by Ann Troup
‘Amy?’
The sound of his voice sent a frisson of panic through her, she scrambled backwards and screamed. ‘Don’t come near me!’ she shrieked.
He stepped towards her, confused. ‘Amy, what’s going on, what happened. Where’s Rachel, are you all right?’
She wedged herself into the corner of the chaise, shaking. ‘You tell me, you’re the one who was here last night, you’re the one who attacked her.’
Charlie’s face contorted into a mask of confusion. ‘What? Look, I know your upset, but I can explain.’
Amy stared at him in disbelief. ‘I don’t want to hear it. There’s blood all over the place, and you want me to listen to you explain? You’ve lost the plot.’ Her voice was wavering.
Charlie opened his mouth to speak, but didn’t get the chance, at least four policemen had run onto the flat bawling at him to get down on the floor.
He just stood there for a moment, blinking at her, until the mechanical click and whir of a taser,being primed brought him to his senses and he dropped to his knees.
As the men swarmed into the flat and manhandled him Amy found herself dissolving into the worst kind of hysteria, blubbing like an idiot, covering her head with her hands and curling herself into a pathetic little ball on the chaise longue.
She couldn’t watch as her father was dragged out of the flat in handcuffs and loaded into the back of a police van.
When she was brought out, still shaking, her arm held in the firm grip of a huge policeman who looked as if he was geared up for a riot, she saw the woman from the cafe, and the lady with the dog staring across at her, their expressions loaded with concern. Out of shame, she looked away.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Rachel’s head felt like a lead weight, and a vague pain was travelling through her right leg, all the way up into her right arm where it throbbed and peaked into a searing heat in her hand. She tried to sit up, but the effort of it became diverted and it came out of her mouth as a feeble groan. She opened her eyes and ascertained from the glimpse of faded green curtains and the whiteness that she was in hospital. She managed to turn her head to the left, though the movement was exhausting and saw a bag of blood hanging from a drip stand, feeding itself steadily into her left arm. The sensation of heavy bandaging on her limbs made her feel as though she’d been mummified.
A nurse came into view and fiddled with something on the line, and smiled. ‘You’re back with us then? Good, I’ll fetch the doctor’.
A few minutes later a balding middle-aged man wearing baggy scrubs appeared at her bedside, gave her a transient, insipid smile and began to flick through a brown folder. She watched as he scribbled something down. ‘A narrow escape I should say Ms Porter.’ He said with another insipid smile.
Rachel blinked at him, a narrow escape from what?
‘Yes, you’ve had several pints of our very valuable blood today.’
‘Why?’ she rasped, her mouth felt like she had been force fed dry cream crackers.
‘I’ll get the nurse to bring you some water. But take it easy, we could do without you being sick.’ Again, the smile, did he think he was being amusing? ‘I imagine you will need to stay with us for a while, you’ll be taken up to the ward as soon as we are happy that everything is stable. We’ve managed to repair the damage to the blood vessels in your leg, but it will be a painful recovery and I expect you will have some extensive scarring from the wound. Your hand has been stitched, your blood has been topped up and in a few days, you should feel much better. I’m told that there are two police officers waiting to talk to you, so when you are feeling up to it, let the nursing staff know and they’ll send them in. I’ll be along to check on you later.’ He gave her a curt nod and moved away.
Leg? Blood? Police? What the hell had happened?
Detective Sergeant Sally Morgan was a tired looking woman, with dry hair and a cheap polyester suit. Her young apprentice, DC, Matt Bulmore, was an altogether smarter proposition. He stood at the end of the Rachel’s bed looking deadly serious, legs apart, feet firmly planted on the floor. His hands were loosely clasped in front of him and he looked like he should be wearing mirrored shades and be guarding the president. Rachel’s’ fuddled mind invited her to laugh, but she bit it back, everything hurt too much.
DS Morgan pulled a chair up to the bed and sat down, ‘How are you feeling?’ She asked’
‘Sore, confused. What happened to me?’
