by Bloom, Anna
“Faithy, don’t run from me. We need to talk.”
I turn, swallowing down the bile that rises in my throat. “I have nothing to say to you. Anything I have to say will be through the police.”
Aiden looms closer in the dark. How the hell did he know where my flat was? It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to work out my dad must have blabbed at some point.
“Ah but, Faith. They don’t have any evidence against me. All your lies have been for nothing.”
“They aren't lies,” I spit. “It's the truth that I should have said years ago.”
“Did you tell them how your nipples hardened for me? How you pretended to be staring at the ceiling while really you were loving every minute of it?”
“I was frozen in fear, you sick fuck.”
He steps closer and I cast my eyes to the side, but he catches the movement and laughs loudly, his breath hitting my face in an acrid wave. “No one’s going to save you now, Faith.” His fingers reach out and slide through my hair, down my throat and under the collar of my jacket. “I don’t know why you stopped our fun. We were never related; it was all just games. All children play games. Didn’t you and Dan play doctor and nurses? Didn’t he get out his big dick and prod you with it? Did you lay still while he did it, Faith?”
“Get away from me.” I push at his chest but barely move him off balance. “I don’t know why you’re here. There is nothing left for you to take.”
“Believe me, Faithy. There is always something for me to take from you.” He lunges for my face, his fingers grabbing my chin hard, his lips close to mine.
I twist and turn with all of my might, shrugging out of my jacket and stepping away. I don’t get far. He has hold of my hair and yanks me back, pulling me off my feet. I land with a bang on the ground and he straddles me. His hands skimming over my clothes.
“Don’t. Please don’t.”
I will never come back from this. There will be no fight I’ll ever be able to make. I scream at the top of my lungs until his hand slaps across my cheek. But I won’t be beaten. I won’t let him have me again. I scream again, anticipating his slap.
“Hey.” A shout in the distance makes my heart soar. I scream over and over again calling for help. Aiden scrambles up, his face white, his eyes burning with everything hell has to offer.
“I will always be in the shadows. You will never be safe. You will always be mine, begging for me.”
“I won’t, you fucking bastard.” Footsteps fall closer, running over the pavement. The voice is still shouting out.
Then a hard, splintering pain lands against my tummy. “Noooo.” I scream so loud I think there isn’t a person in the whole world that won’t hear me.
Aiden looks at me in surprise as I roll over clutching my hands around my stomach, then his expression clears replaced with sheer malice and he kicks me hard again, aiming at my protective hands. My fingers snap with the impact, but I don’t give a shit about them. He bends low, his breath huffing across me. “Happy fucking forever after.” Spittle lands on my face but I just curl in tighter ready for the next kick to come.
It doesn’t.
The sound of footfall rings in my ears and then darkness falls.
A blackness I never want to wake from.
I blink into a dazzling light. My hands hurt; I can’t even bend my fingers. The space around me is hazy and I blink some more, unfocused and unseeing.
My eyes close. The pain in my hands won’t go away. What the fuck is that?
Then I remember my tummy. The pain. The scream that ripped my universe in two. My tummy which hadn’t had time to bloom into a small curve, to fill my hands the way I wanted it to.
My baby.
A deep sob lifts from the place where I think my heart should be. Should be but isn’t because I can’t exist anymore like this. I don’t want to live always with the pain.
Beeping fills my ears. Stupid beeping. Go away. I want to die.
“Faith?” The most beautiful voice I know cuts through my scrambling thoughts. He’s here. It must be bad. He doesn’t even want to see me at the moment and now he’s here.
“I don’t want to see you.” I murmur. My head is fuzzy and full of cotton wool. My tongue seems slow, like I’ve drunk too many tequilas and lost all sensation inside my mouth.
“Look at me.”
“No.”
“Why?” He’s close, his words whispering into my ear.
“Because I’m a monster. It’s what I’ve always wanted to hide from you.” My head whirls. “I’m a monster who kills babies. A monster who lays there and lets people do things to me. A monster in ink.”
“Faith.” A wet splatter lands on my cheek followed by another.
“Why do my hands hurt so much?”
“Sunshine.” My full and heavy heart flickers as he calls me. “Open your eyes.”
“I can’t. Aiden, h-he… he was going to rape me. I tried to protect it. I did, I promise.”
“I know. Please look at me.”
Slowly, I blink my eyes again. This time instead of the brightness I’m met with the clinical cleanliness of a hospital room. Turning my head, I find Eli. His eyes are swollen, his skin pale.
“Don’t look at me.” I turn my face away. “Please don’t look at me.”
“Faith.” His fingers turn me back. “Why are you a monster?”
I shake my head. I don’t want to talk, not now. Not now I’ve lost the thing I never thought I’d have. “Because I don’t deserve good things. I’m a killer.”
“Faith, you didn’t kill that baby all those years ago. You were young and you were scared. Abused and broken. Is this why you didn’t tell me, because you thought I wouldn’t understand why you didn’t want it?”
I nod, tears sliding down my face, into my hair and onto the pillow. “I didn’t know how I could let him plant that inside me.”
