Keep You Safe

by Rona Halsall

  He snuffles and groans. Did I get his nose? His hold on her loosens. She wriggles her arm free and gives him a punch to the face with the back of her knuckles, bone connecting with bone. He shouts out and she gasps at the burning pain that engulfs her hand. Ignore, it, ignore it, she chants to take her mind off the throbbing. This might be the only chance she’s going to get.

  She slithers out of his grasp and runs.

  Twenty-Seven

  Then

  Stuck in prison, with nowhere to go, no place to be and hours on her own, Natalie became a writer of letters. It was a distraction, a focus and something she became obsessive about, writing slowly and neatly, no crossings out, thinking it through before she allowed herself to put pen to paper. Her main correspondent was Sasha, the only person she considered a friend anymore, but it also became a way to create precious moments with her son. By writing to him, telling him about what she saw in her daydreams, her imaginary version of him became three dimensional and for a time, almost real. It was the only way she could make life bearable, the only way to stop herself from becoming one of the self-harmers, the screamers.

  Of course, she didn’t send Harry the letters. She wouldn’t want Tom or the nanny reading them; they were much too personal for that. No, they were just for her and Harry. She kept them all, neatly stacked in her locker and one day, when he was older, she might show them to him. But for now, they allowed her to live in a dream world for hours at a time, a world where he was with her and she could play with him, feed him, bathe him, cuddle him. She could enjoy him, all to herself.

  Today, he’d be nine months old. She drew him a picture, spending an age designing it and colouring it in. In her mind, she baked a cake – banana, of course, his favourite. She could see him, sitting in a living room that didn’t exist, in a house that she’d bought and furnished in her imagination. There was a long Persian rug, patterned with hues of red and blue, Harry sitting at one end, her at the other, holding Mr Bunny. He’d do anything to get that toy and today was the day he worked out how to crawl.

  She could see the look of determination on his face, could hear her cries of encouragement as he pushed himself up on hands and knees and started moving towards her, swaying and unsteady, but getting closer. He flopped onto his belly for a rest, but after a few moments, he was up and trying again, tongue poking out, like it did when he was working something out. Once he’d set his mind on something there was no stopping Harry, and when he finally reached her and grabbed his prize, she was rewarded with a beaming smile and his laughter as he waved Mr Bunny in the air, watching his long ears flapping about.

  She finished her drawing of rabbits, a whole family of them and wrote him a message at the bottom of the page.

  Lovely Munchkin,

  I think about you every minute of the day, hoping you are being looked after. Know that I love you as much as any mother can love their child, even though we are miles apart. I hope you feel my love warming you when you’re cold, holding you when you’re upset, laughing with you when you’re having fun. I am a part of you and you are a part of me, little one and nobody can take that away from us. Nobody.

  A tapping sound distracted her and she looked down to see tears dripping from her chin onto the card, smudging the ink, her chest aching as though she’d been squeezed too hard. She wiped her face with her sleeve and went to lie down on the bed, conjuring Harry up again to lie with her, in the crook of her arm, his head snuggled in to her neck, baby-soft hair tickling her face.

  ‘You are my sunshine…’ she sang, softly, the lyrics flowing until she got to the line about taking her sunshine away, when her voice cracked and it was a struggle to finish.

  In her mind, she stroked his hair as she sang, felt him settle, his breaths deep and even. She sighed, hollowed out by a desolation that was impossible to fight. So many milestones she was going to miss. His first steps, a mouth full of teeth, his first words, learning how to run and jump and climb up and down steps. All without her.

  How could Tom even think about doing this to me? How could he? But she knew the answer. He’d done it to preserve himself with no thought about her. No thought at all. Her body shuddered as she cried herself to sleep.

  Five and a half weeks into her prison sentence, Natalie actually received a letter. It had taken thirty-eight days for someone to write to her, if you discounted Sasha’s scribbled postcard, and it felt more like a year. Her heart swelled with hope when it was handed to her because it meant that someone out there was thinking about her. Maybe a response to one of her letters. Then she studied the writing and sighed. Not Mum, then. Well, what did she expect?

