‘Works every time. She keeps telling me to get a better phone.’
‘You’re a lawyer?’ Kit asked suspiciously, eyeing the woman with bronze curls pulled so far back that her temples puckered with the strain.
Frances nodded confirmation. There was no pride in the movement. I should think not, thought Kit. The words ‘scum of the earth’ ran through her mind.
The hot liquid scalded Kit’s mouth in her efforts to get out of the coffee shop. What the hell was she doing sitting here chewing the cud with a lawyer of all things? A tribe of people Kit would trust less than the Manson family. All lawyers were scum, feeding off other people’s misery. As far as she was concerned they were no better than drug-pushers, and a lot less honest. Nope, you couldn’t trust a lawyer as far as you could throw one.
The cup smashed back into the saucer as she grabbed her jacket and legged it.
The sight of the hostel loomed up ahead. She should have hated it but she didn’t, purely because no strip search awaited her as she walked through the door. The anonymity of the busy road leading into the city centre thrilled her because no one knew her. Buses heaved and lorries trundled past, shaking the ground. She slowly walked the last fifty yards enjoying the sensation of cars speeding past her instead of drawing up alongside and winding down their windows.
The shrubbery and tall spindly trees that stood behind the knee-high wall welcomed her. Set amongst the numerous bed and breakfast establishments that lined either side of Hagley Road, it didn’t look out of place.
A removal van thundered past. Kit looked at the retreating vehicle and found it strange that no matter how many possessions you accumulated during your life, it would always fit in one huge van. A whole life in a van. It occurred to her that the driver was probably on his way home to a wife who’d warmed a tin of tomato soup for him, like on the Heinz adverts. He’d walk in, hug his wife and peer around the bedroom door, checking that their two-point-four children were sleeping soundly. Someone, somewhere, was going to be pleased to see him once he’d parked his vehicle up for the night. Did those families really exist? Kit wondered. Or were they the fantasy of idealistic directors where immaculate, size 10 women washed, ironed, raised kids, worked and still had time to produce something home-made for tea. Who would direct a film of her childhood – Wes Craven perhaps?
She mounted two chipped stone steps that led to the front door and delved into her back pocket for the keys. The first door unlocked with the black-tabbed key. It closed behind her and locked automatically. She turned in the small foyer, causing the straw mat beneath her feet to swivel on the polished tiled floor. The second door also locked automatically with a reassuring click.
‘Everything okay?’ shouted Mark from the communal lounge that adjoined the hall.
She threw herself into a green easy chair opposite. ‘Those people are so depressed.’
Mark raised his eyebrows.
‘I haven’t been drinking. Look…’ She held out her hands. The trembling was obvious. ‘See, I’d be steady as a rock if I had.’
‘Any incidents on the way back?’ he asked, folding his newspaper and removing his glasses.
She didn’t like walking alone at night. He’d offered to meet her but she’d refused. These were her battles to fight.
‘Yeah, three champion wrestlers threatened to rape and pillage me but I showed them a photo of you and they ran off screaming.’
Kit studied the telltale signs of the thirty-one years that lived around his eyes, adding a depth to his boyish face. He wasn’t classically handsome but his features appeared to be set in deliberate concentration. His expression rarely relaxed but the azure eyes speared and rooted you to the spot. She had nearly laughed out loud when she’d first seen him. Her first thought had been, how in hell is this boy going to protect me? I have pimples older than him! That was before she’d sat and talked with him. He did protect her and made her feel safe. Even from that first night when they’d sat together in the kitchen, whispering, as he prepared a veritable feast of beans on toast.
‘Well, do I have to forcibly extract an answer out of you – how was it?’
‘It was nearly as exciting as Sunday school, but not quite,’ she replied, looking away.
‘Cut the act,’ he ordered.
‘It’s bloody hard, okay! Is that what you want to hear? Sodding torture every single day that I can’t have a goddamn drink.’ Her eyes blazed at his probing. How much of her pain did he want? ‘I go to sleep thinking about it. I wake up thinking about it. I dream of having a goddamn drink. Whisky, brandy, cough mixture, I don’t give a shit what it is. Okay?’
