Sticks and Stones

by Jo Jakeman

  I steadied my breathing. Listened. Footsteps above my head. At least he was still in the house and we knew where he was.

  Naomi’s white top was ripped and there was dried black blood on her lips. I touched her shoulder and she flinched, before crossing her free hand across her body and placing it on top of mine and giving it a squeeze.

  Such a good idea to lock him up, and yet so idiotic. I thought it would subdue him, show him who was boss and, in a way, I suppose it had. It wasn’t me.

  Ruby was on the floor leaning against the radiator, a sad, bitter smile on her face.

  She had made me pity Phillip, and believe that I was the one being cruel. She had made me doubt what I knew to be true. Her I-see-the-best-in-everyone attitude didn’t make her better than me, it just made her more gullible. I shook my head at her and looked away. Looked around. Looked up. Down. Looking for a way.

  I stood up quickly, desperate to find a way out. My head was swimming.

  ‘Are you all right?’ asked Ruby.

  The darkness was spreading like ink on a pristine white table-cloth. The floor swayed and dropped from underneath me. I gripped the wall. It was the only thing stopping me from falling.

  Danger was breathing down my neck. I could hear it like a gentle tide over a pebbled beach. I could smell it, and it caught in the back of my throat. I tried to cough, but the cough turned into a choke. I couldn’t breathe. Nothing. I pulled at my jumper, trying to let the oxygen in. There was no air in the room. I was suffocating. I pushed at the walls, hoping for a loose brick or a covered window, even though I knew there to be none.

  I blinked to clear my vision, but the figures before me blurred and danced away as I tried to make sense of them. The room was full of darkness and low ceilings. Pain in my nose, in my ribs, in my stomach. I bent over the unmade bed and groaned. The sickness was coming and I didn’t want it. It would stop me from getting what little air there was in the room.

  ‘Imogen? Sit down. Can you take some deep breaths for me? Nice and slowly. Listen to my voice. In, two, three, four, out, two, three, four, in, two, three, four …’

  I tried to do as Ruby said, but I could only grab at the air in short gasps. I had to get out, and I had to get to Alistair before Phillip did. He would take him away because he knew it was the only way to hurt me.

  I could have let myself go, given in to the panic and despair, but I knew if I was going to get out of here I had to keep my mind clear and get the others to help me.

  Naomi’s eyes skated between curious and fearful. I tried to speak, but my mouth was dry and my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth. My head throbbed and I coughed, to check that I could still make a sound. My entire face hurt. As I mentally travelled down the length of my body I found that every inch of me ached to some degree. I had little control over my mind. Simple words were difficult to grasp. All I knew was that I had to get out.

  ‘Phillip’s still here,’ I said. ‘Which means he’s not worked out where Alistair is yet.’

  Despite the pain, I shook my head to reset it. On and off. But I was struggling to think clearly or form a plan. There were a series of images and feelings, but they were out of order, a dropped deck of cards waiting to be shuffled.

  ‘Listen,’ I said quietly. ‘I’m sorry about this. It’s my fault we’ve ended up down here; and that he … hurt you both. I never thought he’d go this far. If I hadn’t …’

  ‘It’s not just you.’ Naomi was mumbling through swollen lips, which she was doing her best not to move. ‘I bought into that crap about the cancer.’

  ‘You weren’t to know,’ I said. ‘Why would you suspect him of lying about it?’

  ‘You did,’ she replied.

  And yet I’d let myself be convinced.

  Ruby coughed, ‘If anyone should say “sorry”, it’s me. I didn’t believe what you were telling me upstairs. I … I – er – I’ve never seen him react like this. Not physically. He has a temper, I know that much, but I’ve never … He only raised his hand to me once and it was more of a push than a hit. But I’ve seen how he likes to punish people who’ve hurt him. I blame his parents, of course. His mother was a piece of work. That woman knew how to hold a grudge.’

  I wanted to shake her for blaming anyone but Phillip, but in her own way I knew Ruby was trying to make amends.

  ‘He adored his mum,’ I said.

