade me to stay, using either money or threats.
Should I just give up and go back? But if I did, there was no guarantee Jake would be safe. It was awful to think of him getting hurt because of me. Would he have to go on the run? How would he survive?
One question after another ran through my mind until I felt dizzy. I didn’t want to have to come up with the answers myself. What I wanted was what had happened in the dressing room. I wanted someone to just tell me what to do, take all the questions away so I didn’t have to worry anymore.
I had to wake him up when we got to Gladwell, shaking his shoulder lightly. His eyes opened instantly. “What’s wrong?” he asked, sitting bolt upright and immediately alert.
“We’re here,” I said. “We’re at Gladwell.”
We stepped off the train and joined the other passengers heading for the exit. “Can I borrow a fiver?” I asked as we passed a newsagent’s in the main entrance hall. He gave it to me without asking why and I dipped into the shop, coming out a minute later with a carrier bag in my hand.
“Where does Ben live?” he asked, stepping out onto the pavement and waving his arm at a passing taxi.
“Samson Avenue,” I replied as a cab swung in to stop next to us.
“How far’s that?”
“No idea.”
“About five miles,” the taxi driver told us when we gave him the address.
Once we’d set off, I dug into the carrier bag and brought out my purchases.
“What’s that for?” Jake asked, nodding down at my lap.
“For me to write on,” I replied, opening the notebook. I spent the rest of the journey writing, crossing out and restarting countless times before finally getting somewhere just as the taxi stopped. “Samson Avenue,” he said. “That’ll be eleven fifty.”
Jake paid from his pool winnings before we climbed out. I looked up and down the tree lined street. “It’s number nine,” I said. “That way.”
We walked up the street and then I saw the house on the other side of the road. It felt so strange to think that Ben was inside there. “Wait there,” I said to Jake, pointing at
a bench. “I won’t be long.”
“I should go,” he replied. “You don’t need me here for this.”
“Please, just wait there for one minute.”
“Why?”
“Please.”
He nodded. “All right. One minute.”
He sat on the bench as I crossed the road. I stopped at the gate and looked up at the house for a moment, looking for any hint of movement inside. Once I was sure no one was watching, I unlatched the gate, walked through and then up to the front door. There was a doormat with ‘Welcome’ stamped on it in thick letters. I took the letter I’d written out of my pocket. Bending down, I wedged it under the edge of the doormat before muttering, “Bye, Ben,” and turning back to the street.
Jake was still waiting on the bench. “You didn’t knock,” he said when I reached him. “Why didn’t you knock?”
“I did what I had to do. Shall we go?”
“But what the hell, Izzy? Don’t you want to talk to him? Find out how he feels about you?”
“I’ve said goodbye,” I said, turning and beginning to walk down the street. “That’s enough. Are you coming?”
“You wrote him a letter didn’t you?” Jake shouted after me, getting to his feet. “What did you put in the letter?”
I was about to reply when a car suddenly screeched around the corner and raced towards us. “They’ve found us,” Jake said, running towards me. The car was already on us, the doors opening as it spun and stopped, separating me from Jake. A pair of hands reached out and grabbed me as I began to scream.
I was yanked into the car, my feet dragging on the ground as we were already moving away, Jake running after me. “Get off me!” I screamed as a pair of hands pulled me further in, far enough for the door to be slammed shut. A bag was shoved over my head, everything going dark as I felt something being tied round my wrists at the same time.
“You should have found a better bodyguard,” a man’s voice said, ignoring my writhing body as I fought to free myself from his grip. “Someone who knows that phones are trackable even if they’re switched off.”
“Fuck you,” I spat.
“Temper, temper,” the voice replied.
“Let me out!”
“Shut up or we’ll have to gag you.”
“Let me go!”
“Right,” he snapped. “Don’t say I didn’t give you a chance.”
The bag was lifted off my head just long enough for a strip of foul tasting cloth to be wrapped round my face, the largest part stuffed into my mouth. Then the bag descended again and my screams faded into muffled nothing when the man next to me elbowed me in the side. “Sit still or you’ll get hurt. It’d be awful if the blushing bride was covered in bruises on her wedding night.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
JAKE
“Jake,” Tony said, his voice making me all the angrier. It was the lightness of it, as if he thought it was funny that I was calling him. “I thought you might ring me. How are you?”
“Let her go,” I replied, my voice cold in comparison to his. I didn’t let my emotions out. They were locked down where they belonged. This was about work now. I had a job to do. Get her back. Everything else was extraneous.
“You let me down, Jake,” he said, the humour slipping briefly. “I trusted you to get this done.”
“Let her go.”
“You don’t get to give me orders, Jake, remember? I’m your boss, or have you forgotten?”
“Let her go.”
“You’ve lost it, it’s over. And I’ll tell you something for free, Jake. You better run far and fast if you want any chance of being alive this time next week.”
“I’m not running,” I said, gripping the phone so tightly it creaked in my hand.
He laughed, a barking laugh that dripped with sarcasm. “Is that supposed to frighten me, Jake?”
I hung up, dropping the phone to the floor and stamping on it, hard. A car was coming past me. Perfect.
