by K. L. Slater
‘Thank you, David.’ She stands up and walks over to me, taking the letter and brushing my hand as she does so. ‘I really am grateful. With you around I don’t feel nearly so alone.’
I feel a rushing sensation in my chest, like someone just opened the floodgates to a great backlog of pent-up emotion.
I grasp her hand and squeeze but I don’t say anything. There seems to be no need for words. There’s a sort of knowing between us.
Holly squeezes my hand back, then begins to retract, but I hold onto her fingers. I don’t want to let go of this feeling.
‘David,’ she says softly. ‘We’d better go downstairs. Cora will be waiting.’
I come to my senses and release her hand.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘I didn’t mean to…’
‘It’s fine.’ She smiles. ‘Honestly, it is.’
I feel hot all over. I wipe both hands on the sides of my trousers.
Holly clears her throat. ‘What will you do? I mean, if you catch someone in the garden?’
I think for a moment and realise I don’t know what I’ll do.
‘I’ll ring the police,’ I say.
‘The police?’
A trickle of sweat runs down from my temple. I wipe it away quickly, but I think she sees it anyway. I’d better not ring the police.
‘I’ll chase him away,’ I say.
‘I thought you didn’t like going outside after dark?’
I stare at her.
‘David?’ I focus again and see that Holly is looking at me with concern. ‘I’m not sure you’re feeling quite yourself. You look… confused.’
Who’s been telling her things… embarrassing things?
‘Are you coming down soon?’
As soon as I hear Mrs Barrett’s voice call up, I know it’s her. She’s been blabbing about what happened to me in the past.
The anger backs up in my throat but I swallow it down. If I let it out, it might never stop.
I must start taking my tablets again tomorrow. The world is too dark a place without them.
Chapter Sixty-Six
Holly
Thinking back to Manchester, to waking up feeling so ill, Holly couldn’t begin to hazard a guess at how long she’d been in the bedroom.
She’d been too ill to question what had happened or to think logically about the situation.
‘You got drunk and acted like a slut,’ Geraldine had told her repeatedly. ‘Brendan is a hot-blooded man, not a saint. I went to bed early and you threw yourself at him, wouldn’t take no for an answer. He told me you threatened to tell me he’d raped you.’
‘I’m sorry… I can’t remember.’ Holly had hated herself, had shaken her head and repeated the same line again and again.
And then Geraldine had suggested she carry out a pregnancy test.
When the blue line appeared, Holly couldn’t believe that Geraldine didn’t throw her out of the house.
‘We’ll help you look after the child,’ she had said. ‘And when you’re completely well, we’ll set you up in your own place.’
There was a doctor who came to the house several times a week. One day, Holly peered through the crack in her door to see Brendan paying him in cash before he left the house.
When Brendan was home, Holly now stayed upstairs. Geraldine seemed to be interacting with her husband perfectly normally.
One day, she’d crept onto the landing and listened to them talking at the bottom of the stairs.
‘Why has it taken her so long to recover?’ Geraldine had hissed.
‘The doctor said some people have a particularly adverse reaction to Rohypnol,’ Brendan had replied. ‘I told him someone spiked her drink when she was out. Good job we never gave her any Ecstasy as we’d planned.’
When Patricia came into her bedroom to vacuum, Holly closed the door behind her. Patricia eyed her suspiciously.
‘Am I the first girl to come here?’ Holly asked, keeping her voice as level as she could. ‘Or have there been others?’
‘There have been two others like you.’ Patricia shrugged. ‘They also got themselves into a state like this and had to leave. Now it is you.’
Holly could see that the housekeeper viewed her as just another inconvenience to clean up after.
‘I’m having a baby,’ she whispered.
Patricia shrugged. ‘So were the others, but they both miscarried. Miss Geraldine, she is always disappointed.’
Everything had fallen into place then like a sinister jigsaw. Right back to Brendan’s interview, him so interested in Holly’s life story, her parents and heritage… the pressure for her to get into shape, keep healthy… The whole thing had been planned.
Brendan and Geraldine had done this before.
She had pushed past Patricia and run downstairs, confronting the two of them.
‘You drugged me… raped me!’ she spat at Brendan, and then turned to Geraldine. ‘And you knew all along what would happen. All because you’re desperate for a child.’
‘Calm down!’ Geraldine had slapped her face and Holly had been stunned into silence. ‘You’re talking nonsense… you’re losing your mind. We’re offering you support, that’s all. Nobody wants to take your child.’
Holly had cried and Geraldine had held her like a baby, soothing her with words. She felt so confused, so alone… Was it true? Was she losing her mind?
These two people were all she had.
* * *
Holly grew stronger, became well, and the whole incident was ring-fenced as a no-go area.
Geraldine treated her like glass.
‘I’ve told Brendan I want a divorce,’ she said one day when they were out for lunch. ‘You’re like a sister to me now, Holly. He’s going to move out and I’ll help you look after the baby.’
Holly had felt as if she was playing a lead role in some kind of sick play. Without Geraldine, she had literally nothing; she was penniless, alone and pregnant.