‘We were hoping you’d be able to tell us. Do you remember anything at all?’
Rachel raked back through her memory. ‘I cut my hand on a broken plate, I was upset I think.’
‘Who had upset you?’
‘I’d had a bad day.’ She said simply, she didn’t have the energy to explain.
‘Do you remember Charles Jones being in your flat last night?’
‘Yes, he brought me home. I wasn’t well, I have epilepsy.’
‘How did the plate get broken?’
Rachel screwed her eyes up, concentrating on recalling what had happened. ‘We argued, he slammed the door and it fell off the shelf.’
‘Did Mr Jones cause your injuries?’
Rachel stared at her, ‘What? Charlie? No, of course not.’
‘So how do you explain your injuries?’ DS Morgan asked wearily, as if she were tired of stupid females covering up for violent men.
‘I don’t know, I know I cut my hand, but Charlie didn’t do anything, he’d gone by then.’
‘So how do you explain the bruising to your face and the stab wound to your leg?’
Rachel was starting to feel mildly panicked, ‘I don’t know, I must have done it myself, had a fit or something, but it wasn’t Charlie. Honestly’.
‘How can you be sure? It would be difficult to inflict those kinds of injuries to oneself. You are aware that Mr Jones has a history of violent attacks on women?’
She made it sound like he was some kind of serial rapist.
‘What exactly is the nature of your current relationship with Mr Jones?’ She pressed.
‘We were, are, married, but have been separated for a long time.’
‘Our records show that you took an injunction out against Mr Jones some time ago, on grounds of harassment, that injunction had a power of arrest attached. It would appear that you have some fear of your husband.’
Oh God! ‘It wasn’t like that, it wasn’t for violence. Charlie has never hurt me’. She said, beginning to really panic, how could she possibly explain this without opening a whole can of worms.
‘Why would you take an injunction out against someone who posed no risk to you?’
Rachel was floundering, but was saved from answering by Mr FBI’s phone ringing. He left the ward to take the call, beckoning to DS Morgan to follow.
While they were gone, she tried to gather her scrambled thoughts. There had to be a simple solution to this.
DS Morgan and Mr FBI came back into the ward and placed themselves back by her bed. ‘Right, where were we?’ Morgan said, looking moderately annoyed.
‘If I state that I was not attacked by Charlie, you can’t do anything can you?’ Rachel asked.
Morgan sighed, and then leaned forward, clasping her hands together and resting her forearms on her knees. She looked up at Rachel from beneath her frizzy fringe. ‘I’m afraid that’s not the case anymore. If we have grounds to believe that Mr Jones caused your injuries, we can prosecute him with or without your testimony. Domestic violence is a serious matter. Besides I have just been informed that Mr Jones has been taken into custody, he was witnessed breaking into your flat a few hours ago.’
‘I don’t believe you.’ Rachel said instinctively.
DS Morgan raised an eyebrow and glanced at Mr FBI, ‘Nevertheless. Mr Jones is currently sitting in a cell, awaiting an interview. It would help us to understand exactly what happened last night.’
Rachel tried desperately to stop her thoughts from spitting and popping like fireworks, determined that the tingling sen
sation that fizzed through her nerves would not result in a fit. The last thing she could remember seeing was Mr FBI’s face contorting as her eyes started to roll back into her head.
Amy had never cried so much in her life. Before this, there had never been anything to cry about. It made her realise how cushioned she had been by her family, how much Charlie and Delia had done to protect her from everything that might hurt her. As a consequence, she had just wandered blithely through her life expecting it always to be a smooth ride. Now, sitting in a side room in the police station, being fed cheap coffee, and handed rough tissues by a WPC who looked as if she would rather be sticking pins in her eyes than babysitting an overwrought girl, Amy realised that she had been spoilt. Her burgeoning resentment told her that they had protected themselves more than they had ever cushioned her. Look at her now, fallen at the first hurdle.
