by Kingsley Ash
I keep silent and listen to her. She spills her secrets, tells from the heart. I keep silent when she tells me about her father’s abuse on Elizabeth, and all his underage pornographic movies. I keep silent when she tells me her sister is really her mother. I keep silent when she tells me that she’s seen my mum’s face before. I keep silent when she pulls out a DVD from her bag and gives me it. And I keep silent as my mother’s sad baby face looks up at me.
‘When you showed me your mother’s photograph, I think deep down I’ve always known. I blocked it out . . . I should have told you. Shouldn’t have doubted you. I don’t doubt you.’ In a small voice she says, ‘Do you hate me?’
Amy’s sunshine in my whole fucking universe.
She’s the opposite of my destruction.
We sit in the middle of the room. We don’t speak about loss, but it’s with us in the broken room. Amy wears the sadness she shares with her sister. I look at her with my mum’s eyes. We see the dead written on each other’s faces. We don’t mean to, but we do. Even now, drawn together in the peace, we’re not alone.
Amy is consumed with torture. Her heart is cut with pain. There’s still a thousand places I haven’t gone to die, but it feels like I’m dying here with her.
I look at her hand in mine. ‘Here’s the thing, Amy. If my dad hadn’t been a sadistic bastard, if he hadn’t forced my mother’s hand to get rid of me, if I hadn’t grown up in a loveless home . . . then I wouldn’t have loved you. I went through hell, but it all led me to you, and I wouldn’t change a single damn thing. You’re worth every cut & scrape of hellfire. No regrets. No what ifs.’
There’s that certainty. No fucking hesitation. Not an instant where I look or feel unsure.
Just you and me across two twisted hearts.
Amy will never get over the pain of her family’s secret. But I’ll do whatever it takes to save her from the darkness that nearly took my own life.
I cradle her face in my hands and I kiss her.
‘I just wish you told me, Amy, from the beginning. It should never even been a question. From now on everything.’
She smiles a smile that could end world suffering. ‘Everything.’
The sun strobes through the roof, hits our faces. We lie together with the smell of wet earth. Crows caw. The wind roars against the cottage.
Amy hesitates to reach out for a tiny white knitted cardigan. ‘Where did all this come from?’
‘It belonged to my mum.’ I touch her face with my fingers.
Are you real?
‘This DVD of your mother . . . I know it’ll be hard to watch, but maybe this will help identity your father.’
I laugh coldly. ‘I don’t need to watch it, Amy. I already know who my father is. You see that car she’s sitting in?’
The cover of my mum’s DVD is set inside the interior of a car.
Amy nods her head.
‘I’ve been inside it. Helped repair it, in fact.’ I laugh bitterly. ‘That’s the interior of a classic red Mustang. It belongs to Bishop Clark.’
Bishop was twice my mother’s age when he abused her. And I’m the thing born from that evil.
‘I’m so sorry, Shepherd.’
Amy’s hand curls on my chest. I put my fingers in the cup she makes with hers. We stay like that for a bit.
I do my damnedest to drive away the dark past, concentrate on plotting the curve of Amy’s spine, the shape of each stacked vertebra, the freckle just under her shoulder blade. But then I see how frail she is, how raw. Her skin is pale, her shoulders narrow.
To Amy, I recount the horrors of my childhood, and the hell inflicted on me in Nazareth. I disclose everything. Including the night I tried to hang myself.
I confess every raw piece of me, and it feels like the knife stabbed in my soul is being pulled out. We go into the darkest corner. Our pain pulls us together like a blackhole, pulled into destruction. Annihilation. And we cling to each other’s darkness.
Whatever hurt I’ve got inside, nothing compares to Amy’s horror. Amy is already dying. Fuck if I’ll be the death of her.
Something thuds at my feet.
The hell?
A large piece of concrete collapses from the ceiling. I grab Amy and pull her up behind me, shielding her. Rubble and dirt block up my world. I kick through the fallen rubble and stoop to flick up a piece that kinda looks like a star. I put it in Amy’s hand.