  The sound of her mother’s disapproving voice was never far from Natalie’s mind. Maybe because she knew that it was a voice she was unlikely to hear again.

  Natalie was never her mother’s favourite; that would be Martin, her younger brother, who was so clever he’d been put up a year into Natalie’s class, an embarrassment she’d never come to terms with during her time at school. They had never got on, were the opposite of close and he delighted in showing her up at every opportunity. In her mind, he was the wedge that drove her family apart.

  The pivotal moment had happened after a memorable parents’ evening. They’d all been to school to discuss performance and the subjects Natalie and Martin were going to choose for GCSEs. The more teachers they spoke to, the more the tension built and their parents had started arguing as soon as they got in the car to drive home.

  ‘She’s not stupid,’ her father had said.

  ‘I didn’t say she was,’ her mother snapped. ‘She just needs to apply herself. Like Martin. Put some effort in.’ She looked round to where Natalie sat, open-mouthed, on the back seat and caught her eye. Her mother’s face hardened. ‘It’s the truth.’

  Martin sniggered.

  Natalie swore under her breath.

  Her father thumped the steering wheel and the car swerved dangerously close to a hedge.

  ‘Natalie is just as clever as Martin. The problem is…’

  ‘Eyes on the road, Roger, please.’ Her mother hung on to the door with one hand, her seat belt with the other.

  ‘I know how to drive,’ her father said through gritted teeth, knuckles white as he tried to strangle the steering wheel rather than her mother. ‘The problem is teaching methods. Natalie’s a bright girl, but she needs to be engaged in the subjects. All this national curriculum, it’s like a straitjacket. Makes lessons boring.’ It was her father’s hobby horse. An ex-teacher himself, he felt he had the high ground on the matter and he glared at her mother.

  ‘It’s about application. And drive. And determination.’ Her mother folded her arms across her chest. ‘Things you could show a bit more of. Perhaps if you’d set a better example…’

  The car screeched to the kerb before she could finish her sentence. Natalie’s father got out, slammed the door with a force that made the car shake and headed into the Golden Lion. None of them spoke. Her mother sighed, shuffled across to the driver’s seat and drove them home in a silence that demanded not to be broken.

  It was a couple of days before her father came home and then it was to announce that he was leaving. As far as Natalie knew he was living in France somewhere, teaching English. But that information was thirteen years old. Maybe he was still there. Maybe he wasn’t.

  Natalie never blamed him for wanting to get away from her mother. What made her angry was that he didn’t take her with him. Her mother refused to have anything to do with him once he’d gone, and had moved the family without telling him their new address. They’d lost touch and she didn’t even know where he lived anymore. It was a sadness that she found hard to bear because he’d always stood up for her. And she could really do with him now.

  She could do with somebody.

  Anybody.

  Which brought her full circle back to the letter in her hand, written in Sasha’s big curly script. Perhaps she hasn’t deserted me after all. Perhaps I can still count on her as a
friend, whatever Katya might think.

  She tore open the envelope, delighted to find several pages of stories about Sasha’s life, the tour she was on with the theatre group, places they’d been and people she’d met. It made Natalie smile and she read it several times, warming herself in its gentle embrace, hearing Sasha speak the words, seeing her face, hearing her laugh. She savoured each word, each sentence, especially the last one:

  ‘Love you always, better than a sister, Sweetie x.’

  It was only later, when the day had been and gone, that she realised that today was the first day since she’d been on the Therapy Wing that she hadn’t seen Katya. And that troubled her. That was really odd.

  Twenty-Eight

  Now

  Natalie doesn’t look to see if her attacker is following, but dashes through the back door of Marks & Spencer, her heart racing. She slows to a speed-walk and weaves her way through several departments until she finds herself by the front exit. Then she’s back on the main shopping street. She glances over her shoulder, can’t see him and hurries on.

