Matilda Wren

by When Ravens Fall

  The location would not be advertised, just a mobile number to text. On the night, hundreds of cars would congregate together, up and down the major roads across the county, waiting for the message to be sent through, telling them where to go onto next. This would then be repeated and could go on for hours.

  The destination would never be revealed until the early hours of the morning, but when you finally got there, you entered into a parallel universe of unadulterated escapism.

  As he kissed her back, that all seemed a life time ago now. He heard Adam call out for his mum and felt Rachel pull away. He saw the reservation return to her eyes. He knew he was on shaky ground with her. She had no real idea of how she felt or what she wanted, but he knew he wanted her. He always had.

  This was his chance, the small window of opportunity that wouldn’t come around very often. Not with girls like Rachel. He knew she had never looked at him in that way before, her mind and heart too preoccupied by a wasted drifter. But he also realised that she was ready to move on, that she desperately needed to and he was determined to make sure it was him that she moved on with.

  “How about I make a cuppa tea and you tell Adam you have a guest for breakfast?”

  The subtle insistence that he was not intending to go anywhere had the desired bamboozling effect.

  He jumped out of bed and pulled his jeans on. He was out of the door in a flash, leaving her to contemplate what just occurred. As she put on her dressing gown she marvelled at how things can suddenly just change. She wondered at the possibility of this new decade; the new millennium might not be that bad after all.

  Chapter 9

  April 2001

  The constant shrill of the telephone worked its way through to a semi-conscious Kenny. He opened his eyes slowly and tried to focus on the clock that sat on the bedside table.

  Slowly, his eyes allowed the red numbers to blur out and the 04:17 fi nally registered in his mind. The phone was still ringing relentlessly and a sudden fear enveloped him; that it was trouble with one of the children. He reached out and grabbed the phone.

  “Kenny… Ken… You there?”

  “Who is this?”

  “Ken, I need ya help… I… Ken?

  “Sean?” Kenny rubbed his temples in a slow circular motion with his free hand. It was still dark outside. He was awake now.

  “I fucked up Ken…”

  He listened to Sean ramble on about something and nothing. It didn’t make much sense. He hadn’t known the kid for that long. But he was up and coming, he knew that.

  He had met him a little while back through some mutual acquaintances. Kenny had heard of his reputation, so he employed Sean’s services, as an inhumane thug.

  Kenny hated violence, but that did not mean that he couldn’t appreciate its effectiveness and understand the importance of it, especially in the world that they lived in.

  Sean’s other enterprises, such as his sideline in prostitutes, had held Kenny’s attention. It wasn’t so much the girls that he was interested in, as the boys.

  People like Sean and Kenny didn’t live by the rules that govern society. They didn’t pay taxes, or contribute to the running of the economy; not in the way that regular honest people did.

  They lived by a different set of rules, where respect, honour and status were of greater magnitude than honesty, integrity and morality.

  Kenny and Sean were entities on their own. Everybody gets a choice in how they will live their lives. Free will determines that for every human. For some people the choice is an easy one.

  A nice homely upbringing, which is lavished with love and happiness, normally determines that the choices of that life will be of a similar nature. When that loving and happy childhood is not available though, it can be expected that the choices made in later life will be quite the opposite; a home that is loveless and full of neglect will usually be replicated by a next generation.

  They had both made a choice as to how they would live their lives. For Sean, the choice was preordained; the monster that lived inside of him controlled his thoughts, his actions, even his motives. Kenny’s choice was different; he had made his out of loyalty and a sense of duty.

  Even so, in his eyes, these choices were rarely choices and Kenny was a firm believer that everything was already laid out. There was something about Sean that intrigued him. He was a lost wild beast, but he had a vulnerability buried in the debauched version of himself that Sean had allowed to take form; free will. Kenny had seen it though, in fleeting moments, usually when the drugs had worn off.

  He wondered what had happened to Sean for him to be like he was. It was a crazed and demented persona, which would take even the paramount psycho years to perfect. It would need shaping and forming to achieve the fanatical and extreme eminence that Sean portrayed. Yet he was only twenty-one.

  Kenny hadn’t made any coherent sense from Sean’s frantic phone call. He had managed to get an address from him and was on his way to a block of flats, on a housing estate in Harold Wood. Kenny hated this particular suburb of Essex. It was run down, derelict in parts and overrun with Turkish kebab shops.

  Even the people that lived there seemed to look run down, life taking its daily toll etched in the lines on their face. Harold Wood screamed out poverty to Kenny and he loathed every second of having to be there. It reminded him of when he had suddenly been thrust into becoming the main provider for his family; a time when there was no money, no food and no warmth.

  He had strived to remove his family from that particular depravation and it galled him when he was forced to be reminded of discomforting memories. Kenny saw himself as having made something of his life and couldn’t understand people who seemed to want to live this way.

  He pulled his car into the entrance of the vast housing complex and parked next to a row of huge metal dustbins.

  Communal rubbish, another reason Kenny despised the destitution of the place. He thought of his own Mock-Tudor semi-detached house in Buckhurst Hill, with its manicured lawn and clean shiny windows and personal wheelie bin, in the sought after tree lined avenue.

