Beginnings

by L. T. Smith

  I leaned forward; my interest was totally piqued by this stage.

  ‘Remember Danny Spencer?’

  ‘What has he to do with anything?’ I leaned back, emitting a deep breath as I did so.

  ‘There is no easy way to tell you this … but … I think you have a right to know.’

  ‘Know what?’ A tinge of anger was coating my tone, maybe because my initial response to her acting surprised was slowly drifting away. And secondly, I had a gut feeling I wasn’t going to like what she was going to tell me.

  ‘Well. Erm. Lou? Please don’t get mad with me.’

  ‘Just tell me, Ash.’

  ‘Danny Spencer is …erm … he’s your brother.’

  I actually felt my mouth gape. Actually felt the lips part and the slackness take root. I had a white screen inside my head and there was nothing coming onto it. I felt blank. Emotionless. I just sat there, half leaning towards her with my mouth open.

  ‘Well, half-brother.’

  That seemed to get some kind of reaction anyway. A jolt of feeling hit me in the gut and made me sit back in the chair, my eyes focused on her face.

  ‘He’s …’

  ‘Fuck it, Ash! There’s no fucking way I’m related to that twat!’ The words were out and they didn’t come out quietly. Heads turned in the café and I lowered my voice before continuing through clenched teeth. ‘How on earth could he be related to me?’

  ‘Calm down, Lou … I’m just …’

  ‘How on earth …’

  ‘Well if you …’

  I was half leaning over the table by this stage, the adrenaline pumping through me. I felt angry … and cheated. My head was totally in a spin … nothing made sense. Danny Spencer? Related? Ash had only contacted me because I was related to Danny Spencer. That was the only reason. That was the reason … the reason she had called me the link … not Sam’s link, but Danny’s.

  Now I was angry. Fucking angry. Of all the …

  ‘Lou … just calm down … let me explain.’

  ‘What? What can you explain? That you fucking used me? Again?’

  I saw her lips move around the word ‘again’, and she seemed to chew over it, but her expression stayed blank … well … more like confused. The shaking of her head seemed slow and out of focus. My eyes were burning and I could feel the coolness envelop me, which was a telltale sign of my up and coming temper. I felt slow and sluggish but wired and primitive at the same time. My forearms tingled as muscles spasmed.

  At this point, her eyes looked away … only for a split second, but they looked away. It was then I knew for sure. Ash had used me to get to Danny Spencer, whoever the fuck he was.

  My fingers curled around the edge of the cup that had housed my now cold coffee and I couldn’t stop the action of the lift … tip … and hurl.

  She sat there. Cold coffee all over her face and shirt, her eyelashes flinging back the excess and the once separate hairs collecting into tiny groups. Her mouth opened and stretched, pushing the liquid away. I stood, leaning over the table, the empty cup clenched between my fingers, knuckles whitening.

  ‘Fuck you Ashley Richards! Get the fuck out of my life. Got it?’

  Then I was gone. I didn’t care how she felt. I had to go and see my mother … had to find out some things. Deep down I knew Ash was telling the truth, but on the surface I just couldn’t accept he was any relative of mine. I didn’t know anything about him … not even his age or the colour of his eyes.

  The only thing I knew was that he was a nasty piece of work, and the fact Ash claimed he was my half-brother.

  I was not happy.

  In more ways than one.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  IN LESS THAN forty-five minutes I was banging on my parents’ door. Yarmouth was only twenty-five miles from Norwich, and I floored it to get there in that time. Anger flooded through me. I couldn’t distinguish whom I was the angriest with. Ash … my parents … or even myself.

  Now my anger with Ash linked with the anger I held for myself. I trusted her. Again. I had let my guard down with her … again. I had been kicked in the teeth and told to keep my perverted feelings to myself … again. Well, not as much told about my feelings the second time as the feeling of being used. I felt she had used me as a way to help her case. Now this was something I doubted I would ever forgive.