  What to do? What to do?

  She needs to get to Tom’s office, but equally, she needs to make sure she’s not being followed. As she passes a charity shop, she has an idea and slips inside, glad now for her flowery dress because it shouldn’t be too hard to make herself look different. He can’t follow me if he doesn’t recognise me, can he? It’s her only option. She glances at her watch. Twenty minutes until Tom leaves. It’s doable but she’s got to be quick.

  The shop is long and narrow, widening out at the back where the clothes section is located, so she’s hidden from people passing on the street. Her legs are shaking with all the effort of the morning and as she flicks through the clothes rack, she realises how close she came to being caught. Her heart skips at the thought. I can’t let that happen again, got to stay sharp. She picks out a few items, darts into the changing room and whips the curtain closed as if it has the power to make her invisible.

  She struggles to get changed, fingers fumbling with buttons and zippers, the hand that punched her attacker already bruised and starting to swell. A white blouse and black trousers fit well enough and there’s a pair of navy shoes in her size, a bit clumpy in an old lady way, but they’ll do. Then there’s a black handbag, old-fashioned, but it hangs over her shoulder and tucks under her arm, so it’s not too visible.

  She shakes her hair out of the braid into a wavy mane and fluffs it around her face, then scrubs off her make-up with a couple of tissues and a good dollop of spit. Finally, she finds the dorky glasses with thick black rims that she already had in her bag. They cover half of her face and when she looks in the mirror, she sees a different person. One that looks hot and stressed. Like she works in an office.

  She checks her watch. Twelve minutes. Quick, quick. She transfers the contents of her handbag, leaves her old clothes in the cubicle and heads towards the exit. Fortunately, the volunteers who are manning the shop are more interested in a bag of books they are sorting through than what she’s doing and there are a couple of customers milling around the till, hiding her from view as she strolls out of the shop.

  A glance up and down the street reassures her that her attacker’s not there and she sighs with relief, checks her watch. Dammit! Ten minutes and Tom will have left his office. She sets off at a run, back to her car.

  The car park is quiet, only a couple of women draped with loaded shopping bags heading towards their vehicles. She does a quick scan. Is that him? In the far corner? A man standing beside a big, black four by four, talking on his phone, his back towards her, foot scuffing something on the ground as he talks. He’s wearing the same coloured shirt as her attacker and her senses fizz. It’s got to be him!

  Hardly daring to breathe, she slips into the driver’s seat of her car while the man is still focused on his conversation. She’s parked right by the exit and pulls away before he notices. Or did he? She looks in her mirror. A silver estate car is at the top of the exit ramp, nothing behind it. Acrylic clothes stick to her sweaty skin.

  It only takes a couple of minutes to get to Tom’s office, but she constantly checks her mirror, muscles pulling at her neck and shoulders. So many black four-by-fours around, it’s hard to tell if he’s following her or not. She didn’t see what make it was and has no interest in cars, so even the shape didn’t register as anything particularly memorable. Big and black, that’s all she has to go on. Not even a number plate.

  The only available parking space is at the end of the road, too far away from Tom’s office for her to see him leave. She’ll have to get out and loiter somewhere until she sees him come out.

  She checks her watch. A couple of minutes to go. Can she stay and wait?

  But what if… Her eyes widen as an unwelcome thought crawls into her mind. Whoever attacked her is also looking for Harry and if she follows Tom now, she could end up leading him right to his prize. She’ll be putting Harry in more danger.

  Gripped by fear, she drives away, glancing behind her. Something black. Two vehicles back. She urges the people in front to go faster. The black car is still behind her as she gets to the edge of town and she takes a sudden left at a mini roundabout, no idea where she’s going. She checks her mirror, hands so slick with sweat she can hardly steer. Just a silver estate car, nothing black, and she weaves her way through a residential estate thinking that she must have lost him. Then a black car turns into the bottom of the road behind her. Her throat tightens. She turns right and nips in front of a lorry, camouflaged for now.