But despite Geraldine’s assertions that she was furious with her husband, Holly felt she wasn’t quite as innocent as she claimed. After all, Patricia had told her there had been two others.
Holly had tried speaking about the other girls, but Geraldine had shut her down.
They shopped for baby clothes, a cot, a car seat… and the nursery was currently being decorated in lemon.
Geraldine accompanied Holly to her hospital appointment, playing the role of the baby’s father almost. Geraldine paid privately for Holly to have an early ultrasound scan which included photographs.
‘We’d like to know the sex of the baby if possible,’ she said.
‘Sorry,’ the medic had said. ‘You’ll need to wait until your daughter is a minimum of sixteen weeks.’
Holly watched as Geraldine’s jaw set in irritation at his mistake but she said nothing.
* * *
Holly went into labour two days before the expected delivery date.
‘I’ll stay with you the whole time,’ Geraldine had said, clasping her hand in a caring manner. ‘Don’t be afraid, we’ll get through this together.’
A doctor and a foreign nurse who couldn’t speak any English came to the house, but Holly didn’t feel sad or lonely or afraid. She simply felt dead inside.
She had an epidural and the birth was straightforward. But before she could hold her baby, Geraldine had taken him from the nurse and spoken quietly with the doctor.
When she returned to Holly’s bedside, her cheeks had been flushed and her eyes bright.
‘Evan is doing fine,’ she told Holly. ‘He’s the perfect weight and the doctor says he’s strong and healthy.’
‘Evan?’ Holly had frowned.
‘That’s the baby’s name,’ Geraldine had told her.
Chapter Sixty-Seven
Holly
Holly had been watching Cora for a long time.
It had soon become apparent that every time Cora visited the bank, she shot straight upstairs, closing her bedroom curtains.
&n
bsp; She had complained several times to Holly about mistrusting banks and how disgusting it was that people got no interest at all on their savings in the current economic climate.
She sometimes talked about her late husband’s set ways and strong opinions, but as far as Holly could tell, she had seemed to perpetuate these needlessly, long after his death. Holly had often wondered who Cora used to be before a controlling marriage had slowly stripped her of her true self.
Then there had been all the shuffling and scraping that day Holly had stood listening outside the bedroom door. The high colour and heated sheen on Cora’s face indicated that she’d been over-exerting herself, perhaps lifting… and suddenly, pairing this knowledge with the contents of the letter Holly had found, all the pieces had come together and Holly knew.
She’d waited until Cora went out again and then crept upstairs to her bedroom. She’d tucked both hands under one corner of the mattress and pushed up with all her might… and there it was.
She’d stared at it, her eyes filling up with the realisation that she had at last uncovered the key to finding her son again.
Now all she had to do was to work out the best way of getting her hands on it.
Chapter Sixty-Eight
Holly
On the way into work the next day, Holly stopped at David’s kiosk.
‘I need to speak to you tonight,’ she said urgently. ‘Can you come around to the house?’
He tore his eyes away from the top of the car park. ‘Yes, of course. I…’
‘Are you listening to me?’ She stood in front of him to make him look at her.
‘Yes, it’s just that…’ He did a double-take. ‘Are you feeling all right, Holly? You look so pale, and your eyes are bloodshot.’
‘If you must know, I feel terrible.’
David stood up and shrugged on his high-vis jacket with urgency. ‘I’m so sorry, Holly. I have to deal with this. Give me a second.’ He pushed open the kiosk door and shouted, ‘Excuse me, can I have a word?’
The man who’d just got out of a silver BMW looked back at them.
‘Just a word, sir.’ David spat the word out as if it offended him to say it.
Holly watched as the driver checked his watch, openly sighed and then walked slowly towards them.
She felt woozy, like her centre of balance was off.
‘Are you aware, sir, that this is a private car park?’ David said pompously, pushing his shoulders back as he consulted his clipboard. ‘My records show that in the last two weeks, you have parked here illegally on a number of occasions…’
Holly gripped the side of the kiosk to stay standing. She tried to gulp in air, but her chest was burning. David’s voice faded out until there was nothing but a furious rushing noise in her head.
She stared at the driver and he stared back.
David’s mouth stopped moving. His head flipped from Holly to the driver and back again.
‘Markus,’ she whispered before she fainted.
Chapter Sixty-Nine
David
The driver springs forward to help, and together we manage to get Holly inside the foyer, laying her down on the visitor seats.
While he stays with her, I rush to the kiosk and summon Cath, the nominated first-aider, from her office.
Within minutes, Cath and Josh are attending to Holly, helping her inside the shop and the driver and I step back outside.
‘I’m Markus,’ he introduces himself. ‘I’m sorry that I’ve taken liberties with the parking here. I didn’t know… I mean, it was such a shock to see Holly standing there.’
‘You two know each other… how?’
For a few seconds he looks dazed, stands there like he’s altogether forgotten what day it is. I think about inviting him to sit in my chair for a moment but I can’t bring myself to do it. Not with how he’s blatantly flouted the rules here.
‘We went to school together and then we met up by accident…’ the driver says vaguely.
