“You didn’t ruin her life, her parents did that all by themselves when they started trafficking girls and picked on the wrong people.”
“Yeah. Me.” I sighed and ran my fingers through my hair. “Do you think life will ever settle down?”
She patted my cheek as she lifted herself up, “You are Mason Fox and you wouldn’t have it any other way.” She winked when I chuckled then left the room as Debora walked in.
“Hey,” I smiled at her. She looked exhausted, her thick brown hair limp, her skin washed-out and full of blemishes, her lips sore from where she had chewed on them frantically.
I stilled when she sat next to me, lifted my arm and snuggled into me, her arms curling around me as she sought comfort. “He won’t talk to me, Mr Fox.”
“George? And please call me Mason, Debora, I’ve told you before.”
She nodded and sighed as we both stared through the window. “I’ve told him that he can do things properly, you know through the courts and that to gain access to Jamie the proper way instead of just whipping him from under Etta, but he says that’s not enough, he wants full custody.”
“And how do you feel about that?”
“It’s not that, I don’t mind bringing him up with George but I don’t think it’s right the way he’s doing it. It’s not fair on Etta, and it’s certainly not fair on Jamie, he needs his mum… we all need our mum’s.”
I gave her a squeeze and kissed the top of her hair. The poor girl had had an awful upbringing, shipped from uncle to uncle, fighting for her mother’s attention. In some ways I wished that I had been her dad, maybe I could have given her more of a stable childhood but it hadn’t been… it never had.
“Do you…” she gulped heavily as tears choked her throat. “Do you think she’ll come back?”
I closed my eyes as her distress burrowed deep within me, her despair now mine. “I don’t know, Debora. I can’t lie to you and say that she will because I don’t know.” I held her tighter, “But I can tell you that Ava will do her all to get them out of there alive.”
“Yeah?” she scoffed. “Even my mother?”
I smiled secretly. “Even your mother.”
Chapter Twenty Seven
Underestimated
Ava
“God, I need to wee.”
“Good luck with that.” Rebecca huffed as she wriggled on her own backside. “I’ve needed one for the last few hours. But the bastards have just left us here to rot… and piss ourselves.”
I sighed, “Well you’d think they’d appreciate we’re women.”
“Do you always have to be so sarcastic?”
I rolled my eyes as I shifted position and tried to alleviate the pressure on my bladder. “Whatever, Rebecca. I’m too tired to fight with you.”
“Well, wonders never cease. You always want to fight with me; the chemo must have shrivelled your bitchiness.”
“Fuck you, you heartless bitch.”
“Ooh,” she murmured as she smirked at me. “Have I hit a nerve? By the way, loving the new hairstyle.”
I blew out a slow breath, wondering if my death could be any more torturous than this shit. She tipped her head and studied me with a slight incline to her eyebrows. “What?” I asked with an irritated sigh.
“It’s blonde.”
I nodded and shrugged. “Yeah, new growth, completely new colour and texture.”
She pursed her lips and nodded faintly, “Well, it suits you.”
“Eh?”
“Your hair,” she gestured to my head with a tilt of her chin, “I like the colour. It’s kind of a really light copper blush, but with blonde streaks. It might be something I’d consider doing to mine.”
“What?”
She squinted at me. “My God, are you always this stupid? I – like – your – hair. It gives you a pixie appearance too. Makes your chin more prominent and defines your cheekbones.”
For Christ’s sake.
“Right.”
She shifted again as her toilet needs began causing her problems. “Ava, I’m just gonna wee in a minute.”
“Go for it,” I sighed. “I’m sure we’ll be here long enough for it to dry out.”
“Oh don’t say that,” she whimpered.
I shrugged and rested the back of my head on the metal support behind me, closing my eyes to try and gain some concentration. We’d been there ages and the only person we’d seen was the guy that put us to sleep. It wasn’t making sense.
“I’m scared.”
I opened an eye and peered at Rebecca. Her eyes were full of fear, tears rimming over and spilling down her cheeks as she looked at me. I nodded; it was all I could do. “I know.”
“Are you?” she asked quietly.
“Yeah,” I answered with a nod. “Yeah, I am. I can’t seem to get a hint at anything.”
“A hint?” she asked as her gaze roamed the room.
“Yeah, something that will help me understand the situation, why we’re here and who is doing this.”
She nodded then groaned as she shifted again. “If I ask who you’ve upset you’ll take it the wrong way.”
I scoffed but nodded, “Yeah, that’s a possibility.”
She huffed and smiled to herself. “I’d say it’s a given. If you weren’t here with me I’d have said it was you doing it to me, but you are so that’s out.”
“Well done, Miss Marple.”
She glared at me but then something miraculous happened… her lips twitched and she smiled at me. Fuck, life was all wrong. Everything was upside down and inside out. I didn’t like it. It made me nervous and wary. “Don’t smile at me Rebecca, it makes me nervous.”
“Oh fuck you!”
“No thanks.” I retorted.
“No, same here. Why would I want you when I can fuck your husband?”
I clenched my teeth as nausea rolled up my throat and attempted to make an appearance. My stomach twisted with jealousy as her hatred speared my chest and made it difficult to breathe through.
