No Safe Haven: A gripping, twisty tale of loyalty and survival, page 4
…
Something was up. I sensed it the second I stepped onto the walkway that led to our front door on the second floor of the block of flats. The feeling deepened as I walked, dodging the odd airer where laundry was drying, rusting old bicycles that weren’t even worth stealing, and the occasional pot with a struggling plant inside. The atmosphere was different today. Something had disturbed it, I could feel it in the pit of my stomach. I started to unlock the front door but it swung open, and laughter reached me from the living room. Not the laughter of Dom and his friends. It was Dom and a man. I ran down the hall and burst into the living room, hands tightening into fists at the scene before me. Dominic and Liam, both turning towards me guiltily. In the middle of the floor, ridiculously out of place on our disgusting hard-wearing blue carpet, squatted a brand new Playstation, still in its box.
‘Mum…’ Dominic started, but at my silence he faltered. Horror and shock washed through me. How dare he? How dare he?
‘Mum?’ Dominic said again.
‘What is that?’ I asked, gesturing at the box.
‘It’s a–’
‘I know what it is,’ I snapped at Dominic, before my eyes rested on Liam. ‘Why is it here?’ I asked him, my voice like glass.
‘Poppy, let me explain.’
‘No,’ I said. I bent down and picked up Liam’s gift. ‘Dominic, you stay in here,’ I told him, and I fixed my eyes on Liam. ‘Outside,’ I said.
Liam obediently followed me out of the room, while Dominic ignored my words and tagged along behind us, protesting that he’d invited his dad back to the flat, that it wasn’t Dad’s fault, that I should give him a chance. Once we’d stepped out onto the walkway I put the box down on the floor, shut the front door to stop Dominic following us and faced Liam, who’d backed away towards the peeling blue railings. Neither of us spoke. I stared at him, and he stared right back. My body had turned molten, boiling with emotions yet somehow rigid with rage, fear, I didn’t even know what. I opened my mouth to speak, but instead of words I made a low growl of anger, turning into a cry as I beat my hands against his chest.
‘I know you’re angry,’ Liam said, when I burned myself out with a final scream of frustration.
‘You have no idea!’ I yelled at him. ‘Get away from here, and take your bribe with you!’ I kicked the box across to him, and he ignored it.
‘It’s not a bribe. It’s an early birthday present for Dom.’
‘Dom doesn’t play videogames,’ I shouted at him. ‘He’s never shown the slightest–’
‘Of course he does. He plays them at his friend’s houses. He said there was no point in mentioning anything to you about it because you don’t haven’t any spare cash to start buying games consoles and he doesn’t want you to feel bad. He said you’re saving up the deposit for a flat of your own, or something? He says you’ve got a new job. He seemed proud of you.’
I took a step back. Had Dominic really told him all of that? I sagged against the wall.
Liam smiled at me, and reached out his hand. ‘You look just the same.’
‘You don’t,’ I told him, my voice strained. He didn’t. He’d lost his gangly look, filling out and growing into his body. His dark hair was short and tidy now, not the bird’s nest it had been when he was twenty-one and he left us. His eyes didn’t twinkle quite the same, there was hardness there, as though the toughness of life had beaten him down.
‘Let Dominic keep the Playstation,’ Liam said. ‘It’s for his fourteenth birthday.’
‘Do you have something for his fourth birthday?’ I asked him. ‘His fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth…’ my voice was rising.
‘Poppy–’
‘Did you even buy this?’ I asked him, jabbing my finger towards the box. ‘Or did it fall off the back of a lorry?’
‘You have every right to hate me.’
‘Me and Dom don’t need you. And we certainly don’t need ridiculous gifts. If someone round here realises we’ve got that bloody thing in our flat it’ll get nicked within a week.’
‘I thought you were moving soon.’
‘Yes, soon. Once I’ve got some more savings. Not that it’s got anything to do with you.’
‘Come on, Poppy. Dom’s not a little kid any more, let him have it.’ He grinned. ‘At least you know where he is if he’s in the flat playing on this. It’s better than being out on the street doing God knows what.’
