by June Taylor
It sent a shockwave through her now to consider the damage that Louie could inflict upon her current happiness.
I KNOW EVERYTHING KARIN.
Louie did know everything.
And, worryingly, so did Will.
Karin had met Will down by the River Aire under a bridge. She hadn’t long stepped off the train from Morecambe and had no idea where to go in this vast city of Leeds. Apart from her few remaining possessions, everything else had gone, robbed on the train while she slept. So she gravitated down onto the towpath, because that was where homeless people went.
The last half hour of daylight was shared with cyclists and the occasional dog walker, which made Karin feel reasonably safe and she even received a few coins from a couple of them. But when it grew darker and colder, the shadows turned into angry, threatening faces as they got closer, and the wind was raw and uncharitable, biting into her skin. Karin was glad of her parka with the enormous hood. Not only did it keep her warm it also covered her face, hiding her vulnerability as a young woman.
She had spotted a cluster of hunched-over shapes gathered round a small flame flickering up ahead under a bridge. When she got closer she realized it was a cigarette lighter and five men passing a soggy cigarette and a bottle between them. They seemed out of it, listless, and didn’t pay too much attention as she walked past. After, she heard a wolf whistle and some remark she didn’t quite catch. Quickening her step, she decided on the next bridge instead.
It stank just as much as the other one, piss and excrement mixed with cheap booze and cigarettes. But she found a place under the curve of the roof, where, with any luck she might be able to sleep undisturbed. Then she noticed an unoccupied pop-up tent taking a battering in the wind. Shivering and desperate, Karin thought it was worth the risk and crawled inside. She must have fallen asleep straight away, but woke to the sound of two men arguing outside.
It soon became obvious that the dispute was about her, as it began to escalate into a drunken brawl. And yet, listening harder, she was sure it was only the one voice she was actually hearing. So maybe he was having an argument with himself?
‘She’s in my fucking tent, she can pay me in fucking kind.’ Then it went quiet, followed by the same voice again: ‘I don’t know what you’re fucking saying to me you fucking retard but just back off or you’ll end up in that river and never get out again. Read. My. Lips.’ A dog started barking, and then another, growling and snarling. ‘Ah pipe down yer cunts,’ came the same voice once more. ‘You can fuck off the lot of you.’
The tent began to shake violently. Karin crawled out, holding her hood down over her face. She tried to make herself taller, stronger. Tightening her throat, she hoped her voice would sound deep enough. ‘Sorry, mate.’
The man laughed, holding onto his stomach. He was solid-looking and mean. Through his bursts of coughing and snorting he finally managed to say: ‘The bitch thinks she’s a wee boy now.’ More laughter. But then he stopped, stepped into her face and wrenched down the hood of her parka. ‘I’ve already had a look at your tits and pussy, love, so you can—’
He was knocked off his feet. Lying flat on the ground, hit from behind.
The dogs, she could just make out their shadows, started barking again. This time their barks sounded different, like they were pleased.
‘Shush now. It’s all over.’ That was an old man’s voice, and Karin saw a large hand patting the dogs’ heads. ‘He’ll look after you. Stick with him and you’ll be fine.’ She realized that the last comment was for her when the old man gave her a friendly nod. He settled the dogs and then lay down beside them. Karin had mistaken him for a heap of old rags before.
She felt a tap on the arm, jumped sideways and raised her fists.
The man was youngish, but hard to tell how old because of his long beard. He was using sign language and gesturing at her. It all made sense then, why she had only heard one voice in the conversation earlier. There was a girl at her boarding school who had been partially deaf. She had taught Karin a few signs, but Karin couldn’t remember any when she really needed them. At one time she had known the whole alphabet.
‘I really don’t understand,’ she had to confess, giving him an exaggerated shrug, throwing her arms out wide. ‘But, thank you.’
The sign for that one suddenly came back to her. Hand flat, fingertips on the chin, hand moves away from you to show gratitude.
‘And erm. My name’s Karin.’ She just about managed to spell out her name too. But struggled to decipher his, guessing wildly at the letters he was forming.
The old man piped up from his slumber again, and shouted, ‘His fucking name’s Will,’ then went back to sleep.
‘Hello, Will,’ she said, laughing. ‘Can you lip-read?’
Will nodded, and they shook hands. He led her away from the bridge to another area, through a secret canopy in the undergrowth to a place protected by tall trees and sheltered by the wall of a long, flat building. ‘Welcome to my bedroom,’ he said, or something similar. From his rucksack he produced a sleeping bag, and for himself a blanket. Karin tried to insist that it should be the other way around, but he was having none of it. They sat and chatted for a while and when she asked what he had said to her tormentor he made some rather dramatic signing. Something along the lines of: ‘If you touch her I will rip your head off and feed it to those dogs.’
They stuck together after that.
Will taught her to sign and she became reasonably fluent again, but resorted to notebook and pen if necessary. In many ways Will’s story was worse than her own: abandoned as a boy for being deaf and stupid, followed by a succession of children’s homes and foster carers, locked into a system which ultimately failed him and left him to fend for himself. A loner and an outsider, not a single qualification to his name, Will was the kindest, most sensitive, intelligent person she had ever met. Always carried a book around with him, Russian history and literature being his thing. A notepad and pen too.