“You didn’t.”
“I’m so scared you will think I let it happen to me.”
“Why would you think that?” The blues are intense; they won’t relinquish their hold. “I love you like I’ve never known was possible. I’d give you the world.”
“Because it’s what I think. Until you, I never let myself enjoy intimacy. I’d want it so bad, I’d crave it, but then it would happen and I would lay there motionless the whole time.” I drag in a deep lungful of air. “Until you. You made me feel, but I didn’t want you to know how I’d always been, in case you thought it meant…”
“In case I thought what?”
“In case you thought it meant I’d been like that with Aiden. That I’d laid there and just taken it.”
“Did you?”
“No. I was scared. I was so scared, Eli. It haunts me. It’s why I’ve done what I have with my skin. I went through every tattoo I have, after you and I broke up. I tell myself it’s all my mistakes, but it’s not. It’s so no one can see the real me. No one can see the little girl who doesn’t know how to feel.”
“You feel with me?” He looks like I might be able to break him with my next words.
“Only with you. You’re the only one who can see through the ink.” I sob, my chest heaving. Even the pain in my fingers can’t erase the pain in my heart. “Eli, I’m so sorry about our baby. I tried to save it. I did, I did.”
“Faith.” His fingers cup my face. “I won’t ever forgive myself for what happened to you tonight. I should never have left. You are my everything. All of it. Ink, glass, and gold. All the things that challenge us, all the things that defeat us and hide us, all the things that hold us together. Since Peter died everything has been a mess. I hate myself for not being the man that walks down the river and helps at the soup kitchen anymore. I don’t want my life to be complicated. I want to be happy with you. With you two.”
“What?”
“Faith, you saved our baby. You loved so hard and so deep you gave yourself up to protect it.”
He holds up a black and white image. My baby. Bigger then it was th
e other week. Still growing. Still beating. Still fighting.
I cry. Nothing else. I just cry.
“You are going to be the best goddamn mother out there. Because you will never let that child not know what love and affection is. You will live and breathe it every day. Mother told me what you said to her today. It was why I was on my way over.”
“It was you shouting.” I know it. His shout echoes in my head… I can hear it over the terror of the moment.
“Faith, I will always save you, if you will save me.”
“Our baby is okay? Lift the picture up.” He does, grinning, as he perches on the bed. That moment of fear on the pavement under Aiden’s body fades away, washed away with a love so fierce it’s uncontainable.
“It was turned around. Like it knew your hands were there to shield it and it was hiding under your grasp.
I nod, tears still streaming.
“I can’t wait to see it grow.” I sniff hard. “You will be there with me, won’t you? To watch. I know I have darkness in me, but I’m fighting. And I will never keep a secret from you again.”
“Always.” He leans over and brushes his lips against mine. “You are no monster, you’re my ray of golden sun.”
“Covered in ink.”
“Decorated in art.” He kisses me again and for a moment I just breathe it all in. The baby is okay. Elijah is here with me, fighting with me, my constant saviour. There will be no more secrets and no more darkness.
“Faith.” The way his tone drops tells me what he’s going to say.
“My hands, right?” I offer him a rueful smile.
“Yeah, it’s your hands. I’m so sorry.”
“How bad?”
The deep breath he takes tells me all I need to hear.
“Faith.” I startle a little as I’m called. I must have fallen asleep.
“Mm.” I try to sit up straighter, but I can’t put any weight on my hands, so I have no way of lifting myself up.
“The police are here to see you.”
“Why?” I search Eli’s expression.
“Because you were assaulted, my love. They want your statement.”
I swallow hard and his eyes soften.
“You can do this.”
A woman comes in. Her suit is black and utterly plain; her white shirt is tucked in to the waist of the pencil skirt. “Faith?”
“Hi.”
“I’m CDI Barclay. Rough night I hear?” She smiles and it lifts the severity of her demeanour.
“Something like that.” I want to move my hair from my face, but my hands are wrapped up. Eli, sensing my frustration, leans closer and brushes it away.
“I’ll be outside, sunshine.”
“Please don’t leave me.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
He turns for the door and the woman gives him a sympathetic smile. “Are you happy to come to the station to give your statement later?” she asks him.
He nods and pushes through the door, shutting it gently behind him.
“I’m going to ask some simple questions. Is that okay?”
“Yes?” I answer almost with a question.
“You’ve got nothing to be nervous about, Faith. We have a witness.”
“A witness who happens to be the love of my life.”
Her lips trace with a smile at my irrational statement.
“A witness is a witness I can assure you.”
“Maybe.” I glare at the ceiling.
“I believe your attacker is already under police investigation for an historical abuse case?”
“Yes.”
“Did he say why he was outside your apartment last night?”
“Not exactly.”
“But he attacked you?”
“Yes."
"Did he touch you inappropriately?”
"He touched my face and pulled me down to the ground. It happened so fast.”
“And you were screaming? Did you think he was going to hurt you?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because he’s done it before.”
“Did he know you were pregnant?”
“No.” I shake my head. Hardly anyone knows.
