There were no curtains on the window of the kitchen so she put the kettle on the floor. He must not see her. She must not sleep.
She must be awake when the door was broken down, when Graham forced open the door open and tried to rape her again.
It was light again, she didn’t know how many times it had been dark and light.
She crawled to her bedroom. The floor was covered with her father’s notebooks and photographs. She remembered searching through the desk for her coin.
The coin. She mustn’t lose the coin.
She looked frantically for the coin until she remembered where she had found it the day before, or was it a few days before. She didn’t know how long ago. She gripped the coin in her hand as she looked again at the photographs of her father’s family. She looked at the pages and pages of notes he had written when he had been spying on Max and Charles and Monika.
Just like Graham was spying on her now.
Graham would have a book, all her movements would be written down in a diary. She knew he was looking at her as she sat on the floor in her room. There was no way she could escape him.
He had said he’d never let her enjoy his money. Whatever she did in her life he would always be there.
She crawled to the bathroom.
He would never leave her alone.
She reached up to the shelf and her hand found the packet of razor blades.
He would never leave her in peace.
She took one out.
He had won.
She looked at the razor blade in her hand. It would be so easy and it would be the end of it.
She had no idea what time it was when she heard the crashing of the door being broken down and voices.
She looked around her. She had fallen asleep.
She was in the bathroom.
Her clothes were soaking.
She looked, uncomprehending, at the razor blade held in her hand.
She had only been asleep a few seconds.
There were voices, so it wasn’t Graham on his own, he was coming with others just as he had said he would.
Gang bang he had called it.
That’s what her father had done to his sister with his friends. Now Graham had brought his friends and they were all going to take their turn.
She didn’t care who saw her shadow through the curtain she stiffly stood up, moving as quickly as she could to the kitchen. She pulled at a drawer and looked at the knives inside. Thinking very carefully she looked at all the knives before choosing the longest. Backing into the corner she held it out in front of her as she heard the voices coming closer and closer.
“No sign of her here.”
“Try the bathroom”
“Not here Sir.”
Why were they being polite to each other, they’ve broken into her flat to rape her and they’re calling each other ‘Sir’. She was confused, she stood in the kitchen waiting for them, her hand waving the knife in front of her, she reached down to pick up the kettle still hot with boiled water. It was held to the wall by the cable and she yanked it hard until the plug came out of the socket and she could stand, knife in one hand and kettle in the other.
This time she would protect herself. This time she would fight. This time he would pay.
“No sign of her here, are you sure she’s here?”
The voices were getting nearer. She tried to work out how many there were, three? four?
“What about the kitchen?”
And suddenly the door was filled with people, she shut her eyes and flung the kettle at them screaming for them to go away.
“Holly for Christ’s sake calm down.”
She flashed the knife blindly in circles around her. They had to keep away. She was screaming at them, “Leave me alone. Leave me alone. Don’t touch me.”
“Holly. Calm down. It’s me, Jeff.”
They didn’t seem to be coming near her. She hadn’t felt them touch her. But she wasn’t taking any chances.
“Go away! Leave me alone.”
“Holly. Put that knife down!”
She took a while to work out whose voice it was, she tried to listen as it continued calmly, but she could hardly hear it through the screams.
“Holly, open your eyes, put that knife down. It’s me, Jeff. Holly for Christ’s sake stop screaming. Constable, leave me with her. She’ll open her eyes soon and she won’t need to see a stranger. Holly listen to me. Whatever it is that has terrified you it’s gone. It’s me, Jeff.” He spoke gently, clearly and rhythmically. “Quieten down. Open your eyes. You’re quite safe now.”
Slowly she opened her eyes but it was some moments before she dropped the knife weakly in front of her.
He opened his arms to her and held her close to him, rubbing her back as he had done with Linda when she had been a little girl and had been upset. “There there. You’re safe now. There there.” He half turned and motioned to the policemen that they could leave them. Holly was no longer a threat to anyone as Jeff held her rigid and motionless.
It was several minutes before he edged her gently out of the kitchen into the living room.
“Now Holly, you must sit down. You needn’t tell us what has happened. If you want to you can tell us when you are ready but just sit down. Look around you. You’re home and you’re safe. Charles is outside with Linda. Would you like to see Linda?”
When he got no reply he carried on talking calmly and reassuringly. He managed to get her to sit down though she didn’t relax, she sat with her back rigidly straight, not moving, but her eyes darting around warily, looking for any movement.
“Pat’s getting some tea, the kettle seems to be OK, lucky the water wasn’t too hot and you’re such a bad shot.” He tried to make a joke of it but Holly didn’t seem to have heard him.
“We were all so worried about you. Charles came round last night saying you’d been on your own for days and hadn’t answered the doorbell or the phone. He was so worried. He thought you may have harmed yourself somehow, fallen in the shower or something.” He added quickly in case she misunderstood but he needn’t have worried, she couldn’t hear anything but the ringing in her ears.