‘Because you’d know all about that, wouldn’t you?’ I said. ‘But he’s not like you, Liam. Not in any way. Dominic doesn’t want to be out on the street doing God knows what.’
‘Get real, Poppy, he’s a teenager.’
‘Get real? You want to know what’s real? You threw a glass at me while Dominic was watching. That was real. Or were you too high to remember?’
‘I remember,’ he said.
‘Oh, and then you left us for the next ten years.’
‘Didn’t my parents help you?’
‘Yes, to begin with. But I’m not their responsibility. And they’ve got other grandkids now. Your nieces and nephews. Or didn’t you know that?’
Behind me the front door burst open, and Dominic tumbled out, his eyes burning with fury. ‘Stop being so mean to him!’ he yelled at me. ‘He wants to make up for the time he was away. He deserves a second chance, doesn’t he?’
Liam shook his head. ‘It’s up to your mum,’ he said, and I had to stop myself from strangling him for making me look like the bad guy. ‘If she doesn’t want–’
‘What I don’t want is for you to tear my son’s heart out the way you tore mine,’ I said viciously. I wanted my words to hurt him.
‘He’s my dad,’ Dominic said, picking up the Playstation and hugging it to his chest. ‘And I want to see him.’
Cattleford
7
‘I can’t believe he did that,’ Harriet said. ‘He put you in a horrible position. He should have come to you first.’
I pulled myself up from the floor now that I’d finished helping Jessica with Reef’s presents, plonking down on the sofa opposite the log burner. Jessica did the same, sitting with her legs crossed up on the sofa, hair falling over her face in a way that made her look childlike.
‘Well, I had no choice but to let him see Dom,’ I said heavily. ‘It scared me, because Dom was giddy with excitement about his dad. He said Liam was fun, and cool, which I guess he thought I wasn’t.’ I sighed. ‘He was at such a tricky age; it was like he was searching for something. He was trying to figure out who he was and how he fitted into the world. I knew he’d started to think more about where he’d come from, even before Liam showed up.’
‘Everyone needs to know where they came from,’ Jessica said softly.
‘What will you tell Reef when he asks?’ I said.
Jessica tucked her hair behind her ear and looked at me thoughtfully. ‘That he was a gift from the ocean,’ she said, apparently with complete sincerity.
Unsure how to respond to that, I cast my mind back to how it had been when Liam first showed up. I’d been wary, even once I’d agreed to him and Dom seeing each other a few times a week. Mine and Dominic’s existence had always been precarious, and I didn’t want anything to derail our plans of finally moving to a home of our own. But the pair of them wore me down. Using exactly the same tactics he had in the past, Liam wove me a tale of how great his life was now. He flattered me, saying I’d done an amazing job with Dominic. He said how sorry he was. He brought round pizza and made us laugh, until he was at the flat more often than he wasn’t.
One night, when Dominic was round at a friend’s house, he kissed me. Pulling away angrily, I told him he had no right, and that I thought he should go, but a deep ache had begun inside me and I grabbed his wrist as he started to stand. We stared at each other for a moment, as if we were sizing each other up. He was wondering if I was going to kiss him or hit him, and I was wondering the same, because no matter the good times Dominic and I had been having with him, he’d still wounded me in a way that had never healed. Our kiss ended up somewhere between violence and tenderness, there was a viciousness to it to start with, as if I was simultaneously trying to pull him close and push him away. It was a scorching hot day and our sweat mingled as we kissed, the salty taste of it in my mouth. He tore at my dress, before pushing my thighs apart so he could bury his face between them.
By the time we woke the next morning in my bed, tangled in a sweaty, sticky heap, I could hardly claim I didn’t want to let him back in to my life. The days that followed were like a dream, filled with laughter as we enjoyed being a family, and once night fell and me and Liam were alone in my room, we were possessed by a desperate, grasping passion where we practically ripped each other apart with the force of our attraction, the merest touch setting us both on fire.
Of course, I gave the sisters the sanitised version of events. After all, it could really be summed up in a simple statement. ‘I fell in love with him again,’ I told them.