‘Incidentally, I’m opening up a swear box tomorrow. Why not give me all your money now?’
‘Piss off!’
Mark laughed at the hostile tone.
‘Are you ever off bloody duty?’
‘Nope. What are the others like?’
Kit held her head in despair. ‘Questions, questions, questions… For God’s sake, can we talk about something other than me?’
‘How about the weather?’
‘How about you?’
Mark sat back in the chair, placing his feet on the teak coffee table. ‘Ask away.’
‘Why do you do this job?’
‘Why not?’ he shrugged.
‘Do you ever get pissed off?’
‘Should I?’
‘Are you going to answer every question with a question?’
‘Why, does it bother you?’
‘Oh, get stuffed!’ Kit laughed as the heat of the room permeated her body.
Mark puzzled her. As the ‘house mother’ she knew it was his job to remain perfectly balanced but the ease with which he related to her and the other four occupants surprised her. One thing she could never get from him was a reaction. Christ, she’d tried hard enough. Almost like a child tests its parents to see how far it can go. His permanent state of well-being convinced her he’d either had a full frontal lobotomy or he was on Valium.
‘Mark, lift up your hair,’ she asked.
‘What?’
‘Humour me.’
He lifted the untidy blond fringe, shaking his head.
‘Okay, it’s the Valium,’ she stated raising herself from the seat. She bade him good night and climbed the stairs to the room that was similar in size and shape to the one in London. But this room was not threatening. Fear and humiliation didn’t breathe inside the brickwork. This room had bright patterned wallpaper and curtains that didn’t quite meet in the middle.
The bed was half of a bunk-bed set and suited Kit because it was small and nestled into the corner beneath the window. She always slept using only half of the undersize bed by lying on her right side, pushing her back and buttocks up against the coolness of the wall. Then she felt safe.
She sat at the dressing table and removed the harsh make-up that covered smooth white skin, and prepared to face the most torturous time of the day when the memories were harder to escape. During those dark hours when the whole world slept her mind would jump between Liverpool and London. Eventually she would fall asleep and dream. The two worlds would meet and become transposed. Banda’s hate-formed features would vanish beneath the fleshy, slack chin of Bill. Then she would wake, crying and trembling and alone but for the occasional vehicle that rushed past, shining its headlights into her room. She would sit, afterwards, on the edge of her bed trying to force it all away but sometimes she tried to examine and understand the events that had conspired to bring her to her knees.
It was easier to keep the memories of Bill hidden. She’d had years of practice and the assistance of a mind-numbing, memory-reducing friend. Alcohol. She knew he was there, in her head, but for now he remained locked in a cell in the dungeons of her mind until it was safe to let him out, but Banda was another story. He would not rest until she was dead. She had committed the worst possible sin: she had escaped.
She quickly undressed and burrowed under the covers as though the fabric of the quilt w
ould keep out the past. She wasn’t there any more. Her hand reached under the pillow and felt the smooth hardness of her oldest possession, the flick-knife, which had accompanied her while she’d hitchhiked from Liverpool to London.
She instinctively reached for the reassuring coolness of the bottle. It wasn’t there. It was in London with her money and eight years of her life. She craved the comfort it had given her nightly as she’d held it possessively close while the others had slept.
She remembered the feeling of well-being behind which she’d hidden. She could recall the spinning head and random thoughts that had been her friends. But then, unlike now, she had fallen into the spiralling depths of an alcohol-induced dreamless sleep. Now she had to wait for fatigue to come and claim her, guiding her into a hazy world where her legs were made of feathers and would not move fast enough when the ghosts chased her. She always woke just in time, unsure which one would have caught her first.