I tried to ignore her as I pulled my legs up and turned my back on her as far as I could but the vision of her words assaulted my mind and all I could visualise was her and Mason, fucking and even worse… enjoying it.
***
“You know,” Rebecca whispered into the darkness that had descended into the room, bringing a chill into the air with it.
We’d been silent for a long while, both of us imagining how to kill the other as our hatred lay thick in the atmosphere around us.
“I have far more reason to hate you than you me.”
I shook my head in bewilderment. “And how do you work that out?”
She hesitated and I swear I could feel her sadness eat at me. It radiated from her, even in the darkness, even through the chill, its potency thick and rancid as she struggled to find her voice. “Because although you believe I took him from you,” she choked on a sob and I winced at the sound. “You took him from me, Ava.”
I turned to look at her. She was watching me in the dim light from the moon as it streaked into the room and gave off a faint glow. I remained silent, waiting for her to continue. Her eyes slid to the window, “Six years we’d been together.” She smiled painfully, although not at me, her throat bobbing as she tried to swallow back the lump in it.
I rolled my head around my neck as I tried to ease the tension and dropped my eyes from her. “We’d been friends for years. I’d had such a crush on him since I was twelve.” She chuckled slightly and smiled wider. “Our families were friends and would always holiday together. I remember one year,” she paused and I turned to look at her. She didn’t return my look; her eyes were still fixed on the moon as she lost herself to her memories. “He took me fishing. He’d have been, what? I was fifteen... So he must have been around seventeen.”
Her expression lightened and she giggled. “He’d caught this tiddly little fish, I mean it was so weak and weeny but it seemed to beg with its large, round eyes for me to help it, free it. So I unhoo
ked it and threw it back in.” She shook her head in humour. “Mason threw me in after it, said if I couldn’t catch any with a rod I should use my teeth.” She slipped her face to mine, “He used to call me a horse.”
I smiled and nodded. “Yeah, I can see that.”
She narrowed her eyes on me and sighed but carried on. “And then on my seventeenth birthday, he kissed me… and I fell in love.” A tear rolled down her face and I watched it slide off her chin and drop onto her cream silk shirt, the drop splattering against the dirt that now spoiled the pristine material.
She smiled then looked at me. “It was my first ever kiss and…” she swallowed and shrugged, “… and it was perfect.”
“Rebecca…”
“No,” she cut me off quietly. “I’m not telling you this to hurt you. I just want you to… well to understand.”
“Why?”
Her teeth pulled at her bottom lip and a sob made its way out of her. God damn, that was not my heart aching, no it was hatred burning up. “Because I’m tired, Ava. I’m tired of fighting for something… someone that was never really mine, but God, I so wanted him to be.”
I sighed and looked to the floor, her heartache hurtful to watch. “Have you ever wanted something so bad that you would kill for it, Ava? You would humiliate yourself, degrade yourself and do some… shameful things just for the slightest bit of attention from someone who held your heart.”
I nodded, “Yeah, I get that.”
She nodded and smiled tightly. “But then you always had him. You never had to fight like I did, you never took his disgust. You never had to take the humiliation of grabbing onto the scraps he threw you.”
“If that’s the case, why didn’t you let go?”
She scoffed and shook her head as her cries became louder. “Because I love him, Ava. I’ve always loved him. I turned to coke because of him. I let him take whatever he wanted from me. I let him share me with other men and all I wanted…”
I growled as a tear rolled down my face and wiped it away with a lift of my shoulder. “All you wanted?” I urged her on.
She stared at the floor whilst she tried to control herself, blowing out lengthily until she had her weeping under control. “All I ever wanted was to hear him say I was beautiful, to whisper in my ear that he loved me.”
The door opened and this time we welcomed the oblivion that took each of us from our inner tortures.
Chapter Twenty Eight
Waiting
Mason
I ran my hands over the duvet that decorated Ava’s bed. The teal colour she had chosen was soft and feminine, but still not too girly. I smiled when I realised she would have made that choice to include my tastes without even realising she was doing it.
I closed my eyes and took another hard breath. I missed her so much. It had been over six months now, six long fucking torturous months without her.
And yet, as fate goes, just when I was about to put an end to her denial, the cruel twist of life beats me to it and takes her from me again.
Walking over to her mirrored table, I ran my fingers over the mass of her make-up strewn across the surface of it. Her usual perfume, the one that reminded me of honeysuckle and oranges, sat waiting for her to spritz again. The small comb had replaced the thick brush she’d always used, reminding me of her now honey blonde hair that resembled a baby’s delicate tresses. That made me smile, I knew she liked the colour secretly, she’d always wanted to be slightly blonde, but the deep rich red in her colouring had never taken properly with dyes.
I chuckled when the memory of her gawping at me with bright orange hair from the bedroom doorway as tears streamed down her face and her hands flapped about reminded me of some our happy times.
I picked up her pot of anti-aging creamy shit stuff she applied every night religiously and twisted off the cap, dipping my nose near it to pull in the smell of her bedtime scent. I’d never tell her but it had always turned me on. I’m sure the manufacturers of that damn stuff added aphrodisiac extras; they should for the bloody price she always paid. Plastic surgery would have been cheaper in the long run.