‘Whenever I was locked up in the cellar of the children’s home, I’d look up at this little shining star through this small window. The little bright in the sky. I always wondered what it was. All I knew was, it gave me something to focus on in the dark.’ I run my fingers through her hair. ‘You’re the little bright I wished for as a kid. You’re my North fucking star.’
The fucking unreachable.
‘Now I’ve got you — Mine.’
Amy and I just look at each other. The real us.
She’s the whole of my fucking universe right there.
Standing in the ruins of my past, in the darkness, Amy and I can be anything we want to be in the chaos. Just me and her.
Standing in the doorway, I peer around like a man waking up. I feel my mum’s ghost close.
The dead drawn to shattered hearts.
‘I love you, Mum,’ I say to her ghost. ‘Rest in peace now.’
I pocket my mum’s silver seahorse bracelet and go outside. The biting cold feels good on my aching bones.
I start to find things in the long grass. There’re jam jars and hinges, bent spoons and pram wheels, a rusted bath of brown rainwater and a rusted pitchfork.
My inheritance.
I fill the jam jars with water, kick through the brambles to the roses that climb up the side of the cottage. I take out my penknife and cut the stems. Amy helps me put flowers in each room before we leave, and get rid of any weeds. If my mum returns, there’ll be light in the darkest corners of our shattered home.
I hold Amy’s hand, and I walk her out of the dark woods.
I stop and turn to her. ‘Amy, I need to do this.’
‘Go do what you need to do,’ she says with sad eyes. ‘Just promise to come back to me.’
‘I promise,’ I say.
My father is evil. Am I born from evil?
‘I’m a monster, Amy.’
‘You’re my monster.’ I hear her heart break. ‘We’re the same, Shepherd. We’re both born from pain.’
No Amy in my life is like putting a gun to my head and pulling the trigger.
Every man has a purpose in life. I couldn’t see mine until Amy. Protect and love her . . . it’s all I am. It’s all I was born to do.
I touch every inch of her face with my fingers.
‘What are you doing?’ she says.
‘I just want to remember every bit of you.’ The little white brain of her hair is coming loose. She is so beautiful. Too fucking beautiful for an ugly soul like me. ‘Amy . . . you bring me crashing to my knees. I’d fall into Hell if it meant being with you.’
Standing together at the edge of the woods, I pull out a pen from the inside of my leather jacket.
I trace the outline of her shadow, cast on the grass by moonlight, on the inner wrist of my left forearm. A tattoo for future’s wish. A permanent reminder of when all the lies died.
‘What is that for?’ she says.
I tug her into me, hold on tight, and run my fingers down that body I’ve fucked, adored, admired, worshipped, loved. I kiss her on the lips and do my damn hardest never to forget the taste of lemon drops.
‘Just in case. Just in case I’m not a monster.’
I tell her to wait for me in my car. Then I turn and head back into the woods.
Cross my heart and hope to die, that the liar in me is dead.
54
ME
Five years ago . . .
HM Prison and Young Offenders Institution, Nazareth
So this is it. This is how I’m gonna die.
On my own. In a cell. With a dirt
y sheet wrapped around my neck.
As soon as the guard closes the door behind him after the hourly check, I get to work, ripping the sheet into shreds with a strength I didn’t think I had anymore, getting them to the right size to do the job properly. Quickly. Before I change my mind.
I thought I could do this but it turns out I can’t. I can’t take the pain. I can’t take the nightmares. Without the drugs, alcohol, and the gang fam, every time I close my eyes, I can see Mr Finchley towering over me, hear him shouting at me. I can hear the other inmates telling each other what they’re gonna do to me while I’m sleeping.
When I open my eyes, I can still hear them talking. I can feel the things they’ve put inside me crawling all over me, eating their way out. I can see them moving under my skin. I’ve got blood under my fingernails from scratching, but nothing is gonna stop them. Nothing except this. I want to close my eyes one last time and not see anything ever again. Never hear anything. Never feel anything. I want this to be done.
Nobody loves me.
Nobody will miss me.
My mother and father threw me away like trash. Left me for dead.
