Payback

by Gemma Rogers

  I jumped at the intrusion and spun around. Hope appeared out of the darkness from the archway, like a bear emerging from a cave. She spun the keys around her fingers, the familiar brown tag looping. Gary’s handwriting blurred. What was she doing here?

  ‘You?’ James uttered, collapsing in a pool of sweat, his face drenched, skin clammy.

  I knelt to unbutton his collar, feeling the panic rocket.

  ‘Hope, what are you doing here?’ I gasped over my shoulder, my fingers fumbling with the buttons of James’s shirt. His breath coming in rasps.

  Hope didn’t reply. I pulled my phone out of my pocket, stabbing my fingers at the cracked screen but it wouldn’t respond.

  ‘We need to call an ambulance. Give me your phone.’ I stretched out my hand to Hope, fingers twitching, but she remained in the archway, staring at me blankly. It was as if I hadn’t spoken. I bit my lip, tears springing to my eyes feeling helpless. ‘Fuck’s sake, Hope! James, honey, stay with me. Keep looking at me. Where’s your phone?’ I scowled, thrusting my hands in the pockets of his jeans. They were empty. Had he left it in the car?

  I stood to open the back door, but it was locked. Why was it locked? What was happening? Why wasn’t Hope helping?

  ‘What the fuck is going on? Help me!’ I begged, spinning round to confront Hope.

  James looked so pale he was translucent.

  ‘Don’t worry, he’ll pass out in a minute. Come on, I want to show you something.’ Hope turned around, melting into the gloom.

  45

  November 2018

  The sky outside was a Saturn grey, but indoors the shadows loomed large. I chewed my lip, tasting the metallic bitterness. Torn between wanting to follow Hope to find out what the hell was going on and staying with James. He looked like he was fading; his eyelids were beginning to flutter, and his forehead smouldered. If only I’d brought my bag. I would have had some paracetamol to lower his temperature. I looked around, for something, anything. Pulling open drawers and cupboards but all were empty. Park Lane was useless. All I could do was lay a soggy tissue across his forehead in a desperate attempt to ease his pain.

  ‘I’ll be back in a minute,’ I whispered, crouching to squeeze his hand.

  He mumbled something incoherent in response.

  I walked into the living room, swallowing hard, my mouth filling up. All the time pushing the power button on my phone as it sat useless in my pocket. Praying it would vibrate and jolt back to life. Hope wasn’t there; instead I found her in the den, gazing out of the window onto the street. Her hair was wild, as though she’d run all the way here. Her usually perfect exterior slipped, the cracks beginning to show. I didn’t understand. Why was she here? Why wouldn’t she help?

  ‘What’s going on?’ My voice trailed off.

  ‘This was where it happened, you know.’

  ‘Where what happened?’

  ‘Where I was conceived.’ Hope turned to face me, her lip curled back into a snarl. ‘Where my mother was raped.’

  ‘Hayley?’ I whispered.

  ‘You were here, you were all part of it. I know all about the party. You’re all accountable for what happened. He ruined her life, you know.’

  ‘Gareth?’

  ‘Yes Gareth, he raped her here on the floor. His hand over her mouth as she wriggled underneath him. Too frightened to fight back.’ Tears rolled down Hope’s cheeks.

  I gasped, shaking my head vehemently, unable to comprehend her words.

  ‘Yes, your precious Gareth. He became quite loose-lipped after I bought him a few whiskies. Sat alone at the bar. We got chatting. I flirted a bit, you know, we drank a lot and I got him talking about the night he popped his cherry. He admitted it was you he wanted, not my mother. He confirmed everything once the alcohol hit, before I helped him off the road.’ Hope’s eyes glinted and a smile played on her lips.

  ‘He can’t be your father, Hope,’ I stammered, still shaking my jumbled head.

  ‘He is, or should I say was,’ Hope snapped, her chin jutting forward. There was no point in arguing with her, she was determined she knew the truth.

  ‘Where’s Hayley now?’

  ‘At home, and here too.’ She patted the locket that hung from her neck, I flinched at the movement. ‘I always have a piece of her with me.’

  I felt sick, I needed air, unable to take it all in.

  ‘I’m going to check on James,’ I announced, my limbs quaking as I turned to leave, my hand on the wall.

