The Silent Witness

by Casey Watson

The house was silent, momentarily, and her first feeling was relief. Whatever had happened was obviously long over. With any luck, her dad would have stormed off to wherever it was he had taken to storming off to lately – he didn’t seem to be working much, but he was forever storming off these past few weeks. And the lights and sign – evidence of a tantrum? (her mum often called the things her dad did ‘tantrums’) – seemed to suggest that was the case. But you never knew. Equally, they could be out in the back garden. But then she’d hear them, surely? They were always so, so loud.

  She often wondered about that, about how alcohol always raised the volume. About why it made everyone shout so much louder – not just more angrily, but with such enormous volume. That and how her mum, who always spoke so quietly (who did everything quietly, ‘so as not to wake the beast’ – she’d often tell Bella that, creeping around the house like an apologetic wraith), would raise her own voice to match his, once a row had got going, like their voices were swords, trading thrusts and blows.

  But the silence was broken, as her instinct had already told her it surely would be, though not by a shout, but a drumming, scuffling sound. A sound coming from the back room – the room that in other houses would normally be the dining room, but in which they never ‘dined’, or even ate. She ate her tea most days on a tray on her lap in front of the telly. The back room was essentially just a dumping ground. A dumping ground with an armchair, with blackened, greasy arms on it, where her not-your-fucking dad would sit, hour after hour, getting pissed and spilling beer froth down his front.

  He’d wipe his hands on the chair arms, always. Wipe the wetness from his fingers. So they were pickled in old beer now, just like he was.

  She walked the four strides down the hall, throwing her bag down as she did so, so she could investigate what was going on, because what else was there to do? Again the scuffling sound, just as she turned towards the open door – as if a dog was trying to rootle something out.

  It wasn’t a dog. They had no dog. She’d never been allowed a pet. Not even a goldfish. It was her mother and her stepfather, the latter on his knees, straddling her mother’s middle – while she, on the floor, was on her back, stretched out beneath him, and the scuffling noise was the sound of her feet scrabbling for purchase on the wooden floor.

  He had his big beery hands around her throat.

  ‘GET OFF HER!’ Bella roared. It came from deep down inside her. Closely followed by action that was instant and instinctive – she threw herself on top of the hill of her stepfather’s back. He exploded backwards at her touch, knocking her straight off again, launching her painfully against the door jamb, and throwing a punch at her for good measure, which missed its mark but connected painfully with the side of her leg. He had hit her.

  But at least she had surprised him. She remembered thinking that, gratefully. Feeling grateful at how she was good at creeping around too. He roared back at her, incoherently, twisting his torso, staggering upright, stepping on her mother’s forearm in the process. But clambering off her, at least, to express his incoherent fury that his not-his-fucking-daughter had the nerve to take him on.

  Bella’s mother howled too, like a new-born who’d sucked some air in. Red, just like a baby, too, clutching at her neck. Had he actually been strangling her? Trying to kill her? Her mum was coughing now, pulling herself up, one hand still clutching at her throat. She yelled something. ‘Brute’ maybe. And ‘Don’t you fucking TOUCH her!’

  Bella scrambled back up onto her own feet, her eyes fixed on her father, who was now stumbling drunkenly towards his armchair, reaching down on the floor beside it, groping for a can. Even now. Like a prize fighter, between rounds.

  ‘You FUCKING ANIMAL!’ Bella’s mum shouted, and the first thing Bella thought about was that the door into the garden was open. The patio door that had been replaced only eighteen months previously. The door that her mum said was the catalyst (Bella had had to look the word up) for her dad getting help and going back to the AA meetings.

  And a good spell. For the most part. Though it hadn’t lasted long. The glass had been replaced but it hadn’t lasted long. It never did. She ignored the open door, though, even though she knew the whole street was probably out listening. Instead she hauled her mother up, and helped her to her feet. There was blood in her hair. A huge pink egg on her forehead. A dark wet patch at the crotch of her jeans.

  The can whistled across then, glancing off her mother’s shoulder, spewing liquid and fizzing froth over both of them. ‘Bitchhhhhh!’ her dad yelled back, soon following the can himself, cannoning into them as he glanced off the arm of his armchair, sending all of them back to a writhing tangle on the floor.

