by Annie Murray
She dragged herself groggily into a sitting position, trying to remember the things Marcia had told her as she showed her round.
‘It’s all right – I know you won’t take it all in now,’ Marcia had said kindly, over a mug of tea and some squash for Amy. ‘I expect we’ll go over it again. But there are certain things I have to say now.’
She had impressed upon Joanne that she could stay securely here while they made a plan for her future and tried to get her sorted out. There had been strict warnings about security, and about not disclosing the address of the refuge to anyone outside. Marcia outlined the question of the rent she would need to pay, and the benefits she could claim, until Joanne’s head was spinning.
‘But don’t worry about that tonight. I’m sure you’ll have had enough for today. And your social worker will be in to see you. There are a few things you do need today, though. Like food. Have you got any cash on you?’
‘Yes,’ Joanne said. ‘Some.’ She’d made sure of that.
‘Good, there are shops at the bottom of the road – you can walk down there. Now, a few house rules . . . And I’ll take you round and show you the ropes!’
She led Joanne into the communal sitting room, where a large TV blared to an invisible audience. Marcia turned it off. Then to a little playroom where there were child-sized tables and toys. Amy perked up and looked interested at this. At the back was the kitchen. Marcia talked more about sharing the kitchen and other rooms, about the time at which everyone had to be quiet at night, about use of the TV and the pay phone. Joanne immediately, automatically, thought about phoning Dave, then realized, with a stab of agony, that nothing was as it had been even twenty-four hours ago.
Just as they were about to come upstairs, Joanne caught her first glimpse of one of the other inmates. A small, slight figure appeared at the top of the stairs, her head covered by a black scarf. She came speeding down the staircase, head lowered, not making eye contact with anyone, a closed, terrified expression on her face. The girl looked as if she wished she was invisible. Joanne thought she seemed very young.
‘Hello, Mariam,’ Marcia said. But the girl unfastened the front door and was gone, without even turning.
‘She lives up at the top,’ Marcia said, looking sad and concerned. ‘She either can’t or won’t speak English. She’s Bangladeshi – we have to keep getting an interpreter in. If you can get her to say a word to you, all the better.’
Amy wandered over to the bed. ‘Bikkik?’ she said hopefully.
What was the time, Joanne wondered? It must be getting on for five o’clock.
‘Here you are, darlin’. Here’s a biscuit – then we’ll go out and buy some tea for Amy and Mommy.’
Everything felt alien. Home seemed so much closer to her still, so much more real than this place. In about an hour Dave would get home, would discover that they’d gone . . . She felt a flash of triumph, then an ache filled her. What had she done? Was this the end of it all – her marriage to the man she had known since she was so young? The enormity of it washed over her. And he had been so nice last week. Much more like the Dave she had known in the past. She thought with anguish of the bright, hopeful lad she had known at the beginning. Perhaps he had really changed again, back to his real self. Maybe it had just been a bad phase he was going through, and she had now run off and hurt him, not giving him a chance. She’d destroyed everything. He wasn’t all bad, that was for sure. How could she have done this to him?
Then the memory of seeing him shaking Amy came back to her, the shrieking pain in her scalp as he had dragged her, the taste of blood, his face full of rage and aggression . . . But it was because of Amy that she had left. She could just about cope with him when he hurt her, but not Amy. Because if he could go that far with her, what else might he do?
Forty-Two
Joanne did not sleep well.
She had put Amy down on the bottom bunk, but she had woken crying and Joanne took her into her bed. It was comforting, but sleeping in a single bed with a child meant that she kept waking, and stayed awake in the small hours with her thoughts churning, full of remorse and horror at what she had done.
Now she was away from home, she felt a fool. Dave had always been a good guy. Had it really been so bad? Hadn’t she overreacted and done something far too extreme, instead of staying and trying to sort it out? It’s not as if he had hit her very often, and there was obviously something wrong with him. Shouldn’t she be trying to support him and help him get better? Now it sounded as if the police would be turning up on his doorstep! That wasn’t what she had intended – she longed somehow to explain it all to him.
