“Shouldn’t I stay here?”
“No.”
And then he hangs up on me. I slip away unnoticed and head for the café like Stan told me to.
The usual ping sounds over my head as I open the door and find Marg in the middle of taking an order. She catches me slipping past her and frowns.
“You’re back early, is everything alright with Drake?” she asks, ignoring her customer.
It is now I think but I shake my head and concentrate on the now.
“Drake’s fine,” I assure her, “The same can’t be said about our flat though. It’s on fucking fire.”
“What!” she shrieks, “What are you doing here then?”
“Stan told me to wait here,” I shrug.
“What’s the matter with you? You should be more upset than this,” she snaps, shoving her notepad in her apron pocket.
“I just don’t have the energy today, so why not have my home burn down around me just to top things off?” I shrug.
She watches me carefully and skitters off to collect an order, keeping an eye on me as she goes.
I learned a few months ago that Stan only lives around the corner in the opposite direction to Drakes so I am not surprised when he bowls into the café this quick. What I am surprised about is who he has with him and holding onto his hand.
“Oh my God, Cam. Are you okay?” Lorna shrieks, rushing towards me.
“I’m fine,” I say for the tenth time, “What are you doing here?” I ask.
“Oh, um, I was going to tell you but I came up to see Stan.”
She doesn’t have to look so guilty or worried about me. She shakes the snow off her head and takes a seat beside me.
“What are you going to do?” she asks me.
“Not important, she’ll stay with Marg,” Stan says, speaking for the first time. “Have you seen anyone hanging around the building lately?” he asks.
“No. This can’t be anything to do with Drake, Stan. He hasn’t been around in months,” I argue.
He rolls his eyes at my stupidity and begins shredding a napkin between his thick fingers.
“Doesn’t matter, everyone knows you’re his. Hurting you is hurting him. He’s been keeping his head down inside so if anything, it will have to be an old vendetta.”
“Or it could be a simple reason like someone forgot to turn their fryer off or left a candle burning or something,” I argue back.
“You’ll do well to remember who you are now, stop living in this fucking bubble Drake has put you in and look around you properly,” he growls at me.
Stan has never risen his voice to me before and to be honest he is ridiculously scary when he is angry.
“I don’t live in any bubble and until we know how the fire started, I’m not going to assume the worst just because that’s how most of you live around here.”
Personally, I haven’t seen too much to warrant thinking this is because of Drake.
“Then you’re going to get us killed because if anything, and I mean anything happens to you, Drake will kill me for sure. It doesn’t matter how long I’ve known him or how much I look out for you, he will make me wish I never met him.”
Lorna gasps beside me and holds my hand under the table. I squeeze back.
“Stan,” Marg warns him, making her way over to us.
“No, it’s time she knew just how much danger she’s been in,” he says, glaring at her, “every day Drake has been locked up I watch you to work, I watch you home when you’re finished. When you visit his mum’s grave, I watch you there and back. When you go to the market, I’m watching. In the evenings when you’re watching telly all cosy and thinking you’re safe behind a locked door, I check on you. Thirteen times in the last two years I have stopped his enemies getting to you. Did you honestly believe that being Drake Deveroux’s girlfriend would be easy?” he snorts, “some of the men he’s pissed off over the years would happily rape you, laugh about it and leave you in imaginable pain and then happily get word of it to Drake.”
“Stan, that’s enough,” Marg stops him.
He leans back in his chair and scrubs his face with his hands and then stares at the ceiling.
None of that can be true. I knew Drake wasn’t a good guy and had a reputation for all the wrong reasons, hell, he told me that himself. But, how could I have been so blind to this bubble as Stan called it? My day went from shit to crazy and now it’s just gone back to shit again.
All this time I have been living my quiet life believing I’m just waiting for Drake to be released but in reality I have been living a nightmare, I just wasn’t aware of it. However, I am aware now.
“No Marg, let him carry on.”
I can’t think right now. I want to know as much as possible before I begin to process everything he is telling me.
“All I’m saying Cammie, is open your eyes to what’s around you. I know for a fact you half have an inkling of what Drake has done in the past. That shit doesn’t get forgotten easily. Your house getting burnt down is nothing in our world. I was off the ball today but it won’t happen again. From now on, you’ll stay with Marg. I’ll speak to Drake and see what he says.”
I don’t bother telling him again it could have been a genuine accident, I’m too busy thinking he could be right and this fire is much more sinister than I would like it to be and it out right pisses me off.
“Thank you for looking out for me, if I had known I would have been more on alert. I’ll stay with Marg until I can find other accommodation, but I don’t want you telling Drake about this. He worries about me enough as it is, if he finds out about this I don’t know how he’ll be.”
“He has to know, he might know what’s going on,” Lorna argues, squeezing my hand assuring me.
“If he thought this could happen he would have told Stan,” I tell her, “Right?” I ask Stan just in case.
He nods and begins shredding another napkin.