She lay with her eyes open wide, listening for unfamiliar sounds as the determination fought with despair. She seesawed between the aggressive conviction that she would have a better life where she wasn’t controlled by fear or addiction and the tormenting, unrelenting terror that she would never be whole, that her past was so deeply ingrained into her skin, third-degree burns wouldn’t cleanse her.
She quashed a rising swell of pride that was trying to take hold. She’d attended her first meeting and she wanted to be pleased. She wanted to feel good about her achievement but she couldn’t. Pride always came before a fall.
So what, she told herself, you’re still nothing more than an alcoholic with an attitude problem. That’s what people see, and that’s what you are. She was aware of her own aggression, knew it, protected it and honed it. Sometimes it tired her. Occasionally she would wish that she could drop her guard, just a little, to see who she was, but she couldn’t. It was a wall built of bricks and mortar. The foundations were deep, supporting the first course that had been laid before she was ten years old…
2
Kit
Katrina Mason sensed she was an unwelcome surprise to her devoutly Catholic mother, April, who had known from an early age what her life would be. She had expected nothing more than the two-bedroom terraced house that quickly filled with screaming babies. And she didn’t complain when she got it. She was too tired to hug and kiss the dark-haired baby who was nothing like her three sisters either in looks or temperament, already anticipating the time when they would move on to their own lives, that would be just like hers.
Aware of her mother’s lack of interest, her sisters’ impatience and her father’s fear, Kit continued to throw herself against the rocks that surrounded their emotions until a granite shell formed around her small body, signalling the acceptance of her exclusion.
As she grew older she spent less time inside the crowded house. Instead she chose to play with the other kids in the street, watched by some of the mothers who stood on the front steps of garden-less houses twittering like birds atop television aerials. The ‘over the bridge’ area of Vauxhall, separated by the Leeds and Liverpool canal, prided itself on its tight-knit community spirit but one by one apron-clad mothers whisked their dirty children inside as dusk fell. Kit hoped daily, as the long street darkened against night-time, that her mother would call her in. The other kids begged and pleaded with their mums, dads, older brothers for another five minutes while glaring enviously at Kit, whose curfew exceeded their own. One night, she sat on the stone step, entranced by the stars that winked at her from above. She didn’t know what time it was that her father found her there as he returned from The Swan. She only knew that her mother hadn’t called her in. Kit didn’t really try to talk to her father. There was always something that needed his attention more urgently than her, like the daily paper or the racing results or a game of dominoes at the pub. She tried to understand why, on the rare occasions he looked at her, his eyes were almost wary.
On her ninth birthday, the family sat around the crowded kitchen table awaiting his return from the iron foundry, as they did every night. He would come in, place his dusty sandwich box on top of the fridge ready for April to prepare his sandwiches for the following day. Then he would sit down and inspect his dirt-filled fingernails as April placed a plate of food before him. Only when his blackened face had accepted the first mouthful were they allowed to start. No words passed between husband and wife. Kit thought it was like watching a mime show.
That night six o’clock came and went. Kit and her sisters continued to sit and stare at the empty place, then looked to each other for guidance. Kit knew it was Wednesday because the fried eggs were growing cold. She wanted him to hurry up home. She was eager to tell him about last night, about her dream where he’d come to her and whispered ‘Get away from here’ into her ear. She knew it must have been a dream because he never spoke directly to her in real life, but she wanted to ask if he’d dreamt it too.
Eventually they were told by their mother in a quiet voice to go to bed. Kit never saw her father again. She didn’t really miss him. It was like being told you couldn’t have chips for your tea – it was a shame, but no great loss.
Three weeks later, Kit watched her mother being led away to ‘The Briars’ after walking around the high street, shopping, in her dressing gown. Carol, at sixteen the eldest sister, looked after them, with regular visits from Mrs Jenkins from over the road. She cooked, cleaned, kept them clothed with the family allowance money and took them on two bus rides to see their mother.
The bus was hot and stuffy and Kit knew everyone was looking at them. She scrunched up her eyes and pursed her lips into what she thought was an intimidating stare back.
