The Under Ground (Strong Women Book 4)

by Sarah Till

  Ellis stretched on the bed. The nurse shot him a disgusted look.

  “Visitors are not allowed on the patient’s bed. Risk of infection.”

  I smirked and welcomed back the fire in my belly that indicated an argument.

  “But there’s nothing infectious about me. I’ve been assaulted. I’m not ill. Anyway, I’m going home today.”

  The nurse marked her chart and stuck a thermometer under my tongue. She didn’t wait for an answer before exiting and slamming the door.

  It could hardly get any worse. If had have walked into the room at that moment and announced that to be decapitated would be in my best interests, it would have remained unchallenged. Ellis looked fidgety. I shuddered.

  It was a deflating moment. I had expected to be able to get up and go home. I desperately wanted to pee, and I got out of bed slowly, assessing my movements with the amount of pain endured. It was better than I thought. I could feel bruising on the back of my head and down my back, as if I had been dragged down some stairs, and my stomach felt heavy. The cut above my eye had been stitched and felt sore, but all in all I felt better than the day before. I still had a haze around my thinking; I would drift off on tangents of trivia from time to time, but this was becoming less frequent and I regained my pre-heroin state.

  Nurse Nasty returned with a small trolley. I went into the toilet, peed with a certain amount of pain and returned. She was preparing the syringes to take blood.

  “Just doing full bloods. To make sure where you are now.”

  With the drugs, she meant, but didn’t say.

  “Aren’t I supposed to get counselling about this?”

  She smirked sarcastically as a tall thin man opened the door and entered timidly. I noted that his fingers were long and ribbony, and his thin arms hung out of his white coat. Ellis motioned that he was going to get a cup of tea.

  “Don’t be long!” I shouted after him. I turned to the doctor. “You’ll stay until he comes back, won’t you?”

  The young man smiled. He reminded me of a grown man with a boy’s face.

  “Yes, yes, I’ll wait. So, Mrs Munro. You had a spot of bother and have been assaulted. Your notes tell me that you were assaulted. But all the same. If you were unconscious and cannot remember what happened, it would be better to have the tests anyway to see what you’ve had, so we can deal with the aftermath. Seeing as you can’t remember.’ He looked away as he said it. ‘I notice that your body had been disinfected prior to your admission. You skin had been cleaned with an industrial disinfectant. Do you know why that would be?”

  So that’s’ what the piny smell was. I had first noticed it in the toilets at the station but assumed it was a rim block. Now he mentioned it, I could smell it on my skin. I remembered that I hadn’t had a shower.

  “I’ve no idea. I was attacked, you see. “

  “It says here that you had a possible self-overdose. Is that not the case?”

  My temper rose.

  “How many more times? I was attacked. Someone did this to me. Why would I do this to myself? Why would I do that? Eh?”

  The man-boy smiled ironically.

  “We get all sorts in here. Look, I’m here to counsel you on your HIV test. Do you understand the implications if the test is positive?”

  “HIV?”

  He nodded.

  “The needle.”

  I nodded assertively.

  “Yeah. Yeah. I had a friend who died of AIDS. He was a close friend. I understand all about it.”

  The man-child handed me a leaflet.

  “Any questions give me a ring. Dr Henny will be along to discharge you in a second.”

  Ellis arrived with two cups of tea. Nurse Ratchet extracted the necessary blood with no exchange of words or looks. She silently filled the various syringes and left.

  “I can go home soon.”

  Ellis smiled.

  “I can’t wait to get home. To our own bed. Proper cups of tea.”

  We sat in silence until Dr Henny came and told me I could go. Still in my pyjamas, I shuffled my way out of the room and along the corridor. A brown paper bag awaited me at the nurses’ station, and Ellis grabbed it and swung it alongside him as I held his other arm. I noted the stress of the nurses, and some of the other patients as I left, constantly dumbing down the paranoia I felt ringing in my mind. They all know. They know what’s happened to me. They think I’m a junkie. They think I’m a fool, that I didn’t know about John.

