The Under Ground (Strong Women Book 4)

by Sarah Till

  Except maybe my mother. A cold shiver ran through me as I imagined what they had done together. Had he subjected her to the things he had put me through? Worse, had she enjoyed it? Then I remembered. He loved her. He told everyone that he had loved her. He had cried at the wake and professed his love for my mother. But Swiss Steve was Swiss Steve. Was I romanticising the whole thing? Did he even know what love was? It seemed to me that he had mistaken love for getting his own way and he certainly got that with Sally, over and over again when we all thought that she was paralysed from the waist down.

  I glanced at my hand as it gripped the loop and saw my white knuckles. He had never loved me. Swiss Steve had never loved me. He had lied to me and never loved me. It had all been like a morbid game, a battle of wills, round after round of arguments and pomped up parlour games followed by doled out punishments. Who could make who do what? Payne was right. It was no wonder that he went to my mother. He actually loved her. He didn’t see her as Sally Walton, grandmother to his children. He saw her as the exotic creature she portrayed to the world, the desperate face of a woman scorned who craved attention. She ate Swiss Steve up like a syrupy bonbon, and he fell hook, line and sinker. Detaching her from her ‘mother’ role now. I could see them together, the golden couple, her neediness fitting his huge sexual appetite. Their untimely dance of passion leaving a trail of destruction behind them, leaving my father a broken man. More broken. He was already a shadow of his former self when the affair started, pining away his days for Sandra Reid and his son John, burying himself in grey ash and the stink of death until finally he escaped.

  I thought about my conversation with Reverend Sloan about my mother’s heaven. I sniggered at how naive I had been and wondered if there would be an entirely different man in her heaven. It wouldn’t be Dad and it certainly wouldn’t be John Baxter, or Swiss Steve. Would her heaven be devoid of men, just a paradise where she could feel valued without masculine validation? It was at that moment I prayed for her. I realised in the split second that I did it that I had constructed a reality for my mother. Another reality, apart from my former hatred and my new information, one where I could reconcile my idea of her happiness with what I hoped she had learned. It was then, in that moment that I realised Lynus had been right. It was within me, and it was about me. About me and my relationship with myself, and about my relationships with other people. A wish, a prayer, a hope, an intention that Sally was somewhere, even nowhere, where she would no longer feel the pain of her neurotic needs – somewhere away from the ‘shoulds’ of the world that she never quite escaped in life.

  Chapter Eleven

  By the time I had left the tube station, I felt almost cheerful. I sensed a breakthrough in my mood and let the terrors of my past slip slowly through the mesh and filter under my soul. I would deal with them later. My home was in sight, and Ellis would soon return to a couple of packed suitcases and the potential for freedom.

  Ellis. My mind focussed back on him and the clarity of his outlook. I debated with myself, as I crossed the road leading to my house, whether or not I should tell him about Swiss Steve. He did know about the sexual cruelty I had endured but somehow I had managed not to tell him the extent of it. I marvelled now that I hadn’t actually ever told anyone how scared I had been, how scared I still was, of Swiss Steve. Ellis had seen many, many demonstrations of Swiss Steve’s anger, the banging on the door at odd hours, the red-faced jumping up and down, the explicit threats to us both if we didn’t do what he said. The central subject of Swiss Steve’s rages was Shiralee and Jupiter and in the absence of vital information on my former torture, Ellis had swallowed this. I, however, armed with the knowledge that Swiss Steve would never surrender in what he still considered to be a game he played with me on a regular basis, I knew that this was just another round. A display of Swiss Steve’s virility, his ability to place himself in my home, in front of my boyfriend and shout ‘I’m still here, waiting for you, like I promised. I'm still here, a constant spot on your wine glass, an immortal wasp flying around your head forever, just waiting to sting you.’ I had long ago abandoned any hope of him going away. Women came and went from his life, each one a fresh hope of him marrying and a refocus of his attention, but it had never happened. I had become used to his invisible presence but had never imagined that he was waiting to score the final point. I reeled now as I considered how I had loosened my grip on that particular situation. I knew he was a killer. I knew what he was capable of. Yet, over time, I somehow convinced myself that he had mellowed, that our divorce had somehow diluted his hatred of me and most of all that I was safe. I concluded now that I had always known that he was dangerous and I had let my guard down. The underlying murmur was that I had been so busy hating my mother that I had taken my eye off the ball.

  I wondered if I should just forget about everything and sweep it under the carpet. John Baxter and Swiss Steve could have the houses and the money, they could turn the bloody village into one big church. Shiralee and Jupiter could continue to believe that I was the devil incarnate because I didn’t share their greed and refused to provide them with a lifestyle which, as adults, they should be providing for themselves. It all seemed so easy. I could easily never mention it again, let DI Payne and Mr Smith get on with their jobs, detach myself from what was left of my family and live happily ever after with Ellis. My heart raced as I imagined the peace and tranquillity I would enjoy.