“Then until we know how the fire was set, we don’t say a word. Even then I don’t want him to know. I’ll find somewhere to live, I don’t want him coming home to find out he’ll be sleeping on Marg’s sofa and everything he thought he’d have is now gone. I want a home for him and that’s what I’m going to focus on.”
Stan shakes his head and stares at me.
“Do you have a problem with that?” I ask, non-too kindly.
“Of course I have a fucking problem with it, I’m going to get killed either way here so what the hell. Do what you want. Stay here till I get back, I’ll take you both home when Marg finishes up.”
He leans across the table and kisses Lorna sweetly on her cheek, “You wait here too, I’m going to listen to the whispers.”
Then he is walking out of the café.
“What whispers?” Lorna asks Marg.
“Word will be spreading about the fire and whispers travel faster around here than a stolen Lamborghini. Hopefully he’ll know who done it by the time he gets back,” Marg explains to her.
Stan came back just before five o’clock as promised when Marg’s shift finished. He was none of the wiser about the culprit who set the fire. Personally, I was still hoping it was an accident by one of the other tenants. Stan said he would wait till the morning when the fire inspector found how it started. He drove Marg and I back to her place and with a hug and a promise to see me before she left London I said goodbye to Lorna and we were inside and Marg was putting the kettle on.
I focused on the steam rising out of the kettle as it neared boiling point and if it wasn’t for Marg poking into my pockets and thrusting my mobile in my face, I wouldn’t have heard it ringing.
Shit, what’s the time? Six o’clock. It’s Drake.
“Hello.”
I keep my voice calm and normal, if I don’t want Stan telling him then I can’t give away that anything is wrong myself.
“Alright babe, did you get home okay?” he asks.
I briefly close my eyes and tell myself I can do this and I am only lying for
his benefit and say, “Yeah, glad to be in the warm now.”
“Good, and you’re okay? I mean, I know you said you were earlier but I want to make sure.”
“I’m more than fine, we’re fine,” I reassure him.
“Where are you now?”
“Home, why?”
Surely he couldn’t have been told this soon and Stan gave me his word, finally, that he wouldn’t tell him.
“Where about?”
“Sitting in the kitchen, why?”
He laughs down the phone and for a second I don’t like it.
“How the fuck are you sitting in the kitchen? There’s hardly enough room to stand let alone sit.”
Oh right, I forgot, I’m not in my kitchen.
“When my phone rang, I sunk to the floor. My legs ache today. Why is it so important to know where I am?”
It isn’t his questioning that is making me angry, it’s my lying to him. I hate it.
“I like to picture you in our home while I’m talking to you. You don’t seem so far away when I do.”
Tears spring to my eyes but I am adamant not to let him hear them.
“Oh, I’m just sitting here in my coat. I stopped by to see Marg on the way home. And you’ll never believe who has come to London specially to see Stan,” I say, well and truly diverting the conversation away from the flat.
“Lorna?”
He doesn’t sound surprised. Maybe he already knew? Stan seems to tell him everything. Which reminds me, I desperately want to ask him about the thirteen times I’ve supposedly been in danger. I hold back because I can’t explain how I know about them without telling him about the fire.
“Yeah, they popped into the café while I was there.”
“It probably won’t last,” he mutters.
“I’m sure people thought that about us too,” I say to him.
“Well they’d be wrong. We’ve lasted this, we’ll last anything. I’ll never let you go,” he promises.
“I don’t want to be let go.”
“Damn right you don’t,” he chuckles.
When he laughs this lightly I can’t help but laugh with him. It’s infectious. It sounds so cheeky and carefree.
“I wish you hadn’t of walked out today, I don’t think I can wait another month to see you,” he groans.
“Not long and you’ll see me every day.”
“I know.”
The line goes quiet and I know it is time to say goodbye for tonight.
“I really do love you Drake and I would change anything to have you here.”
“I know you would, I love you too, babe. I should go but same time tomorrow night?” he asks. I can’t remember a time that I haven’t been around to answer his call because there hasn’t been one yet he still asks this at the end of each call.
“Same time.”
“Bye, babe.”
“Bye.”
And the line goes dead.
“I’ve run a bath for you. You look like you could with a soak.”
I find Marg standing in the doorway, I became so focused on Drake I didn’t notice she left the room.
“Thanks.”
The water is just the right temperature when I dip my toe in, then slide in until my whole body apart from my head is submerged under the water.
I haven’t soaked in a tub for a long time and this is by far the best part of my day.
I have no right to worry about myself when I chose to come here with Drake and I certainly won’t allow it to affect me. I have no doubts that when Drake is released he won’t leave me high and dry like I hear about some men who get of prison and while they’re away they have girlfriends visiting them to pass the time and when they get out, they dismiss them because they don’t need them anymore. Drake will not do that to me. When he does get out I will have a home waiting for him. The money under this very bath tub I am laying in will more than cover a new lease and furniture if needs be. He is always strong and confident to look out for himself and so will I.
