Inevitable

by Nicola Haken

  “Y-y-yes, sir.”

  “I don’t think you do. How many goddamn times are you going to force me to remind you? I don’t like punishing you, Blaine. But I will not have you blatantly disrespecting me or my rules. Do. You. Understand?”

  I bit down on my lip and blinked my eyes to wash away the stinging tears which were flowing freely. I balled my right hand into a fist and visualised me spinning round and ramming it into his skull until it caved under the pressure. I willed my body to move. It wouldn’t. I was frozen. I was… weak.

  “Yes, s-sir.”

  “You’re a failure, Blaine Elwood. You’re failing school. You’re failing football. You’re even failing to make yourself look presentable. Take a goddamn shower. Shave once in a while. Give me a son I deserve to be proud of god dammit.”

  Grabbing the waistband of my jeans he yanked them down to my knees whilst I prayed for the first time in my life.

  “You need reminding what I expect of you? I’ll fucking remind you, boy.”

  Help me.

  Climbing into the shower what could’ve been minutes or hours later, I adjusted the water to the hottest setting. I rested my head against the tiled wall and my body shook violently in protest as the scalding water streamed over my skin. It hurt like hell and I slammed my fist into the tiles until bubbles of blood appeared on my knuckles.

  But it still wasn’t hot enough. I could still feel him. I could still feel the burning sensation ripping through body. I could still feel his sickening breath crawling across the skin of my neck. I could still feel his fingers digging into my bare hips.

  Grabbing a small towel and dousing it with shower soap I scrubbed at every inch of my skin. I scraped it back and forth against my blistering flesh until it started to sting. The top layer of my skin started to peel away when I rubbed where the boiling water had hit. That felt good. So I scrubbed harder – removing any skin which had been in contact with him.

  When the pain got so bad that I struggled to hold myself up, I shut the water off and sank to the floor. My skin was raw. I was bleeding. Yet I was still dirty.

  I drew my knees into my chest and sobbed like the pathetic and spineless prick that I was.

  Maddie

  When I woke up late in the afternoon my eyes were so swollen from crying they felt like they were welded shut. I started to open them but then gave up - resigning myself to a day spent crying and wallowing under my quilt. How in hell did I get here? How can life spiral so far out of control in such a short space of time? Just the thought made me dizzy.

  When my tears turned to dry sobs I reluctantly peeled my sore eyes open and climbed out of bed. My arid throat felt like it was closing up – I needed water. The second my toe stepped onto the living room carpet someone started knocking on the front door.

  “Maddie? Maddie are you in there?”

  Fuck.

  My mum, who I’d not even had chance to talk to yet, brushed past me to open the door to Treacle.

  “Leave it,” I deadpanned. Mum flashed me a sorrowful look – bursting with guilt and maybe even sympathy.

  “You need to talk to her, Maddie,” she said but I could tell by the crack in her voice the mere idea of it was cutting into her.

  “Annie?” Treacle changed tactic as she continued to bash crap out of our door.

  “Besides, if I don’t let her in she’s going to bust that damn door in.” My mum rolled her eyes and ambled eerily slowly over to the door. As it opened Treacle practically flew through it. She stopped just inches away from me and threw her hand over her mouth, gasping as if she’d just seen me rise from the dead or something.

  It was too much. It was all too much. My mum that wasn’t my mum, my other mum that wasn’t my mum either, the creep from the party, Blaine… oh dear god, Blaine…

  “Maddie?” One of my mums called after me. I was running too fast towards the bathroom to tell which one it was.

  I skidded on the cracked tiles as I made a dash for the toilet. Flipping the lid up I collapsed to my knees and dry heaves ripped through my body until it became painful. There was nothing left in my stomach since this morning’s spew-fest yet my stomach continued to roll and every inch of my skin started to sweat.

  “Maddie? Are you okay?” my mum asked cautiously through the door – my real mum. Actually no, I suppose Annie wasn’t technically my real mum was she?