  Involuntarily, I pictured the couple on the train. I remembered that gentle way the boy had touched the girl’s face, the way she had smiled gently at him. The way he was now in a prison cell, wrongly accused of murdering my mother and attempting to murder me. Probably facing life imprisonment. His mother would be waiting for him at home, mystified why the gentle young man she had raised was being accused of something she knew full well he hadn’t done. His family would be devastated, unable to imagine why this had happened to him, yet unnerved by the seed of doubt that had been sown. Did he have a job? Would they understand when it was explained to them that he had been arrested on suspicion of terrorism? Would his girlfriend understand, would she continue to protest his innocence or would she give up and move on, leaving him alone? Even if the truth was revealed and the boy was released immediately, his future was tainted with the whiff of extremism. He would never be free, but I could not be responsible for his imprisonment.

  I cringed as I opened the front door to my house. Kevin Jakowski’s house. I stood in the hallway and stared at the landing. What would Kevin do now?

  The telephone rang. I jumped and picked up the receiver.

  “Hello?”

  There was a slight pause and then I heard Lynus laugh.

  “Virginia. Ted tells me you are going on holiday. Have a lovely time. And don’t worry about anything. The project will still be waiting when you get back.”

  I nodded then remembered I had to speak.

  “Thanks, Lynus. Oh, I had to ask you something. I was just wondering, but did you ever know Kevin Jakowski? He lived here, in this house, and he died of AIDS some time ago. He was a good man, he gave me a lot of good advice, not unlike you, Lynus...”

  A loud throaty laugh interrupted me.

  “Oh my, child, oh my, you need to think about other things right now.”

  I nodded again.

  “Yes, of course, I’ll be away for about two weeks. Oh, by the way...” I heard a click at the other end of the phone and silence. I still held the phone and eventually spoke, “you were right about the project. I learned a lot, Lynus.”

  I shook my head. The strange tingle of anticipation that I always felt when I spoke to Lynus rose and fell in my chest and a sense of wellbeing pierced the stress that I felt. I went upstairs and showered again. I scrubbed at my bruises, but not too hard. The new knowledge about my attack hung over me, but I knew that the familiarity of my conscience with the resurging hurt Swiss Steve had caused me in the past had dampened the terror. After all, I was used to it. I finished the showering and walked naked
to my bedroom. Pulling on a pair of loose cotton trousers and a T-shirt, I rubbed a little concealer above my eye. I completed my routine makeover, mascara, powder, blusher, and dried my hair. I automatically smiled to check my teeth for lipstick and to check the lines at the side of my mouth. I clicked the hairdryer on and absently blew the hot air over me. It felt good, almost naughty to be away from my desk on a Monday. I felt fresher now, lighter and on the brink of change. I smiled a little more at the thought of Ellis coming home and our driving into the sunset, the uncertainty causing a ripple of mystery as we sought out places to hole up and hide. Or recover. I tried to force myself not to think about the boy in prison or John Baxter living in my mother’s home. Or the unbearable image of her death, which, although almost pure speculation, was beginning to seep into my mind more and more often. It was almost as if the removal of my hatred had unbunged a genie that could penetrate my imagination and reconstruct the part of my life where I was most vulnerable.

  I gently brushed my hair and thought about what could have been, if only I had realised earlier how weak she was. I heard a click downstairs and my heart jumped gladly.

  “Ellis?”

  I shouted for him loudly and went to the top of the stairs. He didn’t emerge, and I wondered if I was hearing things. Back in the bedroom, I hurriedly packed some clothes for the trip. I was trying to decide between an evening dress, just in case, or a taffeta skirt I had rescued from a charity shop, when I felt the hairs on the back of my neck prickle. Someone was in the kitchen. I had heard the tinkle of pans near the door, the set that hung on meat hooks and jangled when someone tall passed them. I listened carefully but for a moment I could hear only the buzz of the central heating boiler, and the fan from the laptop computer in the lounge. Sounds from the London street punctuated the near quiet and I silently urged them to cease so that I could listen more carefully. I was frozen to the spot for a moment, then I made my way quietly to the top of the stairs again. My bare feet avoided all the creaks as if they were landmines, all the time reassuring myself that the intruder would not have this spatial blueprint of the creaky floorboards and this would eventually expose their whereabouts. I thought I heard a footstep and stopped, frozen again. After a minute, I crept down the stairs and listened again. I was standing quite still, with my hand on the wall to steady my stance and my head leaning exaggeratedly forward in a listening motion when Ellis arrived.

  “Hello!”

  He looked at me as I relaxed my statuesque body.

  “I thought there was someone in the house.”

  My explanation caused him to smile slightly.

  “Not surprising really. After all this, you’re bound to be worried. How did it go with Henry? Trip still on, is it?”

  I grimaced slightly but remained fairly jovial.

  “Yes. Yes, we are still going. I’ve packed and everything. Henry, well, turns out they’ve arrested....”

  In an almost repeat performance of my misunderstanding earlier, he exploded with relief.

  “Oh, thank god. Thank God. So, it’s over then? They’ve got them, have they?”

  I cringed a little, as if somehow what I was about to say was my fault.

  “No. They didn’t get John and Sandra. They’ve rearrested the Asian boy who they think is a terrorist. They’re charging him with it.”