I know this works. I can’t get out of this room by walking. I can’t jump. I’ve got no pills to take. I can’t cut myself. But they’ve left me one escape. The sheet is a rope now. Like my roommate said, one end tied around the bars on the window will do it. The bars won’t let me down. They’re designed to keep me in. They’re not going anywhere. They’re going to do their job.
Tying the sheet around one, I pull hard on the knot to make sure it’ll hold. The thin cotton tautens around the metal so that the only way to get it off will be with a knife. Same around my neck and . . . Is this the proper knot? I’ve never seen it done in real life. I’m guessing. I don’t want to get it wrong. I don’t want to fuck even this up. When I drop back, it has to get tighter fast, so I don’t get a chance to think about it. I don’t want time to chicken out.
One end around the window bars. The other round my neck. This should be simple. I kneel in the middle of the floor to say one last prayer, looking like the dog that used to live at the end of the children’s home. Chained by the neck, day in, day out. Barking, barking, barking, going mad. What was he even born for? What was I even born for? Who gives a shit anymore?
I say my goodbyes. Nobody will hear them. I say my sorrys too. Sorry, Diana, that you’re gonna have to see me on a slab. Sorry Amylocks . . . Sorry I couldn’t be a better man, sorry for being scum of the earth and killing the only bright in my dark . . .
Turns out that I am a piece of shit, and now I’m gonna die like one. At fifteen, I’m gonna die with a sheet wrapped round my neck, stinking of piss, sweat and tears. Looking like the loser I am.
I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.
Do it. Do it, you fucking coward.
The voices want one last say.
Get on with it.
I get up from the floor, then I get on the bed and lie down. I just have to roll off the side. The drop doesn’t need to be big. It just needs to be definite. Holding the sheet rope, I get into position. Then I let go. The bed disappears from under me and . . .
I roll off the bed, jerking my head back harder than I expect. It knocks the breath out of me, squeezes my windpipe so hard I can’t take another. Instinctively, my hands go to my neck. I try to loosen the noose. No chance. It’s too good. For once, I’ll actually get something right.
Jesus Christ.
Nothing to do but let it happen.
Then I see her, smiling up at me.
Amy Earhart.
I’d ripped out the article in the newspaper, the one about Amy running a marathon to help raise funds for the children’s home. She smiles up at me, like she’s the happiest girl in the world.
Where there is colour, there is hope.
And fuck, I suddenly don’t want to die. I want to get out. I want to tell Amy I’m sorry for what I did to her. I want to tell her that I fucking love her.
I scrabble to free myself. I’m on my back. My heels slide along the floor. I can’t get my feet under me to lift me up and out of danger. Darkness starts to creep in at the edges of my vision. Of all the mistakes I’ve ever made, this one is the fucking worst.
I can’t loosen the noose. I can’t cry out. I’m fucked. So absolutely fucked. I can only go through with it. I black out, and wait to die.
But I don’t die.
I don’t know how long I’m out for, but when I come round, it’s to find that someone is pressing hard on my chest, trying to resuscitate me. I can hear shouting. Blurred silhouettes loom over me. The metal door keeps crashing against the wall as people rush in and out of my cell. The rope is gone from around my neck. I’m back on the bed.
I come back to life.
When I was released from prison, I got an apprenticeship at a car garage in The Valley. I saved up enough money to go into business with Fab5.
I never forgot Amy’s smile. It was the only little bit of happiness I felt in my sad, lonely world.
Amy was my heroine.
She was my breath of life.
She was the saving of me.
55
ME
The world is arsewards.
Sky, rain, branches, leaves, earth and stone, all whipped and colliding.
I stumble ahead in the woods, can only hear the howl of the wind in my ears. But my guts feel the bass roll of thunder. The storm’s returned. My nerves catch every shotgun crackle of lightning as it forks over the trees.
I keep moving forward, caught by brambles, lashed by branches backlit for split seconds. But they’re just blacker fissures in the darkness.
I get to Bishop’s camp. Everything here looks like a beaten dog waiting for its owner.
Neglected.
Tortured.