  I should have protected my mother.

  I stopped dead. Where did that come from? For the first time it struck me that perhaps, just perhaps, she hadn’t done this to spite me. I buffered myself from this feeling of unison with my matriarchal role model and hurried towards the taxi rank.

  In fifteen minutes, we were home. The fresh air had woken me up a little and although I could see from my reflection in the cab mirror that I looked like shit, I did feel better. I made the front door my target and aimed myself at it. Once through, I sank into the calming atmosphere of our home. Ellis put the kettle on and joined me in the lounge.

  “So. What now?”

  He leaned back in his chair and clasped his hands in front of him.

  “Well, I need to find out what progress the police have made, then rest. Lots and lots of rest. In bed. I'll take the week off.”

  He smiled.

  “Good, Jinny, good. Because I don't know how much more of this I can take. I would never leave you, but I'm at my wits’ end. Scared, insanely worried about you. In need of reassurance.”

  I frowned and the cut above my eyebrow stung.

  “Of what? What do you want reassurance of?”

  He looked at his hands and seemed a little embarrassed.

  “That you love me. I'm worried that you still have feelings for Steve. You were so mad about him sleeping with your mum and telling everyone, then when he said it out loud, I thought you would explode. It just seems weird that after all this time you still care. We've been together years. You've been divorced a good while. I don't get it.”

  I hugged myself.

  “Of course I love you. I love you very much. But it was unfinished business. I needed to hear it after all those years of wondering. They ate into me. I still can't believe they did it to me.”

  Ellis shrugged.

  “Maybe they didn't do it to you. Maybe they just did it because they wanted to be together. Perhaps you weren't the main focus of their thoughts when they were together. Maybe they did it to escape from you. I don't know, but it seems to me that it’s done now.”

  I nodded.

  “Yes. It is done. Over. Actually, after everything that's happened, I feel less confused. It's beginning to make more sense now, after all those years of her being a bitch to my dad and...”

  Ellis jumped up.

  “Jinny! You're doing it again. Going over and over the past. Reinforcing your sadness, and all that your mother was. She's gone and you can't change it. Just give it up and let it go. Let it fucking go. Please.”

  He sat down quickly. I hadn't seen Ellis quite so angry before. I could see that he was fighting for his place in our relationship. I could sense the crumbling of our symmetry, our togetherness, the comfort and warmth of each other. It was slipping through my fingers, fingers that I was holding intentionally slightly open. The reason for this eluded me. Perhaps I was self-sabotaging myself in an endeavour to not face the difficult, million-dollar question again. I had answered in the affirmative, but inside me I had felt numb when Ellis asked if I loved him. It had been so long since I had been alone with him without being completely preoccupied that I had forgotten the love we shared. Not the sex, not the rolling and tugging of the other night, but the cushion of love that we could fall back on no matter what. If the other was moody, the cushion would swallow up the fear and negativity and bring us together in unison. Now he was gasping to ask me again. I could see his eyes pleading with me. I deflected.

  “OK. I'll let it go. Just give me some
time to recover from this and get my head straight and I'll book some therapy. Or we could go on holiday.”

  He brightened now and I smiled.

  “Where shall we go?” His face returned to its usual relaxed state and I breathed out at last. I scanned my memory for his favourite destinations.

  “How about the Seychelles?”

  Although we could never afford it, we could dream. Now we were engaged in one of our favourite pastimes, imagining ourselves on a sandy beach far away. It worked for both of us. Ellis perked up.

  “Yeah! We could skip work and go for a month!”

  I smiled and ventured forth.

  “We could actually do it when we get the money from the cottage. We could go away for a month.”

  I watched for any sign of Ellis' anger returning. There was none. He smiled warmly.

  “Yes. Yes. Look, I'm going to go upstairs for a sleep. Are you coming?”

  Alarm bells rang as I imagined his sexual advances being rebuked by my aching body and soul. Our relationship was shaky as it was and that would just compound it.