Carol called her father names and talked about poverty and starvation. Kit’s fingers closed around her last humbug sweet, the one she’d been saving for the bus journey. She uncurled her fingers and left it, deep in her jacket pocket. They might need it later, she thought.
Kit entered The Briars with a handful of pictures produced at school, sure they would make her mum happy. The rolled-up paintings were carried with the protection reserved for a chocolate bar that was all her very own.
She didn’t really understand what The Briars was – she only knew that she’d heard people in their street laugh about it. ‘Stop acting like you’ve come from The Briars,’ she’d heard Mrs O’Reilly say many times to her two noisy sons. The Briars had always been a place of ridicule and amusement in their street, and now her mum lived there.
The heavy, double doors were closed behind them. The turning of the locks made Kit want to run back outside into the sunshine. Were they locked in now? Did they have to stay? She’d ask Mum when they found her.
As they wandered further into the building Kit instinctively huddled behind her sisters, who began pointing and giggling at an old woman dancing alone in front of an unwatched television. Kit found that strange. If the television wasn’t watched in their house it had to be turned off. Why didn’t Mum tell them that?
Two men in pyjamas chased each other around a battered sofa with the middle cushion missing. There was laughter but it didn’t sound like funny laughing and one of the men had something strange dangling out of a rip in his pyjamas. Frightened, Kit huddled closer as Carol spotted their mother. She too was wearing nightclothes and Kit wondered if it was nearly bedtime here. But it couldn’t be, she’d only just had watery porridge.
She tried not to notice the smell that reminded her of Nanny Smith’s outside toilet and wished that Carol hadn’t worn a pair of Mum’s high-heeled shoes. They echoed like thunder along the grey-walled corridors that had coloured lines painted on the floor.
Kit felt safer once she saw her mum sitting beside the window staring out. There was no need to be frightened now. She stood right in front of her and offered her the pictures. The hands that sat limply in her lap didn’t move. Kit stared into her mum’s eyes, which looked like her doll’s at home.
She opened her mother’s pliable fingers easily and pu
t the pictures there. They slipped to the ground. Carol pushed her out of the way and stood on the discarded papers. Kit backed away and remained unnoticed.
The taunting at school started about her clothes. Having already been worn by three sisters plumper than her, they hung on her skinny body. The other kids made fun of the odd buttons and clumsy stitching borne of late-night repair work. Kit ached for a pair of trousers instead of the short skirts that she had to wear. She often she sat picking at the bobbles, caused by too many washes, in the hope that she could make the clothes look as new as Pamela Bate’s. Kit sat behind her in class and stared longingly at the pretty slides and clips in her hair, which changed daily. She promised herself that she would have pretty things like that when she was older.
The insults grew worse when they were aimed at her mother. ‘Yer mum’s gone loopy,’ they chanted at school. At first she was unsure what ‘loopy’ meant. Carol dismissed the trouble by telling her to ignore it, but once Kit realised they were calling her mum a crazy lady, she fought back.
The first fight she had, she got pounded. Her scalp stung where a handful of hair had been ripped from it. Her arms were scratched and covered with gravel holes where she’d been thrown to the ground. A graze covered half of her chin and a bruise circled her right eye. But she was determined not to cry. She walked home with trembling legs and a quivering lip. Carol would take care of her. Carol would wipe the blood that had dried between her nose and her mouth. Carol would tell her it wasn’t true about their mum… Carol slapped her for fighting. Then Kit let the tears fall, but not before running upstairs to her bunk bed in the room that she shared with the others.
That night, amidst their chatting and laughing about things that did not concern her, Kit took the top blanket from her bed and tucked it under her sister’s mattress above so that it fell down and enclosed her. She didn’t want to listen even if they did speak to her.
Kit tried to remember which way she had faced the previous night. It mattered greatly. Mum coming back could depend on whether or not she slept with her head on the pillow or facing the wall, she was sure.
The Forgotten Woman: A gripping, emotional rollercoaster read you’ll devour in one sitting Page 2