  My parents were another matter entirely. They must have known Danny Spencer was a relative of some kind … even though they didn’t know I was working a case that linked with him. I should’ve heard his name mentioned before now. Because if my memory serves me right … I knew he wasn’t the son of my mother.

  So that left only one person.

  The bastard.

  The dirty teenage fucking pregnant getting twat of a bastard. The same bastard I hadn’t heard from for over thirty years … and even then it was too soon. Even when my brothers and sister, Angie, had got married … he didn’t turn up … or couldn’t be contacted. He had shown in more ways than one that he just wasn’t father material. Biologically, he could get a woman pregnant – but it takes more that a feisty spot of sperm to make a dad. A hell of a lot more.

  ‘Lou?’ The surprise in my dad’s voice stopped me in my tracks for a split second. He sounded so happy and pleased to see me, and this was supported by a huge grin as he leaned forward and pulled me into a hug. ‘What have we done to get a treat like this?’

  Now that was a loaded question. And after five minutes, I think he was sorry he answered the door.

  It is never good to hear how a member of your own family could be so heartless. My father was an out and out bastard. However angry I had been when I had stormed out of The Lounge paled in comparison to how angry I was when my mum told me of what he’d done.

  If you cast your memory back to earlier, you may remember I had overheard how he got a seventeen-year-old girl pregnant. Or something like that … I had been eaves dropping on the conversation between my mother and her sister. The letter … in his workbag …

  Remember?

  Well, as it turned out, he had. Seventeen and pregnant by a man who was in his forties by that stage. Turns your stomach … to think he slept with a girl who was only a year older than his eldest daughter. Shows you what kind of man he was.

  Nine months later (five and a half after my mother had walked out on him), a baby boy was born.

  Yep. Daniel Lee Spencer.

  Danny Spencer.

  The Danny Spencer. The one who was at that moment in Norwich trying to gather a bunch of cronies to do his bidding.

  It took a few minutes for me to collect myself … it was the age that had cornered me. I automatically assumed he was in his early twenties at the very most. Don’t ask me why … the only reason I can come up with is the fact he had Sam Read on his books, shall we say.

  Why would a man who was in his thirties want to have teenage kids running around him? No mention of Michael Jackson here, please. I mean … in his thirties and using bits of kids to do his dirty work … getting them on his side … pretending he was their friend.

  Just the thought of that makes my skin crawl anyway. But still … that’s not normal is it? Then again, it was the perfect age to catch the unsavoury elements of society … especially if you can sculpt them to be what you want them to be … the younger the better. And Sam Read would love the fact someone was actually taking him seriously – an adult at that.

  Now I come to think of it, it makes perfect sense. They were his protégés … dispensable … gullible … cheap. They could cop the rap if the shit hit the fan, and Spencer would just flit off back to Manchester or whatever rock he had crawled out from underneath.

  But why Norwich? Why near me? Did he know I was here? Ash had said she knew where to find me because of him … but what did that mean? Was he after me? My family? My mum … for some reason or another?

  I sat on the dining room chair. Slumped really, my head resting in my hands completely resigned to the fact my neck couldn’t suppo
rt it at the moment. I could hear my mum’s voice trying to get through to me … trying to tell me she hadn’t wanted to hurt me even more than I had already had been. Trying to say I would always be her baby.

  Tears trickled through my fingers and plopped effortlessly onto my trousers, the wetness hitting and separating the colour of the material, making patches appear darker than the rest. I was fascinated in a comatose kind of way. I felt like I had been lied to on so many different levels. I understood why my mum hadn’t told me, and I honestly didn’t care if my father had twenty kids by different mothers.

  So what made this hurt so much?

  What made the ache inside my chest, you know … the ache that gripped and pulled and wrenched something inside until I felt like screaming for it to stop?

  My parents hadn’t lied … they’d avoided the truth – inadvertently forgot to mention it. But someone had lied. Someone who I thought I could trust with my life … trust with my all.