  Christ this was some fucked up shit.

  Standing up I reached for the sink and splashed cold water over my face letting it trickle down my front and saturate my t-shirt… and my hair.

  “Not really,” I admitted after reluctantly opening up the door. My mum – Annie – held her arms out wide as her eyes pleaded with me to let her hold me. “I-I can’t. Not yet.” She gave me a knowing nod and slowly dropped her arms by her sides.

  Cautiously I stepped out of the bathroom and with two steps I was in the living room. Treacle was sitting on the sofa but stood up as soon as she saw me.

  “You left me.” The words rolled off my tongue before I realised I was saying them.

  “I know,” Treacle replied, stopping a rogue tear in its tracks with her finger as it trailed miserably down her overly-foundationed face. “And I’ve regretted it every single day.”

  “Well I don’t,” I bit back. Treacle’s mouth fell open and a series of stutters spilled out as if I’d just told her I enjoyed wanking off puppies. “I love my mum.”

  Risking a glance in my mum’s direction she had her hand clasped over her mouth.

  “I love you too, baby girl,” she choked out.

  “But… after all she’s put you through?” Treacle muttered incredulously. How the fuck I didn’t smack her right in the face I’ll never know.

  “Don’t you DARE! Don’t you FUCKING DARE!” I blared. “You knew damn well what you was leaving behind... Who you were leaving behind. But it wasn’t enough was it? I wasn’t enough to make you stay?”

  “Maddie, please…I-”

  “Now you think you can stroll back into my life and take over where you left off? Pretend you never wanted fuck all to do with me for the last thirteen years? That woman right there,” I pointed towards my mum – my real mum, “she might not be perfect, might not always get things right… but I have grown up safe in the knowledge that she would never leave me. She loves me. She wants me. She’s always wanted me. I don’t need anything else in a mother. So, Treacle… you can fuck right back off to where you came from. I don’t need or want anything to do with you!”

  I was expecting some huge dramatic scene to unfold in front of me. For Treacle to fall to her knees and wail, or plead with me to forgive her.

  Not one fucking tear.

  “What about your sister? Do you want nothing to do with her either?”

  “What? I don’t have…”

  Holy fuck. How the hell had this never so much as crossed my mind?

  Kara.

  Blaine’s sister.

  My sister.

  “I’m gonna throw up again.”

  Seconds later I was back in the bathroom, bile burning my throat like pure acid as I retched into my new friend, the toilet. The heaves gradually morphed into sobs and before long I was rocking back and forth hugging my knees and crying until it felt like my eyes were about to explode. The most painful part of the whole thing was that the only person I could think about was… Blaine. I’d never wanted him to hold me so badly. But… he didn’t want me either.

  How in hell was I ever supposed to accept that?

  When I finally resurfaced from the bathroom in what seemed like hours later I prayed that Treacle had gone. No such luck. When I stepped into the living room she and my mum were sat side by side on the sofa… chatting. Fucking chatting!

  “Well isn’t this cosy?” I uttered with as much disdain as I could summon.

  “Maddie,” they both said at the same time.

  “So what, we’re a big happy family now?”

  “Please, Maddie. Come and sit with us,” my mu
m asked gently, patting the space in between her and Treacle.

  Every other thing disappeared from the room and the only thing visible was that spot on the sofa. It seemed to have quadrupled in size and it lit up like it was resting under a giant spotlight. I felt like a game show contestant as I made my way towards it. All eyes were on me as I made my way down the aisle to take up my spot on the stage.

  Wedging myself between my two mums, they both tried to talk to me at the same time.

  “Sorry,” Treacle said, “you go first.

  “No it’s okay. You talk,” my mum replied.

  Immediately I catapulted myself from the chair.

  “I’m sorry but this is just too fucking weird!” I paced the room, striding three steps to one edge of the room and then back again.