‘Oh, Poppy,’ Harriet said.
‘If anything, my feelings were even more intense than the first time around.’ I shook my head. ‘I don’t know how he does it to me. I don’t know why no one else can even come close.’
‘He’s the love of your life,’ Jessica said simply. ‘There’s just one that can be that intense, I think.’
‘I take it it didn’t work out?’ Harriet asked me.
‘I thought it was going to. I really, really did.’ I took a deep breath. The betrayal was so unexpected, and so horrific. Jessica put her hand over mine and gave it a squeeze. ‘What did he do?’ she breathed.
‘He left,’ I said. ‘I woke one morning to find him gone.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ Jessica said.
‘But he hadn’t just left us. He’d taken something with him. I didn’t notice straight away, not until the next day, I think.’
‘Didn’t notice what?’
How could I say the words? I didn’t want to remember. But the sisters were both staring at me, and I had to speak. ‘He’d stolen from me. My bank account was empty, all my savings were gone. And he’d maxed out my credit card.’
This revelation was met with shocked silence, while the sisters’ faces showed their anger, and their sadness for me. Jessica threw her arms around me, while Harriet said, ‘Men are all the same. They just use you to get what they want, then they throw you aside.’
‘Dominic isn’t like that,’ I said into Jessica’s shoulder. ‘I’ve made sure of that.’
Jessica released me from her embrace. ‘Don’t worry about her,’ she said, ‘Harriet’s a natural pessimist when it comes to men. What did you do, though, Poppy? About the money? Did you go to the police?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’ Harriet said. ‘He stole from you.’
‘Because I didn’t want Dominic to know. I couldn’t have Dominic know.’
‘But how did you live? What did you do?’
I sat back against the sofa and closed my eyes for a second. How did you live? Could I find the words to explain all that had followed? They wouldn’t know what it was like to be so desperate, so afraid, and just so tired that you could be drawn into making the kind of awful decisions I had made. But I’d have to try. I owed them an explanation.
Habmouth
8
Sighing inwardly, I picked up my tea bag from the morning which I’d left drying while I was at work, and dropped it into a mug. I left them to dry out where I didn’t think Dominic would notice them – I had to protect him from how bad the money situation really was. I’d become pretty used to it – the hunger. After a while, it didn’t hurt so much. Eating anything substantial made it worse, as my stomach would remember what it was like to be full, and demand it again later that day, or the next morning. But even if I got used to the raw sensation of hunger it still affected me in other ways, sapping my concentration and leaving me tired and drained, like I was permanently coming down with something.
Footsteps along the walkway outside made me duck down so that I couldn’t be spotted through the window. Please go past, please go past. Please be someone else. At the knock on the door my chest tightened, but I forced myself to stand up tall. I wouldn’t let him see that he scared me. In fact, I would stand my ground. I couldn’t give him what I didn’t have, and he’d have to deal with it.
‘I know you’re in there,’ his weaselly voice came loud and clear.
Of course he did. He’d hang around outside, watching for me. I tried not to go out, but I had to go to work, and by now Kevin – which I was quite sure was not his real name – was well aware of my routine. He hammered on the door again. I forgot I was holding a mug of tea, and my fingers opened letting the mug smash to the floor, the precious liquid lost as it coated the ugly kitchen lino. I swore under my breath, staring at the mess until yet another knock forced me to move. Not answering the door wasn’t really an option.
…
That night I simultaneously longed for Dom to get home – to know he was safe – and dreaded it. He spent many of his evenings now with friends, and his Saturdays working at a garden centre, and I was glad he was happy and enjoying life. As much as I worried for him when he wasn’t in the house, I didn’t want him to know what I was scared of. I told him to never linger, to come straight home after college or from his friend’s houses. I hoped he just thought I was being a normal, overprotective parent and not that anything more sinister was going on.
There was really no getting around the situation tonight. As soon as he walked into the living room, he would realise. Sure enough, ‘Mum, where’s the TV? And the Playstation?’
I finished cleaning up the tea from the kitchen floor and went to join him. ‘It broke,’ I said, ‘it’s being repaired.’