  A retail park looms on the right and she whips her car off the main road, pulling in behind a burger van, at the far end of B&Q’s car park. Satisfied that she’s hidden from view, she slumps forwards and rests her forehead on the steering wheel, her body shaking as if she’s drunk a six pack of Red Bull.

  Her throat feels raw with the force of her breath. Her head throbs where she head-butted the man, and her hand is so swollen now that her fingers will hardly bend. She rummages in her bag, and finds a packet of painkillers, swallowing a couple down in the hope that it’ll take the edge off the pain, enough to stop it from distracting her at any rate. Her eyes flick between her mirrors, but nobody comes and gradually, her pulse starts to slow.

  Dammit! What went wrong?

  It occurs to her then that her car is the problem. It has UK number plates and stands out as a stranger amongst the local vehicles. And it was borrowed from an ex-convict friend. Could Lech have found that out, through his network of contacts? Maybe that’s how he found me? Because the man in the car park can’t have been there by accident. He must surely have known the car was hers. Has my timescale shrunk? Is today the only chance she has to get to Harry and sneak him off the island?

  She works through her options. Dump the car? No, she needs transport and won’t be able to get Harry without it. Maybe hire something? But then she’d need to give identification. Change the number plates? That’s it! Disguise the car. She sits up and a sense of calm drapes itself over her, like a magic cloak, returning life to her limbs and purpose to her thoughts.

  She hops out of the car and peers round the edge of the burger van, eyes sweeping the car park. There are a few black cars, but nothing as chunky as the one her attacker was driving. She double-checks, just to make sure. No, not here. Inside the shop, she finds an assistant who’s stacking shelves with paint.

  ‘Number plates? No, we don’t do them here, but if you go out of the car park, turn right and right again, you’ll find a motor supplies place up the road on your left. They’ll do them for you. Fit them as well if you pay a bit extra.’

  Natalie runs back to her car and within half an hour, she’s on her way, her car now camouflaged, not only with Isle of Man number plates but with a white stripe on the bonnet and boot, some fancy hub caps and fluffy tiger print seat covers for good measure. It was the best she could do, and overall, she’s happy with the effect. It’s surprising what a difference little details can make to a car’s a
ppearance, she decides. Surely, he won’t recognise her now?

  Cat and mouse. I can do this, she thinks as she navigates her way back to the main road. As long as she doesn’t panic, and keeps sharp, he won’t find her again.

  So, what now? She can’t go back into Douglas, so that rules out meeting Sasha. Her best option, she decides, is to go back to Peel, get changed into a new disguise and see if Mary has come up with anything useful. And she can ring Sasha, see if the producer’s PA has come up with Tom’s address. If she hasn’t, then she’ll ring Jack.

  She takes a deep breath. It’s all okay, she reassures herself. Only lunchtime. Still plenty of hours left in the day.

  She chews at her bottom lip as she drives, her mind stuck in the car park, with the man in the Hawaiian shirt. Was it Lech? She doesn’t think so, but maybe that’s who he was speaking to on the phone. She nods. Makes sense. Icy fingers walk down her spine. But that means… Crap! There’s two people to look out for.

  Her eyes flick to her rear-view mirror, but there are no black cars in sight. Just a silver estate. A sleek thing with tinted windows. Silver estate? She looks again and her heart skitters. Isn’t that the car that followed me down the ramp at Marks & Spencer?

  Twenty-Nine

  Now

  Well, that didn’t go as well as I’d hoped. Best laid plans and all that. All gone to shit. That bitch is a slippery fish. I really thought I had her.

  I mean, I know she’s in Peel somewhere, but she parked in the central car park then scarpered before I could see which direction she went. Those bloody mobility scooters, getting in the way. Two abreast at two miles an hour, for fuck’s sake!

  Anyway. Stiff gin and then I’ll have to work out what to do next.