  “We just want to talk to you,” my mum said. Seething rage seared through my veins like wildfire.

  “What the hell is this, mother’s fucking united?” Both mums sighed in unison. Jesus, this had to be some fucked-up parallel universe. “Go on then,” I snapped. “Talk!”

  I don’t quite know how it happened but after three hours of talking, screaming and crying Trudy and I… hugged. I’d even stopped calling her ‘Treacle’ in my mind. It just didn’t seem… appropriate, anymore. It was like a bizarre episode of This Is Your Life as she told me all about her childhood and the events that led her down the road of drugs and prostitution.

  Before falling pregnant with a child she didn’t want but was forced to keep by her parents, Pamela Davis, Trudy’s mother – my grandmother – was a dancer, well on her way to gaining entry into London’s prestigious Royal Ballet School. Naturally an ever-growing belly threw a spanner in the works and Trudy said her mother made it clear every single day that she never wanted her – that she ruined her life.

  Apparently, after her parent’s deaths, Pamela showed more affection to her bottle of vodka than she did her daughter and by the time Trudy was twelve, her mother had drank herself into a bottomless pit of debt. Blaming Trudy for everything that went wrong in her life, she brought home a male ‘friend’ one day and told Trudy it was time to start ‘paying’ for the mess she’d created. Trudy gained her first ‘client’ when she was just thirteen years old.

  I would have to be a heartless monster not to feel a little sorry for her at this point, though – maybe selfishly – I still didn’t see this as justification for her abandoning me. She went on to describe how one of her regulars offered to ‘manage’ her and even provided her with a small but fully furnished flat. Tears bubbled around the edges of her heavily mascaraed eyes when she said that her mum had packed her bags before she’d even said yes to the offer.

  Turns out my mum – Annie – had the same ‘manager’ and Trudy would essentially become her new flatmate. Impossibly Trudy’s life spiralled even further out of control when she began drinking heavily to block out the emotional pain. Alcohol led to drugs. Drugs led to debt. And an unpaid debt led to Trudy being raped and beaten when she was eighteen – my age.

  Yep. Turns out my father was a violent rapist.

  I felt sick. I doubled over with pain from the dry heaves ripping through my stomach. I didn’t bother to get up and go the bathroom – there was nothing left to throw up. I felt empty in every way possible.

  When Trudy revealed that I was born addicted to heroin and had spent the first month of my life in a special care unit, tears pricked my eyes as I imagined the tiny baby cocooned in an incubator and hooked up to all kinds of wires and machines. The vision seemed so surreal – in no way could I imagine that fighting little girl being me.

  Trudy’s ‘excuse’ for leaving me behind was that although her best friend was pretty screwed up (her words), she wasn’t half as bad as she was. In some warped way I found sense in her words. My mum had been a borderline alcoholic for as long as I could remember but although she dabbled in drugs, she’d never hit the hard stuff – mainly weed and the odd line of coke.

  What didn’t make any sense to me however was why the hell an obscenely rich and successful American business man with a young boy to look after would bring someone as fucked up as Trudy into his life. With that much money there would unquestionably have been a string of gold diggers lurking in the wings practically drooling over the idea of becoming his trophy wife. Control maybe? Perhaps he wanted to ‘own’ her in every sense of the word. When I asked the question, Trudy simply shrugged.

  Mitch checked her straight into some kind of rehab clinic when he brought her home which from her description sounded more like a bazillion-star hotel. She was clean within a month, married within two and carrying Kara – my… sister – a month later. She had the perfect life at last.

  So why wasn’t I in it?

  This was when she threw me some dodgy excuse about Mitch being ‘settled’ and not being a fan of change. What a croc of shit. You can’t make much more of a severe change than leaving your young son behind whilst you head off on a business trip and coming back a couple of weeks later with a new mum who was addicted to crack!