I entered the bathroom and turned on the shower, pre-warming it to the heat I always had it, scowling and shaking my head in frustration when I saw that Ava had it set to lukewarm as always. What was that all about? Who the hell had a lukewarm shower, apart from Ava that was?
I used her toothbrush. I knew she’d hit me if she found out but stupidly, it took me closer to her, linked her with me.
The soap looked at me, the £15 bar of soap she always defended was one of her luxuries – one? One? Damn, she was the only woman I knew who couldn’t seem to count past one, even when there were twenty odd… it was always just the one. Like just the one bar of chocolate or just one more Agent Provocateur bra and thong set.
The image of her shoving a bar of soap swiftly into her little mouth when she was pregnant and I’d caught her in my bathroom gave me another smile. There was only my wife who would crave something hideous when pregnant… and oh god, the bloody gherkins!
The shower pounded my back, stimulating every deadened fibre until my pores tingled angrily and my skin pimpled funnily. Ava had always wrinkled up like I’d never seen before, mind you, the three bloody hours she spent in the tub didn’t help, with her glass of wine, her strawberries and the mountain of bloody Ferrero Rocher’s.
Right then, I’d have given anything to see her wrinkled body slide up and down the tub like she used to just to annoy me, her perfect lithe body gliding up and down on her belly, water sloshing over the rim of the bath and drenching me as I’d sat on the toilet reading her the latest Ker Dukey novel she always went crazy for. Mind you, I’d never complain, she was always horny as fuck after reading one of them.
I squirted her shampoo into my palms, smiling at the baby brand that she would have to use now while her hair was in its fragile period.
I’ll admit, the day I saw her after her treatment, the day I stupidly hated what my fucking damn mouth had come out with, had been a shock. For over twenty years, Ava had had such beautiful thick healthy hair, her copper curls one of the things I had fell in love with. And then suddenly, it was gone. She had appeared to be a completely different person, someone I hadn’t recognised. However, it hadn’t just been her hair that had stunned me; it had been her whole look. She’d lost shit loads of weight, her face was drawn and pale, her once smooth freckled skin had been covered in blemishes and broken veins and her striking green eyes were dull and lifeless.
I hated how my thoughtlessness and lack of compassion had caused her to run and break. And how she’d turned to Steed after.
I stepped out of the shower, dried off and climbed into her bed, pulling the duvet up to my face and inhaling her sweet scent, consuming her, filling my soul with her essence.
I didn’t know what to do. For once there was absolutely nothing to go on. There had been no contact in two days… nothing.
Initially, I hadn’t been too concerned. Occurrences like this, something usually happened to give me a lead, or a contact would be made to tell me why this was happening. But as yet, nothing. And now I was starting to panic. Now I was struggling to take another breath in case Ava was taking her last.
After everything; after what the cancer had put her through, and how she had fought like my warrior always did, I prayed to god that she would get through this final battle.
I needed her. My heart needed her. My soul needed her.
Her glorious bastard would follow her into hell if need be.
I once told her that she would never leave me, even in death.
And I would keep that promise.
Chapter Twenty Nine
Revelations
Ava
“Can I ask you a question?”
I shifted round to face Rebecca. The dampness in my jeans was cold and irritating. Every time it dried out, I had to wee again. We’d been here around two days by the coming and going of light, but that two days had given me
more of an idea about my surroundings. However, now my brain was starting to shut down with dehydration, my stomach hurt so badly with pangs of hunger and I was exhausted. I knew I wouldn’t get out of here unaided now; I was too weak and vulnerable.
“Go for it,” Rebecca slurred. She was losing the fight too. She no longer cried, she was too frail and in as much pain as me. Her fingers had gone blue from being elevated for so long, her bottom was as sore as mine after sitting in our own urine for so long and her spirit had evaporated into the dust particles that refused to stop floating around us.
“If Mason means that much to you, why did you bribe him to marry you? Wouldn’t you have just wanted him to be happy?”
She sighed and rolled her lips, her gaze slipping from me to a random spot of dirt on the floor. “It was all so hard at first. I got pregnant and daddy did something I had no idea about at first.”
“You didn’t know he was blackmailing Mason?”
She shook her head and looked at me, “Not at first, no. He’d asked who the father was, I told him Mason but I knew he wouldn’t want anything to do with it and daddy took it from there. But then it was so easy to go along with.”
I frowned and tipped my head in confusion. “But it wasn’t Mason’s baby, was it?”
She shook her head, her teeth gnawing on her sore lips as her heartache took her to a place I knew all too well. “No it wasn’t. At first I thought it was. The dates fit, even though I’d had sex with another.”
“No Rebecca, the dates didn’t fit.”
She turned to me, her eyes so sad and watery. “I… I lost it.”
“What?” None of it was making sense.
She blew out hard and shifted until she was looking at me without a twist in her neck. “I was six weeks pregnant when you came on the scene.”
Fortitude (Heart of Stone) Page 12
