Fighting Chance

by Shaun Baines

  "Your legs opened, you mean," Lily said. "You were still married to Scott's dad."

  "Watch your mouth," Sprout said.

  "Stick your head up your arse," Monica shouted at him. "I don't need you to defend me."

  Lily trembled. It was too much to comprehend. Scott was alive. Scott was a father. She'd assumed Scott was too self-centred to love anyone, but that wasn't true. Scott simply didn't love her. She wasn't the person he wanted and although she didn't want him either, it hurt her nonetheless.

  "We have you to thank for our little miracle here," Monica said. "If you weren't such a damp rag, it might never have happened."

  Learning of Scott's treachery changed everything. She'd taken his bluntness as a form of honesty, but she'd been wrong. He was just cruel and Lily's body hardened, her shakes subsiding. She was tall and strong. With Daniel at the back of her mind, she felt more like a Dayton than ever before.

  "You can have Scott," Lily said, marching forward to the sound of a brass band, forcing Monica to meet her gaze. "He wasn't good enough for me."

  Monica grinned. "He was good enough to get me pregnant."

  "But that's not what you want, is it? I know women like you. You want fireworks and bells and whistles. You want the money, the status and the freedom." Lily looked around the dingy room, opening up her arms. "And he's brought you here. A shithole in Seaburn."

  The brass band stopped, the final notes humming in their ears. It was Monica's turn to shake. "We're planning for a future," she said, her voice hushed.

  "Scott doesn't love you any more than he loved me. You're parasites feeding off each other."

  Monica pulled a shirt sleeve to her elbow, showing off her Cartier watch. "If he didn't love me, would he get me this?"

  Lily recognised it immediately. It was the watch Scott had bought for her. The one she kept in the vase.

  "Snap," she said, holding the same watch up to Monica. They were a match down to the last twinkling diamond.

  "Have you looked at your watch?" Lily asked. "I mean, really looked at it?"

  The skin around Monica's mouth constricted into ugly lines.

  Lily dipped a finger into a puddle of sour milk and rubbed it on the face of Monica's watch. "It smears. The glass on a real Cartier doesn't smear. He has hundreds of them."

  "It's a fake?" Sprout asked, his face as ashen as Monica's.

  "How could you possibly know that?" Monica asked.

  "Because Scott told me. On the first anniversary of our wedding, he thought so little of me he told me it was a fake." Lily gave a hollow laugh. "But at least he told me. That counts for something, doesn't it?"

  "So, why do you keep it?" Sprout asked Lily.

  "Because it felt like a gift from someone else."

  All eyes turned to Monica. She stared out of the dirty window into the dying light of the sun, her hand cupping her precious watch. The window was a portal to the outside world, but for her, it was a blockade. The window barred her escape and a tear stained her cheek.

  "He's done it again," Lily said, creeping closer.

  Monica's hand whitened as she strangled the gun. "Stop talking."

  "Keeping me here won't make him happy. Nothing will. How do you know he's not with another woman right now?"

  The brass band played a new track.

  "He is," Monica answered, her voice barely audible under the swell of a French horn. "He is with another woman. He told me where he was."

  "Scott is a black hole of a man," Lily said, "consuming everything. You don't want that, do you? You want to be someone."

  Monica nodded and Lily's body sagged with relief. She was getting through. She was going to make it. Just one more step. Just a little closer.

  "Why don't you give me the gun?" Lily asked, keeping her voice pleasant. "We can talk about it. Have a girly chat. It'll make you feel better."

  There were tears in Monica's eyes as she raised her gun. Sprout shouted, leaping forward. There was a commotion. Someone screamed and Lily thought it might have been her. An image of Daniel and Eisha flashed through her mind.

  Lily looked from the gun to Monica's eyes, hoping so see some sign of life, but the tears had dried and Monica pulled the trigger.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  "And I can make it do this as well." Angel pointed at the computer screen flashing black and white. Scott knew very little about technology, but hoped it could achieve more than that. He scratched at the paint on the window and looked at the pond outside.

  "Was that where it happened?" he asked.