And what on earth had happened that evening when he had found her gone? Had he called the police himself? She knew the Coles would have been able to give him some idea of what was going on, even though they could say, hands on hearts, that they didn’t know where she was. He’d have phoned Mom and Dad, and they’d be worried. She almost got up at four in the morning to phone them, or him, to let them know she was okay, so that they wouldn’t worry. But she didn’t feel up to wandering about in this strange house at night. She also knew she didn’t have the right change for the phone. The night crawled past and gave her no rest. She lay feeling desolate and exhausted, cuddling up to Amy and longing just to go home.
I’ll go and see Marcia in the morning, she thought, and tell her it’s all a mistake. I need to go back and work it out with Dave. It’s as much my fault as his. He’s not a bad man – he’s just got himself in a state over nothing.
Before she had even left her room to go down to the kitchen, though, she heard a terrible racket break out, raised voices, over which a child’s wild screaming and shouting roared. Joanne opened the door and listened. The sound was so savage it turned her stomach. A moment later the door opposite hers opened and a round face peered out, with sandy-brown hair cropped at chin length, blue eyes and very pink cheeks.
The woman stared at Joanne.
‘You’ll be the new one then,’ she said. She sounded Irish. Opening the door more fully, she came over and nodded contemptuously towards the stairs.
‘That’ll be the boy from there.’ Another nod of the head towards the third door on their floor. ‘He’s a wild one – you can hear. My girls are terrified of him.’ Seeing Amy peeping out from behind Joanne’s legs, she went on, ‘You’ve just got the one? Well, you’ll want to be keeping her away from that lot, I can tell you. You’d never think it to look at them, but they’re like animals, those boys.’
She disappeared back into her room with a self-righteous air and closed the door. From downstairs the cries escalated, and Joanne could hear the struggle moving from the kitchen into the hall. Marcia’s voice was raised over the yelling and fighting.
‘Now, Jason – no, no . . . We’re just going to stop that. Stop, no, you’ve got to calm down . . . Calm, easy now . . .’
Joanne decided to stay in her room until things had quietened down. Eventually the noise died out, so she picked Amy up and crept downstairs. Entering the kitchen, she came face-to-face with another inmate of the house. For a moment she thought the woman was one of the children, she looked so slight and young, sitting by the table at the side of the kitchen opposite a little boy who was eating toast. She was very pretty, blue-eyed, with long, wavy blonde hair taken up in a thick bunch at the back. The boy, who looked about three, was also blond and obviously resembled his mother.
‘All right?’ The girl gave a brief smile, though she seemed preoccupied.
‘All right,’ Joanne replied, standing hesitantly by the door.
‘You the new arrival? You can come in – I won’t bite, not like my boys.’ She laughed at this with real mirth, though Joanne couldn’t think what was funny about it. ‘Get some breakfast. Have you got any food?’
‘Yes . . .’ Joanne went to her cupboard to fetch the sliced bread she’d bought from the corner shop last night. She and Amy had had beans on toast. As she was doing everything one-handed, she went t
o sit Amy at the table, beside the little boy.
‘Oh no, I wouldn’t sit her there.’ The young mother got up and moved round to sit next to him, freeing the chair opposite. Joanne noticed she was hobbling badly. ‘Only he’s a bit – you know, he might not be very nice to her.’
To Joanne’s horror, as she moved close to him, the face of the angelic-looking boy had taken on a hateful expression of aggression and he clenched his fists. Cautiously Joanne sat Amy opposite him, out of reach.
‘This is Michael,’ the young woman said. She seemed intelligent and chatty. ‘I’m Gina, by the way. And my other boy you’ll have heard earlier – Jason – he’s with Marcia at the moment. She’s quite good with him. The pair of them have had so many beltings they don’t know what else to do.’
‘Oh dear,’ Joanne said, shocked by the openness of this admission. ‘Your husband?’
Gina looked squarely back at her. ‘Yeah. And me. We’re both bad like that. But he drinks and he goes for me. His heart’s in the right place and he’s a good dad in many ways – but when he drinks he turns into a complete fucking nutter. This time he’s gone and broke my toes.’ She held out her feet, dressed in huge, fake sheepskin slippers, which obviously covered dressings. ‘Got his hammer out, he did. I just have to get out of there for a bit sometimes.’