  ‘She has a lot to answer for,’ Ruby continued. ‘The woman breast-fed him until he was five. Used to tell him he was better than everyone else. Cleverer, better-looking … But she never put store in kindness or helping others, the way that other mothers would. It hit him hard when she died. He proposed to me just afterwards. It wasn’t lost on me that he was replacing her with me, an older woman. But I did so love him. And don’t get me started on his dad. Never met him, of course, he died when Pip was young. What was he? Ten or eleven maybe? There were always rumours that he wasn’t Pip’s real dad, and that’s why he was so harsh on him. I’ve always tried to bear that in mind, you know? When he’s behaving badly, I try and take into account that his childhood wasn’t all it should have been, and he was never given the tools the rest of us were. But still … Pip’s not the only one who had it tough.’ She sighed. ‘Perhaps I’ve excused too much. Maybe I am like his mother after all.’

  I closed my eyes as Ruby spoke. Her voice was low and smooth, with a melodic lilt towards the end of each sentence as if, way back, she’d spent time in Wales.

  I was back on my feet, checking the camping equipment, the discarded clothes, the boxes of things with no homes. There had to be something I could use on Phillip when he came back.

  ‘It’s all right sitting here now, covered with blood, saying he’s a bad person, but why did neither of you warn me or something?’ Naomi asked.

  ‘I don’t know. I suppose I suspected it was just me. Something between Phillip and me that was toxic. That maybe I provoked it? And what would I have said anyway? That he was mean to me and called me names?’ I said. ‘It wasn’t until I saw the way you reacted when I spilled my tea that I began to suspect he was abusing you too. I wondered about saying something at the time, but you didn’t make it easy for me.’

  ‘You don’t seem the type to hold your tongue,’ she said.

  ‘You know, as well as I do, that not every victim of domestic abuse is timid and quiet. For every abuser who looks like butter wouldn’t melt, there’s a woman with a smile painted on her face. God forbid the neighbours should find out.’

  Naomi nodded.

  ‘He never abused me,’ said Ruby. ‘He was no saint, but …’

  Perhaps she was telling the truth, but I suspected she just wasn’t ready to admit it to herself.

  ‘Do you hate me?’ Naomi asked me.

  I stopped searching through boxes. I don’t know what I’d expected to find, but it wasn’t there. ‘Why would I hate you?’

  ‘Me and Phil.’

  I considered her question. Two weeks ago I would have said ‘yes’ without missing a beat, but now I had to reconsider my feelings.

  ‘I used to. I knew he had affairs, but you were the one he couldn’t walk away from, I suppose. If I stop and think about it, I was jealous. Which is ridiculous because I wanted shot of him. Him leaving me was … humiliating. It made me look like I was the one to blame. And the fact that he left me for a younger woman made me look undesirable too. Old. God, if I couldn’t even keep a man like Phillip …’

  ‘That’s not what other people think,’ said Naomi.

  ‘Well, it’s how I felt at the time. No one knows about the years of abuse that have led to that point, or that you’re actually better off without him. And then when he says it’s your fault because you’ve had depression …’

  Naomi nodded.

  ‘The things he said I’d done – they were half-right. There was just enough truth in them to sound plausible. I couldn’t argue with the fact that I’d had serious depression after I lost the baby. But that wasn’t the reason our marriage b
roke down.’

  I picked up a fractured leg from the broken table. It was light, probably wouldn’t do much damage.

  Naomi said, ‘I didn’t know you’d lost a baby.’

  I stopped studying the wood and stared at Naomi.

  No. Why would she know? It wasn’t something I would have told her, but wouldn’t Phillip have mentioned it? Of course not. It didn’t mean anything to him.

  ‘Yes,’ I said quietly. ‘At twenty weeks. There was a car accident.’

  I looked over at Ruby, but she had her eyes closed.

  ‘That’s hard,’ Naomi said. ‘I was pregnant once. Had an abortion, though. Some days I regret it, some days I don’t. I know it’s not the same, but it were hard. Really hard – and that were my choice. Can’t imagine how difficult it must’ve been for you. Shit!’

  I coughed to clear my discomfort rather than my throat.

  ‘Your baby,’ I began. ‘Was it Phillip’s?’

  ‘No. It were when I was with a foster family. You know, the posh teenage son. They kicked me out soon after. No. Phil had a vasectomy, didn’t he?’