  Ash.

  She hadn’t just lied. She had used me. Used me. Used me to get what she wanted. An arrest. Another glowing recommendation of a job well done. Another pat on the back – maybe a promotion. Maybe a bigger and better office with less paperwork and a bigger and better pay packet.

  But in the process she had crippled me. The one person who had trusted her implicitly.

  And for that I could never forgive her.

  Never.

  I could smell coffee, could feel the heat of it. My dad was pushing a cup of the stuff underneath my face, and I could see him bending so low he was almost kneeling on the floor. Concern etched his tired face, and I felt my heart fill with love for him all over again.

  You know, that sad kind of love. The kind of love that makes you so very aware of what you have and also what you don’t.

  ‘Thanks Dad.’ My voice was full of the rejection I was feeling, full of the hurt of unrequited love, full of the agony of betrayal. All in those two words.

  The room was deathly quiet, and all that could be heard was the clinking of the cups as they hit the saucers and the intermittent sound of liquid being drained from china.

  As I sat there, the rejection I had been feeling ebbed away and anger slowly, but surely, began to replace it. Boiling anger. Blood red anger, and it was aimed right at the woman who had instigated so much self pity inside me.

  I wasn’t a victim, no way. I allowed myself to feel like this. I allowed my feelings to override my reason and make me close up inside and metaphorically stroke the old wound that had been spliced open by a new one.

  Fuck this.

  There was no way I was going to let this get to me.

  Ok. Danny Spencer, however much I hated the fact, was my stepbrother. There was nothing I could do about it … so why stress myself out.

  The next fact.

  Ash had used me.

  Get used to it.

  I sat up straighter in the chair and inhaled deeply … held it in … then blew it out in one long breath.

  My parents were watching me intently, probably expecting me to crack off again. But I just smiled. I think that freaked them out more then if I had lost my rag and danced a temper tantrum around the house.

  ‘Thanks. I’d best be off.’

  My mum made a move to say something, but stopped after the initial goldfish manoeuvre.

  I stood, swiped a hand down the front of my trousers, catching the wet patch were my tears had fallen a few minutes before. Handbag in hand, and destination clear, I bade my farewells and left.

  I was on a mission. I was out for revenge. I was going to make sure Ashley Richards knew she couldn’t mess with me anymore.

  The only thing I didn’t know was where to find her.

  But I would.

  By golly … I would.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  WHITE ANGER ENVELOPED me. On the outside I looked normal, to that I can guarantee. Everybody I spoke to I did so very coolly, and not once did I have to raise my voice. Even when the station refused to tell me where Ash was staying whilst she was in Norfolk.

  It was nearly ten thirty by the time I got back home, still none the wiser. But determined.

  I promised myself, as I was unlocking the front door, that tomorrow would bring an address of one tall and very cock sure Detective Inspector. And I would settle the score.

  The key was firmly in the lock by the time my body alerted me I was not alone. Someone was watching me.

  I turned in the Hammer House Horror kind of way, the hairs on the back of my neck were standing to full attention … very much in conjunction with the ones on my arms.

  Streetlights made shadows on the pavement and they appeared to move. And my hands started to wiggle the arrogant key in the lock a little more frantically. I knew how to handle myself, but I wasn’t going to walk into trouble.

  I heard a movement come from just behind the hedge and my stomach clawed at my throat in an attempt to flee the scene.

  The door fell inwards and I stumbled through, clumsily grabbing at the handle in a last pitch to save me hitting the floor. I would have done it too if my handbag hadn’t slipped off my shoulder and landed heavily on my forearm.

  I landed awkwardly and tried to scramble more into the house, as I was well and truly spooked by this stage. I could hear someone approaching … hear a voice saying my name, but panic consumed me and I was trying to kick the door shut.

  A hand grabbed my ankle and I let out a yelp … or should I say scream of terror, and kicked wildly.