God almighty, Joanne thought. What have I come into? She realized she was staring in frank amazement and didn’t know what to say next. Things that she found almost impossible to talk about, things she’d never even imagined, to this woman seemed quite natural. Gina handed Michael another finger of toast. She was scowling now.
‘They want to take my kids off me – I know they do. I keep telling them: they don’t understand. Thing is, me and him, we have our problems, right? But that’s just it – they never do anything to help. I say to Marcia, “Look, me and Benny, we need help. What’re you going to do about it?” But all they go on about is the kids this, the kids that. They say I’ve gone back on my promises, but the thing is – it’s not that easy. Once me and Benny get together, well, we’re lovers, right? We’re really into each other. But we’re a bit different from other people, the way we are together. They don’t understand, that’s the thing. It’s all one size fits all, with the Social. Their way’s the only way – it makes me sick . . . Eat up, babby. What’s your name then? You got problems with your old man?’
‘I’m Joanne.’ She fed slices of bread into the toaster and clicked it down. She didn’t know what to say. ‘Yes, things haven’t been too good.’
‘Does he drink then, does he?’
‘Not – well, a bit. But he doesn’t get drunk as such . . .’
‘What’s up with him then?’ Gina asked.
Joanne was struggling to find an answer to this – he’s sort of lost himself – when Marcia’s head popped round the door.
‘I’ve put him in the basement for a bit,’ she said to Gina. ‘He’s calming down. But he needs some cool-off time.’
‘All right then, ta, Marcia,’ Gina said. She seemed unconcerned, despite the murderous sounds that had been going on earlier.
But Marcia was not going to let her get away with this. She was wearing the black leggings again, but this time with a long, emerald-green blouse. She folded her arms. ‘We need to talk, Gina.’
‘All right then,’ Gina said nonchalantly, not meeting her eye.
‘Hello, Joanne,’ Marcia smiled. ‘You two have met then. Got everything for the moment?’
‘Yes, thanks,’ Joanne said.
‘And how’s little Amy this morning?’ She came over and made a fuss of her. ‘How did you both sleep?’
‘Not very well,’ Joanne admitted. She felt tearful again and swallowed it back. What the hell was she doing here, in this dismal house with these crazy people?
‘Oh, I don’t think anyone does the first night,’ Marcia told her. ‘You’ll settle in, don’t worry. Now you’ve met Gina and, well, you saw Mariam, didn’t you?’ She turned to Gina. ‘Any progress there, drawing her out?’
‘What – that Paki girl? Nah . . .’
‘Gina . . .’ Marcia said in a warning tone.
‘Sorry, Marcia – but she’s not going to talk to someone like me, is she?’
‘I don’t see why not; you’re friendly and outgoing . . .’
‘Nah.’ Gina denied any positive praise. ‘She’ll just think I’m a scumbag . . . She’s one of them religious ones, isn’t she?’
Marcia sighed, hand on her hip. ‘All I’m asking is that you try a bit. Is that too much to ask?’
‘I do try! I do!’ Gina protested with an exaggerated shrug. Joanne could see that, though she was in her twenties, she was still somehow a child.
‘Now who else is there . . . ?’ Marcia said.
‘I met someone upstairs: an Irish lady . . .’
‘Ah yes, Maeve – she’s got two little girls with her. In fact the youngest, Siobhan, is only a bit older than Amy. They might play together all right. The older one, Roisin, is young for her age too. They’re both very quiet, withdrawn . . .’
‘Not like my lot,’ Gina put in, almost proudly.
‘No,’ Marcia said in a dry tone. ‘Not at all like your two. Anyway, the other woman here is Doreen – up in the attic with Mariam. She’s quite a quiet lady, a bit older than all of you.’
‘Fucking punchbag that one,’ Gina said.
‘Gina!’
‘I mean, poor woman, that’s all . . .’ Gina put on a wheedling tone, which immediately made Joanne feel even more wary of her.
‘She’s here with her youngest son, Danny – he’s seven? Isn’t he?’
‘Yeah, not that you’d know it,’ Gina said.