I pick up a stone, and holding one arm over my face, put a window in with it. I pray to whatever god is listening that Bishop’s here.
When he barrels out of the caravan, he looks like a man half beaten.
‘The hell are you doing, Shepherd? You gone mad?’
I spit, find a smoke in my pocket, light it, and only take one drag. I flick the fag butt to the ground, half-finished. It just doesn't taste good anymore. I watch the rain put it out.
I look up at the sky, willing myself to stop shaking. I don’t know if I can trust either God or my own legs in any of this. I’m in between minds if a god exists, but I say a prayer anyway.
‘I know you’re my father, Bishop.’
I can see the stubble on Bishop’s chin and the fine white hair on his head. He frowns, looks at me in desperation. ‘You’re barking up the wrong tree, kid. Who’s been lying to you? Christian?’
‘Quit lying. I’ve seen my mum’s film. I know it’s you — so cut the shit,’ I roar.
His frown turns to a scowl. He’s just comprehended the shit that is my life. ‘Your mother was a whore. She came on to me. You don’t know the full story, son. Don’t judge a man.’
Time slows.
I look around me. There’s a crow flying low over. What little light there is shimmers in the branches above.
Keep your head, Shepherd.
‘I’m. Not. Your. Son,’ I grit out. ‘I know she was thirteen when you took advantage over a poor, abused girl.’
‘What’re you gonna do?’ Bishop looks me up and down. I don’t like what I see on his face.
I see it now. All the darkness I inherited came from my father’s evil eyes.
‘There’s no good in drudging up the past,’ he says. ‘You’re the illegitimate child of an underage whore.’ His smooth voice makes me grit my teeth.
I lose my head and think of nothing.
I charge at him, smash his back against the caravan. I lower my face to his, teeth bared like a wolf foaming at the mouth. I squeeze his neck.
‘It’s over. The past is done,’ Bishop says, his eyes artic. ‘I didn’t want you then, don’t want you now.’
His voice is low a
nd calm. He sounds just as he did when we sat alongside each other in his bar. It could be a joke Bishop’s telling me, or it could be something profound, about this being the end.
‘You think I’m looking for a father in a man like you?’ I spit out, eyes furious, limbs shaking, even angrier now than when I found out. I mash his neck harder under the force of my arm blade.
‘Your mother was a slut,’ Bishop spits. ‘She loved every fucking second of it. Begged me for it.”
Bishop knows his days are numbered. He wants me to give him the easy way out.
Kill him.
I want to kill him. I want to fucking torture him.
It’s like a sucker punch to the throat, a sharp white pain in the base of my spine. And I hang off at the edge of the world.
I see a vision of Amy walking to me, in her white shoes, with a twist of a smile, her soft green eyes sparkling. She’s perfect and lovely.
I know at once every detail of her. Her angelic voice, her sweet smile, the smell of her sunshine hair. I know her sudden temper and her slow soft tears and the way she moves, like a little ballerina.
Now, at the edge of the world, I remember everything. She holds out her hand. Smiles. Her face lit with love, like a bright rose in the darkness.
I focus my blurred eyes on Bishop, crushing the life out of him.
‘Go on — do it!’ he roars into the howling wind.
The world is wrong. So fucking wrong.
A man can change.
I don’t ever want to hurt anyone, again. I don’t even want to fucking be here. It makes me sick to realise what I’ve done in the past. The armed robbery, the gang fights, so much shit and nothing. It disgusts me. It makes me loathe myself to know I was capable of it and that I used to get off on it. Thinking it made me the ‘big man’.
There’s no power in that — no feeling of being alive. The power is in choosing not to hurt. The power is in living with the flaws of others, in — in . . .
Fuck, but that’s it, isn’t it? Me and Amy. To make things work. Because Amy sets my world on fire and makes me feel alive. It isn’t hurting people or lying to manipulate and get what you want, all those things only force me to shut down, turn off my emotions, hide inside myself for protection. Fuck. No. It’s Amy who makes me feel like a man on fire. Amy’s touch, Amy’s love. The world is so, so fucking wrong.