  There was no comparison between the concrete pond at Cedar's Mount and the lake at Five Oaks, but the pond clearly had a special significance. To Eleanor, who had retired early to sleep off her wine and pills, it was the altar where she had sacrificed her beloved husband. To Angel, it was a baptism in the waters of madness. To Scott, it was a tacky heap of shit, but it was also leverage.

  "Do you want to see my books?" Angel stood by her shelves, pointing at them like she worked for a shopping channel. Her smile was fixed and uncertain. She looked around the room, seeking further highlights from the world's most boring bedroom.

  Scott undid the buttons of his shirt. "Is that why you invited me up here?"

  Angel's face went scarlet, but her eyes were drawn to Scott's pale chest. What was she seeing, he wondered? The desiccated muscles? The marks of a thousand fights?

  "Why don't we sit on the bed?" he asked. "I have something to show you."

  The mattress was soft and he ran his hands over the surface, feeling the hollow where Angel slept alone every night.

  "I think we should…be professional," Angel said, backing into a wall.

  "Is that what you really want?"

  No, she wants you. She wants you. The words came out fast, deeper than Angel's usual voice. It was her madness speaking. Scott and Angel had company.

  Hiding his discomfort, he held out his hand and Angel inched toward him. Her fingers brushed his. They linked hands. Scott pulled her to the bed and she sat upright, staring straight ahead, her upper lip dusted in beads of sweat.

  "I've never done this before," she said.

  "I know." Scott placed her hand on his chest, feeling the moistness of her fingertips.

  Angel brought her face to his and Scott pulled away sharply.

  "Look at this," he said and indicated a scar on his chest. It was triangular in shape, pointing toward his left nipple. "My brother did this on his fourteenth birthday. With the edge of a brick."

  "Why?"

  His birthday present, a Playstation Three, found its way to the bottom of the lake.

  "I can't remember," Scott said, "but my point is – families can be cruel. You know that, don't you?"

  Angel watched his lips and nodded slowly.

  "They're never what we think they are," he said, "except in unusual circumstances."

  "I thought we were going to…?" Angel looked over her shoulder to the plump cushions of the bed.

  The bed creaked. Scott gained an inch of mattress away from Angel's large thighs and buttoned up his shirt. "Who are your contacts? Where do you get Blizzard from?"

  "I'll tell you after. Please. Can't we just do this?"

  Scott shook his head. "I have a fiancée. I went through a lot to get her and I'm not giving up now."

  You're just another user, Scott Dayton. Like everyone else.

  "I knew you wouldn't give up your sources. It's the only thing that makes you special, but I'm not like everyone else." Scott threw the cheque from Eleanor onto the bed. Angel's eyes widened at the amount and narrowed when she saw Scott's name. She looked at him with a wobbling chin.

  "Your mother is concerned about you," Scott said. "She's beginning to suspect you killed your sister."

  "I didn't do anything."

  Tucking his shirt into his trousers, Scott inspected his reflection in the bedroom window. "Maybe. Maybe not, but it doesn't matter."

  "Why did she write you a cheque?"

  "
It's for a contract. She wants you dead and she wants me to kill you."

  Angel jumped from the mattress, darting to her computer desk. She yanked open a drawer, but Scott stopped her before she reached the gun.

  "I'm not going to do it," he said, dragging her in for a hug. "I'm not going to do it."

  The scent of boiled sweets filled his nostrils. It edged down his throat, turning his stomach.

  "She wants me dead?" Angel asked.

  Scott stroked her hair. "You're special. She's jealous of you. That makes her dangerous. You have to do something about your mother."

  Wriggling from his hold, Angel stood on her tiptoes, forcing her lips on his until Scott couldn't hold his breath any longer.

  "I have to go," he said.

  "Can't you stay?"

  "I think you have work to do," he said, moving to the door, "and don't forget about Bronson."

  Angel was framed by the window that looked out on the accident that changed her life. She muttered to herself, but glanced up and gave him a smile.

  Scott almost went to her, sincerely this time. She was small, trapped in something bigger. Angel the child had never been released from the net. The accident had set her on a course that could have been different with another family.