  Sean was at the car door before he even had a chance to turn off the engine.

  “Jeeze lad, let me get out!” Kenny said, as he opened the door. “What’s all the pissing drama, to get me out of me nice warm bed, in the middle of the fucking night?”

  Sean didn’t answer him. He just stared at Kenny. He looked demented; his eyes bulging out of their sockets, red rimmed and bloodshot. He had not shaved for a few days by the looks of it and his clothes were stained with patches of what Kenny decided was dried blood. He looked manic and terrified, all at the same time. He began rambling again, Kenny only being able to make out a few words at a time.

  “She looked like her; you see… a bit… I didn’t mean to go so far…”

  Kenny looked at Sean and then over to the block of flats where he was pointing and back to Sean. Then Sean grabbed his arm and literally dragged him through the communal door and into a ground floor flat. At first Kenny wasn’t sure what he was supposed to be seeing.

  They were in a one room bedsit. To Kenny’s right was a double bed; which sported a discoloured and marked mattress. Large brownish yellow stains were splattered all over it. There was a solitary pillow, which was in the same disgusting state as the mattress; there were no sheets or a duvet.

  Against the far wall was a sofa, which had cushions on that did not match nor fit and was quite obviously only suitable for a rubbish tip. In one corner was a sink and a small gas oven, which was practically growing its own version of penicillin. The place was filthy and stunk of stale fried food.

  There was a door to the left of the room, which Kenny presumed was a bathroom and he felt no desire to confirm that assumption. He wrinkled his nose under the smell and suppressed the gagging reflex in the back of his throat.

  The whole room was minimalistic. It didn’t look lived in; it didn’t contain enough rubbish to be a squat and it didn’t contain enough personal ob
jects to be Sean’s base. The windows had been boarded up and there were no carpets on the floor. It was like the bed and sofa had been bought in especially.

  Kenny wasn’t sure what he had expected to see when Sean had half dragged him into the flat. When it came to Sean, it could be anything, but what he wasn’t prepared for, was what he saw emerge out of the door that he correctly thought was the bathroom, a young, naked, battered figure that sheepishly stood in the doorway; a small rancid hand towel keeping what modesty she had.

  Her bright red hair glistened in the low light of the room; drops of water fell to the floor. Kenny looked at her and then Sean in almost fascination.

  “Fucking Christ! How old is she?” He finally said.

  He was in bewilderment. It wasn’t often that Kenny was lost for words but this was one of those times. Shaking his head, he sat down on the two seater sofa, then jumped back up again and brushed down his coat. Still Sean said nothing.

  Kenny stared at him. He seemed to be in some sort of shock. It was scandalous what he was seeing.

  Most people of his ilk could turn a blind eye to things that would usually distress and disturb regular ordinary people, but when it came to molesting children there was an unspoken code, which was universal between his and the conventional worlds; it was bang out of order.

  Kenny had a preferred taste for the slightly younger individual but even he had boundaries. They at least needed to make it to adulthood. Granted the girl was not a child, but she was definitely did not look like an adult either and by the look of her, she had not been a willing participant in Sean’s depraved and merciless game.

  Kenny took off his coat and went over to the girl. He wrapped it around her and led her gently over to the bed.

  He helped her to sit down. The fact she winced as she sat on her bottom did not go unnoticed. She pulled the coat around her tighter.

  She hadn’t made eye contact with either of them. Still shaking his head in disbelief, Kenny went out to his car and retrieved a small canvas holdall that he kept in the boot. He walked back into the flat and placed it on the bed next to her. Opening it up, he waved for her to look inside it.

  She didn’t move, but allowed her eyes to fall down to the bag. It contained a change of clothes and five thousand pounds in ready used notes. It was his emergency bag, in case he ever needed to make a quick exit. He made a mental note to replace it at the next available opportunity.

  “Put the clothes on.” He gestured. His voice was soft and malleable. The mellifluous velvety tone it assumed brought the girl a little comfort. “Then, if it’s alright by you, I am gonna get you as far away from him as I can…that okay?”

  She nodded feebly and detachedly watched Kenny grab hold of Sean and march him out of the flat. Twenty minutes later, Kenny was driving the girl up the M11, heading for the Essex border to the North. It was the last time she ever saw the green counties again.

  * * *

  Ginnie woke up in bed suddenly. She was soaked with sweat. She looked around the darkness and it took her a few seconds to realise where she was. It had been another nightmare; they were becoming more and more regular.

  She had been having them from a few days after it had all happened. Since she was bought here by a man she didn’t know.

  She had trusted him though, something inside of her had told her to do so, although Ginnie would have gone with anyone, if it meant they would take her away from the hell that she had found herself in.

  He had set her up with a flat and some money and told her she would never see either of them again, on the condition that she never said a word about the night he had found her. She didn’t know his name and never spoke to him the entire time he had helped her.

  Nightmares at night and flashbacks during the day; she couldn’t escape it at all. Ginnie wasn’t sure what triggered the first major flashback. She had been in a daze for the first few weeks after arriving in Liverpool. One minute she was sitting, watching the TV, the next she was transported into the middle of that degrading experience which was forced upon her.