  Bella had found some sort of primeval strength. She’d cried out, aimed a punch at him, anything to stop him, really, but for all her ferocity she was too small and weak for him, winded and gasping for breath under their combined weight. Her mother was fighting back now – Bella could feel the sudden hardness of her fists and thighs and biceps – and trying to make space for her to wriggle free. ‘Get the fuck out,’ she was gasping. ‘Go get help! Get Mr Atkinson!’ The words coming out in breathless bursts.

  Get her mum’s mobile. That was surely the better thing to do. Not Mr Atkinson. Mr Atkinson who was one of the neighbours who hated them. Mr Atkinson who rolled his eyes at them, who moaned in the street to her mum, embarrassingly, about the ‘endless, endless scenes’. Find her mum’s phone. Dial 999. Get the police. Get anyone. Get someone who’d want to help them. Who could see that her dad – her not-her-fucking-dad – had turned into a monster. A murderous monster who once again had his prey in his hands. And who didn’t even seem to care that his not-his-fucking-daughter was standing there, watching him. Her dad who was too busy, too intent, too determined to kill her mum.

  ‘Bella, GO!’ she saw her mum say, though she could hardly even hear it. He had his hands round her neck again and was shaking her with them. Her head was bobbing, thudding, against the floorboards.

  Bella wasn’t sure why she stepped out into the garden. Afterwards, she became resigned to the fact that she probably never would know. She had intended, after all, to get her mum’s mobile phone. Except for a pure kind of fury that had engulfed her. Was that it? Was that the word? Was it fury that had propelled her? That made her forget that she was twelve and she was terrified of him? That, like her mother, she was so used to creeping around him? That, every other time, she’d have done what her mother had told her. Called help. Got a neighbour in. Watched her father crumple, seem to shrink almost, in the face of it. Listened to her mother, wanting to scream herself, hearing her excusing him. Making light. Making less of it. Saying things like ‘It’s not him, it’s the drink’. ‘It’s an illness.’ Then the tears and the apologies and the inevitable fragile truce. Before the same thing. The same drink. The same row. The same fight.

  She blinked, seeing it all there. She had read so many books now. She knew another word, too. (There were so many more and different books in high school.) ‘Sisyphean’. The never-ending, pointless, pointless task.

  Was getting help going to help her? Had it helped her in the past? No, it hadn’t. And it was simple. She needed to help her mum herself. If she didn’t he would kill her. She could see that so clearly. Her mum’s whole face told her. It was the colour of cooked beetroot. She knew the word for it. She was asphyxiating.

  Soon, if she didn’t help, her mother would be dead.

  The pile of old house bricks had been there for years. The result of some stupid plan he’d had, to build a barbecue. Back in another good spell, a long time ago now. He’d got some kit, off some other builder, which was ‘a bargain’ apparently. Whereas, as far as she could see, it was just a box with a few bits of metal in. A bag of various bolts, a kind of grill pan, and what looked like an oven shelf. Little more. You built the actual barbecue out of your bricks and mortar. There was a sheet of instructions for how to do it, and where the grill pan and shelf went. Even though anyone with h
alf a brain cell could have worked that out themselves.

  He’d come home with the kit and instructions and her mum had been excited reading them out to her, even so. ‘This goes here, see? And then we’ll have a proper, built-in barbecue.’ As if having a proper built-in barbecue would make them a proper family too.

  ‘Like I need instructions? I’m a fucking brickie!’ her dad had said, laughing. All those years, and here they still sat, waiting for him.

  It turned out to be surprisingly heavy, the brick she plucked from the pile. Dense. Cold and sharp. Almost too big for her hand. Heavy enough, certainly, to have to be hefted with both of them. For fear of dropping it before it hit its target.

  Then her mum’s voice – ‘Bella! What the hell?’ – and perhaps the word ‘Noooooo!’ But he’d already slumped on top of her by then.

  Chapter 20

  Bella couldn’t remember when she’d last seen her grandmother. Four years, perhaps? Five? A long time ago. She’d given her a Moomintroll book. The last thing she’d ever given her. Her face was hard to recall now, and there were no photos of her anywhere. But her ‘words of wisdom’ – her mum always said that with a funny look on her face – had stayed with Bella always.