  "I have something for you," Scott said and pulled a diamond Cartier watch from his pocket. "Give me your wrist."

  "That's the same one you gave your ex-wife."

  "She didn't deserve it, but you do. I bought this watch for you."

  Angel crushed her fingers to her lips and tears spilled from her happy eyes. She offered a wrist to him. "It's beautiful," she said.

  "Just like you." Scott struggled with the clasp. Angel was too fat for the slender watch, but he didn't want to force it shut. She took it from him and did it herself, cutting off vital blood supplies.

  Scott kissed her forehead. "It's not fair, is it? What parents do?" And he left without looking back.

  Marching down the corridor, his demeanour changed. With each step, he hardened, his sympathy replaced by ambition. He needed to keep Angel close if he was to learn the source of the cocaine. Eleanor posed a threat, but he couldn't kill her. Daytons killing Maguires spawned bloodshed on the streets and the equilibrium of Newcastle was unstable enough. Better to plant a seed and watch it grow into a garden variety power struggle.

  Right now, getting back to Seaburn was his priority. He had to keep Lily safe from Monica. If something happened to her, Daniel would go atomic and Scott, together with the rest of Newcastle, would see a nuclear winter.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  The room went black. Lily's legs buckled and the floor rushed up to greet her. Bracing for the impact, she hit with a clatter of teeth. A wheeze hissed from her body like a deflating tyre. A final breath shot from her lungs as pain ricocheted through her ribs, pinballing through her bones.

  Lily's eyes snapped open, finding a damp spot on the ceiling. She stared at it, trying to make sense of what had happened.

  She heard shouting. Sprout's words garbled together. He was unintelligible and scared. His voice was laced with panic.

  "I'm okay," Lily said, barking out a laugh.

  Monica paced the room, swinging her arms by her sides. "Of course, you are," she said. "The gun is a dud. The barrel's been filled. The trigger pin is gone."

  Sprout's face thinned. "What do you mean?"

  "She was taking the piss." Monica ran her hands through her hair and sighed. "I just wanted to scare her."

  Adrenaline poured through Lily's system like liquid silver. Her body quaked, but she got to her feet. "I'm going home now," she said.

  "You're going to sit your arse down and shut up. I might not have a gun, but I can still slap that look off your face," Monica said before turning to Sprout. "And if you don't calm down, soppy bollocks, I will beat the shit out of you, too. I'm too old a cat to be fucked by a pussy."

  If Sprout heard her, he made no show of it. His right hand was in his pocket. When he pulled it free, it was clenched. "You sent me to Five Oaks with a gun that didn't work," he said.

  Monica shrugged. "You were safe. We had a guy on the inside. Daniel wasn't there."

  "I didn't know that, did I?" Sprout's pasty face went crimson. "I chased a guy through the house with that fucking gun. What if he turned on me? What if he had a gun of his own?"

  "Did you kill him?" Monica asked.

  Lily pressed her hand to her lips. Panwar had betrayed her, betrayed them all, but he had not deserved to die. She remembered how he'd dragged her down the stairs and the liquid silver in her stomach turned to lead. Her hands curled into claws.

  Maybe Panwar did deserve to die.

  "How the hell could I kill him with a rubber gun?" Sprout asked, stamping his foot, his trainer leaving a print in the dirt of the floor. "He ran outside. I left him in the garden."

  "You can count on one hand the things you've got right," Monica said, staring through the dirty window.

  Sprout pushed her backwards and she stumbled into the sofa, dropping into its mouldy cushions to a seating position.

  "Why do you treat me like this?" he asked. "I only wanted to love you."

  "You don't know what love is," Monica said, spitting venom. "You're a child."

  "You're so mean to me."

  Monica slapped her hand on the sofa. "I came looking for you at The Black Rose because I needed you. I needed you to keep track of Bronson. Scott told me he was the key. You were so stupid, so in love that you couldn't see I was after another man. You were a hired hand, sniffing around for morsels of affection. It was pathetic."

  Lily shuffled closer to the door.

  "I wish I'd never met you," Sprout shouted. His mouth was a slash mark across a wounded face. He was trembling, but his fists were still. "I'm finished with you."