I stepped in front of the car, looking directly at the driver as he hit the brakes, coming to a stop with the bumper just touching my legs. “Out,” I said, moving round to the side of the car and wrenching his door open.
“What the fuck?” he asked as I grabbed his shoulders, wrenching him out of the car.
“Out.”
He took one look at my face and realised it wasn’t worth the fight. With a click of his seatbelt, he was on the street, watching me climb in and put my foot to the floor, tearing off down the road. Tony didn’t know me, not really. I might have worked for him, I might have done some bad things for him, but that didn’t mean he knew me.
He didn’t know what I was capable of. If he did, he wouldn’t have laughed at me down the phone like that. He’d have been the one who was running.
Every doubt I’d ever had about my choices had gone. I’d been worried he might chase me for protecting Isabel. But now he’d taken her and all worries had gone except one. Could I get to her in time?
I threw the question away as I drove. It was time to concentrate, it was time to do what I did best, to get the job done. It wouldn’t be the first time I’d watched a man die. I had to get to him before he got to her. Once he found out what I’d done to her he’d know he could use her to punish me. He cared more about his reputation than about his son. He’d kill her to prove a point to me and I had to stop him before that happened.
As I drove, my mind went back to the last time I felt this cold. I was reading my mother’s note to me, tears rolling down my cheeks as I did so. My father appeared in the bedroom doorway, swaying slightly in place. “Stop being such a pussy,” he said. “She’s not worth crying over.”
“Fuck you,” I replied, my voice quiet.
“What did you say to me?”
“I said fuck you.”
“You little shit. Who the fuck do you think you are?”
He ran across the room, grabbing me and throwing me over to the doorway. As drunk as he was, he was still far stronger than me. I slammed into the door and slid down to the torn carpet. I staggered upright as he got hold of me again, his fist slamming into my stomach. I folded over and he shoved me down. “Man up,” he hissed. “Hit me back. For once in your life, hit me back.”
I tried, my arm swinging upwards. He caught it easily, twisting it back towards me until I screamed in pain. I slid backwards out onto the landing and he followed, still swaying. “You’re just like your mother,” he said, leaning down over me. “Weak.”
“Fuck you,” I said, watching as his face contorted with rage. He pulled his arm back as I scrambled away from him.
“Come here,” he screamed, running at me. His expression changed as he caught his foot on a hole in the carpet, flying forwards, his head thudding into the banister that separated the stairwell from the landing. He slumped straight down and blood began trickling out from where he’d struck his skull. It soaked into the carpet, a dark pool slowly spreading towards me.
I thought about calling an ambulance but only for the briefest of seconds. Then I sat cross legged and watched my father die. I didn’t feel a thing as I watched him. All emotions left me and I was just an observer, silently watching as his life ebbed away.
That was exactly how I felt as I drove. I was cold and empty, focussed on nothing but the job at hand. It made thinking easier. Back when my father had died, I was able to plan my lies, how I’d found him like that, how I’d tried to help him. All of that bullshit. It meant that when they interviewed me about it, I had the story sorted.
I ran through things as I drove, able to plan without being troubled by fear. She’d be taken to Tony’s house. He wouldn’t have it any other way. She’d be taken to his house and kept there until the wedding. He’d work on her to make sure she walked down the aisle without any fuss. His house.
My mind moved onto his house, the layout, where the guards were, where the cameras were. I could get in there easily enough. It would be a challenge, dealing with the guards and then him. But there was no qu
estion of not going through with it. I needed to make one stop on the way and then it would be on. He better be ready, because I sure as hell would be.
TWENTY-NINE
ISABEL
When the bag was pulled off my head, I found myself looking up at a white haired man who seemed utterly indifferent to my plight. He was picking something from under his fingernail, only giving me the slightest of glances before continuing with what he was doing. I tried to scream but the gag was still in my mouth and only muffled noises came out.
“You’ve given me a lot of trouble,” he said. “I hope you’re not going to give me any more.”
The entire journey, I expected Jake to save me. Even as I was dragged out of the car and manhandled into this room, I thought he’d save me. My hopes only started to fade when I looked around me. Besides the white haired man who was dragging over a chair to sit opposite me, there were two other men in suits, both with guns at hand as if they’d walked straight off the set of an action movie.
“I’m going to take that off you,” the man said, pointing at my gag. “And you’re not going to scream. Understood?”
I nodded slowly as he clicked his fingers. Someone behind me undid the gag and the cloth fell out of my mouth, leaving me to work my jaw up and down where it had rubbed so violently against me. “Who are you?” I asked, my voice hoarse, my throat dry.
“I’m going to be your father in law,” he replied. “Don’t you recognise me?”
“Tony Matteo?”
“The very same.”
“I’m not marrying Kingsley.”
“Oh, that is a shame. I suppose I’ll just have to have Jake killed then.”
“What? What are you talking about?”
“It’s perfectly simple. Either you put on the dress I’ve bought for you and accompany me to the church where I have a very friendly vicar happy to marry you and Kingsley or I have Jake Murdoch killed. You’ve got a thing for him, haven’t you?”