They would swap stories over a bottle of cider, or anything else they could get their hands on to numb the pain of their existence; the rest of the time, trying to keep warm, find a bed for the night or get a hot meal.
Karin promised to repay Will one day for all the times when, if it hadn’t been for him, she would have been raped, drugged and possibly even murdered in those desperate months being kicked around the streets of Leeds. It was as though Will could smell danger, and even if they were separated for a time he always seemed to turn up whenever she was in trouble. This hideaway of his, Will’s bedroom, became their regular meeting place down by the river.
Will was a special person and a friend for life.
So in the same way that Mel had shown kindness to her, putting a roof over her head, giving her the chance to make a go of her life, now Karin wanted to do the same for Will.
The world was not all bad.
17
Karin
Getting the Room for a Night and Love an Empty schemes properly off the ground had been a tough battle. It made Karin think she did have some of her mother’s drive and tenacity after all.
The charity’s aim was to help homeless people get back into society, giving them skills for life. The Love an Empty scheme fit this vision perfectly. Doing up unoccupied homes, they had a guaranteed roof over their heads at the end of it. Will was to be one of the first to move in next week to the Ashby Road project. Karin had the Yorkshire Post and local TV networks lined up to fanfare its completion. Of course, she dreamed of national coverage so that her mother might see her being interviewed on BBC Breakfast and News at Ten, or on the front page of The Times and the Guardian, maybe hear her on Radio Four. Erase all those years of being an embarrassment and disappointment to her. Sometimes she just wished they could start again.
No matter. This was a big achievement all the same.
The area around Ashby Road had once been popular with students but now many of the houses were left empty and neglected as the student population h
ad gravitated towards the city centre into flats with en suites, gyms and on-site shops. For the past few weeks, Karin had been busy with garden maintenance, enjoying the run of long summer days.
Number sixty-eight was Will’s house, along with seven other residents. In a couple of days the scaffolding would be gone from these houses and they would look lived-in and loved again. Karin spotted a yellow hat visible between the metal bars on the first level, but not much activity going on. As she walked up the path, the site manager was coming towards her wiping the sweat off his face with his forearm. He greeted her with the news that two people had called in sick and he warned her they were in danger of not meeting their deadline. There was no sign of Will yet either, but Karin felt sure he would show up at some point.
Will had needed a lot of convincing at first that this wasn’t a trick or another half-hearted promise. He had had too many of those in his life. Karin assured him that this opportunity would never be taken away from him, as long as he worked hard. It was a chance to get qualifications, maybe go to university, with a well-paid job at the end of it. Like Karin, he finally had the option of a proper future. Will had been so keen throughout the project, helping out at every stage; the one person she could rely on to do whatever she asked.
‘I’ll get some agency help in,’ Karin said.
The site manager shook his head, saying it would be expensive and there were no special rates for charities. But Karin had funds now, which she could use on the quiet in circumstances such as this. Maybe she could pretend to be an anonymous donor, the secret millionaire boss. It gave her a warm feeling to be able to put some of this money she had received from her mother to a worthy cause.
A string of messages and missed calls greeted her when she extracted her phone from her pocket to make the necessary arrangements. All were from Louie. Ignoring those, Karin gave Mel a quick ring instead.
‘Mel, has Will come back to the house? He’s not shown up for work yet.’
Mel said he hadn’t, but offered to check his room just in case. He wasn’t in there either. As she was working from home today, Mel promised to let her know if he appeared.
When a message came pinging through, minutes later, Karin hoped it might be Mel to say that she had seen him.
But it was Louie:
SO PLEASED YOU CAN MAKE MY EXHIBITION.
YOUR OLD MAN JUST CONFIRMED!
SEE YOU THURSDAY.
LOU XX
Karin deleted it. There were far more pressing things to worry about right now.
There was very little she could do about Will for the time being. His refusal to have a mobile phone, despite offering to buy him one, meant that no one could reach him. And with their big launch only around the corner, Karin couldn’t afford to go chasing across Leeds to find him. She just had to hope that he would emerge at some point, which, knowing Will, he more than likely would.
He didn’t.
By six o’clock Karin had had enough. Her back ached from a day of pulling up weeds and chopping down overgrown shrubs. She packed up her things and promised to return tomorrow morning. Walking home via Woodhouse Ridge, a woodland shortcut that was once an Edwardian park, she wondered what she should do if Will wasn’t back at the house. She had asked a few people working on the project if they had seen him, made a few calls, but no one had. At what point was a homeless man – and technically he still was until next week – a missing person?
Despite feeling like she was being watched, her mind was still distracted. She didn’t notice the cyclist shooting past, bouncing her into the wall. The brightly-coloured graffiti sprayed along the old stonework was also a reminder that the beat and throb of the city was never far away. For all the beauty of the Ridge, it paid to stay alert at any time of day and to avoid the area at night. Karin continued on her way, quickening her pace due to a growing unease. Once or twice, a movement in the dense shrubbery caused her to turn, the sound of branches snapping, but as soon as silence was restored she was back in the tangle of her thoughts once more.