  "Finished? You didn't even make it to the start line, mate."

  Sprout kicked out at a cereal bowl. It didn't break, but it left a smear of congealed milk on the floorboards. "You're rotten. You and your psycho boyfriend. I should have stayed with Kimberley."

  Monica laughed. "Is that Kimberley from your poem? The one scrunched up under your disgusting bed? 'Kimberley is the girl I love, she is as lovely as a dove.' Isn't that the first two lines?"

  Sprout snarled, spit spraying through his teeth, but Monica's grin widened. She leaned forward, beckoning him with a finger.

  "I read it while you were out fetching my meals," she said.

  With a howl, Sprout's fist raced through the air, punching Monica in the face, snapping her head back on her shoulders. Her nose split and blood funnelled over her gaping mouth.

  "I'm going to fucking kill you," Sprout said, closing his hands around her throat.

  Monica gasped for breath, her face turning purple, but she didn't fight back. Her arms snaked around her stomach, holding it protectively.

  "Stop it," Lily shouted, but no-one was listening. "Leave her alone."

  Lily jumped on Sprout's back, clamping an arm around his neck. He twisted, trying to throw her off and they collapsed on top of Monica, crushing her.

  Searching for a weapon, Lily grabbed the nearest thing to hand. She took the jam jar, heart thumping and brought it down on the back of Sprout's head. It exploded. Clumps of dead flowers parachuted to the floor.

  Her hand was cut and Lily nursed it to her chest, but not for long. There could be no hesitation this time. Fear more than hate drove her bloody fist into Sprout's kidneys. His back arched and Lily pushed him. He snatched her hair as they fell, crashing to the ground together. Her scalp burned. Her hair was torn out by the roots.

  Scrambling on her hands and knees, Lily saw Monica stricken on the sofa, panting and clutching her stomach. Sprout dragged Lily down. She wriggled free, elbowing him in the nose. He crumpled with a groan and she pounced, straddling him. Grabbing a handful of dried flowers, she shoved them into his mouth, clamping her hand over his jaw. His eyes bulged, turning pink, then red. Lily watched in horror, her eyes find
ing the dry stalks sticking through her fingers. Sprout's body bucked, but Lily held firm, his legs slapping against the floor as the fight left him.

  Sprout weakened, looking at Lily, knowing he was going to die. He stopped moving and held her gaze. There was no panic or fear in his eyes. Just a hazy film and Lily saw he was dead.

  She relinquished her hold and wiped her eyes. Sprout coughed, spewing out the flowers he'd wasted on an unrequited love. It was a death rattle, his last wheeze. She stared into a face growing grey. Lily had killed a man. The thought rushed unstoppable to her quailing heart. Her body spasmed. She snatched a cereal bowl and threw up.

  Finishing with her dry heaves, Lily noticed a puddle of greasy water by Monica's ankles.

  "It's coming," Monica said. "Not now. Not like this."

  Lily looked to Sprout.

  "What's his name?" she asked.

  "Name?" Monica asked. "It hasn't got a name. It's too early."

  "I meant the man I killed," Lily said. "Sprout isn't a real name."

  "How am I supposed to know what his real name is?" Monica shouted. "Call me a bloody taxi, will you? I'm having this baby now."

  Straightening, Lily smoothed down her clothes and rubbed her empty stomach. The Daytons were all the same. Self-centred and ugly to their core. For a brief moment, she was almost one of them and although she'd killed a man, the guilt would haunt her forever. It was something a Dayton, one in particular, wouldn't understand.

  "Why are you standing around with your thumb up your arse?" Monica asked, pointing at her phone. "Call for help."

  "Of course," Lily said, finally walking out of the door. "Of course, I will."

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Shadows lengthened along the shoreline at Five Oaks. The Victorian lampposts were turned off, their fuses removed from the junction box. Daniel needed the dark while he worked, scooping out water from the rowing boat with a metal bucket. It was watertight, but a recent downpour had filled it in the same way Daniel was filling with unease. The boat would be sitting low enough without the additional water.