Another WPC came into the room and whispered something to Amy’s sentinel.
‘Your dad’s being released without charge.’ She said coolly when the other had left the room, her tone indicating that she would like to charge them both with wasting police time.
‘Can I see him?’
‘I’ll take you through to reception and you can wait for him there.’
Amy gave her a tearstained smile, ‘Thanks’, and got a grudging nod in return.
When Charlie finally came through the security door, he looked like he had aged ten years in the last twenty-four hours. Amy was shocked, he had always looked pretty good for his age, so to see him like this, unshaven, exhausted, defeated, was like a smack in the face.
‘Dad?’
He didn’t speak to her, just closed his eyes for a moment and took in a deep, deep breath.
Outside he walked ahead of her. He had never done that, never ignored her before. She really didn’t like it.
‘Dad where are you going?’
He didn’t stop walking; just spoke to her over his shoulder. ‘To get the van.’ He stuck his hand out and flagged down a passing taxi. He didn’t even hold the door for her, so she just had to scramble in after him. Inside she looked at him tentatively, scared of him for the first time; she had never known him like this. He lay his head on the back of his seat, closed his eyes and seemed to let out that long breath he’d taken a few minutes before.
‘Dad?’ She said, the tears threatening her composure yet again.
He didn’t open his eyes. ‘Look, Amy, I know you’re upset and confused, but I can’t talk to you now. I’m sorry. I haven’t slept in twenty four hours, I’ve had a pretty shit day, and to be honest with you I just need you to shut up and give me a break for a bit, OK?’
He had never spoken to her like that, not once, she had always been his little princess and it came as a jolt to find that he wasn’t putting her first for once. She bit her lip and tried not to start bawling again.
He didn’t speak to her for the rest of the journey, just kept his eyes shut the whole time.
Once back outside Rachel’s flat she was surprised to see him feeding the parking meter, instead of getting into the van. It already had a ticket on it, but he ripped it off the windscreen and put it in his pocket. Then he stalked round the corner and walked into the first hotel he came to and booked a room. She wouldn’t have said it was seedy, at a hundred and fifty pounds a night, it couldn’t have been that bad, but from the snide looks the young male receptionist kept giving them, she figured it wasn’t exactly the Savoy. Under normal circumstances she would have countered his sly looks with a haughty ‘I’m his daughter, actually!’ but today, she just wanted to disappear into the nearest big hole. Besides, she could see his point, an older bloke, looking a bit rough round the edges, booking one room with a young woman in tow. It would have looked bad to most people.
The receptionist returned Charlie’s credit card and glanced self-importantly over the counter, ‘Any bags sir?’ he asked with barely disguised disdain.
Charlie didn’t bother to reply, just snatched the key card out of his hand and stalked towards the lift, Amy following, shamefaced, in his wake.
Inside the room, Charlie took off his jacket and threw it onto the chair. Then he took off his boots and flung them unceremoniously onto the floor. ‘I need to sleep. I can’t think straight. Wake me up in four hours, and if you can’t wake me, go and shove some more money into that damned meter will you?’ With that, he lay on the bed and turned his back to her, and was snoring within seconds.
Amy sat on the chair for a few minutes, listening to the rise and fall of his apnoeic breathing. She had never felt this bad in her life. She thought about phoning her Nan, but knew she would only end up dealing with Delia’s misery over the whole thing, she wasn’t up to it. There were her mates of course, but they would have too many questions, the same ones she had, so what would be the point. The only person she really needed right now was the man on the bed doing the fantastic impression of a foghorn. But even if he hadn’t been asleep, he didn’t want to talk to her. In a way she couldn’t blame him, all her shrieking when the police had turned up hadn’t exactly helped the situation. They were half convinced he had tried to attack her, and by the looks of him now, they hadn’t given him an easy time of it. Not that they had beaten him up or anything, but they’d dragged him into the back of the van as if he was a sack of potatoes. They had handcuffed him too. She felt really bad, she shouldn’t have shown off like that, but the whole scene in the flat had really freaked her out, what with the blood everywhere.