‘Holly called you Markus, is that your name?’
He nods and it occurs to me that this man could be a useful source of information. I’ve long suspected there’s more to Holly’s than she’s been letting on.
‘Come and sit inside for a moment, you look as if you’ve had a shock.’
I steer him into the foyer and he willingly sits down on one of the comfy chairs that Holly had been laid on only minutes earlier.
I get him a beaker of water from the cooler.
‘Thank you,’ he says.
‘You were saying that you met up with Holly again by accident,’ I prompted.
‘Yes, a year after leaving school. I told her about my life in Manchester and she jumped at the chance to…’ He shakes his head and looks at the floor. ‘She was in a bad time in her life. I wasn’t such a good friend.’
‘Why’s that?’
He shrugs. ‘My boss, Brendan, he’d been looking for a young woman suitable to be a companion to his wife. I knew there was something not quite right about it, with all the weird questions he got me to ask the girls, but I didn’t know exactly what. Then, when I got talking to Holly, I realised she’d be perfect.’ He bites his lip. ‘I swear I would never have taken Holly to him if I’d known what he had planned…’ His words trail off.
‘What happened?’ I shake my head. ‘Holly has been scared of something, of someone. She thinks perhaps somebody is following her… watching her, even. What happened to her that was so bad?’
And then Markus tells me Holly’s story.
He tells me everything.
Chapter Seventy
Holly
‘Come in,’ a raspy voice called when Holly held her breath and tapped on Mr Kellington’s door.
David opened the door for her.
‘Good luck,’ he whispered, before returning downstairs.
Inside, both Mr Kellington and Josh waited with concerned faces. Mr Kellington sat bolt upright behind his desk, and Josh had perched stiffly on the edge of one of the visitor seats.
‘Thanks for coming up, Holly. I understand from David that you’ve had a bit of a shock.’ Josh patted the chair next to him. ‘Come and take a seat.’
Her hands shook and so she tucked them under her thighs.
‘Are you feeling quite well now?’ Mr Kellington said kindly. ‘You were lucky that David caught you as you fell; you could have sustained a nasty head injury from hitting the edge of the kiosk.’
‘Yes, thank you. I’m fine now,’ she replied, shifting in her seat.
‘David said that you recognised someone who came into the car park… that it was quite upsetting for you.’
‘I thought I knew him, but I didn’t after all,’ she said quickly.
‘This is a pastoral chat only, Holly,’ Mr Kellington confirmed. ‘We are concerned only for your welfare; your private life is your own. You’re not in any trouble… as such.’
She stared at him, her heart pulsing in the top of her throat. Private life… What had Markus told David while she’d been out of it?
‘However, you’ve been acting a bit odd over the last few days,’ Josh said softly. ‘I’ve noticed, and so have some of your colleagues.’
Her eyes narrowed. She remembered seeing Ben and Martyn whispering and looking her way last night before she left.
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she said, grateful that the shaking in her hands hadn’t yet transferred to her voice.
Josh sighed.
‘I’ll spell it out for you, Holly. You’ve been distracted to the point of neglecting the customers. Sitting staring out of the window for long periods of time and scribbling constantly in that notebook of yours, which I believe has nothing to do with work.’
Holly shrugged. She’d glanced out of the window a few times, making sure Emily wasn’t watching her every move, but she hadn’t been writing in any notebook. Had she?
‘They’re lying,’ she said simply. ‘Whoever told you that is jealous of my sales. They’re trying to get
rid of me like happened to Lynette.’
She said the name meaningfully and fixed Josh with a look.
He coughed and glanced at Mr Kellington, who showed no sign of understanding the meaning behind it.
‘Also, I’m afraid I received a concerned call from our long-standing customer Mr Fenwick this morning,’ Mr Kellington added.
Holly remembered that the Fenwicks had popped into the shop yesterday… or had it been the day before? She seemed to be losing track of the days. Her head was only full of the chance to find Evan and take him far away, where they could make a new start together as mother and son…
‘Holly?’
Mr Kellington had been talking and she’d missed it.
‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Can you say that again?’
‘You sold him the panther sculpture for more than double the list price,’ Mr Kellington repeated, a little more sharply. ‘Embarrassingly they discovered the guide price sticker still on the bottom when they got the piece home.’
‘So what? They’ve got more money than they know what to do with,’ Holly snapped. ‘Nothing better to do every day than come in here, buying more and more trinkets for their already overstuffed home. Why don’t they do something good with their money for once?’
‘Well! I hardly think that’s your concern,’ Mr Kellington blustered, pulling at his green-striped bow tie. ‘Lucky for us that they choose to spend their money here.’
‘You talk about this shop and the furniture in it as though it’s something important,’ Holly said slowly, shaking her head. ‘But it’s all just a load of overpriced crap that doesn’t mean anything. Don’t you see? It’s not real, it’s not what’s important in life. There are far more precious things than fancy lamps and feather-filled cushions.’
Mr Kellington’s mouth fell open.
‘That’s enough, Holly,’ Josh said. ‘I think you need to go home and rest for a few days.’