Chapter Seventeen - January 2005
Drake
I’m dripping with sweat from my morning workout in the prison gym and I am in desperate need of a shower. I only popped back to get my wash bag.
“You got a letter,” Tommy nods towards my bunk, keeping his eyes on his book.
I haven’t known anyone to read as much as he does, but hey, if that’s how he wants to pass his time, I won’t complain. The more he reads the quieter he is.
Using my vest, I half pull it up to wipe the sweat from my face and sit and see Cammie’s handwriting scrolled across the envelope.
“You want me to leave?” Tommy asks.
“Nah, you’re alright today.”
Since our bust up last month, everything has been good between Cammie and I. Our time apart got too much for the both of us and bottling it all up did neither of us any good.
We have just over a week until our next visit so we have written more letters than usual. Most of it is reassurance to each other that we are both fine and we are going to get through this.
We are looking at months till my release now, not years. I have kept my head down and stayed away from trouble, I don’t see any reason to have my parole refused.
The envelope is already open which I try not to let bother me that God knows who has already read this before I have and decide to have a shower after read what my girl has to say.
The first thing I notice is Marg’s address written at the top of the letter. Why the fuck is she writing from there? She hasn’t mentioned anything about it.
January 2nd 2005
Drake,
So it’s the second day of 2005 and we finally can see light at the end of this dark, horrible tunnel we are in. I brought a new calendar this morning and the first date I wanted to put in was your parole hearing date, I can’t wait until you have one. I actually did a happy dance around the kitchen which I will only admit to you. I am more than ready for you to come home and I am being nothing but positive that you will be soon. I tell myself every morning and every night before I go to sleep that we have less time to go than we have already done and it makes me feel a little better. I lost my strength during our last visit but I have found it and I assure you I will never lose it again. (I blame it on the Christmas fever and you, if you weren’t so gorgeous and lovable I wouldn’t miss you so much) I promise you that was all it was, me missing you and me loving you so much.
Okay, you ask for every detail so here they are…
Les reopened the café the day after Boxing Day and as much as you still don’t like it, I told him I would work as much as I could, apart from the afternoons when I come visit you. The days have been long and busy, and my feet have never hurt so much but for every pain I endure it makes the days pass in a blur and pass quickly. Les didn’t open on New Year’s Eve so Marg and I visited your mum and took her the prettiest pink Lilies. I told her you’ll come see her soon, we couldn’t stay for long because the weather was too cold but we’ll go back in a few days and have a clean-up. After we left the cemetery, I decided to head home and spend New Year on my own. Marg and William invited me to tag along with them to the pub to see the New Year in but I quickly declined. I don’t think I could’ve stomached that much enjoyment without you, especially as you’re the only one I wanted to kiss at midnight, not watch Marg and William get it on after drinking all evening.
I spent the night with a glass or four of wine watching bad TV waiting for the countdown, annoyingly I fell asleep half hour before midnight and woke up at ten the next morning with a pounding headache thanks to the wine.
Yesterday I spent feeling sorry for myself and didn’t move off the sofa unless I needed the bathroom or to get food. There’s not much to tell really.
Through our letters and our visits, we have gotten to know each other really well. I think with your parole coming up, we should concentrate on planning our future.
Tell me what your New Year’s resolution is? Mine is to not look bac
k. Not on anything unless it is happy and to do with us both. It has been a long two years so far and now we are months away from being together I can’t stop smiling. Even though it hurts being apart and the loneliness is cold and unbearable I have never regretted walking away from everything I knew. I will always choose you Drake Deveroux. Your home has become my home and we are both waiting here for you. Never doubt that or me.
Don’t worry about Marg’s address at the top of this letter, our postman has been dumping mail and I don’t want to miss one of your letters because he can’t be bothered to do the job he’s paid to do.
I love you always,
Your Cammie xxx
I re-read the last paragraph three times before I carefully fold it back up and put it back into the envelope to keep with the others she has sent me.
She will always choose me. Don’t doubt her. Her home is now in London. She is waiting like she told me she would two years ago. Cammie Darcy is my fucking home and I’m more than ready to join her.
“This job of yours better pay off,” I tell Tommy, “I’m not coming back here. My girl isn’t living without me again.”
“Well, let’s go over the plan again,” he smiles.
Not only will I give Cammie every inch of me she needs but I will give her everything she deserves. That girl will not go without a thing ever again.
The water is lukewarm and the soap is cheap. My back is turned to the rest of the shower room but it doesn’t make me blind, or stupid.
Men to my right gather their toiletries and disappear half way through their showers, leaving me the only one under the water.
I hang my head under the spray and remain oblivious to the shift in the air around me.
“I don’t see what the big fucking deal is about him, all I see is a pussy,” I hear rinsing the soap out of my hair.
A deep laugh resonates behind me and sounds different to the previous voice I heard. There is at least two men behind me from what I can hear.
“Walking around like he’s a big man, he ain’t shit.”
Perfectly Obsessed Page 15