  She was there, reliving it second by second. It was so very real, she could feel what was happening, hear what was being said. She was unaware of anyone or anything, other than what she was being subjected to yet again; just like the nightmare she just had. She could feel the panic again and couldn’t breathe. She struggled against it, wanted to escape but didn’t know how.

  She was going crazy. She wanted to shout and scream for help; desperate for someone to drag her out of this horrendous nightmare. She didn’t want to be there, but the events of those few days enveloped her totally once again. It was really happening again; she was trapped deep in the grip of her tortured mind, unable to move, paralysed with fear.

  She could smell him, feel him and hear him as he violated her, abused her and debased her with his actions, his words.

  How could this be happening again? She was frightened; she didn’t know what to do to make it stop. She could hear someone screaming. Was it her? She couldn’t go any further, she had gone far enough and she needed to get out.

  Ginnie tried to calm herself. She took some deep breaths and reached for the glass of water. It was empty. She climbed out of bed and made her way to the small compact kitchen, at the back of the apartment. She turned the tap and let the water run for a few seconds before filling her glass.

  Gulping down the water at speed, she replenished it and held it too her forehead. The cold glass felt cool and refreshing. It helped her to step back into reality and shake off the nightmare she just had.

  She instinctively rubbed her swollen belly and felt a trembling followed by some sudden thuds. In some respects, the past eight months had gone quick, but she knew she did not have long left now.

  The baby inside her was a heavy, dead weight and it just exhausted her. Ginnie felt a dull ache running along her back and down her legs. It certainly was taking its toll on her. She walked into the living room and sat down on a small arm chair by the window, wrapping a blanket around herself.

  She looked down at the silent and vacant street, lit with streetlamps. The flat was part of an old Georgian House.

  The outside was painted white and had ivy growing all over it. Ginnie loved it. It looked homely. It was on a nice quiet street, away from the city and she hadn’t been bothered at all while she had been here.

  Most of the neighbours kept themselves to themselves.

  They would nod as she passed, on her rare trips to the shops.

  Not liking to go out much, she would buy enough to last a few weeks; the fewer trips out into the world the better. She was beginning to feel safe, until the flashbacks remind her of why she was here.

  Ginnie felt the baby move again; a belly full of arms and legs, kicking and punching the limited space. It felt like an alien was growing inside of her; although it was a part of her, she felt strangely detached and estranged from it.

  It was just another reminder of what he had done to her, over and over again. She was kept inside that dirty, grimy bedsit for four days before he had come to his senses and realised he had maybe gone a little too far. That was when he had called the man who had come and helped her.

  She had honestly believed she was going to die there.

  Now she was living in constant fear of her life, looking over her shoulder and having to deal with an imminent birth.

  She was eighteen and terrified. There had been no pre-natal care; no checkups, antenatal classes, no intervention of any kind.

  The ache that was pulling at her insides suddenly intensified and she tried to stand, to relieve the pressure that was bowing down in her stomach. As her legs gave way and she fell to the floor, she tried to grab hold of the small table that sat next to the arm chair. It crashed down on top of her.

  Ginnie screamed out loud and tensed her whole body as she tried to cope with the pain. What was happening to her?

  She thought. Surely she couldn’t be having the baby now.

  It wasn’t tim
e, she wasn’t ready. She hadn’t thought about it all yet, not properly. She wanted more time.

  Another agonising convulsion hit her, the retrenchment in her belly tore through her but this time she managed to stifle the scream. No one must hear; no one must be alerted.

  Grasping at the arm chair, she managed to pull herself onto her knees. She clung onto the arms and buried her head in the cushions, allowing herself to moan quietly.

  Squatting seemed to help with the pain, which was coming so quickly. It was constant; no waves or lows; intensifying as each second passed. At least Ginnie thought they were seconds, they could have been minutes or hours.

  She had lost all concept and awareness and could only concentrate on trying to breath. Deep pulling breaths which made her think she may have an asthma attack. When was she supposed to push? Now? Not yet? She didn’t know what to do.

  She tried to do what she thought might be pushing, although it reminded her of imitating someone doing a poo.

  If the pain wasn’t so prominent, she would have laughed at herself. Then something happened; something shifted inside her. With one all mighty howl, a purple patched, white covered baby, dropped onto the floor with a thud.

  Ginnie sat back; legs spread open, smeared with blood and stared at the newborn. It didn’t move, just lay there.

  She felt like she was in a trance. It was shock and a state of bewilderment. It had all been so quick; the immediate onset of labour issued no warning.

  It had attacked just as rapidly as he had and it had ripped through her body just as he had. The lack of admonition and the ferocity with which the child was born was so acute, so excruciating, that she had prayed to god to make it stop. In her mind, he answered her.

  Then she felt the pain return. Not as bad as it was before but still enough to make her groan in agony and roll over onto her side. As the placenta was delivered, Ginnie threw up all over the rug she was lying on. She had felt the bile rise up to her throat and before she could even think about trying to stop herself, it was out. The trance-like state that had previously taken hold of her had vanished and awareness was very much taking hold.