It had taken some talking to convince them that he hadn’t hurt her, and even to persuade them that she was his daughter. Fortunately, she remembered that she had her birth certificate in her bag, along with the letter’s and the marriage certificate. Only when she’d shown them that, had they believed she hadn’t been the victim of something terrible. They had grilled her about what she was doing in the flat, and why he’d come back. She couldn’t answer for him but told them she guessed he’d come to find her, but that only made sense in the context of her having run off to find her mother. One of them had said that if the whole tale had been a plot on East Enders, they would never have screened it. They were probably right.
The fact was there was no way she could sit there for the next four hours doing nothing, her head would explode! She was knackered herself, but any chance of sleep was impossible, notwithstanding the questions that were whirling around in her head, the snoring alone would have stopped Rip Van Winkle from nodding off. There was only one thing she could do, finish what she had started, and go to find her mother.
Just in case he should wake up, she left him a note. ‘Gone to find Rachel, I’ll be back, don’t worry. X.’ She set the bedside alarm to go off in three and a half hours, just to be on the safe side. She hoped she would be back by then, but she had to find Rachel first.
After the fit they had given her some pretty heavy sedatives, she had slept for hours. When she woke up it was almost dark, and she had been moved to a side room. Everything was even more painful than it had been before, as she found to her cost when she tried to sit up. The last thing she could recall was the frizzy haired policewoman telling her that Charlie had attacked her. Anything could have happened in the hours she had been sleeping. The call bell for the nurse was on her right side. She tried to reach across with her good hand, but the pressure on her leg as her weight shifted caused her so much pain that she nearly passed out with the effort. There was no choice, she would just have to sit it out and wait for someone to come in.
As she laid there, the twilight sending creeping shadows across the walls, she wished that they hadn’t found her at all, that she could have just faded away on the kitchen floor. Then they might have tried to say that Charlie had killed her. Oh God! Would it never end? No matter what she did, trouble just kept coming. Even in death, her mother was having the last laugh! She should never have gone back, should have ripped up Frances’s letters without ever having read them, then none of this would be happening. Everything would have just gone on as it
had before. Maybe she had grown complacent over the years, even curious. It had been so long since she had seen Frances, there had been a strange compulsion in her to go back and study her. Maybe she had been looking for some kind of redemption, though she should have known she would never get it from Frances. That day, when she had arrived at the house, when Frances had been purging the place, there had been no acknowledgement of the albatross around Rachel’s neck. Frances had just greeted her as the feckless younger sister who needed to share the load. Then other things had taken over, had muddied the waters, and had led them to this. A point where in order for anything to change, the truth had to be told.
The door swung open, ‘Look at this, let’s put the light on shall we, we don’t want you lying here all on your own in the dark do we?’ The nurse said, flicking the light switch and forcing Rachel to screw up her eyes against the sudden intrusion. ‘Just come do your checks.’ She added, wrapping a tight cuff around Rachel’s arm and sticking an electronic thermometer into her ear. The cuff on her arm began to inflate, to the point where it was causing her more discomfort than the injuries. ‘That all seems fine.’
‘What happened to the Police, are they still here?’
‘Oh no dear, they’re long gone. Hasn’t anyone been in to tell you?’
Rachel shook her head.
‘Oh, right. Well, never mind. No they went after they’d spoken to Dr Pritchard.’
Her neurologist, ‘what did they say to him, what did he tell them?’
‘Well from what I can gather he seems to think you might have done this to yourself, he spoke to the surgeon who patched up you leg and he seems to agree that it didn’t look like the kind of thing someone else might have done to you. It looked to him like you’d managed to lacerate yourself during one of your seizures.’
Rachel gave a huge sigh of relief, ‘Did the police believe them?’
‘I don’t know dear, must have done I suppose, they haven’t been back anyway.’
‘So what happens now?’