  Bella’s gran had told Bella lots of important things when she was little. Not to pull funny faces in case the wind changed and it stayed like that. To eat her crusts, to make her hair curl (she was glad now that it hadn’t; that she could choose). To mind her Ps and Qs, which meant to be on your best behaviour. To never break a promise. And to never tell a lie.

  Which left Bella now in something of a quandary.

  Having heard the dull thud of the house brick as it connected with her father’s head, she had – to her shock, since she hadn’t actually planned it – raised it and hit him a second time, just in case. And would have done so a third time had her mother not stopped her.

  Not physically; she couldn’t. She was still trapped underneath him. But by the power of her voice, which was shrill and hysterical: ‘Stop it, B! Stop it, B! STOP IT, B! STOPPPPP ITTTTTTT!’

  Bella stopped, having never heard her mum yell like that before. Not to her. To her dad, yes, but never at her. She dropped the brick, then, a mad term she’d read recently popping into her head. To drop like a hot brick. To drop quickly. In a panic.

  Her mother was in a panic right now.

  ‘Help me,’ she implored now, scrabbling her arms and legs like an upside-down beetle. ‘Quickly. Help get him off me. Oh, God … Jesus. Christ. Oh, God, Bella. Fuck.’

  Close up, Bella could now smell the urine. And worse. She didn’t like to even think about the worse. Didn’t like to look at the blood she saw too now, that was seeping, dark and steaming – condensing in the cold? – from between the dark furrows of her father’s greasy hanks of hair, and stickily, from underneath his head.

  A mighty shove from her mum, and he flopped over on his back, groaning, where his bleeding head went ‘donk’ against the floorboards. His arm, as she pushed him off, slapped hard against the armchair. He made a strange sound, not quite a moan, more a sigh. Then fell silent. Had she killed him?

  ‘Fuck,’ Bella’s mum said, scrabbling up to her feet again, clutching at her head. ‘I need to call an ambulance. Shit, I’m spinning out. Get my phone. It’s on the charger.’ She grabbed Bella’s wrist. ‘Hear me? Get my phone!’

  Bella backed out of the room, watching as her mother sank back down to her knees beside her father, and for a moment she worried that she was going to pass out on top of him. Her not-your-fucking-father, who lay there with his legs splayed, very still. Her mum was talking to herself, and Bella wondered if she actually even realised he’d been trying to kill her. ‘Shit,’ she was saying to him. ‘Shit. You fucking asshole! See what you’ve done? See what you’ve fucking done? Shit …’

  Bella went for the mobile, and pulled the lightning cable out of it. Wondered grimly who’d decided to call it that and why. The kitchen was warm, and she realised the oven was on. She went and switched it off, ‘on auto-pilot’, she thought as she did so. What might be in there? She hadn’t eaten lunch and was hungry. But they needed an ambulance. She didn’t open the oven door.

  Never break a promise and never tell a lie.

  Bear those two in mind and you’ll do all right, girl, her gran had told her. Which was something she used to think about often, if not so much now. Her mum told lies, didn’t she? All the time, actually. To the people at the social. To her dad. About money. To her own mum, even, on the phone, about her own dad. She told her own mum there wasn’t anything wrong, all the time, then, to her, and, more often, to her dad, or herself, she called her own dad – Bella’s granddad – an evil f-ing bastard.

  Bella gave the phone to her mum, who looked pale, like tracing paper, and was now in the armchair, elbows on knees, face propped up in her hands. The blood – her mum’s blood – was from a cut in her eyebrow. It made a line down her cheek. It made her look like a lady-pirate off Pirates of the Carribean. Or a lady Viking even, like her own great-great-grandmother.

  Her mum took the phone. But didn’t punch out 999 or anything, like Bella expected her to. Instead she held it in one hand and stared at it for a long time. Then looked up at Bella, who was still standing staring at her.

  ‘I’m all right, B, okay? Okay? I’m okay. I’ll be fine. Are you okay?’ She gripped Bella’s hand as she said this. ‘Shit … okay … right. Here’s what’s happening, okay?’