  ‘I wouldn’t do that if I were you.’ Hope drew a large kitchen knife from behind her back and waved it at me.

  I stood frozen to the spot, my eyes mesmerised by the silver point. The urge to open my bladder overwhelming as I desperately tried to connect the dots. Hayley was raped? Hayley was raped by Gareth? She got pregnant but never had the abortion? My head swam, Hope’s voice bringing me back to the present.

  ‘So, once I’m done here, I’m taking a holiday. Australia seems like a good place. There’s someone there I’ve always wanted to meet.’ Her eyes sparkled, and she grinned; she looked maniacal, mascara stained her cheeks, eyes wide, mouth twisted. ‘I can’t say it’s gone completely to plan, I hoped to ruin your business with that virus. But I figure I’ve caused enough damage with Robyn and Becca. Robyn got sacked, and notched up another criminal conviction, so she’ll find it hard to get a job. Maybe if I’m lucky, she’ll turn to drugs or prostitution. With Mark’s injuries, Becca will struggle. It’ll be like raising children alone. She’ll know how hard it was for my mother. That leaves you and James here. Until I get to Elliot anyway.’

  I gaped at Hope, who spoke as though she was reciting her shopping list. She didn’t know the truth, that Mark was recovering, and Robyn’s charges had been dropped.

  ‘How could you do this? You killed Gareth.’

  ‘Don’t look so shocked. You would too if you knew what my mother had been through. I read her diaries after she died, they were worse than any Stephen King novel. The things she had to do, the dicks she had to suck. All to make sure her child was warm, fed and safe every night. It disgusts me and it’s all your fault. Slut Sophie with her virginity party. You ruined her fucking life, Sophie; you all did. You ruined mine too.’ Hope shouted, her voice echoing around the empty room, face an angry red mess of tears and snot. Eyes crazed, she began waving the knife animatedly.

  I shrank back, pressed against the wall, barely able to breathe.

  ‘You sit in your fucking ivory tower. Successful business, lots of money, parents that still want you. We could have had that, given the chance. My grandparents disowned her, they wanted me sucked out and thrown away. That’s where it started; she wrote in her diary what she had to do to get the nurse to say she’d gone through with the abortion. What you can get when you trade sex for favours. She learnt to be a whore from a young age. I bet you’re thinking it was heroin that killed her, aren’t you? But she was clean, always, she never dabbled in any of that stuff. She brought me up the best she could. We were a team. She was my best friend.’

  ‘I’m so, so sorry, Hope.’ My heart aching as the anger and bitterness spilled out of her. The release of years clinging on, living on the breadline and the loss of the person that meant the most in the world.

  ‘Last year she found a lump. It turned out to be breast cancer and within two months she was gone. Just like that. She’d hidden all this stuff from me, I never knew any of it. We had nothing, but we were happy. She worked two jobs, anything she could to keep a roof over our head. It wasn’t until I was going through her things, I found her diaries. Years of misery, all to keep me.’

  I edged along the wall, towards the door, in two minds whether to make a run for it, but as I moved, Hope shadowed me, step for step. Her eyes never leaving mine.

  ‘I have all of this rage, Sophie, it burns inside me, and I can’t control it. He had to pay. Gareth fucking Dixon had to pay.’

  ‘Gareth’s not your father.’ James’s voice a low rumble from the doorway. He leant h
eavily against it, the only thing keeping him upright.

  Hope cackled and pointed her knife at him, pleased he’d joined the party. ‘I have his DNA, dickhead. That night in the pub, I took a hair off his shirt and got it tested along with mine. One of those home kits. We matched.’

  ‘Not a full match though was it?’ he asked.

  Hope appeared momentarily unsure what to say and rolled back onto her heels.

  James cleared his throat and edged himself up the side of the door frame trying to stand to his full height. ‘Gareth couldn’t have children, he’d been trying for years with Lisa, so that Ben could have a brother and they could have a child of their own.’

  ‘She wrote D in her diary, for Dixon.’ Hope stammered, her eyes glazing over, recalling what she’d read.

  James wheezed, clutching his side, his face a mask of pain.

  ‘It was him, you’re fucking with me. It must have been him.’ Her voice trembled, unsure, the knife hanging limply at her side.