“He is so very worried about you. He loves you very much and he doesn’t understand why you’re so desperate. Being pregnant isn’t the end of the world you know. If you don’t want it you don’t have to have it. If you do you can. We’ll all support you whatever you decide to do. And it’s your decision Holly darling. You must know that. Talk to me Holly. Say something.”
Holly started to rock backwards and forwards, her arms wrapped around herself.
Holly looked up but didn’t react when Pat joined them, placing a tray with three mugs of tea on the table.
“I wish she would cry Jeff. Something terrible has obviously happened to her and she’s bottling it all up. Go and tell the boys and Linda to go home. I’ll stay with her. She’ll tell us in her own good time.”
“Come on Holly, drink this.” And she gave her the tea laced with crumbled sedative.
It didn’t matter whether it was the drugged tea or Pat’s calm presence that brought Holly back from the brink but ten minutes later she was sitting more normally, sipping the last dregs from the mug. She still hadn’t said a word.
“You don’t have to tell us what the problem is, but is there anything we can do to help?”
Holly finally showed she had heard and shook her head.
“Was it anything Charles has done?”
Holly shook her head vigorously looking round wildly, struck with panic that he might be blamed for anything.
“We didn’t think it could be.” Pat’s calm voice overcame Holly’s panic. “Well who has upset you? I refuse to believe that just finding out you’re having a baby is sending you into the dismals like this.” It was always Pat’s way to understate problems.
Holly didn’t respond.
“Holly, dear, if you don’t tell me I can’t help you.”
But Holly really couldn’t
tell her and just shook her head.
Then she fainted.
Chapter Thirty-Two
She woke up in an unfamiliar bed. I watched her as she became more aware of her surroundings, seeing the pink check curtains and hearing the crying of babies.
I had spent the last hour trying to understand how they could possibly think it right to put women who had had miscarriages so close to the maternity ward.
“Hi there. Welcome back.” I didn’t know what else to say.
“What happened?”
“Have a glass of water first, then we’ll talk.” As I poured the water into the plastic cup I pressed the button to alert the nurses.
“Why aren’t you in the office?”
“Because.” I couldn’t believe she thought anything could be more important than her.
“What’s happening?”
Holly had made to get out of bed but clutched her stomach as she was hit by a terrible cramp. She looked enquiringly up at me.
I couldn’t say anything, I didn’t need to tell her. She knew.
A man in a white coat, who seemed far too young to be a doctor, pulled the curtain aside picking up the chart from the bottomn of Holly’s bed.
“Well, Mrs Tyler isn’t it? Awake now are we? Good. Here. Take this.” He handed her a pill and waited while she swallowed it. At no time did he wait for an answer from Holly or from me.
“Your wife’s had a miscarriage, Mr Tyler, but you mustn’t worry, it’s all cleared out now. There shouldn’t be any problems. You’re both young and fit. You’ll have another in no time.” He spoke as if Holly were not there. I was about to ask how long she would be in hospital; could he get something for her pain; would he look at us when he talked to us, but he just wrote something on the chart, clipped it at the bottom of the bed and left without another word.
I sat holding her hand as we both listened to the sound of babies crying.
“Are the others here?” she asked after a while.
“Of course, they’re all waiting to hear you’re OK.”
“Go and tell them they can go. I’m OK. I’m awake.” She turned away from me but I didn’t leave until I heard regular breathing and realised she was asleep.
As I walked past the desk at the end of the ward the doctor was laughing with one of the nurses. As he saw me pass he said “She’ll be out for a few hours, come back in the morning. There’s a decent pub over the road if you need a few pints.”
I ignored him as I walked towards the waiting room.
When I came back into the ward the next morning Holly was sitting up in bed. I noticed she had brushed her hair. She seemed a lot brighter.
“Hi.”
“Hi.” She said, almost shyly.
I handed her a cup of brown liquid and we sat looking at it, unable to look at each other. It was a few minutes before I eventually spoke.
“What was all that about? Please Holly, if you never tell me anything ever again please tell me what that was all about.”
She shook her head.
So I sat with her, holding her hand when she eventually let me take it.
“Was it me?”
She shook her head again. “No.” she spoke very quietly.
“The baby?” I couldn’t ignore what had happened. Anyway I was grieving too. She must have realised how much the baby meant to me. Even though it had been mine for only three days.
“What was it then?”
When she didn’t reply I couldn’t push her. I reached out for her hand and sat, holding it between both of mine as she failed to find any words.
“Was it Graham?”
I knew from the tightening of her hand that I had guessed right.
“Graham’s been to see you?”
She nodded.
“When? Tell me. Talk to me. Please.”
She frowned slightly, as if trying to remember something precisely.
“Was it recently? Last week?” I tried not to push her.
Eventually she spoke “After the party.”
“Which party?”
It wasn’t as if we had had so many.
“Birthday.”
“The firm’s birthday? That was ages ago!”
“Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you say anything?”
When she didn’t answer I dropped her hand and stood up. “What happened Holly? Look at me.”
She flinched so I sat down again. I should have realised she was still so vulnerable but I had spent five of the most difficult days of my life, living with such a variety of emotions and I needed some answers.
“Please Holly. I know you’re devastated. You’ve just lost a baby but please remember I’ve just lost my baby too. We’ve lost our baby, I can’t lose you as well.” Perhaps I was being too harsh. Perhaps I was just as frightened as she was. “Please, Holly, Please. Tell me what happened.”
She spoke the words in such a flat voice I wasn’t sure I had heard her correctly. In a voice devoid of any emotion she told me how he had spent that night, how he had raped her over and over and over again and done things to her she couldn’t even talk about. How he had said it wasn’t rape as she was still his wife.
I asked her the only question I could “Why didn’t you tell me? We said no secrets.”
“How could I? What could you have done?”
I felt so helpless at the defeat in her voice that I could only shake my head.
“I couldn’t tell you.” It may have been five minutes or twenty when she eventually spoke. “We were so happy.”
I knew by ‘we’ she meant us. I knew she had never been happy with Graham but she had spoken in the past tense.
“We will be happy again.” I had to tell her, she had to know, I wouldn’t leave her. “I love you.” Sometimes it is most important to say the simple things.
“I know.” And we were quiet again.
I was thinking about what Holly had said. For five days I had been worrying about why she had been so distraught at being pregnant and now I realised the reason.
“You didn’t know who the father was did you? It wasn’t just me or Carl was it, it was me, Carl or Graham? You could have handled Carl until I told you it couldn’t be him and so it was me or Graham.”
As I watched her tears I knew I had, at last, worked something out correctly.
“I wouldn’t have minded, you know. I would have brought up the child, even if it was his. But you couldn’t could you? You would have worried every day whether the baby was his but you couldn’t get rid of it because it could have been mine. Oh Holly! Why didn’t you tell me? We could have worked it out together. We could have done.”
She spoke at last. “How could I have killed it if it was ours? I couldn’t. But if it had been his how could I have lived with it? I couldn’t. And then…”
“And then what?” he prompted after she didn’t finish.
“He phoned.”
“When? When did he phone?”
“He said he was going to… going to have one last … one last… He said I’d cost him millions. He said I was going to have to pay for four years of his life. I couldn’t let him. I couldn’t.”
“You didn’t answer the door because you thought I was him.”
She nodded.
“And you were alone all that time, thinking he was outside. Oh Holly I’m so sorry. And you’d taken the phone off the hook so he couldn’t call. And I thought it was because you didn’t want to talk to me.”
She let me take her hands again and she held on to them for all she was worth.
“Oh Holly, I love you so much.”
But I couldn’t ask her to marry me.
Not while that man was free to move about. As long as he was around Holly would not, could not, be either safe or happy.
So that evening I talked to Max.
“It didn’t work, buying off Graham.” And I recounted what Holly had told me. He seemed very distressed.
“He won’t go away, Max. I can’t protect her from him
.”
“No you can’t. You are right. I underestimated him. I believed he was only motivated by greed but there was more to it wasn’t there. Give a man power over another and he will never want to give it up. In many ways Graham was the son Mattieu never had, they were alike in so many ways. But I can protect her now. I will now do the right thing.”
“What is that?”
“It depends, my dear boy, on what you understand by ‘right’.” He picked up the old fashioned phone and dialled a number he obviously knew well.
As I went to get up and leave him to his phone call in private, as I had for so many years he stopped me “No, don’t go away. You will want to hear this.” He turned his attention back to the call as the number answered
“Max Fischer.” He said nothing more, then he waited, not catching my eye but frowning as he looked towards the bookshelf to my right. Whoever he had phoned they knew where to direct the call. I heard the old authority in his voice, I realised it had been missing for some time. It was only a few moments before he continued “We need something a little more permanent for GT.”
Obviously there had been conversations between these two about Graham in the past.
Max’s next contribution to the conversation surprised me.
“A long prison sentence?”
“We can’t put Holly through a court case.” I couldn’t keep silent. Max said something I didn’t catch into the phone and spoke to me as if to a child.
“She doesn’t have to.”
“Well what else has he done?”
Max was being patient with me. “He doesn’t have to have done anything.”
“But how then?
“I believe you can leave that up to me.”
Max was speaking to me as if I knew nothing about anything; perhaps I didn’t.
“David. What do you suggest?” There was silence for a short time as Max listened. “Yes, probably you are right. I agree.” As he put the phone down I realised there had been no hello, no goodbye. The conversation was one between two men who were used to making arrangements such as this. It was all so businesslike.
“That is dealt with. Graham will no longer be a problem to anyone.”
I knew Max had influence and power but I hadn’t realised he was so ruthless. I couldn’t think what to say so I simply raised an eyebrow in admiration.
Walking Alone Page 34