  I was still digesting the fact that her foster brother had got her pregnant, so it took me a moment to react to the news that Phillip had a vasectomy.

  ‘Vasectomy?’

  ‘I know what you’re going to say. People have vasectomy reversals all the time, but neither of us were that hung up on having kids, so …’

  ‘Actually I was going to ask, “When?” It seems like an oddly selfless act. I would have thought he’d rather you got your tubes tied, or something.’

  ‘Wasn’t it when you were pregnant with Alistair?’

  I shook my head. ‘No. Another lie.’

  ‘He told me that he knew he wouldn’t want any more kids, so had the snip before Alistair were born. Wait. Does that mean he could’ve got me pregnant?’

  I put my fingers to my temples, closed my eyes and swayed slightly. ‘Actually, Naomi, there’s a chance that he might have been telling the truth, for once.’

  I remembered him going to the doctors with a swelling. I was worried for him. He said it was a cyst and it could be taken out at the doctors’ surgery. Just a day-case, he said. I’d offered to go with him, but I was eight months pregnant and huge with discomfort. Phillip was a little tender afterwards, and I’d looked after him as well as I could.

  After I’d had Alistair, two things happened. One, I experienced love like I had never known possible. Holding that sweet baby in my arms was a moment so close to perfection that I never wanted it to end. Two, I felt my biological clock speeding up. No time like the present, I’d said. I refused the midwife’s recommendation to go on the pill. My family wasn’t yet complete, and Phillip had agreed. Hadn’t he?

  We tried and we tried, but each month I had to cope with disappointment. I shouldered the heavy burden of failure, while he shrugged his shoulders and said, ‘Not my fault.’ I badgered him for sex. I peed on sticks. I kept charts for my ovulation, and I took my temperature daily. I called him at work and said, ‘Now! Come home now. It’s time’, and Phillip went along with it. Of course he did.

  ‘God, I didn’t think I could hate him any more than I already do,’ I said.

  ‘You and me both.’

  ‘The things I put up with. I was so desperate for another baby that I slept with him, even though I knew he was going with other women. You should have seen some of the tramps he … Oh, no offence.’

  ‘None taken, until you said “no offence”.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  I pulled the air into my chest. My heart was beginning to hammer again, but I slowed my breathing and put my cool hand across my hot forehead.

  I looked over at Ruby. Her smile was beginning to worry me. Her eyes were glazed and she looked like she was bordering on mania. She was shaking her head, over and over, as if she couldn’t take in what she was hearing.

  There was a bang at the top of the cellar steps, the sound of a key in the lock.

  I hid the table leg behind my back and picked up Ruby’s scarf, balling it behind my back, pretending I was still tied up. Phillip came lightly down the stairs, spring-stepped, smug, with my mobile phone in his hand.

  ‘How are we, ladies?’

  ‘Pip,’ said Ruby. ‘You’re not thinking straight. You’re ill. It’s—’

  He interrupted her. ‘Weren’t you listening? There is no cancer.’

  Ruby was shaking her head. She was struggling to come to terms with what was happening. I felt sorry for her in that moment. At least when people treated me badly and lied to me, I was half-expecting it. Ruby had spent so long believing the best of people that, now she’d applied the brakes, she was skidding out of control.

  ‘No, I know. But this isn’t like y—’ Ruby looked at me and I saw her realisation that Phillip was like this, to me at least. ‘This behaviour isn’t normal, Pip. You need some help. Let me help you. Whatever you do, don’t make things worse.’

  He stepped past her, ignoring her pleas. ‘Imogen,’ he said leaning against the wall at the bottom of the step. I slowly took both ends of the scarf in my hands, imagining tying them around his neck. ‘… you need to come up with a better code for your phone. Alistair’s birthday? Really?’ He shook his head. ‘You make this too easy for me. But the job’s done. I’ve sent a text to your mother saying she’s not invited to Sunday lunch tomorrow, because of your stomach bug. I hope you don’t mind, but I went into quite graphic detail. And the other one to Rachel.’

  My skin tightened at the mention of her name. Had he guessed that Alistair was with her?