  Ellis turned as white as paper and went into the lounge to sit down.

  “But why?”

  It was clear that he was as shocked and surprised at this as I was and I was at once grateful for his loyalty but wondered if he would begin to doubt me now.

  “I don’t know. Something about John having an alibi and CCTV footage, which I saw, by the way, and it definitely wasn’t the boy. They’re completely on the wrong track, El.”

  I had been careful not to mention my theory about Swiss Steve. Ellis’ face betrayed the thoughts of someone who was weighing up the odds. After a minute of head rubbing, he announced his conclusion.

  “They’re never going to get them, are they? They’re going to get away with it. Aren’t they?”

  I nodded gently.

  “Probably.”

  “And that lad is going to prison for something he hasn’t done. All because John Baxter is a fucking control freak.” I didn’t want to sway Ellis in any direction other than that of which I knew was the truth, and he was working the rest out for himself. “Convincing the police he’s whiter than fucking white, a man of God, practically a fucking saint, while all the time he’s killing innocent people and passing the buck to the usual suspects.”

  I nodded again and he unclenched his fists.

  “Yes. That’s about the extent of it.”

  “So, what can we do?”

  I shrugged.

  “Go on holiday. Move house. Get away.”

  His head jerked towards me.

  “But what about Steve and the kids? I thought you wanted here to be a base for them.”

  I frowned now.

  “For the kids, yeah, but not for Steve. That’s a funny thing to say, El. Why would you say that?”

  He shook off the question quickly and brightened.

  “Oh, never mind. Let’s just go on holiday.”

  The mood was broken by a loud banging in the basement. The house had a cellar where we kept our junk and now it seemed something was amiss down there. My eyes rolled heavenward.

  “Probably vibrations.”

  My tone was hopeful even though I was imagining all sorts of scenarios from a break-in to a terror plot. I was clearly overtired and needed to get away soon and rest my mind. Ellis jumped up and I followed him to the cellar door. It was closed and his fingers gripped the handle momentarily, then went for the key in the lock. He turned it then faced me.

  “Well, whatever down there is there for two weeks now. Let’s hope it’s next door’s cat who’s always crapping on my begonias!”

  I laughed and mock slapped him.

  “Ellis, don’t be so cruel.”

  He strode off.

  “Only joking. It’s probably the vibration from the road knocking something over. Nothing to worry about. C’mon. Let’s do this then.”

  We hurried upstairs and collected the cases and put them near the door. Ellis checked that everything was turned off and I got my coat from the hook by the door. Ellis opened the door slightly.

  “Shall I get the car?”

  I eyed the pull-along cases. I wanted to get away as quickly as possible.

  “No, No. It’s OK. We’ll take a case each. They’re not really heavy. I figured if we run out of clothes, we can treat ourselves to something new.”

  Ellis patted my bottom as I exited first.

  “Ooh, Jinny’s pushing the boat out! Frivolous spending on clothes!”

  My heart warmed as soon as my feet hit the pavement and I turned to share the joke. He closed the door and we stepped out onto the pavement together, still smiling. Then, from somewhere behind me, I heard a deep rumble and I was thrown across the pavement and into the road. I landed on my front with my head twisted to one side and I watched as a cyclist and his bicycle became disentangled and were sent in opposite directions. I saw two men jump out of a car across from the gardens, two men who looked like Mr Smith. I couldn’t see Ellis. It was then that I panicked. On the road, lying there, surrounded by passers-by and tourists, I felt alone. Scared that Ellis had left me, I flipped my already aching body over and looked at my grazed elbows and knees. Someone told me not to move but I knew I was fine. I crawled through a gap in the legs of what had developed into a crowd and saw, nearby another small gathering of people, bent over, mouths gaping. Ellis. I stood now and crashed my dizzy dance through the chaos. There he was, lying on his back. His arm was clearly broken and he had a huge cut on his head. My whole body trembled as I took baby steps nearer, afraid that his eyes would be focussing on a light somewhere in the distance of another reality, that his body would already be limp and cold. He didn’t move. He just lay there. I knelt beside him
and stroked his forehead. I whispered into his ear.

  “Ellis. Ellis. Wake up. Wake up, babe.”

  I could sense the pitying stares of the crowd and I could hear the distant scream of the ambulance. I held on to him, knowing that all too soon the emergency services would wrench my arms away and take us to different cubicles. We would be assessed for damage and then retained separately until our symbiosis has been disembowelled and we were focussed only on ourselves again. He was still warm. I thought I could hear shallow breathing but it was too difficult, with the noise of the traffic and the smoke. I needed to get him inside. I turned around to gauge the distance I would need to carry him, the distance between here and the front door. Through the grimy smog and the screaming sirens, I could just make out the front of the house. Squinting slightly, I managed to see the outline, the roof, the tree in the front garden. The police were here now, rolling a yellow ribbon barrier around the street, ushering people away. I squinted a little bit more. There was no front door or front window. Where the lower frontage of my house had been, there was a huge hole. I craned my neck a little. The front garden had fallen into the basement and the very bowels of the building were on display, like some cheap money shot, for the whole world to see.