‘They both broke?’
I blinked. What was I thinking? I’d never convince Dominic with such a stupid lie as that.
Dominic looked at me closely. ‘How bad is it?’ he asked me.
I gave a false laugh, and reached out for him, and immediately regretted it as my sleeve pulled up revealing the bruises on my wrist. ‘You’re hurt,’ he said.
I wrenched my sleeve back down. ‘I just hurt my wrist at work today.’
‘Mum, please!’ Dominic said, ‘stop treating me like a little kid! Somebody has grabbed your arm hard enough to leave marks on it!’
‘It’s nothing for you to worry about,’ I said, cursing myself for letting him see the bruises. I had stood up to Kevin, and the man he’d brought with him for backup. My show of rebellion had earned me a punch in the stomach along with the bruises on my wrist.
‘I saw all the bills,’ Dominic said, ‘I found them last night. I’ve been thinking about it all day.’
‘You… you found them all?’ I made my way over to the sofa, and he sat down beside me.
‘I’m so worried,’ he said, and his voice caught. ‘I thought you had an eating disorder when you keep making excuses for skipping meals…’
‘No!’ I said, ‘no, Dom, I don’t–’
‘I know that now! You don’t eat because you can’t afford to feed us both, don’t you, Mum? It’s why we can’t have the heating on, and you walk to work even when it’s pouring with rain, because you can’t pay the bus fare.’
Abruptly, I got up from the sofa and strode towards the kitchen, almost colliding with Dominic’s pitcher plant where it hung from the ceiling, those creepy insect-catching protuberances hanging down ominously. ‘What do you want for tea?’ I asked him. ‘We’ve got some pasta.’
‘Mum, you need to get help! Let me give you my wages from the garden centre. I know it’s not much, but it’s a start. And there’s a food bank not far from college. I don’t think they ask any questions, I could drop in there tomorrow–’
‘No.’
‘Yes,’ he insisted. He followed me to the kitchen and stood in front of me, his eyes dark and troubled. ‘You haven’t been the same ever since Dad left. And I was horrible to you about it back then, I know I was.’
‘It’s okay,’ I said faintly. I let him blame me about Liam. I let him think I must have driven his dad away, because if he was angry at me he could yell and shout at me and let the anger out. If his anger had turned to Liam, there would be no way to vent it. It would burn away inside him, hurting him, and he’d only been fourteen – too young to deal with such a deep betrayal. But that was over two years ago and he was different now. When I talked to him, I was often taken aback by how much he’d grown up.
‘You have to eat, Mum,’ he said softly. ‘You’re going to get ill.’
I turned away. I didn’t want to cry in front of him, but he touched my shoulder and I couldn’t help but let out a sob.
‘I’ll go to the food bank tomorrow and see how it works,’ he said.
‘No,’ I said again. ‘That’s not your responsibility. I got us into this mess. I’ll go to the food bank when I get a chance.’
‘You’re at work all day.’
‘I–’ I shook my head. ‘Dom, honestly, it’s not as bad as it seems…’ I started, but I couldn’t bring myself to finish such a barefaced lie.
‘Please, just go and sit down,’ he told me. ‘I’ll make us both some food. And you have to eat it.’
I was so shaken up by my confrontation with Kevin that I did as he asked. I forced down the pasta coated in tinned tomatoes, although it wasn’t easy with my stomach unused to large meals, but Dominic’s eyes were on me and I knew he wouldn’t let me stop.
‘Who took our stuff?’ he said, once he’d taken my plate away and sat beside me again. ‘And who hurt your arm?’
I didn’t reply.
‘Someone you owe money to.’ Dominic stated.
I wanted to deny it, but what was the point? He deserved honesty. ‘Yes,’ I said simply.
‘How much money do you owe?’
I almost laughed.
‘I found your credit card bills, so I already know it’s a lot.’ He was quiet for a moment. ‘Did bailiffs come? They can’t hurt you, can they?’ he said, his voice gaining emotion. ‘You should go to the police about those bruises. People can’t come here and attack you. If they come back, don’t let them in unless I’m here.’