A tap on the shoulder soon pulled her out of them again.
She yelped, turning round quickly.
‘Will! Thank goodness, where have you been?’ She signed the words, as well as saying them, resisting the urge to throw her arms around him. There were boundaries not to be crossed these days. Even though Will was a good friend, he was part of her professional life now and for both their sakes it was better not to show any favouritism or affection, at least not in public. The Ridge was quiet, but there were always people about, hidden by trees in the maze of upper and lower paths.
‘Are you okay?’ she asked.
Clearly he wasn’t. He seemed agitated, more than she had ever known him to be.
Will signed something back to her. It came across as angry. ‘I’m leaving,’ he said.
‘What?’ She thought she hadn’t understood properly. Karin still wasn’t completely fluent in sign language but she could usually get the gist. ‘Did you really say leaving?’ She noticed his rucksack and the sleeping bag attached to it, dangling by its cord.
‘I wanted to say goodbye first, and to thank you for all you’ve done for me, Karin. You are a good person.’
‘But why? Your home is here, it’s almost finished. You can move in next week.’
‘Give my room to someone else.’
‘Will, I’m really struggling with this. You’ve worked tirelessly these past weeks. How can you throw all that away?’ Karin let out a despairing sigh. Will was one of the reasons she hadn’t given up on this project when things weren’t going to plan. He was always there, offering words of encouragement, making other members of the team work as hard as he was prepared to do. Do it for Karin, he would say. And then she would have to remind him that it was for himself. They were doing it for themselves, all of them. Helping each other.
Will started to sign again. ‘It’s time to move on. You’re getting married.’
‘Yes, but I’m not going anywhere. I’ll still be in Leeds and working for the charity. Come on, Will. We’re a good team, you and me.’
There was no denying it would be a challenge for someone like Will to live in a communal environment, but they had been over this many times. Karin knew this wasn’t the issue now.
‘It’s Mel, isn’t it?’
He gave her one of his looks, reaching into her thoughts, rifling through them. She was used to it, others found it unnerving. Will thrust his hands into the pockets of his overcoat; too warm for this weather really. Karin had bought it for him second-hand as a gift when she first started working properly for the charity. She noticed, though, that his pockets were weighed down for a life on the move. Will extracted a book, clearly looking for something else. Karin noticed a bottle and pulled it out.
‘You’re drinking again?’
Will snatched it from her, but in his frustration he put it back into his other pocket, clanking it against another bottle.
Karin removed them both, holding one in each hand. ‘Why, Will?’
Finally he found what he was looking for and held up a set of keys. Karin recognized them as the ones to their house in Headingley. They jingled together in a happy dance, as a dog might wag its tail to cheer up a sad owner. She returned the bottles of cheap whisky to his pockets and accepted the keys with painful reluctance, staring down at them in her palm. She nudged her thumb over the rainbow keyring that she had attached, so they wouldn’t get mixed up with her own set or with Mel’s. Karin could feel tears burning her eyes, doing her best to hold them back.
Will flicked his elbow in the air, hooking the strap of his rucksack over the other shoulder. ‘Goodbye, Karin,’ he said, and took off towards town, taking the lower path.
‘Will.’
She caught up, running in front of him so she could sign. He didn’t make any effort to stop and Karin had to put her hands up to prevent him from going any further. He slammed into her hands deliberately. There was so much anger behind his eyes.
‘
Mel told me what happened about the jewellery. I knew you weren’t stealing it, Will. I mean, you wouldn’t do that, would you?’
He looked down, kicking at the dried-out soil on the path.
‘If you have to ask me that,’ he signed, ‘then I really don’t belong here.’
‘No. No, wait. I explained to Mel it was probably just some mix-up and— what’s that?’
Will was unfolding a piece of paper. It looked vaguely familiar.
‘NO HOME FOR YOU HERE. LOSER.’
‘Oh God. She’s got to you too then,’ said Karin, inspecting it more closely.
Will didn’t give her time to explain. He snatched the note back and set off, forcing Karin to run in front of him once more to slow him down. ‘Wait,’ she shouted, putting her hand up again to make him stop. ‘It’s Louie who sent that note. She sent one to me this morning.’ Will looked confused, then Karin remembered he wasn’t up to speed. ‘Sorry. I didn’t tell you everything about the weekend and – and maybe I should have. But Aaron took us to The Midland hotel – he thought it would be a special birthday treat – and I bumped into Lou again.’
As she was saying the words she felt Will picking up on her embarrassment. He always knew when she was hiding something, which made it even worse. ‘I think she might be in Leeds,’ she continued. ‘She has an art exhibition here on Thursday. I know exactly what she’s up to, Will. She wants to isolate me, get rid of the people I’m close to, stop me having friends.’
The way Will was looking at her, Karin knew she wouldn’t be able to prevent him from leaving. And maybe he had been her protector for long enough. After all, he was free to live his life the way he wanted, and if he didn’t require any more of her help, then that was his choice.
Karin extracted a wad of money from her dungarees. It was intended for one of the contractors at Ashby Road, but she could easily get some more. She pushed the roll of notes towards Will.