  “No, I'm comfy here. You go and have a sleep. I'll come and get you if anything exciting happens.”

  Ellis fake laughed and yawned his way upstairs. I dozed on the settee for an uncertain amount of time until I heard a tapping on the window. I eased myself off the sofa and peered through the nets. I could see the end of a white stick beating a rhythm on the glass. Craning forward, I saw Lynus with his back to the front door, his cane outstretched. He wore a pork pie hat perched on the top of his hair and a long brown trench coat. He tapped louder and I hurried to the door. Releasing the catch, I pulled the door inwards and he steadied himself against the pressure removed and turned slowly.

  “Ah. Virginia.”

  I stepped aside to let him in.

  “How did you know where I live?”

  Lynus chuckled under his breath.

  “Your Mr Brierly told me. I registered my concern over you.”

  He thrust a newspaper into my hand, headlines facing upwards. I felt vomit rise in my throat. The headline shouted John Baxter's lies as loudly as possible:

  DAUGHTER OF MURDER VICTIM ATTEMPTS SUICIDE IN VICTORIA STATION

  I threw the paper onto the sofa as Lynus negotiated himself into the lounge and sat down.

  “What did Ted say?”

  I was almost afraid of asking this question, which implied that I thought I had lost my job.

  “He'll be sorry this had happened to you. He won't believe that you intended to take your life but can't understand what happened.”

  I breathed my relief.

  “What about the project? Will you keep me on?”

  Lynus chuckled some more.

  “Certainly, Jinny, certainly. It's not your fault that your mother died. And all the mess around it? Unbelievable. So, what is going on? One day I read that you and your mother are the victim of a terror plot, then I read you've tried to kill yourself. What's going on?”

  I surveyed Lynus' face. It was quite smooth for his generous age and he looked polished. His fingers were large and cumbersome as he grabbed his cane and played at balancing it in one hand then the other. I couldn't face going over the story again, so decided on the pamphlet version. Lynus looked in my general direction expectantly.

  “OK. I went to the funeral and got insulted in the church. Well, what you could loosely describe as what is left of the church. Then I had a confrontation with Swiss Steve, my ex-husband, at the wake, which, incidentally, was held in a dry pub. Then I went to John Baxter’s house and he told me that he was my half-brother, that my father had led a secret life and had an affair with his mother, Sandra. They drugged my tea and I woke up in Victoria Station full of heroin. So, that’s it in a nutshell.”

  Lynus leaned forward looking very serious.

  “And what are the police saying?”

  I sighed heavily.

  “Well, at first they were running with the suicide story. They think that extremists did all this and that I was next in line and that all the pressure of this made me want to top myself. They were going to charge me with possession.”

  Lynus smiled and moved to sit next to me on the sofa.

  “What about your mother, Jinny? I know you have some problems to face, but what about your mother? You haven’t mentioned her at all.”

  I thought of Ellis’ words earlier on, that I shouldn’t keep revisiting the scenario of Swiss Steve and my mum, but it seemed that Lynus was asking me about it. What harm could it do? I set my face and started.

  “I found out for sure that she was sleeping with my husband. In fact, he told me and everyone else that they had been in love. In fact, everyone was in love with Sally. She had them all wrapped around her little finger.”

  “Not everyone.” Lynus’ voice was taut, and his face stern. “She was tricked into marrying a man who didn’t love her. This John Baxter, I expect he was wanting his inheritance, what was truly his. Am I right?”

  I nodded.

  “Yes, he and his mother think that they deserve all my father’s property and money.”

  Lynus shook his head and clicked his teeth.

  “Driven by greed. Coveting other people’s goods.”

  I agreed enthusiastically.

  “Yes, and as a cover for it they pretend be people of God. My mother was heavily involved in it and even wrote letters to the Times. They’ve developed a cult in the village, getting young people to come to church. They’re intending to build a sort of dorm on the farmland to house them, andtake them away from their families. They’ve even influenced Shiralee and Jupiter. Even Swiss Steve. John Baxter is very convincing.”