  ‘It was a Dixon, but not Gareth. His older brother Craig is your father.’

  I stared at James, eyes bulging. He wiped the sweat from his forehead with the cuff of his shirt and took a slow, deep breath.

  ‘Around two years ago, Gareth and I were in the pub, his local. I’d come up to visit. Craig came in later, he was drunk, and started a fight with Gareth, like he always did. He was a user, first steroids, weed, then drink, another of life’s wasters. No fixed job, continuously bouncing from sofa to sofa. He followed his brother up to St. Albans to sponge off him when he couldn’t get anything else out of their parents. Gareth idolised his older brother, I couldn’t understand for the life of me, why. But Craig hated him, he was jealous. Whatever Gareth did, Craig would always try to knock him down. I remember that night as I had to physically split them up.’ James coughed and my legs shook beneath me, I feared they may collapse.

  Hope looked on, lips parted, eating up James’s every word.

  ‘Gareth had enough, told Craig what a loser he was. It made him mad, of course, and then, in retaliation, Craig said he’d had sex with Gareth’s first girlfriend because he was “too much of a pussy to do it himself”. He said Gareth rang him, that night, for a lift, gave him this address, but when he arrived Gareth had already gone.’

  The silence that followed was immense as I began to see the true horror of what had happened to Hayley. What had I done?

  46

  November 2018

  I imagined Hayley’s terrified face, when Craig walked in to find her alone and vulnerable. Likely in tears after being dumped on what should have been the best night of her life. We were all upstairs getting on with it. She was there alone, helpless. I squeezed my eyes shut to try and stop the influx of tears. My throat constricted. Why hadn’t she told us? Why hadn’t she called for help? Anger struck me like a red-hot poker.

  ‘You said there was a chance Craig may have got her pregnant, James, not that he raped her! Did you know? Did you know it happened that night?’ I spat.

  Hope seemed stunned, speechless, unable to comprehend his bombshell.

  James slid down the wall, weak and exhausted, his body fighting against the infection. ‘We didn’t know if Craig was bullshitting or not. He was a liar, he’d say anything to wind Gareth up.’ James turned to Hope. ‘It was only when we tried to track your mum down, when I saw your grandparents and they said she’d had an abortion that I connected the dots.’ James panted. The conversation sapping the energy from him.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ I hissed, my guilt turning to anger.

  James had the good grace to look ashamed. He couldn’t meet my eyes. With all Hope was doing to us, the threats, the attacks, he kept what he knew to himself? Why? Out of some misguided loyalty to Gareth’s or, worse, Craig’s memory?

  ‘He made me promise to drop it. Hayley was gone, Craig too. We didn’t know it had happened for sure. We didn’t know Hayley had a baby. Gareth was worried about his parents, what they’d say.’

  Hope interrupted, ‘She changed our names, as soon as she was eighteen. She became Hannah Smith and I was Hope. The most common surname she could think of. No one was ever going to find us, including her wanker of a father or her spineless mother.’

  Hope looked past us, out into the darkness the house was now cloaked in. I should have taken the opportunity to run, but I knew I’d never get James out too. I couldn’t leave him behind. Even though he’d acted like an idiot. I had to keep her talking. Figure out how to get the keys.

  ‘It was you all along? The phone calls, the rat, the cards. You were the one coming into my home?’

  Hope smirked at my wide eyes. ‘It was easy, I recorded Gareth that night on my phone, he was so drunk, he didn’t have a clue. I thought you might like to hear his voice, a trip down memory lane.’ Hope sneered, reaching into her pocket and jingling a set of keys in front of her. They weren’t the ones for Park Lane, with the brown handwritten tag. ‘I copied yours, you didn’t even notice them go missing, I had them back in half an hour. Even when you changed your front door, I still managed to get in through the back of the office. Silly Sophie. And the calls? You gave me your number on my first day, remember? I got James’s from your phone. You led me to all of them. All I had to do was follow you. I needed this place though, and when I saw Mrs Davidson had it up for sale with Osbornes, I only needed to give her a nudge to swap estate agents. It had to end here, where it began. Where my mother’s life was ruined by you.’