“But he kicked you in the stomach?”
“Yes. The first time was just a wild attack, but then he saw me trying to protect my tummy.” I pull in a deep lungful of air. “And he kicked harder.” I shake my head. “No one will believe me though. They already don’t believe what I’ve said about him in the past.”
“This time you have a witness. I believe your fiancé was running towards you when you were kicked and on the floor.”
“I don’t know. I heard footsteps and someone calling out, but I didn’t know it was Eli. I couldn’t really concentrate on anything and I guess I wasn’t expecting him to be there.”
Her hand pats my arm, such a simple and comforting act. “Did your attacker say anything to you?”
“He said he would always be after me, that he would always be there.” I shiver uncontrollably. “It’s what he always used to say when I was young. That I had nowhere else to go, that it was just him who understood my dark needs.”
“That’s not true though, is it?”
“No. But no one will believe that Elijah isn’t just protecting me, trying to right the wrongs that I can’t get justice for on my own.”
“Just as well we have CCTV footage then.”
I look at her closely. Her words don’t make any sense. “You have?”
“Yes, your apartment block has a camera at the main door and on every corner. We have everything.”
“You do?”
“Faith. Relax. Aiden Jones has been arrested for grievous bodily harm. Intent to maim. And before I came in here, I spoke to the detective on your case in Brighton. It has been reopened. He will be going to jail, and I know I for one will be clapping my hands when he does. Animals like him shouldn’t be let out on the streets.”
“No, they shouldn’t.” Tears slip down my face. He’s going to go to prison. He’s sent himself to prison and it doesn’t matter what anyone else says or believes. What my father might do, or not do. Aiden is going to prison, and he is going to pay.
It’s over.
I sob quietly and she pats me on the arm again. “I’ll go and get Mr Fairclough.”
I can’t answer. I just let the tears wash everything away one final time.
Later, Eli lets us into Chesham Place. The baby has been monitored for hours. She or he is fine and as snug as a bug in the protective layers of my tummy.
I walk in through the door and for the first time I know I’m truly coming home. Miss Beesley runs out of the kitchen and catches me in a tight embrace. Another hug to add to the ever-growing list.
There’s a flicker of a movement behind her and Abs joins us. She’s crying and it sets Miss Beesley off.
“Bloody hell, Faith.” Abi squeezes me tight. “Shit, if anything happened to you, I don’t know what I would do.”
“You’d be lonely and have no one to constantly moan at.”
“See, you get me. I’d be lost.”
Tabitha comes out of the sitting room.
“Bloody hell, it’s like you guys are gathering for a funeral or something.”
“Sister sledge, what are you doing to us?”
I shake my head at the nickname Jeremy seems to have made stick. Aren’t Sister Sledge some pop band from the monstrous depths of time? I’ll need to investigate.
My mouth falls open as Jennifer comes to the doorway of the sitting room. "I thought you could do with a mother.”
I refuse to let one more single tear drop. It’s not happening. Never. I nod, simple and direct and she smiles, those blues her son inherited shining.
“Right you lot, back off. Faith needs to rest.” Eli elbows me through my little familial crowd.
“I haven’t got time to rest.” I say. “I’ve got a TV show to prepare f—” my words die off and I glance down at my bandag
ed hands.
“Shit, Faith.” Abi picks up one of my bandaged hands.
“My right hand has been splintered; not just the fingers but the entire thing. The complicated small bones that run through my palm have been smashed. On my left most of my fingers are broken with clean breaks.” I try to keep my voice light. “But it’s the right hand that’s the problem. They don’t know if they will be able to fuse them back together and if they do how much strength I will have. I spoke to the specialist at the hospital. In normal circumstances they’d be operating and inserting small pins.”
“But they can’t, because of the baby.” Abi finishes for me.
“No, they can’t.”
I smile at them all. “It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s just how this is meant to be.”
I can feel the weight of the blues on my face and I meet his gaze full on. “This is how it’s meant to be.”
Twenty-Nine
“This place looks like a florist’s.” Eli grumbles as he tries to edge around a large vase full of the most extravagant display of flowers I’ve ever seen. “Are any of these flowers going to go into the compost soon?”
I glance up from the magazine on my lap. “Those are from Whitlocks. They were bigger than Damien when he carried them in. Anyway, what are you moaning about, it’s only been a couple of weeks.”
“What are you looking at?’ Eli sits on the sofa and lifts my legs, placing them over his lap, his fingers drifting to my feet which he begins to massage.
“Wedding dresses.”
“Oh really? Has my mother been leaving bridal magazines all over the house again?”
I snigger. “Just a couple.”
His gaze settles on my face. “There is no rush, Faith. I can wait forever. The pressure is off now Mother is standing up to Gran. Not that there ever should have been any pressure anyway.” He frowns and rubs at his face. Changes in Bowsley are small and slow, but they are changes nonetheless.
“I know, I can wait, too… We don’t need a piece of paper to say what we are.”
“But?”
“I don’t know. I don't want you, me, and the baby to have different names when it’s born. I want us all to be tied together.”