  ‘I’ve asked her to tell work that you won’t be in on Monday. Same stomach bug, obviously. Have I missed anyone? And as for you two,’ he said looking from Naomi to Ruby. ‘There’s no one, is there? No friends; no work in your case, Nay; and well, you, Ruby – you’re the boss, aren’t you? No one’s going to begrudge you taking a day or two off work. And the great thing about this is that even if someone did miss you, they wouldn’t think to look here for you, would they?’

  ‘You can’t keep us down here for ever. Think about what you’re doing,’ I said.

  ‘Just treating you the same way as you did me. “Do unto others …” Isn’t that the saying? Can’t have you getting to Alistair before me.’

  ‘You won’t get away with this,’ Naomi said. ‘There’s no covering this up.’

  The phone in Phillip’s hand buzzed. He glanced at it casually. His eyes widened and he smiled.

  ‘Well, would you looky here? Heard back from Rachel wanting to know if that means she should keep Alistair for the whole weekend?’

  ‘Don’t, Phillip,’ I warned.

  ‘Don’t what?’ he answered.

  He looked down at me with a smirk.

  ‘So, he’s not with a school friend then? Well played, Imogen, I didn’t know you had it in you.’

  He wasn’t close enough for me to be able to get the scarf around his neck or attack him with the table leg. Without Naomi free to back me up, there was no way I could over-power him. My only hope was to reason with him.

  ‘Wait. I can explain,’ I said.

  ‘I’d better go get him. Any message?’

  ‘Wait! She won’t give him to you. She knows what you’re like. Let me come with you.’

  ‘Fair point. And one I’m grateful to you for raising. I’d better text her back.’

  His eyes were on the screen and he spoke out loud as his thumb and forefinger picked out the letters. ‘No, ta, Rach. You do call her “Rach”, don’t you? I want this to sound genuine. No, ta, Rach. Phil on way 2 yours 2 pick him up.’

  I shifted across the bed towards him. My fingers groped for the piece of wood. I needed to get closer.

  ‘Don’t do this.’

  He continued tapping the screen. ‘He’ll be with u in 10 mins. Have Alistair ready. Kiss. Kiss. There. Done.’ He looked me straight in the eye. ‘Oh, and stay where you are. I know that you’ve untied yourself. You really don’t want
me to go on a road trip with our son in a foul mood, do you? You wouldn’t want me to lose my temper with him.’

  ‘Don’t you dare take him! I will go to the police and I will track you down.’

  He held my gaze for a moment longer, before laughing.

  ‘Where was that spirit when we were together? I’m going to take some credit for giving you a backbone at last. No need to thank me. It’s been a pleasure.’

  He turned and ran up the stairs two at a time. I scrambled after him. By the time I’d reached the bottom he’d already shut the door. Halfway up, I heard the key turn in the lock. He was in a rush and didn’t bother sliding the bolt across the door. Why would he? The door was locked, and no one knew where we were. At the top of the stairs I threw myself into the door, turning the handle even though I knew it wouldn’t budge.

  ‘Phillip!’ I shouted. ‘Don’t you dare touch my son! Let me out!’

  There was silence.

  ‘Phillip!’

  I kicked the door and threw my shoulder into it. Though it buckled with the effort, it wouldn’t open. I tried looking through the keyhole, but the key was still in the lock and I couldn’t see anything. At least, I comforted myself, if someone did come into the house, they’d be able to unlock the door. The fact that he hadn’t taken the key with him was our first stroke of luck.

  I pulled my hand back and unleashed as much force as I could against the door. It bowed, but didn’t give. Again. Again. I kicked at it with my heels, I threw my shoulder into it. My body screamed out in agony, but I wouldn’t give up.

  ‘Shit!’

  Naomi hopped to the bottom of the steps, balancing on one leg with her free hand against the wall to steady herself. ‘What can I do?’ she asked.

  Ruby was pulling at the radiator, but it had managed to contain Phillip, so it was unlikely to budge.

  ‘Can you get up the stairs?’ I asked.

  ‘I can try.’ Naomi started up the steps.

  She got halfway up, grunting with exertion, then turned and sat down, changing tactics and pushing herself up one step at a time.