  ‘Is Dad dead?’ Bella asked. She hadn’t exactly meant to ask the question. But out it had come anyway. He was just lying there so still. She didn’t have time to wonder how she’d feel if her mother answered yes.

  ‘No,’ her mum said. ‘But he’s hurt.’ She glanced at him, as if he might be listening. ‘Badly. B, listen carefully, okay? I need you to listen to me very, very carefully. I’m going to call for an ambulance. And when they get here, whatever happens, you are to say nothing, okay? Nothing. Not a word. When they ask you, you say nothing.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘Nothing. Just “I don’t know”. “I didn’t see …” Stuff like that.’

  ‘So not nothing, then?’

  ‘Bella, listen. You didn’t see anything. You didn’t do anything. You don’t know anything. You just came in, from school, and you found us, like this.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘Bella, this is important. I can’t begin to tell you how important. You came in. You know nothing. You saw nothing. Nothing.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘Bella, if you don’t, it will be bad for us. Understand? Bad for you. Bad for me. You must do this for me. I have to call now –’ She lifted the phone, pressed the home button, pressed the numbers of her password with her thumb. Bella’s birthday. 1011. She’d told her to memorise it. For emergencies. ‘Remember, Bella. Your birthday. Ten eleven.’

  ‘I have to call now,’ she said again. Her fingers were shaking. ‘Remember, B, okay? It could not be more important. You saw nothing. Know nothing. Came in and found us, like this. Promise me?’

  Bella nodded, automatically. There was only one response when your mum said ‘promise me’. You promised.

  ‘Promise me,’ her mum said again.

  ‘Bella nodded again. ‘I promise.’

  And she did. But in promising to say what her mum had told her, she would now have to tell the policemen a lie. She pointed that out. Right after her mum had made the call. (‘A fight … please come quickly … he’s bleeding … a head injury …’)

  ‘Noooo!’ her mum yelled at her. ‘Don’t say that! Don’t ever say that! You were helping me. Don’t say that. You were terrified. In shock! God, Bella …’ She was sobbing now. Bella hated seeing her mum crying. Crying into her ear, clinging on to her, half in and half out of the stinking, hated armchair. Her face wet. The urine smell – and worse – really strong now. ‘You must promise me, on your life … This could not be more important, Bella!’

  ‘I promise,’ Bella said again. ‘Cross my
heart and hope to die.’ Which made her mum cry even more.

  A police car came first. Bella had gone and watched for the ambulance out the front window, as her mum had told her to, but it was a police car, lights flashing, making blue and red puddles on the road.

  She felt calm as she went into the hallway to open the door to them, opening it just as their fists did a sharp police knock – rat-a-tat, rat-a-tat-tat! ‘Op-en-up-we’re-the-po-lice!’ Policemen never rang on doorbells.

  They were so quick she wondered if Mr Atkinson had already called them. With the patio door open, he must have heard something, after all. Bella wished she’d tucked the broken Santa sign under the bush.

  There were two of them. Big men, lots of flaps and pockets on their uniforms. Stuff stuffed in pockets, in their belts, on their shoulders. ‘All right, love,’ the younger one said to her, but not as a question. All right, love, in a way that said ‘We’re here, you’re okay now’, not knowing, and wouldn’t know, because she’d made her mum a promise, that she wasn’t in the least bit okay. Far from it. She had a lie to carry round with her now, a very heavy one.

  The policemen herded her, almost, down the hall, into the back room, where her mum, obviously expecting an ambulance man, went ‘Ohhhh’, then crumpled downwards, as if the bones in her legs had disappeared, just like in the Harry Potter film. Bella didn’t know what to say or do.

  The policemen did, though, and while one reached to stop her from falling, the other sank to his knees by her still splay-legged, silent father, felt around near his face and said ‘pulse’. The other, having parked Bella’s mum in the armchair again, spoke into a walkie-talkie thing he wore in his chest – ambulance, yes, forensics (a word she knew) – all the while nodding at Bella in what she thought he hoped was a reassuring fashion. But it didn’t reassure her, because everything was swimming in and out of focus, her mum was sobbing really loudly, and the smell was so horrible, and she had to fight the urge to run away from these huge, scary men.