‘I’m going to check on Jason,’ Marcia said firmly. Joanne was impressed by her air of authority. ‘When you’ve finished breakfast you’ll need to go down to him, Gina, right? Jackie’s coming in today, so she’ll come and do some stuff with them. And, Joanne, we’d better have a chat later, talk over a few things – when you’ve finished in here, okay?’
Joanne nodded and attempted a smile. Her face had trouble with that and, instead, tears rushed into her eyes. ‘Okay,’ she said.
‘How’re you feeling about things?’
They were sitting in Marcia’s office. Jackie, the other residential worker, had put her head round the door. She was a dark-haired, big-boned woman in her thirties.
‘Catch you later,’ she said. ‘Don’t want to interrupt.’
Marcia had put a few toys out for Amy and she was playing with a big articulated crocodile at Joanne’s feet. From her chair Joanne could just see cars passing on the road, behind all the netting. The world outside seemed very distant, as if she had already been removed from it for weeks. Tears ran down her cheeks.
‘I feel really bad. I don’t think I should be here. I mean, I’m sure everyone else is in a far worse situation. I shouldn’t have come – I should have stayed and worked at it with him. I’ve been so stupid. He’s not a bad man . . . I just think I ought to go back . . .’
Marcia leaned forward, her face full of concern.
‘But you did come here, didn’t you?’ Her voice was calm and gentle. She paused for a moment, then went on, ‘No one does that lightly. You took a very big step, in leaving – a very brave step. You must have had your reasons. Would you like to tell me a bit about it?’
Joanne hesitated, then it all came spilling out, about how Dave had changed, how it had all built up so that she was afraid of him. The phone calls; the way he had punched her and tried to control her.
‘It wasn’t all the time – I don’t want you to think that. Some of the time he was perfectly all right. Only lately it had got worse; he was always on at me – wouldn’t trust me. He kept on at me: you know, in bed as well. He thought I was having affairs with other men – even if I just talked to someone. And I wasn’t, I’m not like that. But I could manage . . .’
She patted her pockets, looking for something to blow her nose on. M
arcia reached over and offered her a box of tissues. She looked solemnly into Joanne’s eyes.
‘Are you saying he raped you?’
Joanne felt a shock go through her. ‘Raped me? No!’ She thought for a moment. ‘No. Not that. I mean, I never said no or anything – it wasn’t like that. I s’pose I just did what he wanted, but I wouldn’t call it rape.’
Marcia nodded, listening.
‘Then last week, he started on me – but then he took Amy upstairs. He was already in a temper and he’d hit me, thrown me across the hall . . .’
Marcia held up a hand. ‘Stop a minute. Can you hear what you just said?’
Joanne thought about it. She looked down into her lap. ‘Sounds bad, doesn’t it?’
‘It’s not normal behaviour.’
‘No. But then the thing was, he lost it with Amy. She was crying because she could hear us and she was frightened. He grabbed her out of her buggy and took her upstairs. I was scared to death of what he’d do . . .’ She began weeping again, remembering. ‘I ran up after her and he was in the bedroom, shaking her, hard. Her little head was shaking back and forward . . . I was afraid he’d break her neck.’
‘So what did you do, Joanne?’
‘I hit him. I had a . . . I had a . . .’
A wave of hysteria passed over her at the memory and she started laughing helplessly, the tears still flowing.
‘It’s not funny – I know. But there was this tin of corned beef in my shopping. I took it upstairs and I whacked him with it: on the head, twice. He was bleeding and he let go. Corned beef . . . !’ The uncontrollable laughter surged up in her, then dipped into more tears.
Marcia watched her, quietly. ‘Do you want to go back to this man?’
Slowly Joanne raised her head. ‘Yes. No. Oh God, he’s my husband, he’s Amy’s dad . . . I don’t know at the moment.’
‘In the end,’ Marcia said, ‘the decision’s always yours about whether you go or stay here. But why not give yourself a bit of time to think? I know it must feel really difficult, miles from home in a new place. But you’ve done it now. Look.’ She stood up for a second to click on the kettle that was resting on top of the filing cabinet, then perched on the chair again. ‘I’ll fill you in on what’ll happen, to begin with. Megan will be round later today and there’ll be a case conference – I’m guessing tomorrow . . .’