  ‘You killed Gareth. He was innocent,’ I said, trying my best to keep my voice level. My heart raced and perspiration collected at the small of my back. My body entering fight or flight mode. How much longer could I keep her talking? How were we going to get out of this?

  ‘None of you are fucking innocent, you sanctimonious bitch. I read the diaries; she was raped and forever broken because of it. What it set in motion, the life she had. It’s all down to you,’ Hope spat, and I winced, trying to stop myself from cowering. She shuffled closer, the knife held out between us, head tilted to one side.

  ‘It won’t bring her back,’ James whispered, he was practically laying on his side, skin ghostly.

  I had to get help; I didn’t know how much longer he would stay conscious. I had no choice.

  ‘Where is Craig now?’ Hope demanded.

  ‘Craig died that night. He got so drunk after we left, he got into a bar fight with some bikers. He was kicked to death outside in the gravel car park after closing. Maybe it was what he deserved?’ James lifted his shirt to look at his bandage, which was blooming a sour yellow, the sickly-sweet odour drifting towards me. He needed a hospital and antibiotics urgently.

  ‘You’re lying! How can I trust anything either of you say?’ Hope shouted, her chance of payback whipped away.

  ‘Look it up yourself, you’ll see we’re telling the truth.’ James’s voice was becoming weaker and weaker.

  ‘I had no idea what happened that night, or why she left Copthorne so suddenly. Do you think I would stand by and let someone rape my friend? She never told us, never asked for help.’ Tears rolled down my cheeks, they weren’t just words, me begging for our lives, I meant them. I would have to live with the knowledge of what I’d caused. ‘Hope, we can all walk out of here. You can disappear, carry on and live your life. They won’t find you. We won’t tell,’ I pleaded.

  Hope wasn’t moved, her eyes darted around the room, she looked possessed. ‘Now, why would I do that? I’m off to Australia tomorrow, taking a sabbatical. I’m sure my employer won’t mind, will you, Sophie? Elliot will be the icing on the cake. Disappearing there will be much easier, I mean, do you have any idea how big that country is?’ Hope waved the knife as she spoke as if it was a cigarette wafting between her fingers.

  I spun around and hopped over James, running for the back door, but I didn’t even make it out of the lounge. The knife sliced into my shoulder, swishing past my ear a millisecond before cracking the bone. I cried out and turned to wrestle the knife fro
m Hope’s hands, blood sprayed from the wound as my arms flailed. Her eyes bulged; face warped with rage. I was no match for her, she was petite, smaller than me, but her anger gave her strength which far exceeded mine. We grappled and I wrapped my fingers in her hair, yanking it downwards. Her nails clawed my face, trying to gouge my eye. I felt my strength waver, my arm weak and fingers turning numb. It was over.

  Hope raised the knife, high above her head, ready to plunge. I closed my eyes waiting for the fatal blow which didn’t come. I looked just in time to see her arms flap and she fell, her face a wash with panic as she began her descent to the floor. The knife had disappeared. James lay stretched out, gripping onto the heel of her boot and refusing to let go. He’d tripped her over. Hope hit the ground with a thud, her nose slamming into the carpet. A muffled crunching sound rose up.

  I pressed my hand on my shoulder, down onto the wound. Watching my fingers become gloved in the crimson liquid. Nausea made my head swim, but I saw Hope kicking out at James, her foot connecting with his jaw. A flash of silver, a howl and the carpet at my feet blossomed into a ruby red flower. James had stabbed Hope in the thigh. She whimpered on the ground, clutching her leg, eyes rolling.

  ‘Come on. Get up,’ I ordered, heaving James to his feet, my hands slippery with blood. The room around us a macabre crime scene photo in waiting, forever frozen in all its ghoulish glory.

  James and I held on to each other as we stumbled to the back door, before realising it was still locked and changing direction, limping on to the front door. I dropped to the tiles and kicked at the pane of glass at the bottom with both feet. It shattered on the second try. I pushed James through, thrusting with what little strength I had left. All the time watching behind me, expecting Hope to fly around the corner, through the archway, wielding the knife. The villain left for dead numerous times but always coming back for more. But it was eerily quiet. I climbed through, catching my cheek on a shard of glass and wincing. My body a mass of slices, cuts, blood and pain. My shoulder was numb, my arm useless.