  But then I saw it. When she said Mitch’s name she had that same terrified glint in her eye that I’d so often – too often – seen in Blaine’s. It would almost certainly not have been visible to everyone else, but to me – someone who knew exactly what her sick bastard of a husband was capable of – I could see she was afraid of him. I imagined he didn’t want me in his life, and so he made damn sure she was too scared to go against him.

  And of course she had Kara on the way too. A part of me wanted to hate Kara for being the daughter she chose to keep. I was jealous of the girl who had grown up with everything whilst I had nothing. I was pretty sure she’d never had to scrub at the carpet for days on end to try and erase the smell of her mum’s vomit. Or don some pink rubber gloves which you had set aside specifically for the task of scouring the house for used condoms. Or brought a friend home to the sight of a hairy arse pummelling into your naked mother…

  But that was a selfish and jealous part of me. It wasn’t Kara’s fault. I wouldn’t wish my upbringing on her – on anyone for that matter. I also didn’t regret it. No matter what Trudy’s reasons – justified or not – she still left me. Annie didn’t. And even now I knew she would still fight for me until the day she died. She loves me and has raised me the best she knew how.

  By the time Trudy and I ended up hugging – or rather she hugged me and I didn’t back away – I decided I didn’t hate Trudy. I still didn’t think I understood her decisions and there was still so much more I wanted – needed – to know, but for now I was pretty sure I could look at her without rushing away to throw up.

  “I’d best be getting back,” Trudy said, dabbing the mascara splodges from under her eyes with a tissue from her handbag before applying some concealer.

  “Will you take me with you?” All three of us gasped in unison. I hadn’t planned to ask that question, it just sort of… fell out.

  “Maddie?” I could almost see my mum’s heart slipping into her stomach through the sheer fabric of her pink satin nighty. She thought I was leaving – going off to start a new life with my new mum. There was more chance of me growing a fifteen-inch penis.

  “I want to see Blaine,” I clarified. My mum exhaled deeply – like she’d been holding onto that breath for hours.

  “That’s not a good idea, Maddie,” Trudy said. “Mitch is very, um… strict -”

  “Cut the crap, Trudy. I know exactly what kind of sick son of a bitch Mitch is.” I was bordering on Hate Trudy territory again and I had to drag in a few calming breaths.

  “Maddie!” Mum bellowed. Trudy’s jaw dropped open.

  “Okay,” Trudy said, dropping her head.

  “Okay?” Okay what? Okay she would take me, or okay he was a son of a bitch?

  “Okay, I’ll take you.”

  “Thank you,” I said with a genuine smile.

  “But I need you to wait in the pool house while I talk to Mitch. He was called back from our night away due to s
ome kind of work related business or another but he should have done with that by now. I’m sure I can convince him to take us back to the hotel for the night. I’d…well, I’d rather he didn’t see you.”

  She didn’t say it directly but again I knew that’s because she was scared of him. I found myself wondering what kind of things she’s had to endure with him. Was it as bad as what Blaine goes through? Why the hell could no one stand up to this prick?

  “How will you do that?” I asked, suddenly nervous that her plan would go tits up and I’d be sleeping on the hard pool house floor all night.

  “I’ll cry,” she said flippantly, as if this was something she was an expert at. Although, would a cold-hearted motherfucker like Mitch even care if she was upset? Let’s hope so. “Don’t worry, Maddie. You’ll get to see him,” she assured, placing a hand on my shoulder. I nodded. I had no choice but to believe her.

  After giving my mum a hug so tight I almost collapsed one of her lungs, I followed Trudy out to her car. She tried to make small talk on the way to her mansion but my emotions were still too raw to be arsed about the fucking weather. The weather! Seriously! When she pulled up outside the four berth garage she gave me the key to the pool house and told me to wait five minutes so she could distract Mitch before I got out of the car.

  Then she proceeded to adjust her interior mirror and stare at herself in it. Was now really the time to worry whether her lipstick was flawless?

  “What are you doing?” I asked impatiently.