  Lynus thought for a moment. Then in measured tones he delivered his conclusion.

  “Poor Sally. She must have been a very lonely woman.”

  I reeled. How could he defend my mother? After I had told him that she had had an affair with Swiss Steve and had a hand in turning the village into a cult. And then there was my father. She drove him to suicide by cigarettes. I waded in.

  “What? Sally, lonely? She was the least lonely person I have ever met. Oh, did I mention that she drove my father to his death? She confined herself to a wheelchair to stop him seeing this bloody Sandra woman and he had to spend all his time looking after her. And finish work. He loved going to his meetings, his sales weekends, but she stopped him.”

  I backtracked in my own mind and remembered that actually my father hadn’t been going to meetings all the time. He had been with his other family. Lynus took me up.

  “So, your father expected your mother to accept him spending time away at his meetings, which I can only guess were covers for his arrangement with his mistress?”

  Now you put it like that, it did sound quite bad.

  “Well, yes. I suppose he did. But...”

  Lynus interrupted me.

  “So, do you think she was happy about that? Was there some reason why she should have to endure it? In essence, your father cloaked himself in respectability when he was actually a philanderer. And he sired a child who he denied.”

  I listened to Lynus. It was true that my father had me fooled. I was reluctant to admit it, but I had been suckered by the ‘white picket fence’ ideal. Where Mum and Dad live happily ever after with their children. Never mind Daddy’s little indiscretion, that’s OK, that’s just what men do, polygamous beings that the naughty boys are. And anyway we need them for the money. I had ignored the fact that he was barely there and blamed all the arguments on my mother’s drinking. I blamed her because she was there and I saw what she was doing. Had I expected her to sit there and accept his behaviour, which was invisible to me as a child? What would I have done? My mind reeled but I was beginning to grasp what Lynus was trying to say.

  “OK, he did have his faults, but that doesn’t excuse what she did to me. She slept with my husband.”

  Lynus leaned forward again.

  “But did she do it to you? Do you think that either o
f them thought, ‘Let’s have an affair just to get at Virginia?” Lynus laughed throatily. “Seems to me they were two lonely people who fell for each other. Both in a difficult position, both struggling with their relationships, so hardly surprising?”

  I gulped. Surely he wasn’t defending Swiss Steve, the murderer, the adulterer, the man who tainted my life with his emotional cruelty?

  “What’s it to you anyway? Sorry, Lynus, I don’t see what this has got to do with you.”

  He smiled lightly.

  “Fair enough, girl, but I advise you to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes. Seems to me that you’ve been forming your own opinions and sticking to them. Might help you to try and see someone else’s.”

  I was raging now.

  “Help me how? I don’t see how it can help me. And what’s it to you?”

  If Lynus could have seen me he would have noted my red face and bulging eyes but I expect he only had the high-pitched sound of my voice to show him exactly how angry I was. So he persisted.

  “What is it to me? Well, I’ll tell you. You’re working for me, Virginia, and I want someone who is a rounded person, someone who is empathetic and can see the wood for the trees. I was told that you are that person. Now I’m not so sure.”

  His voice was slow and steady. I balked.

  “So, it’s nothing to do with the papers branding me a smackhead? Or that I might have to take time off? Or I’m somehow involved in a terror campaign?”

  He shrugged.

  “No. None of those. I just want you to show me an emotion. One apart from anger.”

  I felt a rush of pain then I erupted.

  “I do care. I do. I’m the victim here. It’s me who’s been drugged and assaulted by a fucking half-brother I never knew I had. I’m the victim. You’re acting like I had some part in it. I do feel emotions, it’s just that I’m not so good at showing them. Anyway, I’ve been excluded from my own family. How do you think that feels? My own children won’t believe a word I say, brainwashed by their father into thinking I’m some kind of monster.”