  ‘Lou. Lou! It’s only me.’ I recognised the voice as being Ash’s, and instinctively kicked out again wanting to hurt her. Her hand held my foot in a grip I can only describe as vice like, and all that happened was I was scooted backwards along the floor a little further.

  Her frame loomed above me and she looked huge. A flitting memory of over thirty years ago came into my mind … the memory of the first time I’d met her.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Almost an echo of the time. And once again, I felt the tears well up in my throat … the football variety, leading me to thinking I wasn’t okay and I would be damned if I was going to admit it to her.

  Ash held her hand down towards me to help me up, but instead of a split second of thinking I would refuse help, I slapped her hand away.

  ‘Fuck you!’ Then proceeded to struggle to my feet. She didn’t take no for an answer and grabbed my clammy hand in her cool one. Some things never change. At least mine were a lot cleaner now.

  One deft movement later I was in her embrace … no chance of staggering forward … just vroom … into her chest – head first.

  And just like all those years ago – she towered above me, dwarfing me with her size and her presence.

  A little voice whispered inside my chest ‘Stay here’, but the gob on display said ‘Get your hands off me!’ and shoved her away.

  Her arms were outstretched in a mime’s welcome, and I once again slapped at her.

  ‘What’re you doing here, Ash?’ I snapped, my hands trying to smooth down my clothes.

  ‘Came to see if you were all right.’

  ‘What the fuck do you think?’ My head poked out, birdlike … hands on hips. ‘You shatter my world and then come to see if I’m all right?’ I blew out a sarcastic breath. ‘You’re more fucked up than I thought.’

  With that, I turned to go. Her hand grabbed my arm and she tried to spin me around. I froze in place … and so did she. ‘Get off me … I’ve nothing left to say.’

  ‘Please Lou … just hear me out.’ She had a pleading quality in her voice and I wanted to back down and let her speak, but I was too hurt … too fragile … she would only screw me up again.

  ‘I think you’ve said all you needed to say.’ And I yanked my arm free. But she was not to be deterred … she was insistent and grabbed my arm again.

  ‘I said get your hands off me!’ As I tried to shrug her away, she pulled me and I half turned towards her. My name was falling from her lips and I didn’t want to see her
, never mind hear her ever again.

  Then things got a little hazy. I can’t exactly remember what happened … all I remember is I tried to slap her … my arm pulled back … my hand flat and ready for connection.

  But it never came.

  I remember the speed of it … the power lacing it … the anger swelling inside it.

  But it never reached its destination.

  Ash caught it and pulled me towards her. Anger raised its head … blood red and fighting. She had me pinned. One hand caught … my other arm held fast. So I kicked her.

  Nothing.

  Not even a wince of pain.

  So I struggled.

  But she held me tighter.

  So I did the only thing I knew how to do.

  I screamed in her face. Loudly. Words of hatred. Words of betrayal. Words I could never repeat.

  I saw her flinch … even felt her grip loosen slightly, but still not enough to release me.

  Her lips tightened into a thin line, and I knew she was thinking. Then she pounced.

  Those lips were now on mine. Hard and tight, muffling the screams still pouring from me. One hand released mine and pulled me closer to her and I took this opportunity to thump on her arm, pull her hair … slap her and slap her and slap … her.

  The kiss stayed firm and unwavering …except for a tiny movement from her lips … a tiny movement that was building to a little more movement … then a little more … then I felt my own move against hers. I hated myself for moving my lips, but I couldn’t help it. Rationally, I thought if I could distract her, pretend to be playing along … then I could lead her into a false sense of security … make my escape.

  But the lips were against each other… more movement … less pressure … more intense … sucking me in … blurring my reality. Her mouth opened a little … so did mine … my hand had stopped hitting her now and was just holding the top of her arm.

  I could feel myself falling into her … bodily falling … lips and mouths and tongues falling. Fingers began to trace along arms and backs. The kiss deepening … wetness passing from one mouth to another … stroking a need … stoking a fire I thought was dead.